Chapter 99: The Dungeon Challenge

Igor was swimming around happily, and Qiu Nuoya had to admit that he had sometimes wanted to swim in a large public bath himself. The only reason he had never done so was because it would have been against the rules. But here, it was apparently allowed.

"I’ll swim too!"

Qiu Nuoya felt a little hesitant about jumping straight in, so he eased himself into the hot water before starting to swim.

This was surprisingly fun.

"Nuoya can swim?" Warren looked slightly surprised.

The bath was shallow near the entrance and became deeper toward the far end, but he was sitting awkwardly in the shallow area.

"Can’t you swim, Warren?"

"I never had a chance to learn. There weren’t any places to swim in Coalora. There were bathhouses like this in the city, but I never went to one."

Come to think of it, Qiu Nuoya could not remember seeing any bodies of water around Coalora that were large enough for swimming.

"Want to try swimming together?"

"Uh..."

"Give me your hands." Qiu Nuoya took both of Warren’s hands and started by teaching him how to kick his legs.

At first, Warren seemed reluctant to put his face into the water, but he was naturally athletic and quickly got the hang of it. Before long, he was able to swim on his own.

As for Mochi, it seemed that he could float on water. He happily bobbed around on the surface, so Qiu Nuoya had Mochi grow a little larger and used him as a substitute for a swimming float.

Qiu Nuoya had never actually gone swimming in a bath before, but if he thought of this as a heated swimming pool, it was not bad at all.

Viktor had apparently never intended to swim in the first place, so he was soaking only his lower half in the shallow area.

The three of them, Qiu Nuoya, Igor, and Warren, had completely reverted to their childhood selves and played to their hearts’ content.

They had been having so much fun that they lost track of time and got carried away.

The result was that they overheated.

"What on earth are you three doing?"

"...My apologies." Viktor used wind magic to create a gentle breeze, which cooled Qiu Nuoya’s overheated body.

Qiu Nuoya had been saying that baths were supposed to heal the body and wash away fatigue, but right now he felt unbelievably exhausted instead.

Maybe this was not exactly what bathing was supposed to be. Still, it had been incredibly fun.

...

After arriving in the dungeon city of Oraria, getting excited, swimming around, and sleeping like a log, they decided to challenge the dungeon castle the following day.

Of course, before attempting the dungeon, they did not forget to stop by the Adventurer’s Guild.

Apparently, all dungeon related missions were managed collectively by the guild’s branch office inside the dungeon castle, so the group headed there first.

"Whoa, there are so many!"

The missions covering an entire wall were, naturally, all related to the dungeon.

Apparently, each floor had different monsters and different environments, so the guild issued requests according to the conditions of each floor. Considering that, the sheer number of missions made perfect sense.

"How about we start with something easy to get a feel for things?" Igor pointed to a mission.

It was already for the tenth floor.

Qiu Nuoya paused for a moment.

Is that really what he calls getting a feel for things?

"If you mean we’re just getting a feel for things, shouldn’t we start from the first floor?"

"We could, but I think it would be too easy for you guys by now. Judging from the missions, floors one through five are roughly equivalent to Rank G, while floors six through ten are around Rank F. How many Rank E subjugation missions do you think you’ve completed by the time you got here? If you were challenging the dungeon alone, starting from the first floor would be fine. But since we’re going together, starting from the tenth floor would be more efficient."

That made sense. Looking through the requests by rank, the difficulty was indeed roughly divided that way.

Even so, there were monsters Qiu Nuoya had never encountered before, as well as medicinal herbs and materials he had never seen. He still wanted to learn about them, at least so he would have the knowledge.

"I have a question. Assuming the floors are ranked the way Igor said, can we really skip floors one through nine and start from the tenth floor?"

"Yeah, we can. There are teleportation magic circle gates installed here all the way up to the fortieth floor."

Teleportation magic circle gates.

They were the same kind of magic circles as the one Qiu Nuoya believed had been used to send the orc that attacked him in Coalora.

People like Viktor, who could use teleportation magic on their own, had no need for them. But even people who could not use teleportation magic could use these gates to travel directly to their desired destination. They were incredibly convenient.

Apparently, they could also be used to travel from one city to another. However, Qiu Nuoya had heard during their journey that using them was quite expensive.

The cost was apparently too high for ordinary people to use them regularly, so the people who used them were mostly from wealthy families.

Creating a teleportation magic circle also required highly advanced magical techniques, so Qiu Nuoya supposed the high cost was understandable.

"But I thought you said the dungeon had fifty floors. So why are the gates only installed up to the fortieth floor?"

"That’s simply because the mage who could construct the teleportation magic circles could only reach the fortieth floor. Anything below the fortieth floor is equivalent to a Rank A in terms of Adventurer ranking. It would be a little too harsh a place for an ordinary technician to travel to."

Ah, that made sense.

"Why don’t you do it, Viktor? It’s probably posted as a mission too, isn’t it?"