"Grrrrrrl!"
As Set's cry echoed through the surroundings, his front leg swung down in a strike.
With the crunch of shattering bone, the goblin's head was literally scattered in pieces.
Bone fragments, brains, eyeballs—everything went flying in every direction. Yet Set, who had done the deed, looked slightly displeased.
Last night, Power Crush had leveled up using the Orc Leader's Magic Stone. When a goblin appeared on the road to the Dungeon, Set had eagerly taken the opportunity to try out the skill. But partly because the opponent was a mere goblin, he couldn't really tell the difference in power compared to a regular strike from his front leg.
Rei, watching from the carriage window, let out a sigh with a complicated expression.
(Power Crush reaching Level 5 means its power should have definitely skyrocketed. But against something like a goblin, it can barely demonstrate that power at all.)
Judging by that alone, Set acquiring a powerful skill should have been cause for celebration.
The reason Rei wore a complicated expression was because Set had effortlessly mastered the leveled-up Power Crush.
Rei, who used a similar skill called Power Slash, couldn't yet claim to use it perfectly—or freely, for that matter.
"Goblins, huh... They still attack normally even with Set around. It was like that last time, too," Elena murmured as she watched Set's rampage through the carriage window.
"Wait, Elena. Can we drop the topic of goblins? It reminds me of what happened yesterday."
No doubt remembering the taste of the goblin meat she had eaten the night before, Marina grimaced over her tea.
Marina had experience working as an adventurer, but she had spent so long serving as the Guild Master that she likely never had the opportunity to eat goblin meat before.
Because of that, the experience had dealt her a heavy blow.
"Should we have Vihera eat goblin meat too once she regains consciousness?" Marina's gaze turned to Vihera, who lay on the sofa.
Her unchanged appearance since yesterday made it look, to an outside observer, as though she were simply sleeping.
"Hehe, indeed. It would be a little unfair for only us to eat it. In that case, we'd need Vihera to have some as well."
Elena offered this with a smile, and Rei, who had been watching Set's rampage outside, joined the conversation.
"Then we'll have to prepare some more... stimulating goblin meat for her."
Choosing to describe it as "stimulating" rather than "delicious" was perhaps Rei's mean streak showing through.
Nevertheless, both Elena and Marina smiled beautifully and agreed.
To an onlooker, it would seem like nothing more than two beautiful women smiling elegantly. It would never occur to anyone that they were plotting a prank on the sleeping Vihera when she woke—one that would normally be no laughing matter.
The fact that they could joke like this was because everyone present believed Vihera would regain consciousness.
Even though they would be challenging an S-Rank monster in the Dungeon, no one showed any sign of fear.
That was surely because they believed in their own power—and in the power of their allies.
Rei, Elena, Marina, Ara, Elk, Min. And Set and Ielo.
Under normal circumstances, assembling this much combat power would be extraordinarily rare.
...In this case, perhaps the truly surprising thing was Rei's personal network that had made it possible to gather this much combat power in the first place.
"The Silver Lion, huh. I hear slashing attacks and magic are mostly ineffective against it, so the question is how to break through its defenses and deal damage. Honestly, when facing an enemy like this, the most reliable person would be Vihera."
Vihera's skill, Magic Impact Palm, transmitted shock directly into the opponent's body—bypassing armor, skin, or fur entirely, no matter what it was.
Against the Silver Lion, the foe they planned to fight in a few days, it was undoubtedly a highly reliable skill.
But right now, Vihera, the one who could use Magic Impact Palm, was unconscious.
And rescuing her consciousness was precisely why they were heading to the Dungeon in the first place.
"Elk's Axe of the Thunder God has high single-blow power. I can only use Mirage to pin it down at best, but I have Dragon Language Magic. And Ara, if we're talking purely about single-blow striking power, hers is considerable as well."
At Elena's words, which sounded like a confirmation, Rei nodded and continued.
"My Twilight Spear might not be very effective either, but it has the ability to return to my hand, so I can use it for restraint. Death Scythe has Power Slash, so I can expect results there. And Set, too."
Between his physical abilities as a gryphon, the Magic Item known as the Bracelet of Herculean Strength, and Power Crush—which had leveled up by absorbing the Orc Leader's Magic Stone—Set was well-equipped. Normally, his strongest single-target strike would be a high-altitude dive utilizing the speed of his fall, but since they would be inside the Dungeon, that was out of the question.
Even so, he could still deliver a sufficiently reliable blow.
"I suppose I'll mostly focus on support. It seems bows are hardly effective. Or maybe... a strike from a spear of stone or earth created by Spirit Magic would work? No, the lowest floor of the Dungeon wasn't earth, was it?"
"I wonder. It seems like it might have some effect, but..." Rei answered Marina's question.
Against the Silver Lion, which was largely immune to magic, would strikes from stone or earth created by Spirit Magic actually be effective? That was something even Rei couldn't predict.
He did have a vague feeling that it might work to some extent, but that was based purely on intuition.
Elena, who had been listening to Rei and Marina's exchange, spoke up as she sipped her tea.
"Should we have brought more people?"
She immediately shook her head, as if rejecting her own suggestion.
"No, since we're facing an S-Rank monster, a certain level of strength is essential. On top of that, hiring someone with no connection to us would naturally require compensation."
