Over the weekend, the three of us visited the dungeon we usually frequented.
Today, we intended to challenge the fourth floor and beyond—the depths where monsters were said to form groups and attack in packs. We all checked our equipment with tense expressions. This would be our first time facing group battles. Knowing that things wouldn't go as smoothly as they had until now, we finished our preparations.
"All right, inspection complete. Yuji, Hiiragi-san, how are things on your end?"
"I'm good," Yuji replied.
"I'm ready as well," Hiiragi-san said.
"Then let's head in."
We pumped ourselves up and entered the dungeon.
Using the shortest route discovered during our previous explorations, we hurried through the first, second, and third floors in about an hour. We reached the stairs leading to the fourth floor with a solid warm-up under our belts, having encountered and fought monsters a few times along the way.
After exchanging glances and nodding briefly, we descended the stairs in our usual order: Yuji first, then Hiiragi-san, and finally me. At the bottom, we found a semi-circular plaza with passages branching out in a radial pattern.
"...Hiiragi-san, do you sense any monsters?"
"...Nothing so far. Kokonoe-kun, what about traps?"
"No reaction on my end either. It doesn't look like any have been set."
"I see."
Yuji waited until we finished our checks before finally stepping onto the plaza floor. Pitfall traps placed right at the bottom of a staircase were a classic trick, after all. You couldn't be too careful.
"So, which passage should we take?"
Yuji pointed toward the eight openings before us and looked at Hiiragi-san and me. Well, even if he asked which one...
"I don't hear any sounds of combat, so I think any of them should be fine. If you want, why not do what we usually do? Stand your sword up and go whichever way it falls."
"That sounds good. Hirose-kun, if you would."
"...Got it."
Yuji moved to the center of the plaza, pulled one of his kodachi out—sheath and all—and held it vertically before letting go. The weapon stood still for a heartbeat, then wobbled and fell with a clatter. After rolling a short distance, the hilt pointed toward the third passage from the right. Yuji picked it up, returned it to his waist, and began walking with slow, cautious steps. Hiiragi-san and I followed close behind him.
After ten minutes of walking, Hiiragi-san spoke up.
"Both of you, be careful. There's something up ahead."
"Monsters?"
"Probably."
Taking her warning to heart, I used my handheld zoom light to illuminate the path. About a hundred meters ahead, I spotted two shadows.
"Those must be the monsters Hiiragi-san mentioned."
"Looks like it."
"They're coming this way."
Perhaps reacting to the light, the two creatures began charging toward us. As they drew closer, their forms became clear.
They were boars with coarse, red fur.
"Red boars."
"At that speed, they're going to ram right into us."
"That'll be a pain to deal with... Daiki, you got anything?"
"Let me see..."
I reached into my backpack and rummaged through my gear for what Yuji was looking for.
"Found it. Here goes! Hup!"
I pulled out a lidded ceramic bottle and hurled it at the red boars' feet. As intended, the bottle shattered a few meters in front of them, scattering its contents.
The red boars ignored the sound of the breaking glass and kept charging straight for us, but the moment they passed the impact site, they skidded to a halt and began to writhe in agony.
"Daiki, what did you throw?"
"Hm? Oh, just some... pepper."
"Pepper? So the reason those red boars stopped is..."
"I imagine they're sneezing their heads off."
The red boars were completely incapacitated, snot dripping from their snouts as they suffered. They didn't have a shred of their former intimidation left; if anything, they looked pathetic.
I explained the item to the other two while we waited for the pepper dust to settle. If we approached now, we'd be caught in the cloud as well.
A few minutes later, we walked up to the miserable boars and finished them off by driving our weapons into their necks.
"Somehow, this doesn't feel much different from our usual routine."
"Well, we are finishing them off after they've been neutralized."
"Once we're used to facing multiple monsters, it might be better to fight them head-on," Yuji suggested.
"I agree," Hiiragi-san added. "Combat in the dungeon will likely center around group battles from here on, so we should fight them directly for the sake of practical teamwork training."
The pepper bombs were unexpectedly unpopular. Well, I understood why.
"Daiki. For those reasons, you can use them a few more times, but after that, the pepper bombs are banned for a while."
"Yeah, fair enough."
As I accepted their suggestion, the red boars dissolved into particles of light and vanished. In their place sat a knife that resembled a deba bocho and a piece of reddish ore.
"A knife and copper ore, huh..."
"Better than nothing, I suppose."
"Indeed. By the way, Kokonoe-kun, does that knife have any special properties?"
"Properties?"
"Yes. We found several blades while we were hunting slimes, didn't we? Since some of those had skills or effects attached, I thought this knife might have something similar."
"True. Daiki, check it out."
"In that case..."
I used Appraisal Analysis on the dropped knife. As it turned out, it was quite a find.
The item was a bronze knife. It was classified as a magic item, and its enchanted effect was "Dismantling." By stabbing a defeated monster with this knife, it would automatically dismantle the creature to produce drop items.
Essentially, it was the real-world version of a skinning knife from a video game. I had wondered how people obtained monster meat, and this was the answer. I wasn't sure if we hadn't seen a skinning knife in the slime dungeon because slimes didn't have meat, or if we had just been unlucky.
I let out an internal sigh as I relayed the results to the others. Hiiragi-san was particularly delighted.
"Um, would it be all right if I took this?"
"I don't mind. Yuji?"
"Of course, go ahead."
"Thank you, both of you."
