"So what kind of stuff d'you need?"
In his personal chamber, Kurobe got straight down to business.
"Well…"
We all went over the hopes we had.
"I'm intending to have Garm build the armor, so I think it'd be neat if you could collaborate again."
"Yeahhh, true. All right. Let's go bother Garm about it."
So as we talked, we decided to take Kurobe over to Garm's workshop. I wound up causing a similar commotion over there, but I'll skip describing it.
"Equipment for monsters?! Wow. You always have the craziest projects for me, don't you?"
As Garm groused about this, the four of us all Possessed our avatars to demonstrate for him.
"All right. We'll make you exactly what you want—no, even better!"
"Yes, we're on the case. I love a nice, creative project like this, and I'll try to craft some stuff that'd never work on a human!"
Kurobe and Garm both readily agreed to the project. And really, I couldn't wait to see what they came up with.
They said the work would be done in several days, so in the meantime, we trained ourselves to get more used to our avatars. Nothing too complex— fighting monsters in the labyrinth's upper levels, attacking obvious newbie adventurers.
Over the past few days, we had grown adept at dividing up our roles. Reaching that point, though, was a slog. At first, we even lost to beginner parties up top.
We'd also get wiped out by traps, which would probably be funny to us later but definitely wasn't at the time, and do other stupid things. We tried using magic items to keep traps from deploying and stuff, even. It was Ramiris who kept setting them off, with Veldora usually suffering as the hapless victim. I floated, meanwhile, and Milim could stick to the ceiling— pitfalls weren't a concern for us two, so we forgot to warn the others about them.
That was a mistake, I'll admit, but Ramiris… Seriously? Why are you setting off traps? We made sure to give her an earful about it, and I think she deserved it.
Through all the pain, we skipped out on sleeping to keep on training. In battle, teamwork was the most important thing. Normal parties would talk to one another or give signals with their eyes, but we had pretty much none of those skills at all. We had Veldora and Milim with us, after all, two people who were the strongest in the world all by themselves.
What we did have, however, was one cheat-level skill—Thought Communication, letting us stay in touch and give orders with pinpoint accuracy. I was the party's command post, Veldora, Milim, and Ramiris serving as my hands and feet. Thanks to that, we began to rapidly build ourselves, eventually gaining some decent experience and abilities.
Once we had a good footing, we patiently waited for our equipment as we fine-tuned our teamwork. As we did, we heard the news that Team Green Fury had beaten Floor 40.
"Hoo boy," said Ramiris. "Now they've beaten the tempest serpent, huh?"
"They took a pretty careful approach. The first team was all about gathering intelligence, the second whittled down its energy, and then the A team killed it," said Veldora.
Bosses were resurrected regularly, of course. But if a boss successfully beat a party, that didn't erase its current damage or state of exhaustion. If a group of people had the right teamwork, this gave them a clear advantage.
"That was a mistake. Bosses really need a way to heal…"
"Yeah, but those monsters work strictly on instinct, so…"
As Veldora saw it, they lacked the intelligence to use healing items anyway, making it a moot point. He was right, but we weren't out of options.
"Why don't we bring it up with Treyni?" I suggested. "The labyrinth managers can heal monsters, can't they?"
"Oh, right. I'll do that!"
So we decided to have Treyni's sisters heal bosses if they were involved in a consecutive streak of battles all at once.
Little by little, we were addressing and solving the labyrinth's issues. And then:
"They're about ready to hit Floor 49. What'll we do, Rimuru?" Milim was on the verge of panic. But she was right. Green Fury would reach their most climactic battle yet as soon as tomorrow.
"Well, we may not have our equipment at the moment, but I'd say our teamwork is golden," said Veldora. "Shall we try taking them on now?"
"I'm game! Time to use my arms of steel to beat them to a pulp!" Ramiris crowed.
Those two were always out for blood. Honestly, though, I don't think we stood much of a chance in a clean fight. For now, Floor 49, packed with the most devious traps I ever devised, was our only real chance at messing with them.
"Well, so be it. Maybe we can scrounge up some weapons…"
Even if Kurobe and Garm provided us the best gear possible, we probably wouldn't take a frontal approach with them. It'd certainly up our chances a lot, but we could probably hold our own anyway. But just when I was about to commit, I heard a knock on the conference-room door. "Sir Rimuru," came Shion's refreshing voice, "Kurobe said he's ready." Our party looked at one another and grinned.
