Chapter 350: Youths Doing Their Best
Meat Dungeon, Level 1.
“Wow, this place looks pretty peaceful.”
Indeed.
[8] Rosandel’s dungeon turned out to be one of those field type dungeons. We clearly stepped out to the lower 1st level, but were greeted by a vast grassland spreading out before our eyes.
From the information that I had collected, the geography of the rest of the dungeon was pretty much the same, only with different types of monsters on each floor.
Right now, I’m riding on Fer [1] as we made our way towards one of the four magic circles to the 2nd floor. There were a lot of other Adventurers heading towards the lower floors, so we decided to head for the furthest magic circle where fewer people gathered.
Since I have Fer with me, it won’t take long to get to the more remote magic circle.
The monsters on the 1st floor were White Sheep and Big Rabbits.
Drops from White Sheep were meat or intestines, whereas Big Rabbits would drop meat or fur.
Also, fur Drops from Big Rabbits were considered ‘unlucky’ or just ‘blanks’.
[8] As we raced through the grassland, we passed by flocks of peacefully grazing White Sheep and hopping Big Rabbits.
“The sheep and rabbits here looked bigger than normal though,” I observed. [1] Naturally, when I say ‘bigger than normal’, I meant bigger than the ones on earth.
I had been told that monsters on the 1st floor would not attack unless we get too close to them. Which, I think was not that much different from normal animals. Still, I must remember they are monsters and would probably be really fierce when attacking.
At any rate, not many Adventurers would stop on the first floor since it’s not profitable to hunt here. Aside from being less valuable, White Sheep’s meat was said to be rather fishy and gamy while Big Rabbit’s meat was quite tough. Neither of these unique points endears them to regular cooks.
Instead of Adventurers, the ones who were active on this floor were the orphanage kids. There were young boys and even young girls in a group, working together to take down a White Sheep. From what I could see of this group, they were pretty efficient. The kids first isolate one sheep from the flock before concentrating their attacks on that single sheep.
A valid tactic since there was no way a bunch of children armed with sticks would be able to take down a whole flock.
While I was watching this coordinated attack [5], I suddenly heard a scream.
“Kyaa!!!”
“W-Wahhhh!”
“Susannah! Harold!”
One of the White Sheep had rushed at a girl, causing her to fall onto her butt. One of her teammates tried to help her but the rest of her comrades were [8] too far away to do anything.
“Dora-chan, help them!”
““Guess I have to, huh?””
Dora-chan has the highest agility, and though he sounded a little reluctant, he zoomed forward with incredible speed.
Small Ice Pillars formed in the air and stabbed into the White Sheep’s head. It toppled sideways just in front of the youths.
“Oi~ are you guys alright?”
I hopped off Fer’s back and called to the young boys and girls. They turned to look at me, surprise on their faces.
“Wooahhh, a- a huge wolf and a little dragon!” [3] one of the boys [5] shouted.
“Ah, they are my familiars, so don’t worry about them,” I said.
“Eh? Could it be… are you a Tamer, old man?”
O-old man…? [5]
“Who’s an old man? I’m still in my twenties!” [5]
“Why? An old man is an old man, right?”
“[5] Just call me big brother,” I said a little desperately.
“Oh, fine,” [7] drawled the boy with an eye roll.
Fer and Dora-chan were laughing at me for some reason. Please stop that.
[8]
“Anyway, thanks for the help, big brother!” The boy speaking to me acted like the group leader. “Hey, you guys. Come and thank this big brother for helping us.”
I received a chorus of ‘thank yous’ from the kids barely taller than my waist.
“Well, Susannah most likely won’t actually die if the White Sheep ram into her, but it could still hurt.”
“I can take a couple of hits,” said Susannah with a giggle.
“It’s also a problem if the Sheep hit you in a bad place,” said the boy, Harold. “You could break a bone or something.”
I glanced over at the fluffy looking White Sheep and said a little sympathetically, “You guys sure have it tough,”
“We do alright,” said the leader. “Susannah just happened to mess up our formation today.”
“Ehehe, I tripped, sorry,” the girl was all grins again, as though the incident with the White Sheep was no big deal.
