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I hold onto the girl and brought her outside of the shop.
[What is your name?] (TLN: direct translate Kimi no na(mae) ha)
[It"s Alice.]
[I see, well my name is Satou Ryouta. Let"s do our best from now on.]
[Un!]
[Well then, I guess I should introduce you to my teammates first. And to also persuade them.]
Even though I"ve managed to take her away from that guy that works for the Black company, how should I persuade my team then.
Though I can"t foresee that they"ll disagree to this, so I guess I"ll just straight up bring her back and talk to them.
[There are two low level people.]
[Eh?]
Out of nowhere, Eve appeared.
The girl with a bunny ear and wearing a bunny suits, and with her usual ennui gaze she was looking at us—-but, this time she was only focusing on Alice.
[I hate low level—–]
[You can"t do that!]
Cutting her off from getting close to Alice, I in returned received the chop.
A "pechi" sound came out from the chop, it sort of hurt.
[Low level is hindering me.]
[I"m not trying to interfere but please don"t simply chop random people.]
[But I hate low level.]
It"s true that Alice"s level is low. Even though her maximum is at 2 she would still be considered as having a low level.
[But it"s a no no, if you chop her—-then I would not give you any carrots for a year.]
[———!!!!]
Eve is in a despair.
She fell down on the ground and did an orz pose, and her bunny ears suddenly lost it"s energy and flopped downwards.
Because the threat was too effective, I was worried in return.
[Wait it"s not like that, if you become like that I would become troubled in return. Uhmm, as long as you don"t chop her I won"t take away the carrots from you.]
[Really?]
[Yeah, I won"t be that horrible.]
[For the sake of carrots I"ll hold back.]
[Oh okay, if it"s like that then it"s fine.]
Eve then immediately stood up straight.
And she immediately approached in front of me and did an extremely quick chop.
Well if she can do with me then it"s fine.
[Oh right, I want to add her in as our team, is that fine?]
Eve then looked at Alice.
[Carrot, love?]
[I"m sorry, I"m sort of bad with carrots.]
[Then, it"s good.]
[Is that alright!?]
[Because there"s no compet.i.tion.]
[Oh so that"s what you meant. Well I have Eve"s approval, I wonder if the other two would agree too.]
[I"ll convince them.]
[Un?]
[If you give me carrots, bunny would go convince them in return.]
Eve then stared at me.
With an extremely shiny eyes.
This is more of…..the eyes of scrounging for carrots.
It"s not as if Emily or Celeste would disagree, and it"s not like Eve convincing them would be any better.
But I can"t win against this ennui glare.
[Okay fine, if you can convinced the both of them, I"ll give you carrots for an entire day.]
[Leave it to me even if heaven and earth were to flip upside down and the stars would fall I will definitely convinced the both of them for you.] (TLN: literally no punctuation.)
[You"re strangely talkative and poetic huh!]
Like a Fanga, Eve went straight ahead. (TLN: Most probably a dragon quest reference)
As usual she loves wasting needless energy for the sake of carrots.
Though that enthusiasm is scary but for now I"ll leave her to it.
After Eve went ahead to convince them, I got a feeling I would have to properly tell them afterwards though.
But I"ll let Even who wants carrots to do it for now.
After Eve finally left, I turned and looked at Alice.
[Let"s go to a dungeon then.]
[Really!?]
[You"re sort of similar to Eve. Is going to dungeon really that great of a thing?]
[Un! That"s because, I was born from the dungeon.]
[Born from the dungeon?]
[My mom who was giving birth to me, while she was doing a job in the dungeon I just suddenly pop out and thus I was being born in the dungeon. That"s why I wanted to go to a dungeon ever since.]
[So you were born in the dungeon….and what"s more when it"s during field work.]
Wait, is it alright to call it field?
Well another name for Shikuro is an agricultural city, because every dungeon drops vegetables.
In a way it"s similar to a field work.
We came to Nihonioum.
Since there"s no one hindering us inside this dungeon.
Since this dungeon has been marked as a dungeon that drops nothing at all, so other than Margaret and the gang which hunts for [air], no one would come here.
And normally it would be empty.
We stepped in front of the entranced and stopped in front of the Know-it-All board.
[Try touching this.]
[Okay.]
Alice did what was told and operated it. There her status appeared.
