Possibility of someone poisonous all over.

I slaughtered the Red Hornet and shoved it into Aishia's backpack.

Since I'd carefully plucked it by hand, it was in pretty much perfect condition as a material.

Apparently the wax you can harvest from them is different from Yellow Hornets—higher quality and fetches a better price. The resale value goes up too, yay.

"Karikari, you're seriously more suited to being an adventurer."

"Ehhh? You think so? That's not true, Sati-tan. If you want, I could show you my prized merchandise. Let that be the proof that I'm suited to being a merchant."

"Prized merchandise? Now I'm a little curious… what kind of alcohol is it?"

"It's not alcohol."

Oh, but I did make Karina-chan Potion, so maybe having them mix it with alcohol would… no, that won't work. The recovery effect would probably be insanely strong, and worst case, it'd be poisonous.

I've heard that polar bear and seal livers are so rich in Vitamin A that they're poisonous to humans. I wonder if the same thing applies to mana and such.

Hm? Then if someone licked my blood, which is packed full of mana, they might die…? Scary. The possibility that I might be poisonous all over just occurred to me.

"We've defeated the boss we were aiming for, so shall we head back?"

"Huh? Dea-san. You don't want to go see the middle floors?"

"No. Sati-san is with us, so safety first. The middle floors have a lot of ant-types and spider-types, right? And ant acid melts iron, doesn't it?"

"Ugh. Yeah, it does. I'd rather not run into them, so I'm glad we're heading back…"

Sati-tan looked disgusted. Her weapon, the sake bottle, is made of iron too, so she probably wants to avoid enemies that can melt it… Maybe she was hesitating in front of the boss room because she didn't want to go to the middle floors?

"By the way, we haven't run into any other adventurers at all. Aishia, are you avoiding them?"

"Yes. I'm avoiding them as much as possible. Also, the adventurers here mainly operate on the middle floors."

Come to think of it, the dungeon sandwich Aishia bought for us was apparently made with monster ingredients from the middle floors too.

Apparently there are multiple staircases leading down to the middle floors, and multiple boss rooms like this one too. Adventurers who mainly work on the middle floors take a fixed shortest route to get there, so there are even boss rooms where the boss rarely shows up—any that spawn get immediately killed by passersby, reopening the path right away.

Conversely, adventurers who want to test their skills explore off those fixed routes, or open up boss rooms to challenge them.

"Then I guess I'll check out the middle floors and beyond sometime when Sati-tan isn't around, if I feel like it."

"Sure. Onee-san, want to go take a quick look at the stairway?"

Oh, nice. If I record the coordinates here, I can enter the dungeon whenever I want.

For me, that means I can gather materials as much as I want. Hehehe.

 

*

 

After returning from the dungeon, we decided to go sell our materials.

The mid-boss materials, that nearly unscathed Red Hornet… maybe they'll make a fuss? I thought, but it was exchanged for money without any incident at all. A bit anticlimactic. Well, it's just small fry when you consider the deeper floors.

So splitting it four ways including Aishia, we each earned 8 silver coins.

"Having a porter really helps with the earnings, huh."

"Is it usually less?"

"Yeah, you end up tossing materials you can't carry."

What a waste. Hand them over to me.

"Well, there are low-rank adventurers who get by picking those up. You know, adventurer orphans and such."

"Adventurer orphans."

Those are orphans whose parents were adventurers who died on quests or in dungeons. Sometimes the parents are scum who just left their kids here and ran off somewhere, making them adventurer orphans too.

(According to [Basic Knowledge]-san)

Also, if Aishia hadn't been there with her conspicuously large backpack, those kinds of kids would apparently come begging to be hired as porters, or follow behind us.

"Sounds kind of dangerous."

"Yeah, dangerous in all sorts of ways—for those hiring and those hired, those who follow and those being followed. I mean, look at me—I look like this, right? When I'm solo, people sometimes look down on me and attack. They get a nice counterattack for their trouble though."

"As expected of Sati. I'm falling for you all over again."

Dungeons are truly terrifying places indeed.