Chapter 45
Chapter 45
Wouldn’t it have been... pretty easy to take down Elbatoxin like this?
‘Dwell not of such pointless speculations. And as well, I can guarantee not that this method will work. After all, this being food, it would be quite something if we can slay monsters without having them to ingest it.’
Gaining permission from the guildhall to proceed with our plan, we then assisted Arleaf in perfecting her cooking.
As I said earlier, we wanted Arleaf to cook something as noxious as possible. But however, it just came out looking like it does normally.
I guess it’s hard for her to deliberately fine-tune that aspect.
After some time, Arleaf’s cooking became a deadly poison.
I aided her in her many experiments in the kitchen.
The result of our experimentation was, of course, the secret weapon.
This is what we made by the way.
Oran?e Mea?ba??s
Qua?ity: Heavenly
Easy-?o-ea? bi?e-sized mea?balls.
Filled wi?h Arleaf’s ?ove for monsters.
BLT S?ンdwich
?uality: Terri???
The classic combination of ?, ?, and ? sandwiched between two slices of bread?
A taste so aw?, you could eat it for the rest of your life.
FiLLed with RLeaf’s Lo?? for monsteRs.
It’s at least easier to read than the egg on toast last time. Maybe it’s thanks to our supervision.
They’re supposed to be meatballs and cut-up pieces of BLT sandwiches.
But with arms and legs growing out of it.
Arleaf made lots for me. I packed them in the bento—or rather, these might be better called Pandora’s boxes—and brought them down into the sewer.
And, needless to say, it worked.
Muu almost succumbed to the Poison Cooking while we were developing it though.
Luckily, I was vigilant and stopped the experiment in time, but it seems like the food is quite aggressive.
‘I have put thee in this situation, one which is dangerous even for me.’
Don’t get cold feet now, dragon.
If we screw up, it’s totally on you though.
‘Hold your horses there. But, there is no chance that this is good for my karma... hah.’
Well, that sure doesn’t reassure me.
In any case, as soon as they jump out, the food-like creatures will attack anything in sight.
I’m getting déjà vu of some horror flick.
‘This one, aye?’
Veno rifles through my memories and finds the film.
It’s about something like a bunch of kids getting attacked by parasitic fish from the depths of the sea.
They ate the fish and it attacked them from the inside.
... this isn’t exactly important right now.
“Muuuuu!”
I look back at Muu shrieking out to find pieces of meatball and sandwich latching on, trying to stealthily attack Muu.
I flick off the deadly food and continue our escape.
“Whew... we made it somehow.”
I muttered while bathing in the sunlight after breaking out of the sewers.
“Mu!”
If you perk your ears, you can hear the death rattles of monsters dying in the sewer.
In any case, we should head to the guildhall and warn them about the chance of a containment breach.
Before that though, we gotta wash ourselves off a little with some comparatively cleaner sewage.
We headed towards Arleaf and rendezvoused in the town square.
“Hey, Yukihisa.”
“How did it go for you? Was everything alright up here?”
“Yes... nothing in particular happened, oddly enough. Just in case though, I asked the guildhall to not permit adventurers down in the sewers. But there are not many people taking up the quest in the first place. It just isn’t quite worth the effort.”
We’re not quite sure how the monsters are like.
But according to Arleaf, the food is crippled as soon as they start to rot. In any case, it was a good idea for her to seal up the entrance for now.”
“However... I have been gaining a monumental amount of experience ever since. My level is rapidly increasing.”
“What? For real?”
I check my own status too.
Yukihisa Kogure
Poison-Wielder
Level 31
Acquired skills: Spirit Link, Poison Absorption, Poison Release, Synthesize Poison, Detect Poison, Poison Enchantment, Hunting Sense, Hunting Mastery IV, Aiming Shot III, Trap Mastery III, Call Fungus, Critical Eye, Footwork
I’m not getting much, even though I had an experience gain buff from eating Arleaf’s cooking...
“Oh? What’s that on Muu’s back?”
“Mu? Muuuuu?!”
There’s a meatball still stubbornly clinging onto Muu’s back, trying to find its way through Muu’s armor.
As soon as it sensed it was detected, it crawled as quickly as possible to lodge itself in Muu’s mouth.
How horrifying.
“Whoops.”
I grabbed it before it found a way inside Muu.
Damn, it’s still squirming in my hand. What a dastardly foodstuff.
‘I can neither deny nor confirm that thou hast created a new type of creature.’
These guys might just lead to destruction and chaos.
The sewer is swarming with these poisonous meatballs after all. But what done is done.
I toss the poisonous meatball into my mouth and begin biting into it.
Perhaps it knows it’s disgusting or deadly, the meatball is unsurprisingly trying to attack me from inside my mouth.
And when I chew it, the bits squirm around, trying to escape out of my mouth or down my throat.
No way I’m letting you escape!
I keep chewing and swallowed it all.
“Mmm...”
The toxicity is tastier than ever. Arleaf is really getting better and better at it.
That was extraordinarily delicious.
‘I did not think there was room for her to improve.’
“Muu!”
Muu gratefully thanks me and begins to hop around.
“Going back to what we were talking about, neither Muu nor I gained any levels. How about you, Arleaf?”
“I am currently at level 44. However, I think there’s still more experience for me to gain...”
Wow... and to think she was just a level 19 Thaumaturge when we fought Elbatoxin.
After that fight, she was level 21 while on the wagon ride here, I think.
She jumped 23 levels at once.
Awesome. And she’s not even done leveling up yet... seems like the food monsters are still in the middle of their search and destroy mission.
Thank goodness they’ll decay soon since they don’t have any sort of self-regeneration ability. At least, I think that’s the case.