I hear the roar of a red ogre, and footsteps echo shortly after.
Ten ogres are charging, led by a red ogre. They’re close to three meters tall, so it’s like a wall is closing in.
But that wall never reaches us.
“Haha, in one strike?”
Argo lets out a dry laugh upon seeing them engulfed in flames and burned.
“…But now we can’t harvest materials.”
Chris is right. Even the magic stones are gone.
“And since this magic uses a lot of magic energy, it will be hard to use it frequently.”
“Well, that can’t be helped when it’s this powerful.”
“So how do we fight next time?”
“I guess… Take them on normally?”
Chris wanted to test her magic, so we left the first group to her, and we’ve seen the result.
“Can I just draw them to me?”
“No, let’s try fighting without that. Maybe there will be situations where we can’t rely on you.”
Like the seventh floor’s boss.
Then we keep encountering groups of ogres, and keep taking them down without any danger.
Argo and the others are excited, probably because they had to bear with the seventh floor, which had enemies resistant to physical attacks.
Argo’s swordsmanship is especially sharp, and he handles ogres like they’re kids.
But the others don’t fall too far behind, taking them down easily even one on one.
Their A rank is not just for show.
◇ ◇ ◇
It’s been five hours since we entered the eighth floor, and we’ve taken down over a hundred monsters.
But the counter soon stops going up, because we’ve hunted all the monsters around here.
“We’re going to have to walk for a bit.”
I say while checking Map.
“I see…”
“Fufu, you sound happy, Sora.”
Argo is dejected, but Mia laughs.
And she’s right.
But we can’t find monsters by just walking randomly. If there’s a party nearby, they might end up reaching the monsters first.
There’s an implicit agreement not to bother other adventurers when they’re fighting, or swipe their kills. That means we have to go to a place where there are monsters but no people.
“Hn, it feels like most parties are also looking for monsters. How about we see how things go while we eat?”
“…If you say so Sora, let’s do that. Maybe some people are on their way back.”
On the flip side, there could be new parties entering the eighth floor, but there’s nothing we can do about that.
And Map is also showing me some parties that aren’t moving. They might start moving again too.
It’s always bright in the dungeon, so it’s easy to not even realize you have day and night flipped. It could be time to go to bed right now.
We end up eating and taking turns napping, and then keep moving.
“How does it look, Sora?”
“Hm, there are more people not moving. But we should move away from here to hunt. There aren’t any people on this route, but quite a bit of monsters.”
A lot of people are centered near the entrance, so our chances of finding monsters go up as we go away from it.
There are also parties who leave after some time, because they’re not sleeping here.
I can see a party that left two days ago. And they stay near the entrance.
I assume this area’s viability depends a lot on people’s ability to take items back with them.
Apparently ogre skin can be used to make armor.
After two and a half days of walking, after we destroy a group of ogres, I see a change on Map.
“People are leaving the dungeon?”
“Yes, a group of fifty ogres appeared near the entrance.”
It looks like the ogres we’re taking down far away are respawning there. And that’s the reason why parties are moving outside.
Each party tends to have about fifteen members, so they probably don’t like their odds against fifty ogres.
Also, the ogres are taking position near the entrance and not moving from there. It’s like they’re waiting for prey.
“Well, this happens. It’s none of our concern. We can take down whatever’s left when we get there, so let’s take our time.”
Says Argo, not sounding bothered.
He probably thinks we can take on four times as many ogres as our party members.
There are a lot, but the size of the passages means only so many can fight at the same time, and fifty can’t attack at once.
And there aren’t any wide areas in Zuirya like there were in Majolica.
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Thanks for the treat.