“Tch,” the leader rolled his eyes. “As for you, Harold. If you want to play the hero and save the girl you like, do move faster.”
Harold blushed bright red after being told off by the leader.
Hahhh… it’s good to be young.
“Anyway, big brother, this should belong to you since you killed the Sheep,” the leader held out a piece of leaf-wrapped package. This must be the White Sheep meat.
“It’s fine, you guys can keep it. We’re heading for the lower floors,” I said.
“Eh? We can keep it?”
“Sure,”
The children, who would be middle schoolers back in Japan and therefore still children in my eyes, cheered happily.
“Hurrah! We won’t go home empty-handed!”
“Yes, yes, everyone’s waiting for our harvest!”
“So,” I asked. “You bring meat home?”
“Yeah,” said the leader. “It’s not like they don’t feed us at the orphanage but everyone looks forward to the meat we catch here every day.”
“It’s hard work, but I heard we’re much better off than a lot of other places,” said Harold.
“All the meat we get goes to the orphanage and is shared out with everyone, but the orphanage director lets us sell everything else and keep the money.”
“Wow, that sounds really generous,” I exclaimed.
“It’s so that we can use the money to buy better weapons and equipment to become better Adventurers!”
[9] [10] “……” I have no idea whether to call this orphanage director kind-hearted or diabolical. On one hand, he allowed the orphans to keep part of their rewards; on the other hand, he actively encouraged children to challenge dungeons with nothing but sticks and expect the children to eventually equip themselves by selling Drop items.
“Hey, big brother, your familiars look really strong,” said the leader. He was admiring a preening Dora-chan.
“The big wolf looks strong too!” cried the children who had to crane their necks up to properly marvel at Fer.
“Well, they really are,” they were definitely stronger than me, their master.
“This is my first time seeing a Tamer. As expected, you must be really strong. I wonder if I can be a Tamer, too?”
“Idiot~ it’s not that easy to become a Tamer,”
“Well, I won’t know till I try, right?”
“Everyone, please don’t fight-” I started.
“Shh, everyone, look there,” it was the leader boy. He was pointing at something and everyone quieted down to look in the direction he was indicating.
I looked too and saw something that looked like a standard broiler chicken, except twice as big as one, scratching the ground in a preoccupied way.
“A Wild Chicken,” said the leader confidently. “We’re in luck. Let’s surround it, make sure not to be seen.”
“Yes!” everyone hissed quietly before slipping through the grass in a well-practised way. They must have done this many times to be this coordinated.
“Now!”
Rustle, rustle.
Children suddenly leapt out of the grass with their own war cry.
“Orya!”
“Tei!”
“Yaaa!”
“Eii!”
“Oraa!”
Bish, bash, clonk, bash, bash, crash!
The poor Wild Chicken was beaten up with sticks without a single opportunity to strike back.
“Kokeee…”
It collapsed after a weird screech, its broken body thankfully disappearing. I can’t imagine in what state the meat would be if the real thing had been beaten up like that… However, for a dungeon creature, it was a valid tactic, especially considering how weak and badly equipped the children were.
“Awesome! Meat! It’s a Meat Drop!” cheered the children.
“Ahem, I heard that there’s only White Sheep and Big Rabbits here, but looks like that’s not all,” I said.
“Oh, the Wild Chicken is actually from the 2nd level. However, sometimes they do stray to the 1st level. It’s really delicious!”
The children, or should I say, energetic youths looked very happy at the idea of getting a feast today.
To me, this was especially praiseworthy since the meat that they collected would not be sold but shared among the other kids in the orphanage.
Alright, should I give these youths a little help too?
[10] They mentioned that they were saving money through the sale of Drops other than meat but considering how unpopular the meat was, I can’t imagine anyone who would want the Big Rabbit fur or, well, maybe the intestines but the intestines meat industry did not seem to be very advanced here.
[10] At any rate, their weapons appeared to be ordinary sticks, which I had had my eye on since earlier.
“Excuse me, these are your weapons?” I asked, indicating the sticks.
