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I arrived in Hell Forest at full speed.

On the way, I made an “Item Search Machine¹” with Dark Matter; I created the equipment to find out the whereabouts of items that were of legend grade or higher² and gave it the specifications about the detailed effects of the accessoire I had given Karua, so it could indicate the hiding place.

As expected, it pointed at Hell Forest.
Well, it pointed at it, but it didn’t seem to know the exact place.

At the closest entrance to Hell Forest, I looked with the Tozumaho for the tree according to the information we had dragged out of that demon.

My device is excellent.
Far from giving the item a hard time, it found the place in question immediately.

I went until several tangled trees³ were in front of me that formed what looked like the entrance of something. At this point, Mika and Bacchus left the magic room.

“Mika, Mr. Bacchus, we’re here.”
“Yeah, that seems to be it, right?” Bacchus commented. “As expected of you, Alim.”
“Alim,” Mika urged, “let’s charge in quickly.”

However, rushing in and suddenly having the tables turned on us… was not something I thought would happen, but I had to make sure.
If we don’t prepare properly…

“Yeah, before that, Mika, Mr. Bacchus, I prepared some Potions for you,” I said, and handed each of them 3 Legend Potions and 2 Amritas.
“Alim?” Bacchus asked. “Did you call these… Potions?
“That’s right. You probably see them for the first time, but, rather than Great Potions, these are 2-3 levels higher.”
“I don’t think I can use something like this, but… Well, I’ll take them for now.”

Finally, I created 3 national treasure grade bracelet items to dive into the shadows, and each of us equipped them. They possessed several abilities: They raised our stats, softened the attacks of enemies, and let us slip into the shadows.

“Well, shall we go?”
“Yeah…” Bacchus agreed. “We must rescue the princess.”
“Karua…” Mika added. “She’s waiting for is, isn’t she?”

We turned towards the shadow of the trees and, one firm step at a time, advanced.

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We were surprised, when we reached the interior and looked around. There definitely were traces of someone living here. However, it was different from what I expected and much too cramped. Wouldn’t there be barely enough space here for the 8 people in the upper echelon?

If we go by what that demon told us, normally only those 8 stay here over night. If the demons control another place, could they simply have created this to serve as a distraction…?

We looked around the whole base, but… It seems like there’s not a single demon here. Even if it’s only for 8 people, it’d be quite small, wouldn’t it…?
…Wait, that’s not it. They taught that demon, the base of his superiors is here, so he wouldn’t talk about the real place, in case he confessed… That’s possible, isn’t it?

“Maybe there was a mistake in the confession,” I tried to explain it to the other two.
“Hm?” Bacchus asked. “How could that be, Alim?”
“My truth serum definitely made him confess, but… What if the place the demon himself thought was the ‘headquarters’, was wrong…?”
“Oh… That certainly could be possible…”

Mika and Bacchus looked like they understood.

What would be a good course of action now? Do we lose hope here… no, we don’t! We’re not done yet.

Since I had created the Item Search Machine on the fly with dark matter, it’s only treasure grade. Supposing they camouflaged the real place with a barrier-item of national treasure grade or higher… That’s it, of course my item wouldn’t find the exact place then.

If that is the case, it might be a good idea to create a divine grade Item Search Machine.

“Both of you,” I told them. “From now on, I’ll need to make full use of my items and do several things, so could you please wait for a bit?”
“Yeah… got it,” Mika agreed.
“Y’know, I leave it to you,” Bacchus joined her.

To increase my production speed, I equipped accessories, I had created with Dark Matter, that raised S by a large amount. Then I used Orichalcum made of Dark Matter and 20 A-Rank magic cores, and created the “Item Search Machine – Version Extreme”. This should suffice.

“I’m done. If we use this item again, we should find Karua.”
“Quickly…” Mika almost yelled. “Please try to use it right away.”⁴　

I pressed the Item Search Machine’s ‘On’ switch.
Thereupon, a red point showed up on its screen. The place was… directly below where we were.

“It’s… right below us…” I told them.
“Eh, but down there’s only the floor…” Mika wondered.
“Most likely,” I said, “there’s some kind of hidden room, but…”

I investigated the floor around the area but didn’t find anything. Maybe some kind of item was needed? I tried to appraise the floor, but there was nothing special about it.

Maybe you can only see it when this floor is wholly in shadows?
Wait, if it’s like that again, it should be enough to face this floor and slip in like before.

It would save us the time to destroy it.

“Mika, Mr. Bacchus, I learned of a method to go down there. It should work if we use the ability of my bracelet to enter the shadows on the floor once more.”
“…Understood. Let’s try it. Y’know, let me go before you,” Bacchus suggested and then sank deeply into the floor.

I joined hands with Mika out of concern and followed him.

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Right after we had exited from the shadow floor, quite a wide space expanded in front of our eyes… A far cry from the one above, this floor was overwhelmingly spacious.

There’s no question, they really wanted to hide this place.
This should be about as wide as the interior of the Tokyo Dome, right? Though I’ve only seen the Dome on TV.

Because I suddenly felt something evil, I tried to find the origin of this sensation.

There were two evil presences.
One of them, a man with three heads, was striking something hard. The other one, I wasn’t sure if they were male or female, was playing with a snake.
They seemed to be demons.

There, Karua was the one being struck. It looked like the Great Protection was doing its job smoothly, which seemed to vex the three-headed man.
…Oh, he made eye-contact with the person who’s playing with the snake.

“…tch out…” the other demon told him. “…tors…”
No good, I can’t hear the voice clearly, like there’s something wound around their mouth.

However, I could hear the three-headed man, who stopped his strikes and looked in our direction.

“What? Did you just say humans have trespassed here~?!” he yelled. “Very impressive… Hey, wasn’t one of our targets a ‘red-haired little girl’?”
The other party knows about me for some reason, I guess I’m also a target.

“Well, that’s fine,” the three-headed man continued. “For now, looks like there are… 2 women. Hey, Astarohd. You kill that vile man with the ugly mug. I’ll go ‘amuse myself’ with these cute little devils⁵.”
“…don’t wan… …ther,” his partner complained.

The other demon doesn’t seem very motivated to respond to our intrusion.

As I thought that, the two next to me started talking.

“Since it looks like that monster wants to fight Alim and me, I’ll be his opponent, right?” Mika proposed. “Please rescue Karua, Alim.”
“Yeah…” Bacchus agreed. “Then I’ll fight that snake person, y’know.”

I see, while they draw those two away, can I go save Karua?

“Got it. Just don’t try anything unreasonable, right?”
“”Alright!””

I left the demons to them and went to Karua’s side.

1. I was tempted to translate this as “Search-Engine”, but that would have changed the meaning too much, since it’s literally a machine to search for an item, not a computer algorithm to find things.
2. It says 異常 (“strangeness”, “abnormality”) in the original, which is most likely a typo and supposed to be 以上 (“no less than”, “greater or equal than”). They are both pronounced the same way.
   Thanks to Kemm for pointing that out.
3. The verb used to describe the trees here is weird. 入り組む means “to be (or become) complicated”. Apparently, it can also mean something like “become tangled”, which would make more sense with trees. Still, wasn’t the entrance supposed to be in the shadows and not out there visible?
4. Mika seems really worried about Karua. I guess the two of them bonded A LOT during those 2 days.
5. In the original, he combines the very well-known expression for cute (kawaii) which is generally endearing, with ガキども (“damn kids” or “brats”) which is derogative, which makes this sound rather strange. Maybe it’s supposed to show just how messed up he is, when it comes to women.