Volume 8 - CH 10

Chapter 10 – Cave Exploration and Simple Tasks

We arrived at the cave, it was a 10-minute walk from the hot springs, and I heard there were a lot of bugs inside that I didn’t like. I wonder about the big hole that I can enter without even bending down.

I heard that a giant ant is a monster that is only as tall as my waist, so why is the hole so big?

“Alessia-san, the giant ant is a monster about the size of a man’s waist, isn’t it? Isn’t the hole too big?”

“Yeah, Wataru-san, normal giant ants are like I said, but giant soldier ants and giant guard ants are even bigger.”

“I-I see.”

That’s a nasty piece of information. And the names are long and cumbersome. Do they have to put a giant on everything? And why not giant and ants shortened to giants?

“Alessia-san, don’t you think the names of the monsters are too long? It’s getting tedious to say them.”

“Oh, it’s an explanation, so I gave the full name, but usually I just call them simply ant, guard, soldier, etc.”

Thank goodness, my tongue wouldn’t be able to hold it if I had to say giant soldier ant every time. My jaw would get tired too. Well, if you think about the fact that adventurers don’t say the full name of the monster every time, it makes sense, doesn’t it?

“I see. It’s a hassle to use full names, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Alessia-san nodded with a bitter smile. I guess the question was too obvious.

“Well then, I guess it’s time to go into the cave.”

We’ve spent a lot of time on trivial things, haven’t we? We float a ball of light and enter the cave. …I think in Japan, the entrance to an ant’s nest is like a hole straight down, but in the other world, it’s different, isn’t it?

Is it harder to go vertical if they’re big or something? Well, if we don’t have to use ropes or anything, it’s easy.

“…Alessia-san, I know it’s a little late for this, but the caves don’t collapse, do they?”

“Ant has made it so it won’t collapse easily, don’t worry. Well, be careful not to overdo it, or it will collapse.”

If we don’t overdo it, it will be fine, huh? I just watch or shoot a bow, and it will be fine. Let’s warn Rimu not to overdo it.

We proceeded through the gently descending cave, with Girasole surrounding me in the middle. There are not many monsters near the entrance, and only a few goblins and ants appear, but they are killed instantly by Girasole.

Incidentally, the monsters that appear are of low rank, so there is no particular material needed. It is a waste of time to dismantle them.

As for why to explore such caves, since ant nests are dug in every direction underground, it is said that valuable mineral veins can be found in the ground.

If we could find even a vein of iron ore, it would help this island a lot. If we find a vein of gold or other valuable ore, I can take it to the Southern City, so I hope we can find something.　

“Wataru-san, is it okay if I skip the places we explored the day before yesterday?”

“Yes, no problem. Please proceed on your own accord.”

I’m an amateur, so it’s not good for me to meddle.

“All right. Then we’ll start exploring the area from there.”

“Okay.”

We passed through several passages, killing monsters in the blink of an eye. The last time they had explored the place was only half a day, so we must have explored it pretty deeply now.

“From here on, it’s our first time in this place, so be careful.”

Marina-san, who is leading the way, warns us. How do you know where you are going, even though it’s dimly lit and the places are all very similar? When I asked her how she knew, she pointed to a wall.

When I looked where Marina-san pointed, I saw a large cut in the cave. …There was an easy-to-see marker. There was no mistaking it.

We started to move forward and entered a branching passageway. As I proceeded deeper, wow, it smelled. What is this smell? We went further in, enduring the stench. More ants come out too.

The stench becomes even stronger when we come out into a large room. The cause seems to be the rotten things piled up in the room.

“What are those things, Alessia-san?”

“That’s ant’s food. They hoard the flesh of worms, goblins, animals, and monsters like that. There seem to be a lot of worms here, so they don’t seem to have a problem finding food. The rooms we’ve passed so far have been similar.”

Oh, so they have plenty of food. If the abundance of food is not enough to feed the ants, then there will be an overflow of ants. That would suck.

“So, Alessia-san, what are you going to do with this?”

“We’re going to burn it.”

“Burn it? Fire is dangerous in a cave. Especially with this smell, there are strange gases coming out. It could explode. If it burns, you won’t be able to breathe.”

