Chapter 71

Second Dungeon Battle

Boss Round Two, Conclusion

Guided by red minotaurs, the golem corps made their way to the stairway.

The red lizards and flame hounds I could see in the surroundings weren’t interfering.

Seriously surreal.

[Redra is eager, hurry up and get there with the guidance yeah?]

It was said in a way that made me doubt if that’s what he really meant. Maybe he really doesn’t mean it and it’s due to the absolute command rights?

Following them, there really were stairs. Moreover, they were newly constructed stairs made to continue down directly. The stairs are more like a mansion’s than a dungeon’s… it took around an hour to get to the forty-ninth floor. Even their hospitality had a limit.

Though he did say it was better than being flooded.

… There’s still a bit more than half a day left. I guess that means Redra will be fighting the entire time?

Red dragons seem to have the ability to be able to fight with their firepower for more than a day. Being able to shoot their breath forever—though they need to inhale—is beyond cheat.

Still, my knowledge about dragons is from Rokuko. According to her:

“Particularly among dragons, red dragons specialize in their physical offensive ability! Haku Ane-sama’s white dragon was only defeated since it was an all-purpose type. But, but, Haku Ane-sama’s white dragon is…”

Like that, Rokuko spoke about dragons while adding uselessly excessive things. Dreaming of summoning a dragon like Haku-san had, looks like she just heard things about them from Haku.

If she liked it so much, couldn’t she have just summoned the dragon with the 100,000 DP…? Eh? She doesn’t want a sub-dragon, but the strongest kind? Hahaha, how much DP would that take?

“So, their weak points?”

“Touching the scales under their chin seem to make them mad! Even doing it is hard though!”

Rokuko spoke with a self-satisfied look… what a useless person.

In the end, I still don’t know its weak point that well. Haku-san’s [They love shiny things] information turned out to be the most useful. As expect of Haku-san, our dungeon’s god of fortune.

“… Hey, he said it was fine to go to the boss room, but what’ll we do about the dragon in the end? Can we defeat it?”

“Frankly, it doesn’t feel like it. Or rather, we don’t need to win against the dragon.”

“Eh? What’ll you do then?”

“… Did you forget about our trump card (crystal golem)? That guy’s in the floor below this boss room. I’m saying that due to the result from the trade a moment ago, all of the locked doors… even the treasure warehouse’s is wide open. Get it?”

It was our [Trump Card] because we’d only use it as a [Trump Card]. We had [Flexibility] if we didn’t use it.

In this way, the curtains raised on our second bout against the dragon in which we had complete victory promised to us.

*

“Gaaaaaaaaah!!!”

Wielding all of its power, the red dragon filled the boss room with plenty of its strength.

Redra moved her head to the side while exhaling a breath.

With just that, many of the armored golems’ bodies were partially destroyed. However, the parts that were destroyed were immediately replaced.

“Kakaka! Good, good! This one’s been looking forward to this!”

Redra laughed in a good mood. When she swung her tail while laughing, the hands and feet of the golems behind her were blown away. She even broke the wall.

Although the room’s floor melted into magma by her breath, Ontentoo immediately repaired it.

“Nooow, dance, dance, dance for this one!”

Perhaps the golems’ storages would be exhausted, or perhaps we’d run out of time… at any rate, it didn’t feel like Redra would exhaust herself. At the very least, she’d be able to fight at full strength for a day. Red dragons were very resistant to heat, their special characteristic being that of ruling over fire, so breathing out flames the whole time wouldn’t burn their throat or mouth like other dragons and could just continue as much as they wanted to.

When it came to combat, they were the strongest.

That was what a dragon was… particularly, this existence (boss) known as a red dragon.

Consequently, very few people have challenged her throughout the years. That’s why she’s fighting with such abandon after such a long time. She was enough to invade and fight as many countries as she felt like, but Redra didn’t have the hobby of bullying the weak. Besides, it might also be her work as the dungeon master and her husband, Ontentoo, and hesitated parting from Tsuia Mountain.

So because of those things, she was having a lot of fun even if her opponents were simply golems. She couldn’t help enjoying herself.

However, it looked like the magic swords that the golems wielded were also able to damage Redra’s prided scales. Even damage piles up on a mountain. Though it was be hard to do anything to her when she was paying attention, damage would properly accumulate when she let down her guard.

It’s good. A proper [Opponent].

“Kuuu~, it’s irresistible! There’s still a lot more right!? Is there enough to let this one enjoy herself!?”

Just gathering enough equipment for the golems costed a considerable amount of DP. That’s why Redra was worried about how much inventory we had to let her enjoy herself.

And while such things were happening, a new golem appeared. It had an egg about the size of an ID card in its hand.

(… What’s that for?)

Redra wondered.

“Bringing food? Let me roast it!”

Goou! A sorching breath attacked the golem with the egg.

However, the golem didn’t melt. Rather, to be more accurate, although the stone armor and helmet melted, the golem’s main body and the egg were intact.

“… What!? This one has never seen a golem like that…!?”

It was kind of white, kind of yellow… about the same color as the egg. Now that its armor and helmet were gone, the egg was hard to see; like it was camouflaged.

“Well, no time to talk!”

She attacked with her claws this time. As expected, the golem was even crushed into tiny pieces… however, as for the egg, it was thrown before it was crushed.

It was aimed at Redra’s mouth. Using the height of the inhalation that was followed by a breath, the egg was splendidly thrown into the large opening.

“Ogu—!?”

Redra unintentionally swallowed the egg.

However, the egg suddenly stopped while going down her throat.

