Chapter 90.1

90 Part 1

Let’s be an Adventurer! ~Defeating Dungeons with a Skill Board~ 90

Let’s Come Up With A Strategy For This Request!

Esta wiggled its feet, skillfully throwing hot water at Haruki.

It was as if he was telling Haruki that it was about time to get going.

Haruki obediently followed Esta’s warning and got up from the hot spring.

By the time he returned to his room after cooling his body, it was already time for dinner.

He left the towels there and headed for the dining room.

“This looks yummy!”

After taking a bite, Haruki felt uneasy with the taste and stopped chewing for a second.

Karen, who had also stuffed her cheeks, dropped her eyebrows and looked disheartened.

Still, unlike Haruki, she kept on eating her food silently.

The food did look yummy. But the taste wasn’t exactly there.

Its quality was at least one… no, make it two ranks worse than the food Haruki usually enjoyed.

The potatoes had no flavor or aroma. They were nothing but a dry… thing.

The soup had no stock in it, and simply tasted salty.

The best thing on the table was the bread. It was hard and dry, and it crumbled easily.

When he tried to chew, a mysterious sourness spread all over his mouth.

“This is terrible…”

Haruki’s voice trembled with surprise.

For Haruki, who was used to baking his own bread at home, the quality of the bread at this hotel came as a shock.

— How did they manage to end up making something like this…?

It was bad like the Kriegsbrot (War bread) the German soldiers used to eat during World War I.

Unlike Haruki, who was sitting there unable to move his chopsticks, Karen was still eating.

“Well, at least you can eat this, Karen.”

“Huh?”

“This food. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“… Well, yes. But this is pretty much the standard anyway.”

“The standard? This? I think the food that they served at that other hotel I stayed at before was much better than this.”

The bread served at the hotel Haruki stayed at in Sapporo was several times more delicious than this one.

For that reason, he had taken hotel food for granted, but it seemed that it wasn’t like he expected.

With a bitter smile, Karen shook her head.

“There’s really delicious food, and then there’s this. This used to be the standard in the past.”

“… I see.”

So that’s why Karen cried when she tried Haruki’s food.

There seemed to be a huge gap between Karen’s standards and Haruki’s standards.

Since the appearance of dungeons, the usual ways of production and distribution crumbled to pieces.

Companies with strong distribution lines that can obtain good ingredients could still work as they did in the past.

However, for companies with weak distribution lines such as Kamui Springs, the dungeons’ influence was reflected in the taste of their food.

— If this is normal, then there’s nothing I can do about it…

Haruki pushed the food into his mouth, thinking to himself “Come on, you can do this”.

Even though he knew there was nothing he could do about it, he was still sad.

Haruki thought that there was nothing wrong with him being particular about his own food in this era.

“By the way, how was your hot spring bath, Karaboshi?”

The person who had set a limit on Haruki’s blissful bathing time asked him that with a smile on her face.

Would that smile grow bigger if Haruki told her that he wanted to stay in there a little longer?

“Ah, it felt good, didn’t it?”

He wanted to ask her “Could I stay a little longer next time?” but his unspoken question found itself rejected by a big smile.

Karen seemed to have also enjoyed the hot springs. She was wearing a yukata and the hair around her collar was slightly wet.

Her white neckline peeking through the yukata was dangerously alluring.

Many men would normally feel heartwarmed by Karen’s smile.

But all Haruki could feel was a chill down his spine.

“You’ve come all the way here to get yourself healed by the hot springs, right?”

“Yes.”

“If your body gets worse even though you get soaked in the hot springs, it wouldn’t make much sense to have come here in the first place, right?”

“… Yes.”

“Then, let’s do the right amount of treatment needed to solve this problem!”

“… Yes.”

Being stared at by Karen, Haruki could hardly taste his food (for better or worse).

— Karen’s smile is SCARY.

Under Esta’s tight supervision, Haruki spent the next two weeks soaking in the hot springs.

Though he soaked in the hot springs every day, he wasn’t sure if he was feeling any better.

Perhaps he would be able to tell if he tried to move with all his strength as if he was in a battle. But it wasn’t hard for him to imagine what kind of mess he could cause if he did so while still inside the inn.

That was a risk he couldn’t afford to take.

It seemed that he would have no choice but to confirm whether he had recovered or not during the subjugation request.

Even though he was still relaxing, he still spent time studying about armor adjustments just to give his brain some exercise.

In just two weeks, he was able to make some adjustments to his armor.

He was also able to polish his swords and replace their handles by removing the rivets on their hilts.

His Magic Sword, Werewolf Short Sword and Silver Wolf Short Sword all felt slightly more familiar in Haruki’s hands after he had performed that maintenance on them.

Such careful adjustments on his weapons slowly poured the habits and taste of their user into them.

It was like with a fine leather product.

The adjustments were fine, like when modifying a mini 4WD.

But Haruki didn’t exactly have good memories about modifying mini 4WDs.

That’s because he would always feel there was more room for improvement, and he would end up overdoing it.

If you cut too much into them, you’ll end up with nothing but a ruined frame.

How many times had he gone off course and ended up ruining a mini 4WDs’ frame…

That had been a reminder that overdoing things was never good.

There had been no signs of him getting any better from his condition…

He had to be careful.

After entering the hot spring, Haruki poured hot water on her face.

— Okay.

The extermination battle “Monster Hunting Contest” held by Akane would be taking place the next day.

The monsters to defeat were those who escaped the dungeon after the second Stampede.