Basement Dungeon Chapter 33: Siblings Prepare for Renovation

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　We woke up at the usual time and watched today’s news on the Internet. I know I shouldn’t say it’s something interesting but it is in our interest to read this. There had been an incident in a dungeon.

“Unique Monster Appears in 9^th floor of Tokyo Dungeon.”

　The headline was something like this, and the bottom line was that there was an unusual and powerful monster on the 9th floor. The problem was the damage caused by this, which resulted in three deaths. I heard that the last one escaped with his life.

　This was the first time that a dungeon had recorded a death after it had been opened to the public in Japan.

　Speaking of which, the dungeons in other prefectures that we don’t hear much about have five of Japan’s strongest parties moving from place to place at their expense, and they are always at the forefront. In addition, the number of explorers is much smaller than in the Tokyo dungeon, so problems are less likely to occur.

　According to our research, rare monsters, or unique monsters as they are called in the world, are the ones that appear when you frequently hunt monsters in a certain area.

　Of course, we’ve also experimented with other levels besides the Forest and found that unique monsters don’t appear in the first four levels and the boss rooms.

　In other words, the appearance of unique monsters this time is a phenomenon unique to Tokyo dungeons, where people are concentrated. Finally, there’s bad luck, I guess they were unlucky enough to have an overwhelmingly strong monster appear.

　 As a countermeasure, the group of heroes with the highest average level among the five strongest parties has been hurriedly called up from the Hokkaido dungeon to take them down. In addition to this, a total of ten parties, including special forces under the direct control of the government that have not been disclosed until now, will also participate to ensure the safety of the surrounding area.

　If they’re going to do that, they should probably bring out the Self-Defense Forces, who are probably on the front lines, but I wonder if they’re aiming to appeal to the Heroes’ Party and the Self-Defense Forces. Maybe, they just want to keep the SDF on the frontlines.

　There was no information on the strength or appearance of the monsters, either to prevent foolish challengers who didn’t know what they were capable of or because they didn’t know in the first place.

　However, since he was able to destroy the party that was exploring the 9th floor, it seems that the strength of the party is well above level 20.

　One of our recent accomplishments is that we have acquired a magic tool for the first time in a long time. Haru examined it and found this.

　The shape is similar to an ordinary metal box, which is why we expected it to be a Micro Dungeon at first, but it was completely different.

　We didn’t know how to use it, but as we tried it out, we found out that if you put something with a skill on top and pour magic power into the magic circle on the side, the thing on top would disappear and only the skill would be stored in the box.

　We got carried away and used all the skill plates in the skill box, but there seemed to be more skills in the box than we thought, so we never lost any skills. By the way, we have over 100 garbage skills in our skill box.

　In addition to that, I was saddened by the fact that all the skill storage plates that we worked so hard to make were used and disappeared. We should have used them in the skill box after transferring the skills to other trash drops through alchemy.

　The only way to get the skills out of the skill box is to put a non-skill item on top and put a lot of magic power into the magic circle next to it while reminding yourself what skill you want to get out. It usually takes about 10 magic power for each skill.

　Also, if I used Alchemy, I could do it easily with almost no magic power consumption.

　Now that the season has turned to June and the weather is getting wet and humid, we got a leak in our house. It seems that the normal rain was no problem for us, but we couldn’t handle the constant downpour. That’s why.

“OK, let’s renovate.” (Haru)

　Haru said cheerfully, and I wondered what kind of nonsense she was talking about. But if I think about it, we can use both Alchemy and Crafting. If we could use this somehow, we could make the house stronger.

　We started by taking out various materials from the pots that could no longer be used, as they had already exceeded their limits.

　There was a good variety of stone and wood materials alone, and even the low-level materials that we had no use for were saved as five samples each, so we could choose any color we wanted.

　I looked for materials that were closer to the color of the walls of the house and took them out. Even though I had the materials ready, if I tried to work on a sunny day, I would be exposed, so I decided to work on a rainy day. Fortunately, it’s supposed to rain heavily tomorrow, followed by a few days of sunshine.

　This meant that we had to gather the missing materials today. Having decided on all the materials to be used for the outside of the house, the next step is to decide on the materials to be used for the inside of the house. This is not visible from the outside of the house, so we don’t have to weigh ourselves down. We can freely use materials from the Forest here.

　There are plenty of Forest materials in the jar, so what’s missing are materials for the outside of the house.

　I’ve only left samples of what I can get at the lower levels, so we’ll need to go hunting, but the amount will be small since it’s only the surface anyway. A few dozen kilos should be enough.

“Okay, Haru. We’re going hunting.” (Kei)

“Roger.” (Haru)

　We quickly put on our gear, finished our sparring, and went into the dungeon.