Our specialized avatar equipment was complete.
I was given a Death Scythe and Hell Garment, two magic items that even ghosts could wear. Veldora got the Death Blade and Hell Mail, along with a Hellgate Shield to complete the picture.
As a slime, Milim could only equip simple objects, swallowing up a Death Stiletto and covering her body with a Crimson Cape. The moment she did, her body grew a pair of bloodred wings—quite a transformation. "See?" she gleefully shouted. "It's really true! You need to equip your items, or else they won't work!"
Yeah, great. If she was happy, I was happy.
Finally, Ramiris. She had ordered Heavy Fullplate armor, which looked like a work of art, but we weren't sure if she could even equip it. Nervous, she Possessed her living armor and tried to take it up—and at that very moment, she switched armor. With a clatter, her old tin suit crashed to the ground, turning to dust and vanishing in the wind. She had upgraded from living armor to heavy living armor—not an evolution, but more like a total replacement.
"Wh-whoa! This is so much easier to move in!"
She was right. Her old, creaky gait was now smooth and ninja-like. It'd help her teamwork a lot, I was sure. Funny to think a suit of armor's feature set could affect the way you moved, though. Kind of an unexpected discovery.
Elated, Ramiris now had to select a weapon and shield.
"Ha-ha! I don't need no stupid shield!"
…was her opinion, so she opted for a large two-handed weapon instead —the Death Axe. The power it packed made it the ultimate in weapons— wielding it was tricky, but oh well; not my problem. She got picked on all the time for being a wimp, so maybe this'll assuage her ego a little. Funny how her personality kept coming out like that.
So we were all decked out in brand-new equipment. These weapons and armor were all on the level of a Unique item, but since they were heavily modified for use by monsters, they were more novelty items than anything. For beginners like us, however, they were crazily overpowered. What's more, they had a type of curse applied that registered our names to them— thus, they could never get stolen.
It was the best equipment we could've possibly asked for right now, and it gave us a new perspective on everything. It was almost time to rumble, and we couldn't have been more excited.
Time for a quick check of our avatars. My ghost dropped physical offense in favor of magical and spiritual attacks. It was classed as a sorcerer, and in time, I'd like to maybe teach it spiritual and illusory magic so it could make the upgrade to full-fledged wizard. Holy magic would be a nice addition, too —what would happen if I placed faith in myself to drive that? That'd be a fun experiment.
Veldora's skeleton was an all-rounder, capable of various kinds of attacks. It was a fighter class, and I think he wanted to teach it magic so it could become a magic knight later.
Milim's slime, meanwhile, was geared entirely for speed—and for landing telling blows in a single strike. Wish fulfillment for her, I suppose. Her class was assassin, and maybe I could have Soei give her some training, but I didn't want to occupy his time with our dumb little make-believe fun here. Her basic strategy involved lunging down on foes from the ceiling—a powerful strike if it worked, but what did she intend to do if it didn't? Run, I suppose; she certainly was fast enough for it. In a way, she was the ideal slime fighter.
Finally, as you'd expect, Ramiris's heavy living armor was an attacker with more than ample defense, giving it a lot more stability than I originally gave her credit for. The class was berserker, and while she was no crazed warrior, defending herself was never really a priority in Ramiris's approach. As a dangerous, attack-oriented creature, that was the name she was given. Once she got used to things, I could picture her as a tank, providing a twin wall of defense with Veldora.
We were all set to go. Given that we never got hungry, long, dragged-out battles were our lone major advantage. Let's do the best job we can to get in Green Fury's way.
Such was our thoughts as we set off, but…well…we sent them running so fast, the actual battle was a total letdown.
If you threw away all emotion and ran a completely impartial, third-party Analyze and Assess on our avatars, you'd realize that we were probably already pushing an A in rank. Our equipment was more than half the reason for that, but even without it, as long as we made good use of our powers, nothing could stop us.
The main oversight we made was that our own personal battle experience was reflected in our avatars. We couldn't use all our skills, but things like Thought Communication and Hasten Thought were themselves enough to give us a decisive edge. Plus, we could cast magic so quickly that it was really unfair. Our restricted magicules blocked us from using much of it, but we had the knowledge for it, and thus we could handle magic better than even your average royal court sorcerer. This came with no casting time, so we could engineer tandem magic strikes with practically zero time lag—our foes had no chance to react.
