Chapter 75.2

75 Part 2

There was no way these items, which were a well-known magic tool, were just randomly lying around this place.

Haruki was rather suspicious until he saw for himself that that seemed to be the case.

He had expected magic tools like these to be more rare.

Haruki’s illusion fell to the floor and shattered like an old skylight.

He started hauling all of the hot stones he found along the sides of the corridor into the magic bag like he was in a supermarket during a discount sale.

The floor in the dungeons Haruki had visited so far was made out of soil, but it seemed to be bedrock in this one.

From the 10th floor onwards, both Chikaho and the garage dungeon’s floors were a single huge room, but this one looked more like a coal mine.

Moreover, unlike those other two dungeons where the floors were filled with grass, nothing seemed to grow here.

It was just stones and pebbles everywhere.

And about one percent of those pebbles were magic tools.

These hot stones were like the grass and trees of other dungeons.

They could be considered a basic part of the floor’s landscape.

So even if people were to come pick them all up, they would respawn.

If the layout for those other dungeons was “grassland”, then this one is “mine”.

It’s a type of dungeon that lured people in by allowing them to mine and collect resources.

Haruki collected the hot stones using both his Level 3 Detection skill and his eyes, which didn’t miss out on even the slightest details.

After five minutes in, Haruki’s Detection picked up the signs of a monster.

— The monsters on the 11th floor are…

Just as he started to remember, the monster appeared before him.

Just like Rhea, it was a plant-type monster who could walk by skillfully using its roots.

Its leaves were round like those of a potato plant.

But it was taller than a potato plant.

The stalks that branched off its center had pods hanging from them, each containing a large amount of beans.

“… Yum.”

Seeing that monster made Haruki’s mouth water.

The monster before him was one of Nakasatsunai dungeon’s endemic species.

It was an edamame monster.

The edamame stopped about twenty meters away from Haruki and began planting its roots one at a time.

What was it doing?

The monster finished planting its roots while Haruki stood there watching.

Then…

“–!”?

The monster started shooting its beans at him.

He was still 20 meters away from the monsters.

It was farther away than what potato monsters tend to be when they shoot.

What’s more, even after flying for 20 meters, none of the monster’s bullets had lost any speed.

No wonder this was an intermediate-class monster.

“Ouch!”

Rhea slapped him on the back of his head with one of her leaves. She seemed to know what he was thinking about.

— I’ll never look down on potato-type monsters ever again. Sorry…

Haruki confronted the edamame while trying to restore Rhea’s mood.

The edamame monster had twenty pods hanging from its stalks.

With three beans per stalk, it had sixty shots before it would run out of ammo.

Due to their smaller size, the flight speed of its beans was higher than that of potatoes.

They were fast enough to startle Haruki to some extent, even with his current abilities.

But they weren’t so fast that they couldn’t be avoided.

Haruki easily dodged the edamame’s bullets.

However, his opponent kept on firing at Haruki so as to try to drive him into a corner.

“!!”

Haruki made a small groan every time a bullet passed by him.

— Come on, what a waste!

He could harvest them the same way he would do with potatoes, but then he wouldn’t be able to enjoy that feeling of popping the beans out of their pods and straight into his mouth.

If only he could harvest the beans while they were still inside the pods!

Behind Haruki’s back, Rhea was staring (?) warmly at the edamame monster.

Apparently, she felt some sort of companionship with it.

Her leaves had become thorny at their encounter with a monster, but after seeing the edamame attack, they had gone back to their usual roundness.

She seemed to empathize with the feeling of not having anything else to attack with as soon as you run out of bullets.

That was a feeling that Haruki could not understand, so he left Rhea be.

While avoiding its bullets, Haruki used his short sword to quickly separate the stalk from its roots.

At that very moment, the edamame’s leaves lost their strength.

Haruki had intended to defeat it quickly, but sadly, the edamame monster had already lost half of its beans.

“Damn it!”

— Next time I have to destroy it as soon as I find it!

Haruki swore that with all his heart.

The beans deteriorate faster when removed from their branches.

For that reason, the beans were left as they were, and the stalks were bundled together with ivy.

“Hmm?”

Esta’s feelers hit Haruki on his belly several times as he rested on his waist.

“Huh? Do you want to eat some of those beans?”

He seemed to be interested in the beans that had fallen onto the ground.

Even if the beans are outside of their pods, they can be enjoyed when boiled.

Zunda bean paste can be made by crushing them, and edamame miso can be made by adding yeast.

But the absolute best way to enjoy them is by eating them straight out of their pods with a bit of salt.