Those they recruited to fight an S-Rank monster would naturally demand appropriate compensation.
Among other things, they might demand the Magic Stone—the most valuable of all materials—or they might want the very heart that Rei and his party absolutely needed.
If it were someone willing to take the job for money alone, Rei would have welcomed them with open arms. But anyone with enough strength to count as combat power against an S-Rank monster probably wasn't hurting for cash.
After all, such a person could earn money easily by completing requests on their own.
What such people would want was, inevitably, S-Rank monster materials.
At worst, a fight over the materials could break out among allies after the Silver Lion was defeated.
(It's not that easy to bring more people in, is it?)
When he considered a fight breaking out among those capable of challenging an S-Rank monster, the outcome would undoubtedly be gruesome.
"True. Besides, if there are too many people, it'll be harder to maneuver during the fight."
Rei and Marina both nodded at Elena's words.
The members planning to fight the Silver Lion already had plenty of vanguards.
If they were rearguard members, that would be one thing, but Rei could understand that no more vanguards were needed.
(Though even if we wanted to bring in new rearguard members, there's the issue of capability.)
Since bow attacks were mostly ineffective against the Silver Lion, what the rearguard needed was a mage.
Of course, the Silver Lion's fur possessed high magical defense that could block magic, but with magic, it was at least possible to provide support beyond raw attacks.
Rei met many mages, but looking at adventurers as a whole, mages were extremely few in number.
It was precisely because Gilm attracted skilled adventurers that the number of mages there was higher compared to other towns or villages.
"If Grimm would cooperate, we could defeat the Silver Lion easily, though," Marina offered, as if thinking there was no harm in saying it.
Grimm was friendly toward humans—or more accurately, toward Rei and those around him—but he was still an undead monster, and a powerful existence known as a Lich Lord. That much was certain.
Even if he was originally human, his principles of action and sense of ethics were vastly different from a human's.
Given that, the fact that Grimm was helping them restore Vihera's consciousness this time was extraordinarily generous.
Indeed, that generosity probably existed solely because of Rei.
"It must be a trial, I suppose," Elena's murmur echoed through the carriage.
"The Silver Lion, huh... I'd heard it was a troublesome opponent, but I never thought I'd be the one fighting it."
Elk muttered from the driver's seat of the carriage traveling alongside Rei's.
His voice must have carried, because Min replied from inside.
"But thanks to that Silver Lion, Rhodos might wake up, right?"
"Yeah."
Ever since Rhodos lost consciousness, they had struggled to find a way to restore it.
They had tried everything—obtaining Magic Items and relying on skilled Recovery Magic users—but ultimately, Rhodos had never regained consciousness.
After nearly a year of desperately searching, Elk and Min had entertained the thought of "maybe..." more times than they could count.
It was at just such a moment that Marina had proposed this plan involving the Silver Lion.
When he first heard about borrowing help from a monster as powerful as a Lich Lord—one that could potentially rival Dragon Species—Elk had honestly doubted Marina's sanity.
But it was a fact that they had no other options left. Accepting Marina's invitation was the last resort available to them.
"How is Rhodos doing?"
Even while traveling by carriage, there shouldn't be any particular change.
He knew that, yet Elk still asked.
"Same as always."
Hearing Elk's voice from inside the carriage, Min looked at the prone Rhodos and replied.
Before her lay the figure of Rhodos, whose body had lost considerable muscle mass compared to before.
Even so, his muscles hadn't deteriorated as much as someone unconscious for that long normally would.
That was thanks to the Magic Item Elk and Min had purchased.
It was a very expensive Magic Item, but for Elk, an alias-holding A-Rank adventurer, it was within his means.
Thanks to that item, although Rhodos had grown noticeably thinner, his body's deterioration was still slower than normal.
Min gently stroked her son's cheek.
"I see."
Elk nodded at Min's words and returned his focus to driving the carriage.
The horse pulling this carriage was, true to its high price, a smart animal.
If all it needed to do was follow Elena's carriage ahead, Elk hardly needed to give it any instructions.
The only monsters that attacked were goblins—too foolish to comprehend Set's strength—and those goblins were naturally dispatched by Set.
Until they reached the Dungeon, there was truly nothing that needed doing right now.
(No, once we reach the Dungeon, there'll still be things to do.)
If possible, he wanted to challenge the Silver Lion the moment they arrived.
But it was equally true that several things needed to be taken care of before that.
First, they needed to secure rooms at an inn to serve as their base.
Elk and his party intended to have Grimm teleport them directly to the lowest floor once they entered the Dungeon, so they had no need to delve through it legitimately.
Even so, securing rooms at an inn was essential—just in case something went wrong.
Depending on their time of arrival, they might stay overnight and challenge the Dungeon the following morning.
Beyond that, there was the matter of storing the carriages and tending to the horses.
Elena's and Elk's carriages, along with the horses pulling them, were extremely valuable. Without a high-class inn with strict security, there was a real risk of theft.
At worst, the carriages could be stored in Rei's Misty Ring, but the horses couldn't be put inside.
Additionally, since Marina—the Guild Master of Gilm—was challenging the Dungeon, she needed to show her face at the outpost.
Consumables had already been purchased in Gilm, so there was no particular need to buy anything else.
Thinking all this over, Elk kept the carriage moving forward.