The strongest sage of disqualified crest

Chapter 49 Strongest Sage, Runs Through Dungeon

A god people believe in has the same name as the past me huh.
With how the swordsmanship god's name is also the same as a sword nerd I was acquainted with in my past life, these are sure some coincidences.
....It's a coincidence right?

"Even Mathi-kun shouldn't be able to get to floor 25.... That floor 23 record is in another dungeon, no one has gone past through floor 20 in this dungeon, so we don't know anything about it you know? If you went without preparation and something happened to you...."

"Nothing to worry about. I can probe floor 25's state by using the high magic version of 【Passive Detection】. Though well, I'm planning to go back if it looks like it'll take too long."

By the way, half of that was a lie.
That magic does exist, but I currently can't use it now.
However, up to floor 25, there's not much difference in monster's strength in any dungeon, so I already know what to expect even without actually diving into one.

The world has largely changed during my reincarnation, but fortunately, the inside of dungeons don't change much.
You even can say that the knowledge I have about past dungeons are all applicable today.
Well, I'm still gonna withdraw if it looks dangerous though.

"Hi-high magic...."

"True, if it's Mathi-kun, I feel like he can comes back from floor 25 calmly.... Or rather, I feel like he'll come back after defeating a monster that doesn't usually appear...."

"Is that Alma's intuition?"

"Un."

That reminds me, Alma's intuition was said to be correct often.
There are people like that in my past life too. I don't understand the concept behind it though.

Well, I will come back for sure, but there's little chance of me meeting a strong monster.
Such monsters do exist, but you rarely ever encounter one.
The chance increases in a floor that hasn't been or never been treaded upon by people in a while.... I'd better keep my expectation in check.

"So then, could you lend me a sword we used for mining."

"Ha.... I understand. But you have to absolutely come back okay."

Ruli gave me a sword with 【Brittle Fracture】 made for mining from among the two swords on her waist while saying that.
The walls get harder as you go deeper in a dungeon, so I'd like to have an augmented sword with me.
Half of my objective this time is gathering metal.

"Yeah. I'll come back for sure. But I can't promise that it won't get prolonged. You two should go back ahead of me if I don't return in two hours. Well, I plan to come back in one hour though."

"No! I'm not going back without Mathi-kun...."

"If you don't, the Camp would lose its effect and my chance of returning alive would decrease instead."

This is the truth.
Since I can make a Camp up until floor 20 alone, I can make use of it to restore my stamina and mana if things get dangerous.
Well, me getting stuck in such a situation on a mere floor 20 isn't even in the equation though.

"....I understand. I'll go back."

Looks like she's assented.

"Then, I'm gonna head off for a bit! Take care not to leave the Camp okay!"

I checked the Camp's and the floor's mana once again and then left after making sure that there would be no problem in the next two hours.
By relying on the flow of mana, I ran straight floor 10 down the stairs to floor 11.

I'm ignoring monsters I meet on the way. Fighting them would only waste my mana and time.
Rush Bulls are the new monsters on floor 11. It's a bull type demon.
It's stronger than a Killer Dog, but they're both small fry.

However I should beat one just in case.
Estimating from the memories of my past life and its mana reaction, I fire a magic with the least amount of mana to kill it in one blow.
One of Rush Bulls died just as expected.

I've no business with Rush Bulls anymore so I ignore the second one.
I can't move at maximum speed while erasing my presence but I've got no choice here.
In addition to Physical Reinforcement magic, I only invoked a mobility magic, 【Friction Reduction】 and ran past the monster.

The Rush Bull immediately ran after me when it saw me running past it, but it's slow.
I'm only running, but our distance gradually gets bigger.
It's impossible for a Rush Bull's speed to catch up to me and my 【Friction Reduction】.

Thus I reached floor 12.
The time needed to reach floor 12 from the moment I entered floor 11 was about 70 seconds.
That's about the average when you advance through a dungeon on the shortest route you get from measuring the flow of mana.


By the way. 【Friction Reduction】 is a magic that reduces air friction when you move about, speeding you up.

There's a lot more magic that can make me go faster and is easier to manage than 【Friction Reduction】, but this magic is overwhelmingly better at mana consumption. Almost zero even.
Thus, I chose to use this magic since I wasn't particularly in a hurry.

