A sudden tremor shook the ground.
"What's going on?" Noah and the others felt the tiny vibration.
This kind of event should not happen—at least, not up here on the 18th Floor.
There was no sign of an earthquake's center anywhere in sight.
Could it really be an earthquake? But they were in the Dungeon.
They were completely underground!
If a massive, level-10 earthquake actually happened here, everyone inside would be buried alive.
"Huh? What is that noise? Is it an anomaly?" Tiona asked.
"Beats me," Tione shrugged.
The Amazon sisters showed absolutely no signs of fear or tension.
Noah looked at the others and realized he seemed to be the only one who was nervous.
'Wait a minute.'
'Could it be that these people had never actually felt an earthquake before?'
In this world where strong adventurers could split mountains and cut the sea in half, there were many crazy legends—like a Crozzo magic sword boiling away an entire ocean with a single strike.
Most of the terrifying disasters described in legends were actually caused by people.
On the other hand, natural disasters—other than normal mudslides and floods—were almost never talked about in this world.
Was it because the gods lived down here in the lower world?
'I see.'
It was not that the others lacked a sense of danger, it was just that Noah had not adjusted his own mindset yet.
To an adventurer, a strange event in the Dungeon was simply an "anomaly."
Their first thought should always be to suspect the Dungeon itself, not a natural earthquake.
That was how a true adventurer thought.
A moment later, the tremors stopped.
The Dungeon returned to its usual calm, as if the shaking had just been a trick of the mind.
"Oh, it stopped?"
"It really did."
"Nothing fun happened at all!" Tiona complained.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Tione sighed. "We are about to head back to the surface. I do not want to get dragged into any more trouble."
....
The group returned to the surface and said their goodbyes in front of the Babel Tower.
On his way back to the workshop, while still a good distance away, Noah saw thick smoke rising from his chimney.
Haruhime must be cooking food for his return.
"Hey, Haruhime, please? Just let me take a tiny peek at the kid's storeroom!"
"No! Tsubaki-san, no matter how much you beg, I cannot disobey Noah-sama orders!"
"Waaah, I was so happy when he asked me to help watch the house! I did not expect there to be a hidden gatekeeper standing in my way!"
"I am a Renard, you know!"
"Shut up!"
The front door was open, and Noah could hear Tsubaki grumbling as he walked up.
He stepped inside and smiled. "I am back."
Hearing his familiar voice, Haruhime immediately dropped her tools and hurried out of the kitchen.
"Noah-sama!"
The fox girl rushed over, quickly untying her apron.
Noah had to helplessly drop the bags in his hands just to catch her as she hugged him.
"Thank you for watching the house and thank you too, Tsubaki. I appreciate your hard work."
"Huh? am i just an afterthought? Hey!" Tsubaki complained.
Since the Renard girl had been checking him over from head to toe the second she hugged him, Noah sighed helplessly.
"Do not worry, Haruhime, I am not injured and there are no problems. More importantly... is the kitchen okay? I think I smell something burning."
"Ah! Oh no!"
Reminded by Noah, Haruhime suddenly realized she had forgotten to turn off the stove.
She scrambled frantically back into the kitchen.
After a loud series of clangs and bangs, the girl rushed back out holding a cooking pot that was smoking black.
Noah washed his hands and gave a wry smile.
He looked at the girl's ruined dish with total confusion.
"Is this leftover titanium alloy?"
"Waaah, it is a mashed potatoes!" Haruhime cried.
Tsubaki, standing off to the side, broke out in a cold sweat.
Over the past few days, she had personally watched Haruhime try to cook one dish after another.
Tsubaki simply could not understand how the girl could follow a basic recipe and still end up creating something like this.
After two days of taste-testing Haruhime's food, even Tsubaki's tough Level 5 body was showing signs of giving out.
She could not fathom how someone with such a delicate, beautiful appearance could possess such a terrifying, lethal talent for cooking!
The substance in the pot gave off a faint red glow, and its surface was covered in a thick, charcoal-like powder.
Looking at this "mashed potato" dish, Noah thought it looked exactly like the heavy titanium alloy he melted down when forging weapons.
It wasn't just similar .... it looked exactly the same!
"I am so sorry, Noah-sama. I am so clumsy. I cannot believe I walked away while it was cooking on high heat," Haruhime sniffled.
"No... I do not think the heat is the only problem here," Noah said.
He could not imagine that simply leaving the stove on high could turn a potato into this.
This was basically dark alchemy!
The actual physical matter of the food had been altered.
The little fox's tail, which had been wagging happily just a moment ago, now hung limp and sad behind her.
"It is okay. No one is perfectly good at everything from the start. As long as you learn from the experience, you will do better next time," Noah said, gently comforting the little fox.
Beside them, Tsubaki shook her head silently.
