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A Harem in the Fantasy World Dungeon Volume 7 Chapter 1 Part 3

That is why I want to avoid them as much as possible.

「The Boss Room should be just up ahead. I’m not sure if there are people inside of it or not, because while I did manage to catch on to some kind of smell, it vanished pretty quickly. Therefore, if people really were ahead of us, they have either died or already moved on.」 said Roxanne.

「Thank you for the info, Roxanne. As expected of you, your nose is as reliable as always. Thanks to your smart guidance we were able to reach the Boss Room without encountering even a single soul!」 I complimented Roxanne.

「Not at all, master. If anything, I should be the one thanking you for allowing me to be so useful all the time, as well as apologize for not being able to discern what happened with the source of that smell more accurately.」

So even Roxanne can’t tell if the people are still in the Waiting Room or Boss Room or if they have already gone to the next floor or have been killed, huh? Well, as good as her sense of smell is, no one ever said that it was all-powerful, so such a thing was bound to happen sooner or later, so it’s not that big of a deal.

There is another door separating the Boss Room from the Waiting Room. When the Party that is currently challenging the Floor Boss inside of the Boss Room is either done fighting with it or has been killed by it, only then will the next Party waiting in the Waiting Room be allowed entry to the Boss Room. Because of that, and the fact that we cannot normally peek through the doors or see through any cracks in them, it is exceedingly difficult to properly tell from the outside whether the other Party is in the Waiting Room or has advanced to the Boss Room already.

There’s always some degree of risk that can’t be completely avoided, and all we can do is to pretty much minimize the amount of risk that we as a Party are going to be subjecting ourselves to.

Other Parties might come to the Waiting Room while we are still going to be in it, and we cannot forbid them from doing so – because the Labyrinths are technically public spaces where pretty much anyone can enter at their own leisure. The only countermeasure that we can utilize at such a time would be for me to hide my Durandal so that nobody would recognize it even by accident, and not talk about anything related to magic or my abilities.

For the last dozen days, I have been frequently visiting the Labyrinths of the Hartz Duchy, just like the Duke of Hartz requested of me; but even if I didn’t do it, I highly doubt that the Duke or Gozer, the leader of the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy would blame me for it or hold that against me like I committed some kinda crime.

Even so, I cannot tell them that I’ve made a slight detour to visit the Labyrinth of Quratar just so that I could gather the materials that I would need for the purpose of replenishing the reserves of my recovery items. Something like that might not pass with them as a valid excuse – and if at all possible, I would like to avoid getting on their bad side.

「Miria, can you go and see if there are people inside of the waiting room? If there aren’t, give us a signal. If there are, then just come back.」 I say as I ask Miria to go and have a look on our behalf in order to mitigate the risk. With her eyes, this should be a piece of cake. Also, now that I think about it, Gozer and the Duke have yet to meet Miria, right? Yeah, they definitely didn’t meet her, because I only bought her a few days ago; and since that time I have not paid any visits to Bode and its castle, or run into Gozer in any of the Hartz Duchy’s Labyrinths.

「Roger, Desu!」

When Roxanne translated my request to Miria, she nodded her head and immediately proceeded to carry out my orders. She walked to the door leading to the Waiting Room and opened them up ever so slightly, peeking her head inside.

After a brief moment, she turned back towards us and gave us a signal to come to her. Good, it seems that no other Party is currently in the Waiting Room, which means that we can enter it without any reservations.

The three of us then rushed inside. All the while, Miria sticks her chest out proudly as if she has accomplished some kind of an important mission. Well, she did what I asked her to do, so I guess a praise for her is indeed in order.

「Thank you and well done. You did well, Miria.」

「X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X.」

「Great job, Miria!」 said Sherry as she jumped in on the ‘Miria praising bandwagon’.

That being said, I really don’t think that what she did can be considered as some kind of grand accomplishment; but as long as she’s happy…

「Yes, desu!」

Is Miria delighted because she was able to be of use to us?

We entered the Waiting Room, and just like Miria reported, there was no one there.

「Sherry, what can you tell us about the Floor Boss of this floor? What can we expect?」

「The Floor Boss of the floors where Sarracenia is the main monster is called Nephentes. Basically, it is just a bigger, stronger Sarracenia. However, there is one thing that you should be wary of, master. Starting from the twelfth floor of the Labyrinths onwards, other monsters will begin to appear alongside the Floor Boss; so you have to be careful not to allow them to overwhelm you or catch you off guard.」
Sherry shares the information on the Floor Boss of the twelfth floor with all of us. Up until now, our tried and true strategy when it came to Floor Boss battles was to basically leave the handling of the Floor Boss’s aggro to Roxanne, who would position herself right in front of it and then bait all of its attacks; avoiding them with her dodges. However, it would seem that we are not going to be able to employ that same strategy anymore – or at the very least it’s not going to be as effective as it was up until now.

Well, I knew that eventually things were going to stop being easy, and that we would have to start putting some actual effort into our Floor Boss battles. That is just how things are. You cannot expect them to always be the same, no matter how convenient they were.

When we enter the Waiting Room properly, the door to the Boss Room immediately slides open, inviting us to go ahead inside.

All four of us entered the room. As soon as we did that, clouds of smoke began to gather in the center of the room; and moments later, monsters appeared from within them. One Nephentes and one Sarracenia.

「Roxanne, hold the Nephentes back from the front like usual. Sherry, Miria, keep the Boss occupied along with Roxanne. I’ll wipe out the small fry first.」

I give instructions to the three and charge toward the small Sarracenia and hit it with 「Rush」 attacks in quick succession, silencing it for good. Now that it will not be able to get in the way of our fight against the main Boss, I immediately join the battle against the Nephtenes.

Nepenthes was a plant monster very similar to Sarracenia, except for the part of it that looked like its head – from which it would most likely spit its digestive fluids at us if we allowed it to. Its head was larger than that of Sarracenia. Overall, when it comes to the size, Nephtenes was twice the regular size of Sarracenia. I wonder if the fact that it is bigger is proportionate to how powerful it is, or if it is just a purely cosmetic thing meant to allow people to differentiate between the two?

Unlike Sarracenia, the brown, pitcher-like head of Nepenthes looks much creepier. I can tell at just a glance that it gets its nutrients not from photosynthesis like any other normal plants, but from eating other creatures.

Actually, even Sarracenia doesn’t get its food from photosynthesis. Both are carnivorous plants; and on top of that, monsters dwelling in the Labyrinths – so they’re probably getting everything they need to function properly from devouring Explorers and Adventurers who were unlucky enough to meet them on their way, and failed to defeat them.