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Good morning.

Mika had already woken up and was cooking breakfast.

“Good morning, Mika”
“Morning~, Alim”

I could still feel it on my cheek, where she kissed me yesterday. I ate Mika’s breakfast, while absent-mindedly thinking about such things. Once we had finished eating, we talked about what we were going do today.

“About today, Mika. I think we should go to the dungeon.”
“Understood. Ah… Now that it’s time, I’m getting nervous.”
“There’s no need to be this tense. As you are currently, Mika, I think you’re probably able to defeat a B-Rank opponent by yourself, you know.”
“Is that so? I wonder, will I have to go through the dungeon several times?¹”
“Yeah. That’s the key to leveling up.”

“How many rounds will I need to make?”
“In my case, I did 83 in a row², once, I think?”
“Right, you’d be able to do something like that, you level-up fiend.”

Level-up fiend… No matter how often I hear it, it’s fitting. I wonder who came up with that? Who could it have been…

Oh, that’s right. Since we’re finally going to the dungeon, I should probably give her that skill, shouldn’t I? I never checked the contents of the skill card I got from the fighting tournament.

“Right, there’s something I’d like to give you before we go, Mika.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“Now, this is a skill card.”

Mika picked it up and fixed it with her gaze.

“Those are the things, that you can use to get skills, right?”
“That’s right, you see? It should have a skill of around B-Rank.”
“Eh, I can’t take that.”
“It’s fine, please use it. You still have only few skills, Mika.”
“Uh… alright. Understood. What’s in there?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
“I see, I’ll try to use it, then.”

I explained how to use it. She then placed the card onto her forehead and acquired the skill.

“What kind of skill is it?”
“Somehow, that’s how it turned out.”

She showed it to me on her Tozumaho.

“Oh, what is this? That doesn’t suit you very much, Mika, does it?”
“Hmm, but maybe I could use it for synthesizing?”
“Allocate 80 SKP there, then.”
“Yeah, but I barely have enough SKP for this~.”
“Why’s that?”
“I used 200 points for Cooking and True Cooking, right? Then, turning [Bow Arts★] into [Great Archery★★★⁴], and maxing it out took 597 points, yeah? If I use 80 for this skill… I’ll be left with only 94 points of the original 877.”

Excellent, that was a good way to use her points. I shouldn’t have expected anything less of my childhood friend.

“You’re going to be leveling up soon, and consequently get a lot of SKP, so that’s not something you need to worry about, you see?”
“That’s also true.”
“Oh, right, when we dive into the dungeon, I think I’ll turn into Ayumu as often as possible.”
“Why would you do that?”
“If I’m in that state, it’s more fun since it feels like I’m playing a video game.”
“Yeah, gotcha. You do love games, don’t you?”

I turned back into Ayumu.

“Then, we’ll be leaving soon. We’ll stay in the forest for a week or so, and if we run into issues, we might have to stay up all night, so please prepare for that, alright?”
“Eh, really?”

Mika looked, as if she didn’t believe me.

There’s no other way, you know.

“Yep. In fact, I slept outdoors in the forest for about ten days, back then. Though, this time we have a magic room.”
“I see… Could you give me about an hour, then?”
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you. In that case, let’s leave in an hour.”

______
____
__

“I finished my preparations.”
“Okay, then, shall we go? Please wait inside the magic room again.”
“Yeah.”

Mika went into the magic room. I then raced to dungeon in Hell Forest, which I had mapped in advance. It took me roughly two minutes to get there. I brought out the magic room from my bag and asked Mika to come out.

“Here we are.”
“Wow… What a huge hole.”
“Right? You reach the dungeon, when you go down those rocks that look like a staircase.”
“Incredible, that’s really a staircase, right?”
“It looks more artificial further down. Well, let’s descend, so watch your step.”

We went down the stairs. Gradually, I started to see the floor, which was made of red bricks. This surprised Mika.

“Huh? Bricks? In the middle of a forest?”
“Heh-heh, that’s right, you see. The previous dungeon, I was at, was paved with stone.”
“Hah… I wonder, what in the world are those dungeons?”

We quickly reached the bottom of the hole⁵.

A message could be heard inside my head.

It seemed like the message had been sent to Mika, too.

“Somehow, when it’s being said like this, it feels real, doesn’t it?” she commented with a tense look.
“Well, to be honest, it takes several laps.⁶ Oh, look, there’s an enemy immediately.

A bit further in was a puppet made of wood, a Wood Golem. However, it’s hue was different from that of a normal Wood Golem, and its appearance was somewhat forbidding. It was a subspecies.

According to information on the Tozumaho, it was a super-strong specimen, even among Wood Golem subspecies, that had only been observed five times in history. Normally, a Wood Golem was D-Rank, but this thing’s strength and dropped materials were on a different level. At any rate, it apparently dropped four D-Rank magic cores.

Suddenly, there were two of them. Furthermore, it looked that the road ahead was blocked.

In other words, does this work like a knockout-style tournament?

“Mika, that’s probably the type where you can advance, after you win, you know,” I explained to her. “Though it wasn’t like that for me, back then. I wonder, if it’s different, because the dungeon is called ‘Wrath’?”
“Hmm, that might be it. For the time being, can I try to beat those two?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll bring them down, then. [Great Archery – One’s Honor]”

This was clearly a skill that let her manipulate her arrows freely, even after she had shot them off. Mika shot eight arrows. Four of them hit each of the strong Wood Golem subspecies, causing them to collapse disappointingly easy.

“Well, that was over too quickly.”
“That means that you’re strong, Mika, you know?”
“Eh-heh-heh, right?”
“Yep, I’ve already collected the magic cores and materials, so let’s move on to the next.”
“Huh, you’re fast!”

The wall blocking the passage had disappeared without us noticing. We moved on.

TL notes:
A note on the dungeon: In chapter 91 it says that it’s a mid-air dungeon. I’m reasonably sure that this was a translation error, and he simply discovered the dungeon (on the ground), while he was running in mid-air.

1. In the original it says, “enter and leave several times”, which is more correct, since they don’t defeat the boss, but it doesn’t flow as well in English, so I chose “go through the dungeon several times”.
2. I checked and he did way more than 83 laps back then. This is either Alim talking about the number he did without taking a break, him not remembering it properly, or the author not remembering it properly.
3. The original is 槍斧 (“spear axe”). This isn’t a normal word, but if you switch the kanji to 斧槍 it means “Halberd”. I chose “Poleaxe” to accentuate the difference, though it might simply be a typo.
4. The original is 弓の豪 (“great/overpowering of bow/archery”). “Overpowering Bow” would’ve been a usable alternative translation.
5. It says dungeon here in the original, but “bottom of the dungeon” doesn’t really make sense, since they haven’t even officially entered it at that point.
6. I’m honestly not sure what he means here. Either that it’s normal for him since he already did so many rounds in the past or that it’ll feel “normal” after several laps.