She highly doubted that normal common sense applied to Haruhime's cooking, but she did not dare say that out loud.
"Alright, let's just go eat at a restaurant today. Tsubaki, you come with us too."
"No way! Forget about food! More importantly, hurry up and give me the reward you promised!" Tsubaki yelled, stomping her foot anxiously.
Because of the threat from the Ishtar Familia, Noah had been worried about his workshop—and more specifically, about Haruhime's safety.
To keep her protected, he had asked Tsubaki who had no recent forging jobs to come over and help Haruhime watch the house.
It was the perfect excuse to have a Level 5 bodyguard nearby!
"What's the rush?"
Noah sighed and pulled out two mind cores he had created using his Spell-Weaver skill.
They were also known as mind furnaces.
Basically, they were solid power sources made by melting down mithril, magic crystals and pure mind together.
Because of his own personal taste, Noah had made them perfectly round.
It made them look like beautiful, glowing gemstones.
The custom weapons he made for Bete and the Amazon sisters all relied on this exact type of mind core to work.
Without exception, every single magic stone product sold in Orario was a consumable item.
They worked by draining the mind inside the magic stone, and once the mind was gone, the stone had to be completely replaced.
An item that could actively absorb mind straight from the air—or steal it from other magic stones to recharge itself—had almost never been seen in Orario before.
There were always stronger people out there, so Noah could not be 100% sure that no one else had similar skills.
But at the very least, you could never buy something like this in a normal shop.
"Here you go." Noah tossed the items to Tsubaki.
The half-dwarf's face lit up with pure joy.
"This is it!"
"With this, I can finally bring the ideas in my head to life! Honestly, if that brat from the Crozzo family was as willing to use his talent as you are, things would be great," Tsubaki sighed.
"Crozzo..." Noah muttered.
"Ah, you should know them. They are the noble family of blacksmiths from the Rakia Kingdom."
Noah fell silent.
In truth, it had nothing to do with knowing the Rakia Kingdom.
He had lived in this world for ten years, but in an era like this, the news didn't travel fast.
Unless a person had magic or divine powers, a normal person's understanding of the outside world was limited to the stories they heard in passing.
The Rakia Kingdom.
In this world, it was considered a massive, powerful nation.
Because Orario had the Underground Labyrinth, the city was able to produce incredibly powerful adventurers.
But the outside world was completely different.
Most monsters on the surface were very weak and could be killed by normal people.
Because of that, even though there were many gods and Familias outside of Orario, most of those adventurers were only Level 1.
A Level 2 adventurer was already considered one of the strongest fighters in the outside world.
A major power like the Rakia Kingdom, which had a single Level 3 and a few Level 2 adventurers, was already seen as a country with massive, terrifying military strength.
"Are you talking about Welf Crozzo?" Noah asked, confirming his guess.
The half-dwarf woman looked surprised. "What? You know him?"
'So, it really was him.'
'Come to think of it, the Crozzo family did serve the Rakia Kingdom in the original story.'
'The Crozzo magic swords were terrifying weapons with power that rivaled actual spells.'
'Legends said they could burn away the sea.'
'This power served Rakia, and the Kingdom abused those magic swords to wage brutal wars everywhere they went.'
During those wars, the land was scorched, lakes were boiled dry, and forests were burned to ash.
The homelands of many different races, including the elves, were completely wiped out by the Crozzo magic swords.
As if the gods were punishing the Crozzo clan for abusing their bloodline, the family members suddenly lost their magic powers one day.
They could no longer forge the famous Crozzo magic swords, and the noble family quickly lost its power and fame.
In that fallen family, Welf Crozzo was the only descendant left who could still forge magic swords.
However, because he hated how magic swords were used to kill, he refused to make them.
Because of his refusal, he was seen as a total disgrace and was eventually kicked out of his own family.
"I have heard of him..." Noah said.
"Is that so? Anyway, he is an infuriating brat! He has an incredible talent, but he completely refuses to use it. It is like he is looking down on all of us!"
Noah looked at Tsubaki and sensed the deep frustration in her heart.
As the city's number one blacksmith, Tsubaki poured her absolute heart and soul into her weapons.
She was willing to pay any price just to forge a better blade.
To her, Welf's stubborn refusal to craft magic swords was not just annoying, to all hardworking blacksmiths, it felt like pure arrogance and total disrespect!
"Forget it, let's not talk about this anymore. He is an annoying brat, but Lady Hephaestus specifically asked me to look after him. I am just not good at dealing with rebellious kids like him. Its such a pain in the ass," Tsubaki sighed.
Tsubaki waved goodbye and left the workshop.
After helping Haruhime clean up the titanium-mashed-potato mess in the kitchen, Noah left the workshop with her.
The two of them headed down the street, walking to the exact same place where they had eaten their very first meal together: The Hostess of Fertility.
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