Level: 1/2
HP: F
MP: E
Strength: F
Endurance: F
Intelligence: E
Mentality: E
Speed: F
Dexterity: F
Luck: D
Vegetation: F
Animal: F
Mineral: F
Magic: F
Special Item: E
[So this is Alice"s current status huh.]
[Seems like it, since this is my second time looking at it.]
[Is that so?]
[Un, there"s nothing like this back in my village, so when I first came to Shikuro the first thing i did was to try this out.]
After Alice finished saying she stared straight at her own status.
To be honest, if I were to put it in one word for her status, it would be [despair].
Her level cap is 2, and her abilities are all F and E.
Besides her Special item the rest of her drops are F so she won"t be [Final F] but, if her Vegetation is F then there is no point in coming to Shikuro at all.
Thus I sort of understand why even if she were to plead for others to let her join their party, they flat out refused her.
Thus I though of various things.
I was thinking back about the things that I"ve done before.
After leveling up once for her, and letting her eat the dropped Magical Fruit from the rogue monster and gaining two magic, and also using various equipments and potion to boost her drop.
For now I guess this is fine.
If it"s like that, then she should be able to fight in dungeons.
[What"s wrong?]
[It"s nothing, I"m just forming a plan. For now let"s go in first. To up your level.]
[Un!]
Today, there"s n.o.body in Nihonium"s first floor.
I thought that Margaret and co would be here doing their air business, but I guess not.
[Uwaa……]
[What"s the matter.]
[This is amazing, dungeons are indeed awesome.]
[Amazing?]
[Un! It seems so calm.]
[Is it that calming in a place like this….]
It was sort of a weird sensation for me.
There are a lot of types in the dungeon.
When you first look at Nihonium you would immediately think of a limestone cave, where from the ground till the ceiling it"s a cave-like place full of rock pillars.
There was never a time I felt calm when diving into Nihonium.
[What"s more the air is somewhat nostalgic.]
[…..Maybe it"s because you were born from a dungeon.]
[Is that so! I"m glad that I came to a dungeon….]
As Alice sighed in relieved, then she murmured deeply.
[Well then, let"s go ahead and defeat some monsters.]
[Let"s go over there then.]
Out of nowhere, as if she wouldn"t get lost, Alice turned around and ran straight ahead.
[Eh?]
[Eh? Is over there a no no?]
[No it"s not that but, why there.]
[Well that"s because there are a lot of monsters over there.]
I"m well versed when it comes to the first floor of Nihonium, because of how many times I"ve come here, the place where monsters would sp.a.w.n, the place where monsters would ambush, and the one place where there is an extremely high rate of monsters sp.a.w.ning.
The place where Alice wanted to go, is an area where Skeleton"s gathered there the most.
Of course you won"t be able to see it from here, and you won"t feel any presence either.
But, it"s as if Alice knew about it and just said it.
[Have you been here before?]
[No. Huh? Then why would I know huh.]
Alice herself is now puzzled.
[Know about it? Didn"t you know about it?]
[Yeah. It"s like I knew that there would be alot of monsters over there.]
[Is that because you"re born from the dungeon?]
[That might be the case!]
Instead of deeply thinking about it, she just ignored it and smiled instead.
[……Then would you know the place where there are no monsters around?]
[I know but….why?]
Let"s think what happened just now.
After that, 20 minutes has pa.s.sed, with Alice"s guidance we walked, and until now there are no Skeletons around at all.
After Alice said [let"s go to a path where there"s no monster], as what she said there are no monsters around at all.
[Hey, why are we doing this/ Aren"t we supposed to be fighting monsters?]
Alice then tilted her head.
She still doesn"t realise just how awesome she is right now.
For adventurers, it"s freaking amazing to not encounter those annoying monsters for 20 minutes.
For me who has been memorizing the path of the dungeon, I still can"t do something as amazing as that.
Even though I know the exact point of where they would sp.a.w.n, but since the monsters would move around randomly, they would not always be at the same spot.
No matter how many times I walk I would definitely encounter at least one of them.
[That"s awesome.]
[Eh, what is?]
[Being an airhead is something to be feared.]
Alice tilted her head in puzzlement, and a [?} was floating on top of her head.
[Amazing! What"s that what"s that! Doesn"t that hurt? Amazing!]
When we were heading back Alice was constantly praising me with the word [amazing].
That"s because, there are currently 10 Skeletons surrounding me.