Veldora, meanwhile, was such a genius with his sword, it was like he had eyes in the back of his head.
"Kwaah-ha-ha-ha! My Veldora-Style Death Stance gives me instant access to an infinite number of sword skills! …Oh, wait, this doesn't work…"
He was trying to imitate the moves he saw in the manga he read. I thought he was just screwing around, but some of his moves were actually kind of plausible. His power was off the charts to start with, of course, so I should've expected anything and everything from him. Treating this whole thing seriously at all now seemed silly.
Milim was exactly as blazing fast as she set out to be. Even speeds that nobody else had a chance at controlling were no problem with her reflexes. I really had no idea slimes could move that fast if they tried—sliding frictionless across the ground, with enough elasticity to bounce off walls and lunge at foes. That worked just as well off the ceiling, too. Your average person would have trouble even following her with their eyes. As a slime myself, these new discoveries were a huge shock.
"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Slow! Too slow! Face my wrath, you chump!"
She was getting exceedingly carried away as she dropped down on her foes' backs, stabbing with her Death Stiletto. That was enough to end most battles. Her body was largely impervious to physical attack, and if you want to cast magic against her, you needed to capture her in your sights first. Think about it, and you'll realize that Milim's slime was a pretty scary enemy to face.
But what let Veldora and Milim truly shrine was Ramiris, the unsung hero of the pack.
"Hraahhh! Time to be crushed!!"
Ramiris's battle strategy was pretty simple—find an enemy, run straight at it, and stage a full-frontal attack. This would be a bad idea for most, an imbecilic strategy, but in our case, it was the way to go. She never listened to any of my advice anyway, so I figured we might as well take advantage of her —she'd be our tank, our diversion, and the remainder of the party could get on the attack then.
Normally, that wouldn't work too well, but Ramiris ran around like a daredevil, never bothering to defend herself, this big suit of armor sprinting for you and spinning a Death Axe in its hands. Anyone who saw it would be forced to deal with it—and since she didn't care about defense, her attacks tended to find their target. (She also had Cancel Pain, which helped a lot.)
Plus, the armor itself was pretty sturdy. A Heavy Fullplate used what seemed like a cartload of magisteel; weight concerns were tossed out the window with it. It came with a Self-Repair function as well, so most damage wasn't an issue. If a regular person put it on, they probably wouldn't be able to move at all. Having such a hefty chunk of magisteel come your way—well, I wouldn't want to be her enemy.
What's more, I had Recovery Magic.
I had been experimenting with holy magic as part of my work, and it was surprisingly easy to deploy. It wasn't a matter of "having faith in myself" so much as offering prayers in exchange for control over spiritual particles, a skill usually shut away from me. In my case, my magical power as a ghost was sent over to the "real" me along with the words of prayer. I was, in essence, borrowing force from my main body to cast magic.
These "words of prayer" were mainly about building up an image. When working with spiritual particles, you'd never get anywhere if you kept asking what your disciples wanted and going with that—it'd take too much calculation. All that processing work is instead applied to the people who placed their faith in you. The more disciples you had like that, the more magic force you got—to put it another way, you got higher up as a god. You were also connected to your believers, and you could use those believers' minds to expand your calculation capacity—kind of a substitution cheat that saved you magic force and time.
Now I saw why Luminus sought to build more believers for herself. With a massive enough number of practitioners, she could whip up large-scale magic on a passing whim. The "secret skills of faith and favor," indeed. That's some scary stuff she taught me.
But enough about that. The point is, I had holy magic, and as a party, we boasted a pretty formidable force—and right now, like evil personified, we had just wiped out Team Green Fury on the forty-ninth floor.
You should never be afraid to try something new, I guess. Our frontal attack failed, so we polished our teamwork and took advantage of the traps.
I set the Slime Doll on them, damaging their weapons. I used the Slime Rain to break their focus and exhaust them—and then we attacked, throwing them into the Slime Pool. While Ramiris's bellowing grabbed their attention, Milim sneaked up on them, breaking down their teamwork as Veldora split them apart and isolated their rear support. Our giant slime crushed their powerless magicians and thieves, while Veldora and Ramiris bear-hugged the remaining core members straight into the Slime Pool, sinking them down. Our aim was to destroy their weapons in the acidic goop, and once Green Fury's main weapons had corroded into useless fragments, that'd be a huge damper on their dungeon-conquering speed.
