CH 243

Episode 243 – Major Review Meeting

With the fatigue piled on from the Dungeon, I ended up collapsing on the bed and falling asleep as soon as I had returned to Ponpokotei. Yesterday when we had left the Dungeon, it had been around noon; but right now it was already morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise.

Even though I had slept continuously for more than half a day, I still had some remaining exhaustion due to the backlash from the Dumbbell Weed Potion. We had already decided that we would be going back into the Dungeon tomorrow, so I kind of wanted to go back to sleep, but… I hadn’t washed up, so my entire body felt sticky and gross. Plus, I had previously just flung the bags aside and left them there, so I had to clean up a bit and reorganize.

I first sorted out the bags and then appraised and screened the plants we had gathered. Then, I washed up and had a meal before knocking out and sleeping like a log in order to make a full recovery.

I spent the day after coming back from the Dungeon doing absolutely nothing, which I hadn’t done in a while, but thanks to that, I had managed to make a full recovery by the next day. Working the knots out of my stiff body as I went about my morning routine, I then got ready and headed over to the Dungeon.

By the time I had arrived at our usual meeting spot, the two of them were already there. In order to not attract any surrounding attention, both of them were wearing hats, hiding their faces deeply underneath.

“Good morning, you two. Did you rest well?” (Lewin)

Placing the hat deeply over my head, we made our way to the Dungeon while keeping an eye on our surroundings and passing through secluded areas.

“See, thanks to the hats we weren’t discovered.” (Aruna)

“…That’s true. I honestly thought there was no point, but I’m surprised that it was so effective.” (Lewin)

“Those kinds of fans only go by your face, so you just have to hide your face to get by.” (Aruna)

We defeated the Two-Mino, which no longer even felt like a Boss monster to us, and safely arrived at the 10th layer, which was our goal for today.

“Looks like we made it easily. I remember it was just a little bit ago when it felt like a struggle for us to reach this point.” (Lewin)

“That’s not true. We could easily reach the 10th layer.” (Aruna)

“I got nervous in that battle against the Two-Mino, and I made a bunch of really terrible moves that almost messed it up for us at that time… I wouldn’t say it was easy.” (Rosalie)

“That was only because it had been a long time since you had been in the Dungeon, so that time there was no helping it.” (Lewin)

“It’s only because of Lewin’s potion, otherwise you would still be iffy.” (Aruna)

“Uguguuu… It’s true that without Lewin’s potion, I think I would still be holding us back even now.” (Rosalie)

“Let’s stop talking about what-ifs! The reality is that we do have the potion after all. Anyway, what should we do now? Should we gather plants and head ba―” (Lewin)

“……..Is there really no way we can go and gather plants?” (Lewin)

“Yeah, there’s no way. You always go crazy when plants are involved, Lewin.” (Aruna)

When she was being this adamant about it, there was no way I could force my way through. Feeling a bit of lingering regret, I left the 10th layer with them and we made our way back to the surface for our original objective, which was the review meeting.

“Is it okay for us to barge in like this?” (Lewin)

“It’s fine. More importantly… it’s really way too loud around here.” (Aruna)

“You can really feel how popular we’ve gotten all in one go. Our return to the surface was completely displayed on the Dungeon monitors, so it made our hat disguise completely meaningless. There was nothing we could do about it.” (Lewin)

And completely separate from the Dungeon-related matters, Aruna’s looks drew a huge amount of attention from the surroundings. In reality, about half of the people surrounding us were Aruna’s fans.

“3-person party, fastest clearing speeds, and the newspaper article. It’s a bunch of main factors all adding together, isn’t it?” (Lewin)

“It’s really a pain. I always kept away from the Dungeon because of these kinds of hassles.” (Aruna)

“We’ll just have to find a good solution. It’s just a matter of enduring it until we’ve saved up enough money.” (Lewin)

“I know… Let’s get to the review meeting now.” (Aruna)

At Aruna’s behest, we got to the main topic at hand and started the review meeting. Our impressions about when we stayed overnight in the Dungeon, what we noticed when clearing the Dungeon for an extended period of time, and the necessities that we needed for staying overnight in the Dungeon… Then the usual reflection on our battles, and also about the fight against the Peak Gorilla.

At any rate, we talked about various topics for as long as the time would allow, and we closely examined and went through what we needed to do to make it to the 30th layer. After those 3 days of Dungeon clearing, we all felt differently. Our review meeting at Araku Village continued on deep into the night.