After finishing our shopping at the Starsia Company, we arranged to have our purchases delivered to the Fledgling Pavilion.
Truthfully, I wanted to stay overnight in the dungeon right away.
However, if we were going to make the trip, heading in first thing in the morning would let us stay the longest.
"With that said, let's just do our usual dungeon exploration today."
"Good idea. If we're staying overnight, going in the morning lets us spend a lot more time in there."
"I'm with Erik on that. If we're going through the trouble, I'd rather make it a long run."
"I think that sounds fine too. So, when are we doing the overnight trip?"
I paused to think at Leticia-san's question.
Staying overnight in a dungeon was bound to come with a fair amount of tension, and more than anything, we would need to be active right from early morning.
"I'd like to say tomorrow, but we haven't taken a proper break lately. It's hard for people to notice their own exhaustion creeping up, so I think we should take a day off from party activities tomorrow and go stay in the dungeon the day after."
Recalling Amanda-san's advice, I realized I hadn't been resting at all.
Which meant, by extension, that I hadn't been giving Philia and the others a break, either.
We could push ourselves because we were young, but there was no telling when that overexertion would catch up with us.
So, I figured we should get some solid rest and head into the dungeon in peak condition.
At my suggestion, Philia and the others stopped in their tracks and stared at me in surprise.
"It's rare to hear the word 'break' come out of Erik-kun's mouth."
"No kidding. I thought Erik didn't even know what a break was."
"I feel the same as them. I never expected Erik-kun to be the one suggesting time off."
"...I know it's on me, but you guys could've spoken up and said you wanted a rest too, you know."
I gave them a flat stare as I replied.
"Our party activities only last half a day, so fatigue doesn't really build up. That's why taking a break didn't really cross my mind."
"I know you train every day, Erik, but guys like me take proper rests in the mornings on some days."
"I guess I'm in the same boat as Alan-kun and the others. Training every day is great and all, but if you don't rest once in a while, you'll ruin your health."
Apparently, Philia and the others had already been pacing themselves with their own physical condition in mind.
That suddenly made me wonder about my own habit of training every single day.
"...Is it weird that I train every day?"
"I don't think it's weird. The fact that Olivia-san hasn't stopped you is probably because she sees how eager you are to do your best, Erik-kun."
It was true that Olivia-san had never told me to stop.
Even so, she didn't have me train nonstop; she always worked in regular breaks.
She had probably been scheduling those breathers while keeping a close eye on my fatigue levels.
"...Anyway, since we'll likely be doing overnight stays in the dungeon from now on, I think we should start scheduling regular days off."
"Yeah. And going forward, we'll keep a close eye on you to make sure you aren't overworking yourself, Erik-kun."
"Erik's a hard worker, but he doesn't seem to know how to take it easy... Even if we call it a day off, he'll probably just end up training anyway."
"We should coordinate our days off with Reina-san and Olivia-san too, just to make sure Erik-kun doesn't sneak in any training."
With the decision made to balance our activities with proper rest from here on out, we made our way to the dungeon.
Once we arrived, we cut the idle chatter and focused entirely on the exploration.
"There are surprisingly a lot of monsters today."
"Time-wise, we're a bit later than usual, so more of them probably spawned in the meantime... Which means there's a good chance magic stone bearers and the like have piled up around the edges."
About ten minutes had passed since we entered the dungeon.
In that short time, we had already run into and defeated dozens of monsters.
Even though we had arrived later than usual, the density of monsters felt noticeably high.
We had already taken down a few magic stone bearers, too.
"I was planning to head down to the 10th floor, but what if we change things up and thoroughly sweep every corner down to the 5th floor instead?"
"I think I'd prefer that. We'd get to fight plenty of monsters that way, and we could hunt for more magic stone bearers."
"I'm all for it. If tomorrow's a day off, the more coin we make today, the better."
"I agree as well."
Everyone was on board with my plan.
The map down to the 10th floor was already committed to memory.
I also had a clear idea of where monsters tended to cluster.
From there, we swept through every nook and cranny of the first floor, securing a whopping ten magic stones by the time we finished.
"If this keeps up all the way to the 5th floor, we're gonna make a killing!"
"...Well, dungeons have a way of not keeping up like that. Let's not get our hopes too high. We'll just focus on clearing monsters and consider it a nice bonus whenever a magic stone bearer shows up."
I kept my voice level, reigning in Alan's rising excitement.