"Good morning!"
"Morning."
"Ahh~ Mornin'…"
Jhin, refreshed from head to toe inside and out, made a stark contrast with Megumin, who wore dark circles under her eyes and looked rather worn out.
After getting his good buddy Megumin to "drain his poison" several times last night, he had finally gotten his hands on that copy of . The contents inside bore no resemblance whatsoever to the cover—needless to say, this had been one link in Kazuki-sensei's play from back then. The only pity was that he hadn't put his mind on the book at all; he hadn't even opened it to look at what was inside, and instead had simply scooped her up and gone straight into a hundred-meter sprint.
Because he never checked the book's contents, things had ended up the way they were now. From a personal standpoint, the results brought about by this volume—heavy on training and on jade feet—were honestly quite good. So good, in fact, that it was almost too much.
But Jhin wasn't the type to do something and then refuse to own up to it. He explained to Megumin clearly what the book's contents actually were, and that for the time being he could only maintain a "bad-friends" relationship with her. The result was that, amid her flustered and indignant expression, he got tackled down and forced into one more round of "poison-draining."
Which was precisely why he looked so refreshed while Megumin sat there with dark circles under her eyes.
"Megumin, you look really tired. Did you not rest well last night?"
"It's nothing. I had a nightmare."
"Oh. If you're really too tired, remember to tell us—we can leave you a little extra time to rest after lunch."
"Mm, thank you, Pecorine." After thanking her, Megumin shot a discreet glare at the chief culprit behind her poor night's sleep—Jhin—as if to say, "You just wait!"
After a simple breakfast, and before the sun could pull back the morning dew from the leaves, everyone took clay earthenware jars and went about collecting dew, bit by bit, from the leaves of the Tricolor Sugar Maples in the valley.
According to Pecorine, in order to get a Rainbow Hen to lay eggs, you needed to fill at least three clay jars with dew.
The morning dew in Maple Sugar Valley was very special: it would gather on its own atop the leaves to form droplets the size of a fingernail, and once fully formed, if it wasn't collected within an hour, it would either be absorbed by the maple leaves or dissolve into mist and vanish. It sounded easy to collect, yet not every maple leaf bore morning dew.
As far as Jhin's collecting had gone so far, a single Tricolor Sugar Maple's leaves held three droplets at most. He had also tried using wind element to envelop one maple tree and gather up all the droplets on it, but the moment the droplets were touched by the wind element they instantly turned murky, as if contaminated by the element.
With no clever shortcut available, Jhin could only rely on the water element to sense the droplets' positions on the trees, then collect them into the clay jars, occasionally throwing in a Time Stop to boost his collecting efficiency.
The single hour of early morning slipped by in a blink. The five of them met up at the agreed spot and poured the morning dew they'd collected into a single clay jar—yet the dew, seemingly imbued with the light of dawn, barely covered the lowest, yellowish-brown band at the very bottom of the jar.
"With collection efficiency like this, no wonder they say Rainbow Hen eggs are so hard to obtain." Megumin didn't even dare imagine how long it would take if someone had to do it alone.
The five of them together had only collected this little bit of morning dew—never mind that feeding a Rainbow Hen required at least three full jars of it.
"It's only the first day. We're not short on time anyway, so let's just take it slow." Jhin capped the clay jar and stowed it in his storage space. "There sure are a lot of wild animals in Maple Sugar Valley. Are there really no monsters here?"
"Master, the animals in Maple Sugar Valley all taste sweet, and they contain very little element or magic power in their bodies, so monsters simply won't come here."
"All of them?"
"All of them."
"All right. Looks like this place is hell for diabetics and heaven for sugar lovers." Jhin glanced at a pink rabbit that had just scampered across the ground and abandoned the thought of eating it.
On the way here, everyone had done plenty of hunting for edible monsters, so there was no need to worry about eating their way to diabetes in Maple Sugar Valley for lack of food.
With the dew-collecting task wrapped up for now, Jhin and the others set off toward the Magic Crystal Pit located in the middle of this straight valley, and along the way they got to see quite a few of the unique creatures found only in Maple Sugar Valley.
Such as the palm-sized Sugar Butterfly, whose wings were made of four lollipops; the Sugar-Eating Beetle, which would turn blue from feeding on maple sugar while clinging to the trunk of a Tricolor Sugar Maple; and the White Sugar Frog, which sat primly atop a papery lily pad on the stream, preying on a kind of mosquito called the Zero-Sugar Mosquito.
This mosquito specifically targeted animals with extremely high sugar content, sucking the sugar out of their bodies and leaving behind swollen lumps resembling chunks of brown sugar.
Walking through the honey-like air, the group followed the straight road for the better part of a day and arrived before the entrance of a deep, dim mine shaft, its exterior studded with crystals of every color.
The crystals densely covering the mine from top to bottom were like rows of multicolored teeth, and the mine itself was that great, gaping maw of the abyss, swallowing every creature that ventured inside.
"The inside of the Magic Crystal Pit is a labyrinth. To this day no adventurer's guild has been able to make a map of it—you can only rely on a mage sensing the elemental anchor points they've left behind to lead the team back out."
"The Honey Spider Empress is right at the very center of the labyrinth. Defeat her and you can obtain Honey Spider Silk."
"Kokkoro, do Honey Spiders have any weaknesses?"
"Fire-type magic works wonders on them, but only on ordinary Honey Spiders. For elite-class monsters like the Honey Guardian Spider or the Honey Shadow Spider, light-type magic is actually more effective. The Honey Spider Empress's monster rank varies depending on how long she has existed and how much sugar she has consumed; the highest recorded so far is Lord-class."
"Lord-class, huh…" The moment Jhin heard that rank, he got a bit of a headache. Open terrain might be fine, but if they ran into a Lord-class monster in an underground labyrinth like this and had to fight it, the constraints on the Gourmet Edifice would be far too severe. "If we find out the Empress is Lord-class, then let's just give up outright. Our odds of winning a fight underground are very low."
"Understood. Kyaru, could you set up an elemental anchor point at the entrance?"
"Mm."
"Jhin, don't you have [Elemental Armament] now? How can you still think we can't beat a Lord-class monster?"
"Megumin, fighting a Lord-class monster underground and fighting one above ground are two entirely different concepts. The biggest impact is that we can't use that trump card of yours—the cave-in caused by Explosion magic could bury us alive on the spot."
Picturing that kind of outcome, Megumin couldn't help but shudder. "I… I'd better not set off Explosion magic in a place like this."
"Good that you understand. Pecorine, let me draw out your Void—we're getting ready to go in."
"Mm, no problem!"
Gripping the silver, flowing-light greatsword in his hand, Jhin willed it with a thought and [Elemental Armament] spread over his body. The battle-armored figure, a tattered black scarf around his neck and the silver greatsword in hand, walked at the very front to clear the way.
"Lighting spell!" Kyaru waved her staff and summoned a glowing orb above everyone's heads, illuminating their surroundings.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Naruto: Is it reasonable to beat up an Otsutsuki with Hamon, right?
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!