For Hiiragi-san, whose primary goal was obtaining monster meat, this skinning knife was an invaluable prize—though we wouldn't know exactly how effective it was until we put it to the test.
To try out the skinning knife, we resumed our exploration. After wandering for a while, Hiiragi-san called out again.
"They're coming. Two in front and one behind. They're trying to pin us in."
"Daiki, take the one in the back. Hiiragi-san and I will handle the front. It's one-on-one across the board. No seasoning gadgets this time."
"Got it. Leave the rear to me."
I turned my back to them and readied Shiranui.
Standing back-to-back, the lantern hanging from my pack illuminated the passage with a wide-angle beam. Combined with my headlamp, we had more than enough light for combat.
While Yuji and Hiiragi-san stared down the hound dogs appearing ahead, another monster emerged from the darkness behind me. This one was also a hound dog. It seemed to have realized it was spotted and gave up on the idea of a sneak attack. The hound dogs facing the others realized the same thing; they let out low growls and lunged. At the same moment, my opponent barked and leapt at me.
"Hah!"
I shifted to the side just before the hound dog made contact, letting its momentum carry it past, and thrust Shiranui into its exposed throat. The blade pierced the flesh without resistance, and a small spray of blood followed. I gave the sword a quick twist to ensure the kill. The hound dog tumbled lifelessly to the floor, convulsed for a few seconds, and then went still.
Once I was sure it was dead, I pulled Shiranui free. If you pull a blade out while the heart is still beating, you're guaranteed to get covered in blood. Unless I was intentionally bleeding the carcass, unnecessary mess was just a hassle. That was a lesson I'd learned the hard way after a few messy kills.
I flicked the blood off Shiranui and checked on the others. Naturally, they had already finished their targets.
"Looks like you're done over there too."
"Yeah."
By the time I turned around, Yuji was already wiping his kodachi with a paper towel. I pulled out my own and cleaned Shiranui's blade. I'd really gotten used to this routine lately. At first, the whole process had filled me with revulsion.
As Yuji and I maintained our weapons, Hiiragi-san approached with the skinning knife in hand.
"Um, may I try it out now?"
"The skinning knife? Of course, go for it."
"Then here I go. There!"
Hiiragi-san drove the skinning knife into one of the hound dog corpses. The body dissolved into particles of light as usual, but instead of the usual drops, a different item appeared. It was a block of red meat. It came out... already butchered?
"...Dog meat?" I muttered.
"Looks like dog meat," Yuji said.
"It is dog meat," Hiiragi-san confirmed.
What were we supposed to do with this? Was it even edible?
The three of us shared a look of uncertainty before stabbing the knife into the remaining hound dogs before they could vanish. In total, we obtained three portions of dog meat.
I wrapped the meat in paper towels, put them into zippered plastic bags, and placed them in my Spatial Storage. I didn't have a cooler bag, so the meat would have spoiled in my backpack before we could leave the dungeon.
"Well, the skinning knife definitely works."
"Yeah. So that's how everyone else gets their meat."
"Yes, I had actually expected we'd have to butcher the monsters ourselves."
"I'm so glad we don't. I'd looked up how to dress game online, but actually doing it would have been a different story."
Truly, I was grateful for this magic item.
You could easily find guides on how to butcher wild game on the internet, but actually performing the task was another matter entirely. Especially when it came to humanoid monsters like an orc... that would have been a nightmare for my mental health.
"Now then, I had intended for us to stay and get more experience with group battles, but..."
"Are we heading back early?" Yuji asked.
"Yeah. We'll fight anything we run into on the way out, but why don't we call it here? A lot has happened, and I'm curious to see how much this meat is worth."
"I don't want to push our luck either, so I'm fine with that. What about you, Hiiragi-san?"
"I agree. Honestly, I can tell I'm a bit too excited about getting the skinning knife. For safety's sake, it's better to reset and come back later."
With everyone in agreement, we cut the exploration short and turned back.
On the way out, we ran into another group of red boars on the fourth floor, but we took them down without trouble and secured more drop items and boar meat. We also defeated several monsters on the third, second, and first floors, adding more meat to our haul.
After exiting the dungeon and changing our clothes, we presented our items at the reception desk.
"Can we exchange these for cash?"
"Monster meat? Certainly, we can handle that."
"Thanks."
"Understood. Please wait a moment."
After a few minutes, the receptionist presented the appraisal results.
The purchase prices for the Core Crystals and ores were the same as usual, but the meat had a shocking value attached to it. The hound dog and hellcat meat were 150 yen per 100g, horn rabbit meat was 300 yen per 100g, and the red boar meat was listed at a staggering 700 yen per 100g.
While the crystals and ore only totaled a few thousand yen, the meat added up to several tens of thousands.
"...Is this appraisal correct?"
"Yes. These are the prices calculated based on current market rates."
"I see..."
I double-checked with the receptionist because I couldn't believe my eyes, but they assured me the numbers were accurate. I knew monster meat was a luxury item, but I was still shaken by the unexpectedly high payout as I signed the documents and finished the transaction.
As for Hiiragi-san's skinning knife, since it was a magic item, it had to be sent to headquarters for a formal appraisal, so she went through the procedure to leave it in their custody. She had no intention of selling it; she planned to pick it up once the appraisal was finished. Given that her goal was obtaining orc meat, that knife was a necessity. Even if the appraisal value came back high, she said selling it wasn't an option.
Sigh. It really feels like our dungeon diving is turning into a serious hunting business.