And the Skeletons are all attacking me.
Using back the method I used before, I utilized my S stats of HP and Endurance.
It"s a method where I don"t defeat the monsters and just pull them towards me.
[Alice, can you stay slightly away from me?]
[Un!]
As per what I said she stood slightly further away from me, then I took out my gun and loaded bullets.
With 5 Bullet Enhancers inside, and one Restraint Bullet.
I shot it beneath my legs.
The bullet shone brightly, and the 10 Skeletons was wrapped by the light rope.
Calmly, I went away from the Skeletons.
Though I don"t know how long it will last, but with 5 Bullet Enhancer to strengthen the Restraint Bullet, it"s probably gonna restrained them for a pretty long time.
Since I want to know just how long it would last, so this time I will test it out right now.
But for now it"s Alice"s turn.
[I want you to try and defeat them. Though it"s just my speculation, but if you were to defeat all of them, you would reach to Level 2.]
[I understand! But how should I….it"s my first time fighting a monster.]
[Oh, that"s right. Why not try using that rock over there and attack them?]
[This right!]
Listening to my commands, Alice took a basketball sized rock and lifted it up.
Besides it being large, it seems to be quite heavy too.
Holding onto that, I heard her saying [heave-ho] while lifting it up and attacking one of the restrained Skeleton.
Attacking the defenseless Skeleton, the bones cracked and it turned into dust.
[I did it!]
[Then do the same thing to the rest of them.]
[Un!]
Like so, she defeated the Skeletons one by one.
Even though the rock was heavy and it took some time for her to hit, but in that time the Restraint bullet did not wear off, and in around 5 minutes she managed to defeat all 10 of the Skeletons.
[Ah.]
[Did you level up?]
[Un!]
I then brought the overly excited Alice outside the dungeon, and asked her to check her status at the Know-It-All board.
Level: 2/2
HP: F
MP: D
Strength: F
Endurance: F
Intelligence: E
Mentality: E
Speed: F
Luck: D
Vegetation: F
Animal: F
Mineral: F
Magic: F
Special Item: E
Based on what I remembered, only her MP increased, the rest had no changes.
With this she has reached her level cap which is sort of painful, but with her MP increased, let"s move on to the next step and let her have a Magical Fruit.
Wait no, if only her MP has been raised, is it best for her to eat the Magic Fruit and return her level to 1 forever?
If her level returns to 1 then her MP would fall from D to E, and in return she would learn a great deal of magic.
There might be that possibility.
[Well, we can just slowly think about that.]
[Hey hey, can we go back in?]
[Did you drop something?]
[That"s not it, just now those boney were telling me to quickly go in.]
[They told you? You mean the Skeletons?]
[Un.]
[But I did not hear anything of that sort.]
[But they told me that.]
[Fumu.]
Though I don"t understand what she meant, but I guess there"s something inside.
Saying that she was nostalgic when diving into the dungeon, and also knowing where the exact location of the monsters are.
Saying that she heard them talk, there must be something inside.
[Okay, let"s go back in then.]
[Un!]
With a br.i.m.m.i.n.g smile, Alice immediately flew back inside the dungeon.
While following her from behind, we went back into the first floor.
And immediately we encountered a Skeleton.
For now let"s use a Restraint Bullet to stop it.
[What are you doing?]
[It"s saying to defeat it.]
Are you for real? For some reason all I could think of is this was some kind of joke.
On the other hand, Alice was closing in on the Skeleton, this time she was holding onto a thin and long limestone and stabbed the Skeleton.
As the rock did not have much power, it took her a few stabs to defeat the Skeleton.
The battered up bones was about to vanish—was what I thought but something different happened.
The bones gathered in one place, and shone brightly and further condensed together.
[Wh, what"s going on?]
After the light became dimmer, I saw something new for the first time over there.
It was really small, an adorable Skeleton.
The size is like those gachapon machine you twist and get from inside, it"s like a deformed version of it.
It then moved, with it"s bones rattling it moved.
To be honest…it was extremely adorable.
[Un, let"s do our best from now on.]
As Alice spoke, she open her palms and let the SD Skeleton stand on her palms and talked to her.
[Let"s do our best from now on?]
[This fellow is gonna fight with us from now on.]
[…..Heh?]
Something impossible just happened right in front of me, for awhile I was put speechless.