"Ugghh! After all that swag we earned!!"
It turns out the leader of the Sons of the Veldt, the one currently whining about the equipment dissolving in her hands, was female. That surprised me —but not as much as what her companions said next.
"Well, maybe this timing's for the best. It was about the right moment to pack up."
"Yeah, our home country's calling for us anyway."
I definitely heard one of the survivors from the team say that to the leader. I thought the Sons of the Veldt was an independent mercenary corps, unaffiliated with any other nation. My reports stated they were being funded by someone in Englesia, but maybe it was more like a long-term gig? The term home country indicated that they might've had more loyalty to Englesia than a simple employer-employee relationship. I'd need to keep an eye on them.
As long as we were encouraging people to use the Dungeon, we'd naturally see visitors with murky origins. I was expecting that from the beginning, but we should probably give everyone another heads-up about that. The whole Green Fury thing reminded me of it all over again.
Besides:
"We did it."
"Yes. Victory is ours!"
"Why wouldn't it be? We are the strongest in the world!!"
If I didn't keep these idiots in line, they'd immediately get distracted by the next victory ahead. The thought was in my mind, but—right now, at least —I didn't let it get in the way of my joy. Mission accomplished.
INTERLUDE
MARIBEL
Maribel had been resurrected as an otherworlder. She had memories of being a ruler in Europe. In her previous life, she had all the finances she wanted; to her, war was just another pawn for her to use.
Her glory was built on misfortune. A battlefield, bullets flying. Kill or be killed; a vivid hellscape bathed in blood. Burnt homes, lost families, wailing people. And she never held any remorse about it. Maribel's life was a happy one, all the way to the end of her natural life span.
And now she was here, born as a princess in the small Kingdom of Seltrozzo.
Her family was in the ruling class, the people calling the shots in the Western Nations. In this world filled with monsters and chaos, nations couldn't afford to squabble with one another; it was natural that something like the Council of the West would be formed. That council was built hundreds of years ago by Granville Rozzo, the great founder of the Rozzo family and a mysterious, seemingly ageless figure.
He was the oldest among the Five Elders who held actual power in the
Council, while still serving as head of the Rozzos, who had taken root in the Western Nations. Even a princess directly related to Granville wouldn't have so much as a chance to see him. Maribel's own brothers, in fact, had never even met the Five Elders before. But Maribel was different. Her memories, and her will, were things Granville couldn't afford to ignore.
The advance of civilization would have been impossible without the existence of money. People advanced from using crops like rice and wheat as currency to a money-based economy, pushing society forward by leaps and bounds thanks to the scale money allows.
The value of money could also change. Gold and silver coins were made of metals with intrinsic value, guaranteeing that the money itself would have similar value. But now we were in an era where things like receipts and bonds in business transactions could serve as substitutes for money—the start of a paper-based economy. This would lead to the creation of banks, outposts indispensable to free exchange. You gave banks money; they gave you receipts as they diverted the money to other things, lending it to those without cash and earning interest from them.
That was the business model people eventually came up with, and it was a kind of magic more insidious than alchemy. Money, in the form of interest, seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Comparing the amount of cash circulating in the world and the total amount of receipts generated, there was clearly going to be a substantial amount of irrecoverable funds—as well as people in deep trouble after not being able to pay up.
If you lent money and charged interest, you would always have that problem. The shift from coinage to paper currency only sped up the process.
People collected money from the rich, dangling interest payments as bait. They invested it to create even more money. Business exchanges began to take place on a worldwide scale, beyond national borders. Limits on the production of paper money were removed, under the pat promise that the nation would be good for it all. Combine that with exchange controls caused by power differences between nations, and the scale of the economy blew up to dozens of times its original size—and Maribel was even factoring the amount of currency produced into her calculations as she controlled the market.
Much of it was a fiction, far removed from the actual economy. A bubble that was bound to pop sooner or later.
In her past life as well, Maribel blew the bubble up as much as she could. Any debts she couldn't recover, she shunted off on the weaker nations and disposed of—in other words, waging wars to balance her accounts. The weaker nations thus fell, and the rich got richer. The parties being harvested for everything they had went from individuals to whole nations, but the basic process was the same.
