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“Ugh.” Tafel groaned as she pressed her back to the wall and dropped down, sliding down onto her butt as her legs bent. She lowered her staff onto the floorboards and tilted her head back, digging her horns into the wooden surface as she stared up at the ceiling. “That was tough.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Skelly asked with a grin. Half of his helmet had been shattered and cracked off, revealing the right side of his skull. “I’m not even out of breath.”
“You don’t breathe,” Alice said, glaring at the grinning skeleton. She was stacking the bodies of the bloody people in a corner of the kitchen where they wouldn’t be blocking any of the cabinets and drawers from opening. Parts of her shirt and pants were torn, but there wasn’t a single dent on the round shield that hung from her back, making her seem like a turtle. “Help me move these bodies.”
“This is cruel…,” Mistle said as she hovered over the bloody people. “They were having dinner and you ambushed them. They couldn’t even eat their last meal.”
“Like I said earlier, they’re monsters.” Tafel climbed to her feet and dusted off the bottom of her robes. “Even a slime has to eat, these things aren’t any different.”
“Didn’t you say they were like golems?” Mistle asked. “Have you ever seen a golem eat anything?”
A tiny wrinkle appeared on Tafel’s forehead. “Golem’s eat mana. The concept’s the same. If you feel so guilty about conquering a dungeon, why are you even here?”
“Vur dragged me along….”
Tafel pretended not to hear as she walked over to the counter and pulled open a few drawers. Her eyes lit up. “Their utensils are made of mithril.”
“What?” Alice asked, dropping the bloody corpse in her hands as she whipped her head around to face Tafel. “Really?”
“Yeah, look,” Tafel said as she picked up a spoon that was tinted with a bluish hue. “It’s a mithril spoon. There’s dozens of them.”
Alice went to the table and grabbed the utensils that the bloody people hadn’t been able to use for a final time. “Woah, you’re right. These really are made of mithril. No wonder why those knights stripped everything in those previous rooms. If even forks and spoons are made of mithril, then….” Her gaze shifted onto the wooden table. She rapped on it with the back of her hand, a dull thudding sound echoing through the room. “Now, trees aren’t my specialty, but even a layman like me can tell that this is pretty good stuff. This is something that E would’ve used in his dining room.”
“E? The ex-dwarf king?” Tafel asked.
“Wouldn’t it be better to call him the dwarf ex-king?” Alice asked as she gathered up the utensils, plates included, and handed the stack over to Tafel, who shoved them all into a portal. “He’s still a dwarf, you know.”
Tafel shrugged. “You knew what I meant,” she said as she searched through the bloody people’s refrigerator. “Their freezing device is pretty nice too. Lots of space, and it doesn’t look like it takes a lot of mana to maintain. Well, that makes sense. If the mana it took to operate it was greater than the mana provided by the food inside, then they’d just unplug it and use the mana source to power themselves.” She took out a carrot and sniffed it before biting into it. “Tastes like a regular carrot.”
“…Do you just eat everything raw?” Alice asked, raising an eyebrow. “First it was that bloody corpse, now it’s a carrot? Are you a barbarian?”
“There’s nothing wrong with eating carrots raw,” Tafel said, furrowing her brow. “In fact, people who cook carrots are ruining a perfectly good vegetable. Once you cook it, it becomes all mushy and disgusting with no texture. It’s like eating a slime.”
“Yep, you’re a barbarian,” Alice said. “Why am I the one on the frontlines while you’re staying behind and casting? It should be the other way around.”
“That’s not really my fault,” Tafel said as she tilted the refrigerator through a portal by lifting one side from the bottom. She grunted as it toppled over completely, disappearing from the room. “Bring that table over? I’ll work on separating the cabinets from the walls.”
Mistle hovered overhead, watching the party strip the room of everything including the lights on the ceiling. “This is too cruel….”
“At least they dispatched all the monsters first?” Sheryl asked as she floated around the blue ball of light. “They don’t have to see their belongings taken away.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
***
“Is this their nest?” Stella whispered to Vur as she sank into his body, leaving only her head showing outside. The chimera mount had finally stopped running once it entered a pitch-black cave. Hundreds of glowing red eyes permeated the darkness, all of them staring at Vur.
Vur hopped off the chimera and yawned as he stretched his arms towards the ceiling. A figure flashed from the darkness, lunging towards Vur. With a simple downward movement of his arm, he swatted the attacking figure into the ground. It was a chimera with three legs and five wings. Vur crouched down and lifted it by its neck while sniffing its chest. Then he took a bite out of it without hesitation. He swallowed and licked his lips. “Tastes like chimera.”
“What does chimera taste like?” Stella asked from inside of Vur’s body.
“Try some and you’ll know,” Vur said as he stood up, his hand still wrapped around the creature’s neck. He glared at the eyes that seemed to be shrinking back. Even though it was pitch-black and only lit up by red eyes, Vur could clearly make out everything inside the cave. Hundreds of chimeras were staring at him, but most of them were small as if they were still hatchlings. “This is probably where they spawn from.”
“Do you think they have a mother?” Mervin asked. “Do you think she’d be the mini-boss of the dungeon?”
“Dummy,” Stella said, her tone filled with disdain. “Don’t you see that these chimeras are super weak? They’re pests, like rats or cockroaches that happen to be living in a dungeon. And you think a pest is a mini-boss?”
“Isn’t Vur just too strong? I’m sure a group of knights would have trouble dealing with even a single one of these chimeras,” Mervin said.
Stella harrumphed. “What do you know? You’re just a beansprout.”
“…Aren’t you just a flower?”
“Everyone knows flowers are smarter than beansprouts. On the hierarchal food chain of plants, fairy birthflowers are at the top.”
“Plants eat each other?” Vur asked, tilting his head as he kicked aside a few chimeras while making his way deeper into the cave. Only a few brave ones came out to attack him, the others pressing themselves against the cave’s walls, creating a path for him. “I didn’t know they had a food chain.”
“You didn’t know? Well, that makes sense; it all happens underground,” Stella said and nodded. “The roots of a birthflower travel really far and wrap around roots of other plants. Then they suck out all the nutrients and consume the plant completely. The only plant that can grow in the vicinity of a birthflower is another birthflower. We even eat trees.”
Vur thought back to the garden of birthflowers he planted. Tafel had contributed with a few fruit trees that she had transported with the help of portals. Oh wells.
I love this novel! I don’t know if it was intentional or not. but didn’t Alice already discover she’d been basically warming her food not really cooking it for the longest time and that it was practically the same as raw food when she tried that in the last book. From my imagination it’s hilarious that someone who cooks like that would make that comment but then it clicked the odd part out is Taffel not pointing out her cooking is practically raw food anyways. Anyways I really love your books and the people who’ve narrated them for the audio books I’ve bought them all on audible! and i will be buying this one too when it’s done it’s just that good. thank you for the amazing work!
I’m glad you enjoy it! Alice is still in deniable about her terrible cooking ability.