I went down many floors, ignoring numerous monsters just like that.

"....This is floor 20 huh."

15 minutes after I went solo.
I arrived at floor 20, the deepest cleared floor of this dungeon in this age.

As I got deeper, the passages became narrower with many twists and turns, slowing my moving pace down.
Now that it's come to this, it's quicker to beat the monsters rather than trying to shake them off, so I continue the journey while doing just that.
However--.

"They're a bit better now but.... still weak as always."

I sighed while lopping off the head of a boar monster with a sword enchanted just with 【Steel Slash】 to save mana.
I mean, even Biffgel can defeat the monster if you bundle up 300 of him together.
Since a Killer Dog can probably be beaten by 10 Biffgel, I guess you can still call this a progress.

A gathering of 300 Biffgel is really really bad for my mental health though, so please no, just no.

It's not all bad since the monsters being weak means it's easier for me to progress on, but that also means weak materials.
I'd like for something less objectionable if possible.

--If this is the deepest cleared floor, the academy's battle force is really low.
The demons' plan to abate humanity power by way of chantless magic seems to be a huge success.

....Even while saying that, I'm stowing magic stones, hides, claws and light but usable materials into Storage magic.
Dismantling them is easy with magic anyway.

In that respect, the War Tiger I met in my trip to Royal Capital wasn't too bad.
It's at a level where I could beat it in one blow, but it's also not too weak.
It's a quite an efficient monster for scraping up exp and magic stones.

"Well, many more monsters of that level will probably come out as I go deeper."

I advance through the dungeon while talking to myself.
I'm paying attention to the mana reaction of the walls instead of monsters'.

Besides mithril and iron, adamantite starts to be found mixed in around this floor.
Mixing even a little adamantite with other metal to form an alloy will grant considerable strength to it.
I'd very much like to get my hand on it.

....Therefore, let's secure it.
I found a place with a good amount of adamantite from the mana reaction, put 【Mana Slash】, 【Brittle Fracture】, and 【Toughening】 on the mining sword, and broke the wall altogether.

And then I recrystallized the crumbled rocks, produced dungeon crude ores out of them and put them into Storage magic.
These will produce adamantite if we refine it seriously later.

That said, refining adamantite is quite tough, the current me can probably get around 3% out of these ores. Even Ruli can only get 2.5% currently.
Ruli can probably improve that percentage to 80% in one year, compared to me getting to 3.5% in that time. It's the so-called limit of the Fourth Crest.
Well, 3% is enough for now.

"....Now then. It's an unknown domain from here on...."

It appears that this is the end of easy path to next floors.
The route that seemingly goes to the next floor is simply a hole, unlike stairs up until now.
It's around 10 meter deep I think.

In cases like this, you'd want to use a rope or such, but--.

"Heave....ho."

The simplest way to do it is this. By jumping off.
You won't get hurt as long as you're careful when you jump off, it's quick, and there's no need to prepare anything.

And I've got a nice little cushion this time. Thanks to it, I can land safely.

"Ga...."

As I jumped down while erasing my presence, I used a monster below as a cushion by trampling down on its head.
I stabbed my sword on its throat while landing, killing it, afterward I got down on floor 21.
It's an extremely safe, and peaceful way to move about.

By the way, the monster I used as a foothold this time was called Flame Lizard.
Just as the name suggests, it's a lizard that spews out flames.
As always, it's a monster I can beat with a single stab of my sword on the vital spots, but since it's only a tad weaker than War Tiger, I guess it's gotten quite better now.

Even if you gather hundreds of Biffgel together, they won't be able to even make a scratch on it, and will only get roasted instead, so you can't use Biffgel as an exchange rate for Flame Lizard.

And it looks like I've got myself a hit here.
I found a reaction that was obviously bigger than anything else here in one corner of the floor when I used 【Passive Detection】 here on floor 21.
There's no mistaking it. It's a monster called 『Floor Master』 with strength imbalanced with the floor they're on.

The appearance of a 『Floor Master』 was the biggest cause of party getting wiped out in my past life, they were a symbol of menace for adventurers.
Once there was a report of its appearance, several hundreds people would form a party to subjugate it with many dead tolls.
That is 『Floor Master』.

Then what should I do in this situation.
That's obvious of course.

--Charge on.