Maribel was a seasoned master at this. She was a golden child of finance in her previous life, and she had both her memories from that and the intensely powerful greed of a ruler. This manifested itself in her unique skill Avarice, a sinful skill based on one of humankind's core vices. If a unique skill was a set of emotions and desires that took corporeal form, those based on a cardinal sin like greed were treated as special cases among uniques.
In the case of Maribel, the strongest member of the Rozzo family since the day she was born, that truth was obvious. The Avarice skill let her hold sway over people's desires—she could literally see them, and the bigger the desire, the easier she found it to rule over them. Everyone had desires, of course, and stoking those desires let Maribel control them any way she wanted. And, little by little, she used that to slowly build her audience of sympathizers.
There was no urgent need to act. Observing the people around her, she could tell that the standards of civilization in this world were pretty low. There was a money-driven economy but still a single currency that circulated across the whole of it. There were no language barriers; everything was different from the last world, but in a way, the environment was perfect for her to take advantage of. To Maribel, the whole world seemed like a sandbox, ready for her to play in.
Yes… Yes. I am destined to descend upon this world as its rightful ruler.
Ruling this world, to Maribel, was a natural goal to have. Once she was older and had the right to speak up, the world was hers for the taking—but until then, she thought, the fewer people who knew about her ambitions, the better.
Ever so carefully, she made sure no one could guess her true nature from her behavior. And when she was three years old, she had her first audience with Granville.
"So you're Maribel?"
"Yes, Grandfather. It is a pleasure to meet you."
It wasn't a three-year-old's usual way to greet someone, but Maribel had accounted for that in her calculations. Granville wasn't like the other rabble skulking around the palace; to her, even her father, the king, was just another pawn. Her brothers, her wet nurse, her servants, and everyone else—as she read their desires, she methodically brought them under her rule.
But Granville was different. He was above all that.
"Why didn't you try to control me?" Granville asked, seeing that Maribel had promptly dropped the act. There was no familial kindness to it. All that existed was the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. It was then that Maribel learned her instincts were correct. If she had tried to deceive Granville, she likely would've been killed on the spot. Not even Maribel's Avarice skill was omnipotent. It could be resisted. After repeated, gradual attempts, it might've been possible to bring Granville under her rule, but he wasn't the kind of man to allow that.
Maribel was confident of that, so she decided to be honest. No matter how things played out, she would need partners—and along those lines, Granville could potentially be the greatest partner she'd ever have.
"I can see people's desires. I mean literally see them. And prodding them allows me to make them do my bidding. But you're not like the others, Grandfather. You have a greater ambition than anyone else, but you've also got a will strong enough to bottle it up. So…"
"Hmm. So you've seen that far, little girl—or should I call you Maribel?
Who are you anyway?"
"Me? I'm Maribel. Maribel the Greedy."
"Heh-heh… Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I like it. Declaring your very presence before me, are you?!"
The head of the Rozzo family liked Maribel. In time, they opened up to each other, sharing in the secrets they knew. Granville knew about the politics surrounding the Western Nations, as well as the demon lords who ruled the world. Maribel knew about her previous world, as well as the Avarice skill she acquired in this one. To her, this was the gamble of a lifetime.
Her brain was one thing, but her body was still that of a three-year-old. As she saw it, it'd be difficult to survive all on her own.
No matter what it takes—no matter what—I need to firm up my position. And to do that…
To do that, she needed to prove to Granville Rozzo, the local kingpin, that she was useful. Instinctively, she understood that was the best thing she could do right now to set herself up as ruler.
And the gamble paid off.
"Maribel, if something happens to me, I want you to inherit my ambitions. What I seek in this world is peace. We must reach a world of universal equality, under the rule of the Rozzo family."
"Yes. Yes, Grandfather, I understand. I promise I will provide you with my full cooperation."
Thus, this unlikely pair forged a bond that none other could enjoy. The family founder and the little girl—the alliance between a former Hero and one whose avarice knew no bounds.
Granville spent the next several years guiding Maribel, instructing her on the full array of Rozzo holdings and coconspirators. He also revealed the true identity of the god Luminus, as well as his own secrets—the underground dealings he engaged in to protect his seat in the Seven Days Clergy, as well as how the demon lord Luminus's power was what truly kept the Western Nations safe.
He told her everything. And now, at the age of ten, Maribel was second only to Granville in power, using her skills to the fullest to take action against Rimuru.