“Mugu—!? …!”

As if it grew hands and feet, the egg stopped in the red dragon’s throat.

(W-what is this!?)

It didn’t completely block her respiratory tract. Even though it was big for an egg, it was still too small to block a red dragon’s throat.

However, she choked a little. The egg moved about in her throat while she thought about that. Following the stream of air inhaled, it entered the esophagus… then, the organ that shot her breath. It arrived at her lungs.

“Uuu, geh, this feels, bad—… o-ow, what… igii—!?”

Kashiiin—a blade grew from the egg, sticking into her lung.

“Gah–, aaah—, gaha!?”

Feeling them for the first time in more than a century, Redra writhed in [Pain] and [Suffering]. Even though dragons had strong bodies, without their scales inside their body, it wasn’t worth talking about how much damage would be dealt. Only the stomach was special. Nothing’s supposed to get into your lungs to begin with. Coughing up blood while breathing desperately, she forcefully ejected the egg from her body.

“Gu—, gefu… w-what the heck… was that…”

She had swallowed adventurers and attacked from inside her body before.

At those times… it was no where near this painful. To begin with, dragons are generally able to digest even swords and armor that they swallow. Just getting stabbed by a sword wouldn’t affect a dragon’s stomach in the least.

“So that’s what Ontentoo meant… gu, pe—!”

She vomited out the blood that had collected in her lungs. The wound was already blocked up. This task was accomplished by the vitality of a dragon.

“There probably aren’t anymore…!?”

But when Redra looked, many golems had circled around her, each one carrying an egg… … As expected, even Redra paled at the memory.

“U-uwah——!?”

She immediately destroyed each golem’s egg. She kept herself from using her breath so that they wouldn’t be thrown into her mouth, going so far as to close her mouth and stop breathing entirely. When all of the golems and the eggs were destroyed, she inhaled deeply.

“Ha, haha, what… the heck, that’s all of them…”

When she thought it was over, Redra lost strength in her wings.

When she looked at the ground for some reason, one of the eggs had fallen there.

(… Missed breaking that one?)

“—!”

Bam! She crushed it under her tail. With this, it’s do—

—Right in front of Redra, beads of light gathered, and the egg revived.

“Wha—!? What is this…!?”

Bang! She destroyed it with her claw. However, it revived once again after several seconds.

“Hiiii—!?”

She once again crushed it in the same way. Revived. Crushed. Revived. Cruched. Revived. Crushed…

“What the!? Whyyyyyy!? Uwaaaaaah!”

In a half-crazed frenzy, Redra continued to attack the reviving egg.

*

“Alright, now’s our chance.”

Since Redra was completely the egg’s prisoner (in a deep meaning), I activated the crystal golem to try and look for the dungeon core. I don’t know how much time we’ll have until the hostile reaction appears though.

“Hey, Kehma. Isn’t that my [Phoenix Egg]…?”

“It’s alright, as you can see it’ll just keep reviving.”

By the way, the eggshell golem was made from collecting the phoenix’s eggshell, but it obviously didn’t get its revival feature. However, the phoenix egg is raised in fire, so I experimented. What I found was that it could withstand even thermite reactions (a chemical reaction that reaches 3,000 degrees Celsius by igniting metallic oxide and aluminium). It didn’t even leave a burn.

Well, I made a fully automatic egg-breaking golem.

Even so, there isn’t much left over after extracting the insides, so the amount of egg-type golems were limited.

The strategy this time was… egging her.

I thought about using the issun boshi strategy at first, but I didn’t think we’d be able to damage the stomach at all. So, my goal was shifted from her stomach to her lungs. [1]

Each and every egg type golem was equipped with hands and feet, as well as having a magic sword golem inside them that I ordered to attack lungs. I also ordered them to hide their hands and feet when they were outside the body.

However, the egg golem is light. If a dragon seriously breathed out, they would quickly be blown away.

Accordingly, I gave her a bit of a trauma. I decided to have her endlessly attack the reviving phoenix egg. After her lungs were attacked, I surrounded her with golems that each held an egg where one was the real phoenix egg. They would throw the egg golems into her mouth if she wasn’t panicking. My plan was to give her a trauma… The results are obvious.

“Vulgar.”

“Quite a thing~”

I heard Rokuko’s impressions before I asked her for them.

But in truth, it would’ve been awkward if she was killed by accidentally exploding her lung. It’d be horribly bad if they sought revenge, I wouldn’t be able to sleep quietly if we weren’t on good terms with our next door neighbor. I can’t sleep if they bang loudly on our wall after all.

Because of that, I made it so that they wouldn’t go to the point of her dying.

“Ah, the dungeon core is here somewhere…”

Manipulating the crystal golem, I looked around outside the treasure warehouse.

To say nothing about other room, the stairs leading up to the boss room on the fiftieth floor was open.

Come to think of it, Haku-san also put the core on the other side of the boss room in the [White Trial] huh. It went up the stairs step by step.

Then, with the room from the boss room still firmly closed, there was the white and shining dungeon core. I see, so after the boss room was the dungeon core, and after the dungeon core was the treasure warehouse even further inside.

… That’s a splendid pedestal. However, if it’s just that tall even the crystal golem can climb it. Thrusting its small sword into the pedestal like an ice pick, it climbed upward. And then—

[Oi Redra, pull yourself together! Oi, o—… ooiiii!? What is this guy!?] “Touch~”

Using our trump card (crystal golem), we succeeded in touching their dungeon core.

Footnotes:

Issun Boshi wiki link.