Didn’t rot meat give off methane gas or something? I think it exploded… Even if it doesn’t explode, I don’t want to run out of oxygen.

“It’ll be fine. Ant needs air, too, so there are air holes all over the place. And don’t worry about the explosion. If we use wind magic to disperse the smell before we burn it, it won’t explode. Just watch.”

“I understand. I’m counting on you.”

I thought I wouldn’t interfere, but I did.

“Then, please do it, Fuu-chan.”

At Marina-san’s words, Fuu-chan uses magic… strong winds blow, and the smell fades fast. As expected of wind slime.

“Ilma.”

“Yes.”

After a short exchange, Ilma-san releases a flame. Even though there is no oil sprayed on the food, it burns up. It’s amazing.

“It will take a while for the fire to finish burning, so we’ll explore the next room while we’re at it.”

It seems we’ll go ahead while it burns for now and check the room when we come back. They don’t waste any time, do they? When we returned to the main passageway after dealing with three similar rooms, we found a lot of ants. There are some ants that are one size bigger than the others. I wonder if those are soldiers or guards.

“There are a lot of them, and some are soldiers. Reinforcements are coming, Wataru-san. Can you take the rubber boat to the front?”

“I understand.”

As Alessia-san told me, I summoned a rubber boat forward to block the main passageway. The group of ants who were prevented from getting on the boat were stuck in the main passageway.

“Wataru-san, are you okay? Are you feeling sick?”

Alessia-san calls out to me, concerned about me at the sight before her.

“It’s okay since I’m seeing things without fully opening my eyes. Besides, it’s still better than when I was waiting on the Hideaway in the Demon Forest.”

“Oh, that was terrible. Even those of us who are not afraid of the insects, surrounded by countless insect monsters in almost every direction, were disgusted.”

“Yes, we could see that the parts of the insects that we could not normally see were clinging to us. I almost threw up if I accidentally looked at it.”

I even had dreams about it. It was a mild trauma.

“Well, you don’t have to go all out, Wataru-san. If it’s a monster of this level, we’ll take it easy and take turns taking it down.”

“Thank you very much.”

Taking them at their word, I turn in the opposite direction of the ant swarm and summon a rubber boat on the other side, just in case, to establish a safe zone and take a break. I sometimes hear Marina-san’s voice cheering for Fuu-chan to do her best.

She seems to intend to raise Fuu-chan’s level as much as possible by taking on weaker monsters. She is like an educational mother. Fuu-chan seems to be in high spirits after seeing Rimu’s evolution, so I guess there’s no problem.

Weak monsters are stopped by boarding rejection, and they are quickly defeated. When the monster carcasses accumulate, they use a little stronger magic to blow away all the ants that are trying hard to attack us.

I was afraid that the cave might be broken when it was blown away, but they thought about that and made sure that the strong impact would not go into the cave. Ants dig holes in the soil, right? They dig through hard bedrock, too. Is that the power of monsters?

Surely, when you think about it, a big body needs a big nest. Unlike the small ants of the Earth, whether it’s rock or not, if they can’t dig through it, it’s not worth talking about.

Two of them are fighting, and the remaining six, plus me, are relaxing over a cup of tea. The scene reminds me of the simple task of leveling up in old role-playing games. I have some doubts, so I ask Ilma-san, who is sitting next to me.

“Ilma-san, you said that they are troublesome when they are in numbers, but Girasole can defeat them without any problem, right? They seem pretty weak.”

“That’s right; if I had to say whether it could be done or not, it could be done. But I think it will be a lot of work.”

“Is that so?”

The two of them are slaughtering the monsters easily and quickly to the extent that I almost feel sorry for the monsters.

“It’s not an ant, but we’ve been in a similar situation against goblins before. Goblins had established a large settlement in an abandoned mine, and we went to destroy it.”

“A goblin settlement? That sounds like trouble.”

“Yes, it was very troublesome. We had to leave one entrance and exit and destroy it. After that, we entered the cave and defeated the goblins. It was easy to defeat them, but the goblins had nowhere to run, so they came at us with everything they had.”

“Wouldn’t it be suicide if you blocked all the entrances to the abandoned mine?”

