Chapter 65

Eminira Dungeon (6)
The boss room on the fourth floor had been home to giant ants called Must.
Apparently, they’re about the same height as me—133 cm. A person-sized ants, huh…
Must’s entire body is hard enough to deflect both swords and magic.
Its weak points are the joints at the limbs and neck—those aren’t as tough.
With about 40 to 50 of them attacking all at once, we have no choice but to aim for those weak spots.

In this fight, the plan had been for us—me, Canal, Atre, and Ripka—to fire off magic, and the adults would step in if things got dangerous.
Aiming for the neck would be the most efficient approach. Since we had backup if things went south, we decided to carefully aim at one Must at a time. Firing off random shots wouldn’t have worked since they’d just get deflected.

Once we had our plan, we opened the door.
Inside the room, the Musts had been standing in formation like a proper army.
They all rushed toward us the moment they saw us. Whoa—that looks intimidating.
It was my first time seeing Musts, but I imagined some adventurers might’ve panicked under that kind of pressure.

We each aimed for the necks and fired Waterballs, Iceballs, and Fireballs. But there had been so many that even though a few went down, the rest kept charging.

“Miss Linka, can you surround the Musts with a barrier?” I’d asked, rather suddenly.

“Leave it to me.” She’d replied, and she had surrounded them with a wall of barriers.

“What was that all of a sudden? You gave me a shock.” Canal said.

Atre and Ripka had looked dissatisfied too. I’d apologized, but—

“Miss Linka, I want to flood the area beyond the barrier. Can you shoot water over it?” I asked.

“If I lower the height of the barrier, I can.” She said.

So Canal, Atre, and I had launched water and ice past the lowered barrier, and Ripka had continued to rain down Fireballs from above until the barrier space filled with icy water.

While we had been pulling off this water assault, the adults had just stared in stunned silence.

“Probably, Hardt just got tired of dealing with them one by one.”

“I think so too, Young master Gerald. He makes the most of the team members he has and comes up with efficient ways to take them down… he’s quick on his feet.” Meyer had added.

“……………”

Thanks to Ripka’s attacks and the water assault, we defeated all the Musts.
They had turned into loot.

“Hardt, defeating them is great and all, but what are we supposed to do about all this water? We have to get out of here.” Said Brother Gerald.

His words had snapped me out of my satisfaction with the victory. I’d completely forgotten about the aftermath… The iron ingots from loot is at the bottom of the water.

What should we do…?
Maybe I could turn it into blocks of ice and have someone stash them in a magic bag for now.

Though it would take a lot of work, I’d pictured the kind of ice used for shaved ice—easy to carry, manageable in size—and cast water magic while visualizing them solidifying.
The water from the barrier had gradually frozen, stacking into chunks of ice.

“Can someone throw these into a magic bag for now? I’ll dump the ice on another floor somewhere later.”

“I’ll take care of it.” said Wilson, who had headed to the other side of the barrier to store the ice in his magic bag.

“Hardt, I’m glad you found a solution, but you don’t have an ice attribute—how can you use ice magic?”

Brother Gerald had asked seriously, not in a joking tone.

“Well, if water gets cold, it becomes ice, right? So I just imagined it turning into ice while casting water, and it worked.”

“Just like with hot water… so it really comes down to the image?”

“I think it depends on the attribute, but hey, it worked, so it’s fine, right, Brother Gerald?”

“Your… casual attitude, or your way of thinking, I don’t even know how to describe it…”

“Let’s not worry about it, Brother Gerald. We can think about it later.” I said as I pushed him forward.

Resigned, Brother Gerald called out to everyone, and we left the boss room.

“Still as creative as ever. And did he really say dealing with each one was a pain?”

“Well, if someone from his own group said it, it’s probably true. At this point, we might as well consider this free training—learning magic and strategies we can use ourselves.” Allie and Linka whispered to each other so Hardt wouldn’t hear.

What do you think about this chapter?