CH 202

“Chris?”

Rurika is the first one to notice the unusual air around her.

Chris looks at her, then at Sera, then back at me.

“It will take time to look for it normally, so… I was thinking about using spirit magic.”

Rurika and Sera gasp, and Hikari and Mia tilt their heads.

“Are you sure?”

Rurika asks, sounding worried, but it looks like Chris has made up her mind, and she gives her a strong nod.

“Don’t make that face. I want to do all I can if we are going there.”

Chris whispers something, and her disguise is undone, waving her silver hair.

It’s shining even here in the darkness.

Hikari and Mia look surprised. Didn’t they talk about this?

Chris whispers again, and the magic energy around her starts gathering in her. The reaction disappears the moment I turn off Magic Energy Detection, so I’m sure the other four don’t know what’s happening. We might see it with magic energy seeing glasses, but the strength of the magic energy, or maybe its quality, means that we probably shouldn’t look at it directly.

Then the magic energy starts undulating a lot, and Chris waves her staff like a baton.

I can feel it spreading at an incredible speed.

“I-is everything all right?”

I ask as Chris goes down to one knee.

She’s breathing heavily, and she has beads of sweat on her forehead.

“I’m using a lot of magic energy. It’s been a while, so I slightly misjudged how much to use.”

She drinks a mana potion, and staggers to her feet.

Mia is looking at the side of her face with a perplexed expression. Chris notices this too, remembers what she looks like now, and pulls her hood deeper over her head.

“Sora, I pretty much know the way now. Let’s go.”

Chris says firmly, but she’s clearly still not feeling well.

“Master, I’ll look after Chris.”

Sera holds Chris, who thinks about it for a moment before putting her weight on Sera.

It’s like she got embarrassed, but decided to comply after thinking about her current condition.

“We’ll go with the same formation, with me and Hikari in the front. Chris, tell us where to go.”

We rush at first, but shaking constantly is tough on Chris, so we walk at a more manageable pace.

We should’ve done this from the start. It’s not like we could’ve ran the whole way anyway. That was my bad.

I guess I’m more flustered than I thought, and couldn’t think straight. My blessing doesn’t even work if I run, so our fighting strength would be cut in half. Mainly mine.

Not to mention that these people have more stamina than people from my original world, but they can’t keep running forever. Especially Mia.

On the way to the staircase, we take the shortest path possible and come across monsters, but I take most of them down with my magic.

We’re trying not to use a lot of disposable items, and Mia is in the back row and we can’t waste time.

It takes us over ten hours to reach the staircase to the twenty-seventh floor.

We only stopped to eat and rest once on the way here, so everyone’s exhausted by the time we get here. Except me.

“You’re kind of sly, master.”

Chris and Mia also look jealous, but what can I do?”

“I’ll take the first turn keeping watch, so you can all rest.”

It doesn’t look like anyone has any objections, and they all go to sleep.

But I guess Mia can’t help but be worried, and she casts holy field first.

This is a new holy spell Mia learned that creates a barrier that repels undead monsters. But like regular monster repellent, it doesn’t work on superior species, and it doesn’t have a perfect success rate against regular monsters either.

And she just learned it too, so she wants to use it often to get used to it.

Still, it feels better to know it’s there.

I keep watch with Map and Presence Detection active. I’m also using Parallel Thinking to work on other things, mainly using the medicinal herbs in my Item Box to stock up on disposable items. And that depletes my stock.

I haven’t had the chance to pick medicinal herbs lately. The twenty-fifth floor was a forest field, but there wasn’t much food or herbs for me to pick.

I’ve thought about just growing them myself, but I’d need land and stuff like that. But there are agriculture and cultivation skills, so I could definitely do it.

What if I used space-time magic to shorten the time between planting and harvesting? Then I could harvest them right away! No, the skill list doesn’t show me anything that could do that.

In the end, no monsters attack, and we get to rest peacefully.

Two days later, we reach the staircase to the twenty-eighth floor. We got here as fast as we could after meeting Totto, but still, it’s been over ten days since Leila and her party were attacked.

Maybe the guild even put together a rescue party and sent them directly to the twenty-eighth floor in the past three days. I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up.

I guess it depends on Guardian Sword, the ones fighting on the front lines.

But Jake and Ash are in the guild pretty often, so they probably don’t come to the dungeon a lot, and they could be available. Then again, they can’t come here alone.

I wish I could just keep going and head to the twenty-eighth floor right away, but that’s crazy.

“Let’s rest here today, and we’ll go to the next floor tomorrow.”

Chris and Mia are particularly exhausted, even though they don’t say it.

It’s worse for Chris, because I think that spirit magic really took a lot out of her.

I make something a little special today, as a thank you to them.

That said, the groundwork is already done, and all I do is add the vegetables and meat to complete the cream stew. And we also have bread and the meat skewers that Hikari loves.

…It was supposed to be special, but it really isn’t that different.

Then again, it’s more extravagant compared to what we’ve been having these past three days, so it’s fine.

Magic and potions can’t take away people’s exhaustion, but eating something good and resting well are the way to go to heal a tired body.