“We thought about that, too. We could set fire to it or poison it. But it’s a big abandoned mine, so we can’t destroy it that way. The goblin king is in control of the mine, so if we lock them up, there is a possibility that they will dig holes in places we can’t reach and escape. In the end, going in and taking them out was the surest way.　”

“I see. If they escaped, it would be troublesome, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, we and one other A-ranked party were there, but it was very difficult. The biggest problem was blood and bodily fluids. You can’t use a strong attack because the abandoned mine will collapse. No matter if you cut them or hit them, you would end up with a bloody mess. It was terrible. There were a lot of us, so we took turns resting, but our bodies were covered in blood. But we didn’t have a bath or a bath set, so the only thing we could do was get water out and wipe our bodies and equipment… That was hard.”

“Yeah, defeating them wasn’t a problem, but it was a tough request mentally.”

I’d prefer not to take a break from being covered in goblin flesh and blood.

“Yeah, if you can do a ranged attack, it’s no problem, but the place will collapse, and that kind of place is tricky when there are a lot of them in an abandoned mine or in a cave. This time, Wataru-san’s boarding rejection protects us from the ants’ bodily fluids, so it’s really easy.”

No one wants to be buried alive. And now I know how convenient the boarding rejection is again. I don’t want to be bathed in the flesh and blood of monsters.

“Huh? Speaking of which, didn’t the ants attack you en masse on your last exploration?”

“Yes, Marina did a good job of scouting and breaking up the group, so we had no problem. Well, some of the ants gathered at the landmarks, and we had to pull them out. Marina told us that the security was getting tighter around there.”

“I see. So there’s a grid.”

“Sorry to interrupt, Ilma, but it’s time for you to take over. Dorothea, please.”

“Okay.”

I see Dorothea-san left after taking turns with Marina-san to take care of the ants.

“Alessia-san, Marina-san, thank you for your hard work. What would you like to drink?”

“Thank you. Well, I prefer the one I had when I was hungover.”

“Me too.”

I give a sports drink to Alessia-san and Marina-san. Maybe because it’s after a workout? I pour a sports drink into a plate and offer it to Fuu-chan as well.

“How long do you think it will take, Alessia-san?”

“I don’t know. I can’t determine how big this nest is, so there is a possibility that it will break off soon, or it could go on and on and on. But with the number of soldiers, it could be a pretty big nest.”

“I see. That’s a hassle.”

“It’s all right. They just come in to be eliminated. Once the attacks stop, there will only be guards and soldiers left to protect the queen. Once those are defeated, we’ll just take our time to explore.”

“Are the ants really going to come at us with all their might?”

“Yes, we don’t know the details, but it seems that most of them do. When exploring, the basic rule of thumb is to keep them at bay as long as possible and retreat when they start to gather, but in this case, it is better to destroy the nests, right?”

Oh, so not only thinning the nests, you’re going to destroy them. I appreciate it.

“Yes, that would be a big help.”

“Fufu, it’s better if we crush the nests, too; it makes it easier to explore. If Wataru-san hadn’t come, we would have ended up just thinning out the nests.”

I’m glad I came. If we can destroy the nests, we can build a village in the hot spring location without worry. We haven’t even gotten permission from the village chief yet, though.

It was a long process from here. There were too many ants, and we couldn’t keep up just by blowing them away, so we had to use water to push them away. There were too many.

We repeatedly took turns to defeat the ants. There were quite a few ants, but since we were in a small cave, there was an immediate bottleneck. It takes longer to dispose of the carcasses than it does to kill them.

After eating lunch, a snack, and dinner, the ants are still pouring in. I got tired of it a long time ago, but Rimu and Fuu-chan are also bored, so they start to join in the ant-killing even when it’s not their turn.

The members of the group who are not engaged in ant hunting are too busy to kill time playing Othello or Jenga or taking a nap. Claretta-san is currently producing her third stuffed toy.

…..Eventually, we each took a nap and continued to defeat the ants endlessly, and when I checked the clock on the video camera, the ants’ attack stopped at 10:33 a.m. I wonder how many ants there were, taking almost a whole day. Well, anyway, we resumed our exploration.