　We had to go through several levels this time, and there was a possibility we might have to go back and forth, so we didn’t use transition. Since we could only use it once for each trip, it wouldn’t hurt to save it for emergencies.

　However, we didn’t want to waste time, so we ran at full speed from layer 1 to layer 6 without killing any monsters.

　Since we didn’t have to worry about the eyes around us, we got there in about 30 minutes. As expected of our level 50+ status.

　So, I went down the floors without fighting the Hobgoblin, and at first, we played with golems in the 7th layer. Actually, it’s not as cute as it sounds, since it was a one-sided massacre of booms and smash. After all, Haru shoots attacks all over the place with [Magic Bullets], so monsters keep coming closer.

　In any case, monsters seem to be quicker to appear from places that are not included in people’s search for them, and they come out endlessly. And about ten percent of those monsters are golems.

　It’s so easy to just swing your sword at them and they’ll come right at you and die. I don’t know how long we kept doing this.

　I couldn’t tell you the exact time because I wasn’t looking at my watch, but let’s just say it was until our eyes started to glaze over. I don’t think we’re bored either.

　So we went down to the lower levels and killed a Black Wolf with one blow to relieve stress, then took a break at the exit of layer 10.

　The next thing to hunt is the Treant that appears in the 13th level. It’s a so-called tree monster, but because it’s in a cave, it can’t mimic anything at all, and the other party probably doesn’t want it to, either, because the ground is a dungeon so it can’t be buried, and it moves its roots dexterously to come at you. I was surprised when I first saw it.

“Gee.” (Haru)

　Now I’m destined to accompany Haru’s scornful words and before long, we’re bored to death.

　And so we continued to hunt here.

“I don’t like this anymore.” (Kei)

　To the extent that two of us say such words.

　After a while, all the materials were gathered and we headed back to the house. It was 10:00 p.m. and we were exhausted, so we transitioned home. We had only brought lunch with us, so we hadn’t eaten dinner. However, my mind was more exhausted than my body.

“Not hungry. Sleep.” (Haru)

“Me too.” (Kei)

　We both went to bed without eating dinner. Incidentally, we killed one unique monster while gathering wood. It was weak, so there was no problem. The drop was a staff made of wood. The handle was about a meter long and gnarled like an old tree, and on the tip was amber with a magic circle instead of an insect.

　It also had a skill attached to it: “Sanctuary… create a space that is inaccessible to monsters…”

　What a powerful skill, I thought, but there was more to this sentence.

　Well, to put it simply, from our point of view, it’s just a wand with beautiful decorations and a magic circle engraved on it.

　It was my first time to have an item with strong skills, so I expected it, but that expectation was ruined. I thought it would be a good idea to combine that skill with another garbage skill, and the decoration of the staff itself was so beautiful that we kept it as it was without any modification.

~3^rd Person Perspective~

　By the way, the 10 exploration parties under the direct control of the government were investigating the dungeon by the time the Hero Party returned. In the first place, how were the 40 members of the government’s direct troops selected? It was based on some unexpected and surprising criteria. Ability and experience. That’s it.

　Many members of the police and fire departments have extensive experience in martial arts, and from among them, those with the best abilities are selected. With the consent of the individual, they recruited to become explorers under the direct control of the government.

　They are commonly referred to as the Advanced Explorers, and they work according to the instructions of the upper management of Dungeon Management.

　So why aren’t the Self-Defense Forces the first ones to explore the dungeon?

　The SDF’s job is national defense. The SDF’s job is to protect the safety of the civilian population, but protecting civilians who go into dungeons on their own is somewhat beyond the SDF’s jurisdiction. That is why there are no explorers in the SDF, only experienced explorers.

　In addition, the Self-Defense Force is not involved in the dungeon because the members who challenged the 15th layer were wiped out, leaving only one member.

　The members of the Advanced Explorers are only made up of those with A and B level qualities. These qualities, or skills, are ranked according to their merits, ranging from D to S class.

　Class D is 40 percent of the total, Class C is 50 percent, Class B is 9 percent, and Class A is just under 1 percent. The last 0.1 percent of the population was considered to be S-class.

　If it is D class, [Scream] an ability to emit a loud voice to frighten enemies and [Cool] that can lower the temperature of things to 1 degree.

　If it is C class, [Light Step] helps you with movement and make what you carry lighter, and [Perception] that can help you see nearby creatures.

　If it is a B grade, you can see the status of the other party using [Detection] or “Prediction”, which allows you to see the possible behavior of the other party.

　If you’re in the A level or higher, you’ll have a skill that only the upper echelons know about.

　Then, what kind of work does the Hero Party do in front of such exemplary members? It seems that the upper echelons will only secretly smile.

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