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Volume 7 Chapter 4 Part 5

Well, I think that it actually might be my only option available here. So it looks like the moment has finally come for me to graduate from the stage of wanting to obtain everything that I want while being as stingy with my money as possible. That time is over. From now on, if I want to obtain the things that I want, I will have to cough up the dough.

 

That being said, even if it ends up costing me a lot more money than usual, the undisputed appeal of the auctions is that there should be, at least theoretically, a lot more slaves to choose from in comparison to the regular Slave Shops.

 

「I guess I can try finding a good member for my party at the auction.」

 

「Indeed you can. So now that you have decided to participate after all, I will be looking forward to meeting you at the auction venue when the day of the auction finally arrives.」

 

With the conversation about the slave auctions sufficiently wrapped up, there was nothing more for me to discuss with Alan-san, so I decided to go back home.

 

「It would seem that there is going to be a slave auction on the upcoming holiday, so we are going to go attend it in order to search for the newest member of our Party, since it is important to keep expanding our ranks and increase our fighting potential.」

 

After I returned back home, I talked to the girls about my plans for the near future, since I concluded that it’s going to be better for me to inform them about my intentions ahead of time to allow them to make up their own minds about it instead of forcing it upon them a day or two before the auction itself.

 

That, and once more, I absolutely need to keep hammering the idea of increasing the ranks of my slaves to them so that they wouldn’t try to say no to it out of the blue.

 

「Understood, master.」

 

「Since you decided to go to the auction, then we will definitely be able to find some good candidates for the potential members of our Party.」

 

「Miria wants to be elder sister now, desu!」

 

Just like I thought, Sherry seems to know her fair share of information about slave auctions, but as for Miria’s request…. That is really not something that I can promise her, since I have no way of knowing whether the slave that I am potentially going to choose as the next member of my Party is going to be younger than her or not. Well, she might not be an elder sister, but at the very least she’s going to be the new slave’s senior in slavery, so that should be good enough for her, or at least I hope so.

 

「Miria, you cannot ask master to make you an elder sister, because he cannot do anything about the age of the new Party Member.」

 

「Okay, desu!」

 

After that, all of us lied down on the new bed that has just arrived in order to see how it would feel.

 

「Master, promise that you’re going to cherish us a lot until the new members of our Party arrive, okay?」

 

Roxanne, my dear, how could you say something like that?! What made you think that I would stop loving you and the others when the new members of our Party are going to arrive? You can be sure that even after we get more members, my love for you won’t change in the slightest!

 

*          *          *

 

The next day, we continued the exploration of the fourteenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth. With the pace at which our exploration was currently progressing, I think we are currently halfway through it.

 

When the battles are short, the hunting goes smoothly and without many issues, but when we occasionally wound up in the longer ones, I can feel the tension and stress levels of my entire Party increasing slightly. We all understand that they key to a safe and fast exploration is finishing the battles we end up engaging in quickly, and while the monsters here on the fourteenth floor are not as easy to defeat as to make the battles be over in a flash, they are also not strong enough to trigger our real sense of danger that would make us all fired up.

 

While not a direct threat to us, such a state of affairs can definitely become a concern.

Because the battles here on this floor are longer than the ones on the lower floors, there is always a possibility that we might end up getting exposed to consecutive attacks from the enemies, and if we lose our focus because of it, then we might end up getting ourselves thrown into some truly precarious situations.

 

However, even though I am aware of it, I keep losing my focus.

 

And then, all of a sudden….

 

「Miria!」

 

「Yes, desu!」

 

 

When I heard Roxanne shouting towards Miria, my senses and my thoughts have been brought back to me in an instant.

 

That shout just now sounded as if Roxanne was really mad at Miria. Looks like she was going solo too much yet again, just like it happened last time. Even though Miria tends to be staying withing the designated formation most of the time, occasionally she just happens to attempt to go ahead on her own or to engage the enemy by herself even though we always tell her that she has to stay close to us if she wants to avoid getting herself poisoned or being stricken with some other status ailment.

 

Well, I can empathize with her to some degree, because I tend to lose my focus more and more often too.

 

My overall thoughts on the fourteenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth? This floor is boring and slow, and nothing that happens here gives me that spark of positive excitement that would usually compel me to continue going forward despite all of the dangers that continue to lurk around every corner.

 

Finally, there was only one opponent left from the group that we were currently fighting, and Roxanne was its opponent, so there was no need to be worried about her at all, because throughout the entire fight she has yet to receive a single attack from it.

 

Surprising nobody, her performance on the battlefield is as spectacular as ever, no matter which floor we are currently on. And since she continues to excel in that field of combat, then I guess I have no choice but to give it my everything as well with supporting her, Sherry and Miria from the backline with my magic.

At the end of the day though, we didn’t decide to go so far as to break through the fourteenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth, and instead, we chose to go to the Bode’s Labyrinth to check how much its exploration has progressed since the last time when we were here.

 

「How far has the exploration progressed?」

 

「The twelfth floor has just been reached recently.」

 

We drop by Bode’s Labyrinth around noon, and asked the Explorer at

the entrance to give us a status update.

 

「And what kind of monsters can we expect to encounter on the twelfth floor?」

 

「Mabream.」

 

「Mabream, desu?!」

 

I have no idea why she did that, but for some inexplicable reason, Miria went and repeated the words that the Explorer has spoken just now and she looked at me with incredibly serious eyes.

 

However, those very same eyes of hers that were looking so serious just a second ago… have now began sparkling with excitement, and she looked as if she desperately wanted to tell us something.

 

I wonder what that might be? Something important, perhaps?

 

「Mabream is a fish-type monster. The Drop Item that it leaves behind when it dies is White Fish.」

 

Sherry explained to me the reason why Miria was feeling so excited. So once again it’s all about fish with her, huh?

 

Miria is still staring at me with those giant eyes of hers, but right now, rather than sparkling, I think it would be more appropriate to say that her eyes are burning with appetite.

 

「W-Well, in that case… can I ask you to take all of us to the twelfth floor?」

 

Now thar Miria has gotten fired up like that, there is nothing that I will be able to do about her aside from satiating her appetite for the fish, so I sighed heavily and took the emblem of Hartz Duchy out of my backpack, showing it to the Explorer and adding him to my Party so that he could teleport all of us to our new destination.

 

「All right then. Follow after me, please.」