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Volume 12 Chapter 4 Part 4

「I understand. Then it can’t be helped. Shall we go from the 1st floor? 」

I say to Roxanne and the others.

Even in the Labyrinth of the Hartz Duchy, the only floors to which the Explorers can take you for free are the highest ones, the ones that are currently being explored.

If you enter the most advanced floor that is being explored at the current moment, it will be useful for subjugation of the Labyrinth, but not good from the perspective of those who would want to go to the lower floors of the Labyrinth which they have never visited before.

Well, you know what they say, right? If you want to eat you have to work for it, so we just have to enter this Labyrinth from the first floor and slowly make our way upwards, since the guy didn’t even bother to tell us to which floor we belong to.

「So you are going to enter from the 1st floor? 」

The Explorer at the entrance asked us for confirmation.

「That’s right. 」

「In that case,I have a brief memo of strategy information for this Labyrinth, would you like to take a look at it? 」

「I appreciate that. Can you show it to me then? 」

Maps were sold in the Labyrinth of Quratar.

In this Labyrinth where the people have no way of knowing if they are going to be able to subjugate it or not would not work, and that is probably why they have decided that it would be better to sell the information of how the ones entering it could clear it more effectively instead.

「Here you go. 」

He showed me the paper, on which it was written as such:「For the first floor, go straight to the back」, or something like that.

So this really is not even a map, but rather just the information on how to go through the floors of the Labyrinth here.

Let’s see… what else id written here?

On the second floor, go left, then right. Well, this is better than knowing nothing at all I guess? But it doesn’t change the fact that it is still rather confusing.

「Can I write it down for myself? 」

「Please, go right ahead. 」

「Don’t mind if I do write it down then. 」

Sherry asked a question of the Explorer, and upon receiving his permission she took out paper, brush and ink from her backpack and started writing all of the information contained on that paper down.

I wonder if she anticipated that something like that might happen, and that’s what she took these tools with her. Because it looks like she really did anticipate something like that.

Well, this is Sherry we’re talking about, so she’s always prepared for everything.

「I’ve memorized the information about the first and second floors, so you don’t have to write them down. 」

「I have done the same for the third and fourth floors. 」

Roxanne looks like she’s immensely motivated.

「Then, I will take care of the memorization of the information from the fifth floor then. 」

It seems that Rutina also intends to memorize some of the information.

When it comes to the 5th floor, even if I remember it here, I’m likely to forget it soon enough… but if it’s just about info from a single floor, then maybe I could do it as well?

Maybe that is also why Roxanne said that she’s only going to remember the information from the two floors, and not from five or more? Because she wants to make sure that she will remember all of it without fail.

In that case, it’s time for me to use my brain as well.

Okay then… on the second floor go left, then go right. I think this is how it went.

「Let’s do it, desu! 」

「I think we are going to be alright. 」

Just from them repeating their usual catchphrases I can see that they have no intention of remembering any of the info whatsoever.

To them, to do is to not remember, so let’s just leave all the work with writing the info down to Sherry, shall we?

That being said, all of the notes were rather short, so Sherry was done with copying them quickly.

「That should be all. Thank you for letting us copy the notes. 」

「Thank you for your continued hard work, Sherry. And you, thank you for sharing the information as well.」

「No, no, I just did the obvious thing that anyone would do if they were in my place. I’m also from here in Nesco, so having your cooperation in the efforts to subjugate its Labyrinths is very much welcome. 」

So the Explorer who’s currently at the entrance to the Labyrinth is from Nesco as well, huh? Well, I guess having the Explorers who live nearby on the Labyrinth entrance duty is a preferable thing, since they won’t have to come here from far away just so that they could do their jobs, which could be seen as troublesome.

Aside from that, I have only come here because Elder Cassandra has told me to, so it’s not like I particularly care about aiding in the effort to subjugate the Labyrinths to begin with, but let’s just keep quiet about it for now and let this guy think that I am here to help them of the goodness of my heart if I can ensure their active cooperation in our endeavors.

And since all that I need to do to secure their cooperation is to show them that we are entering the Labyrinth, then we can show him only the part where we enter the Labyrinth and move to another place by Warping… but of course, I can’t really say that out loud either.

If the exploration of the Labyrinth has progressed all the way to the 52nd floor, then the day when the Labyrinth will be subjugated is probably not that far away, isn’t it?

That is also why I always need to make sure that whenever I go into this Labyrinth, we have to leave it through the main entrance as well. If we don’t do that, then the Explorers stationed here might think that we are cheating to get more contribution, and that would be incredibly bad for us, because once they start suspecting us, then all of our previous records would most likely be deemed as not trustworthy enough, so it’s better to keep all our records clean and proper.

「Uhm, how long has it been since this Labyrinth first appeared? 」

Sherry asked the question that I also wondered about.

Ohh! I see!

If it turns out that the Labyrinth here has grown past the 60th floor, then it is going to be okay for us to skip it for a while.

「I think it first appeared around five or so years agon? 」

「Is that so? Then, have the monsters from the Labyrinth were seen outside of it, and if so, how frequent were the sightings? 」

「… No, there have been no sightings of them outside of the Labyrinth yet. 」

We already know that when the Labyrinths first appear they are going to have a maximum of 50 floors, but even after it appeared five years ago, then I wonder if they know how much it actually grew since then?

In order to try to get an answer to that question, I asked Sherry about it when we entered the Labyrinth.

「How many floors do you think there can be in a Labyrinth that appeared five years ago? 」

「When it comes to the Labyrinths, it really is a case-by-case scenario, so it is impossible to generalize any sort of statistics related to that. 」

So she doesn’t actually know the answer to that either? Then why did she ask that question back there anyway? Was it just to chat with the Explorer?

「Ah. Roxanne, it seems that on the first floor all we need to do is to go straight ahead. 」

「Yes, I understand. Since the monsters from the first floors are going to be weak, there is no need for us to go out of our way to fight them unless they are going to be deliberately standing in our way. 」

「Yes, precisely. 」

I made sure to give exact instructions to Roxanne.

Since we are going to be climbing this Labyrinth from the first floor, then I want her to ignore any monsters we might be encountering all the way up to the 45th floor, but we’ll see about that as we go up.

Roxanne joyfully takes the lead and we begin our advance.

Ignoring all of the monsters on our way up is an ideal scenario here, even though we are going to be losing some of the potential income as a result.