“Yep, we don’t have money for real weapons so we just pick out the hardest and strongest sticks we could find when gathering firewood. They tend to break after a few hits though so we always carry some spares.”
So, these were originally… firewood…
[11]
Well, it’s not like I could make their weapons any worse. So, “Hey, can you lend me one? I can try and make it better.”
“I guess…”
“I should be able to make them easier to grab at least,” I tried again.
The leader looked a little reluctant but then handed me one of the sticks he had as ‘spares’. “Try on this one first, big brother.”
I guess it makes sense for me to experiment on one first. “Ahem, I won’t be the one doing it, hold on…. Sui, could you wake up for a moment?”
I shook the bag that held Sui and a sleepy voice said, ““Hmm~? Master~? What is it~?””
Sui slowly oozed out of the bag.
“This is Sui, she’s also my familiar,” I said to my interested audience.
“Sui is really cute!” cried Susannah.
“Sui is really great at making things,” I boasted. “Sui, see this stick? Can you make it harder and a bit easier to grab? For the shape, I think a bat would be good. Hold on…”
I took a bit of paper and pencil and drew a baseball bat on it. “Here, can you make it this shape, Sui?”
““Un~ this shape is easy. Sui will do it~!””
“Make it really hard too, okay Sui?”
““Hmm… hard…”” Sui absorbed the stick into her body and we watched as the stick inside her began to change shape and… a small crack I hadn’t noticed before mended itself before my eyes.
That tricky little leader brat, he gave me a faulty weapon!
I whipped around to glare at him but all he did was grin at me innocently.
““Master, it’s done~!””
It took Sui less than a minute.
Humph, I shall be generous and let you witness Sui’s might! “Thank you, Sui.” I said, accepting the newly mended and reconstructed bat.
The heft was different now, with more weight at the end and a slim handle for easy grip and a knob to prevent slipping.
I spun the bat in my hand once before handing it to the leader boy. As expected, the leader checked the area where the flaw had been and was amazed, “Looks like your Slime is really great.” he said. Then, he took a few practice swings, not in a typical baseball stance way but one-handedly like a club type weapon.
“Nice! This is actually very good. You’re a great guy, big brother!”
As though they had been signalled, the rest of the youths all ran up with their sticks, “Do mine too! Make my stick into a cool weapon!”
Luckily, Sui was able to take in all the sticks (including the spares) and turned them all into bats in one go through her Gigantify skill.
Sui is really awesome.
“Your Slime is super awesome, big brother!”
“Yeah! I can hit harder with my stick now!”
“And this bit! The stick is now easier to grip but doesn’t slip, this design is genius!”
One after another, praises came from all around. Mwahaha, it’s great to be adored. These children are so cute in their enthusiasm.
“You should be able to hunt better with these bats,” I said.
“Thank you, big brother!!”
And so, we headed towards the magic circle even as the youngsters sent us off.
[Gumihou: Alright, Gumi may have made the children a bit more worldly and cunning. Instead of kyaa~ kyaa~ big bro is awesome! It’s more ‘let’s praise him so he does things for us’. I mean, they had to have encountered bad people and their ability to work together indicate high-level intelligence and leader boy’s ability to judge situation and lead]
[1] Structural Change: Combine 2 paragraphs
[2] Structural Change: Combine 3 paragraphs
[3] Structural Change: Combine paragraph & dialogue
[4] Structural Change: Change passive sentence to dialogue
[5] Delete Repetitive or Pointless Information
[6] Additional Information for Aesthetic Purpose
[7] Add Dialogue Tag
[8] Creative Licence Taken – Describe the dungeon nicely
[9] Description of the children and their interaction with Mukouda
[10] ‘The orphanage director is kind-hearted’
… I can’t believe Mukouda of peaceful Japan would think this without giving the matter much thought. Especially since he was ‘moved to help them’. I think it would be more meaningful to combine his actions with some thoughtful reflections.
[11] Convincing the kids to let him mess with their weapons. Uh, kids? Absolute trust? Weird, don’t you think? Especially Mukouda’s super confident, ‘of course, we can make it better’ attitude when Sui had not been demonstrated to work with wood before. Stone and mithril yes, but wood? This would be the first time.