Advice

Normally, after spending a decent amount of time in a labyrinth, I'd be tired regardless of whether we'd struggled or not.

But right now, I wasn't tired at all.

It felt like I'd just gone for a light stroll.

"Ahh. I'm beat."

Ramiza-san said this while lying down.

Her face was completely relaxed, so she probably wasn't genuinely tired. She just didn't feel like moving.

"I'm sorry for leaving almost all the fighting to you."

"Don't worry about it. This is more efficient, after all. Just protecting me from any enemies that slip through is plenty."

"But still…"

I couldn't help feeling bad about it.

This was basically the same as being babysat.

Ramiza-san had said she found it too much trouble to form a party, but anyone she teamed up with must have shrunk back in the same way.

Having someone along to carry gear was one thing, but a party meant to fight together would never work like this.

"Now, now. Let's just rest. Azu-chan, everyone else too, sit down. If you can detect things with magic, we don't even need to post a lookout, right?"

"All right."

I had things I wanted to say, but I obeyed without protest.

Ramiza-san hadn't done anything wrong.

The feelings welling up were just me venting, nothing more.

Alexia-san and Elza-san sat down too.

Outside the barrier, everything was enveloped in purple toxic fog.

Hard to believe we'd just been walking through that.

"What do you all usually eat at times like this?"

"During breaks in labyrinth runs? Preserved rations, mostly. If we come across an edible monster, we'll cut off some meat and grill or stew it."

"About the same as me, then. Ah, but knowing Yohane-kun, he's given you proper good rations."

Ramiza-san was impressed when she saw the rations I pulled out.

I'd heard that some cheap preserved rations were so bad they were practically inedible.

I'd never had them myself, but Elza-san and Alexia-san both had, and they'd told me the taste was atrocious.

"Rations are all adventurers have during quests and labyrinth runs, so whether they taste good actually matters a lot."

Ramiza-san held out her hand, so I gave her one of the wrapped rations.

She took it with a quick thanks, unwrapped it, and took a bite of the nutrition bar inside.

"Mm, this is good. Plenty of sugar, you can really feel the energy boost. No wonder Yohane-kun's shop is popular with adventurers."

"When I help out at the shop, I see a lot of people buying in bulk."

"I bet. Once you know this taste, you'd buy them even if they're a bit pricier. Can't see yourself going back to anyone else's terrible rations. He's always been good at business."

I bit into my own nutrition bar.

It was a bit crumbly and sucked the moisture from my mouth, but at the same time, a pleasant sweetness spread through it.

Dried fruit had been mixed into the bar too, making it almost like a little dessert.

If I remembered right, this was a new product they'd started carrying recently.

Apparently, he'd found a good supplier.

"Monster meat… probably best not to eat any here."

"Agreed."

I couldn't bring myself to eat it.

The toxically colored monsters looked repulsive on the outside, and while their insides were surprisingly clean, that only made it more off-putting somehow.

"Ha. Well, properly detoxified, they're all actually high-end ingredients, but that process involves burying them in soil or packing them in salt-filled jars for years, so either way it's a no-go here."

"People actually go through all that to eat them?"

"Oh, absolutely. Rich people who've eaten everything under the sun start craving rare delicacies they've never tried. They want to brag about having tasted something nobody else has. That, or simple intellectual curiosity. Next time, check out the ingredient-gathering requests on the board. The high-rank ones are almost all like that."

"There are some odd people out there…"

Honestly, I wouldn't eat it even if you paid me.

If Master ordered me to, I'd steel myself and do it, but otherwise, absolutely not.

The image of that dissected frog's innards was still burned vividly into my mind.

"Oh, this smoked meat is good too. The salt's different."

"Ah… You're right, it is tastier than before."

We chewed on smoked meat and washed it down with water from our canteens.

It was like a picnic.

Was it really okay to have it this easy?

"You've got that 'is it really okay to have it this easy?' look on your face."

"Huh?"

"Bull's-eye? Well, we did touch on this earlier."

"I suppose… yes."

"The way I see it, everyone else works too hard. People say adventuring always carries the risk of death, but you can reduce that risk enormously with the right preparation."

"What do you mean?"

I understood the point she was making in theory.

But in practice, that was easier said than done.

"This labyrinth is an extreme case, but every labyrinth has a more or less predictable set of monsters, and every monster has weaknesses."

Alexia-san and Elza-san had begun listening intently before I noticed.

Come to think of it, none of us, Finn included, had ever been proper adventurers.

Elza-san had done some adventuring, I recalled, but she hadn't gone very deep into it.

We'd been self-taught all the way here.

There had been plenty of close calls, but we'd gotten through them with ingenuity.

Yet Ramiza-san was saying we could have made things much easier with better preparation.

"We do wear fire-resistant gear when facing fire-breathing monsters."

"Good, good. Now if you took that a step further and exploited their weaknesses, things would probably change dramatically."

"Weaknesses? I do aim for vital spots…"

Take the head off and even a tough monster dies.

But the stronger they are, the harder that becomes.

"You should pay more attention to elemental affinities. You've got a mage, after all. She can imbue weapons with magic, right?"

"I mean, yes. I can do that."

Alexia-san responded to the question directed her way.

I'd seen her wreathe her battle-axe in fire plenty of times.

But as for other elements, she used them in her spells, sure, but I'd never seen her imbue a weapon with anything besides fire.

"Specializing in fire, plus having a Fire Elemental's support, so you leaned even harder in that direction?"

"It's rather uncomfortable having someone else analyze you so accurately."

"Going all-in on one thing is great for getting strong fast, so it's not a bad approach. But if you want to go higher, it won't be enough. What happens when you face an enemy resistant to fire? There are even monsters that are completely immune."

Alexia-san looked uncomfortable.

That was the kind of thing we, her teammates, couldn't easily point out.

After all, it had been working fine until now.

More importantly, our enemies from the Church of the Sun God were sun-themed, which meant fire attacks tended to be less effective against them.

"Apparently some mages can break through even full elemental immunity, but if you're not at that level, you need to broaden your repertoire. 'I can't do much when fire doesn't work.' If that's where you are, you'll hit a dead end someday."

That was the advice of a veteran adventurer to those less experienced.

"Well, the fact that talent alone carried you this far is something to be proud of."

It sounded more like consolation than anything.