Touring the Imperial Capital 4

We’re a bit away the imperial capital at the sea today.

At a sandy beach. It’s still too cold to wear a swimsuit, but I want to come and swim in the summer.

By the way, Haku-san isn’t with us today.

“As expected, work piles when you take three days off to play around…”

“Nooo, Chloe can deal with this much. I’m busy entertaining Rokuko-chan.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Ah, w-wait. Kuh, I-I’ll work today. However, I’ll finish up three days’ work in this one day! And I’ll take tomorrow off again!”

Like that, Chloe dragged her off.

It looks like you have to do a lot of stuff once you turn into the leader of an empire… Rather, Haku-san actually has that much work? Isn’t she supposed to be a retired person, living her life free of worry?

… Ah, is it that a person of power who doesn’t even need to worry about succession issues from aging and longevity can’t be idle?

Being efficient’s a problem too. I swear that I’ll just leave it to proactive people and sleep.

“… The sea~~~~~~!”

“Woah Kehma, what’s wrong? You just shouted out of nowhere.”

I wanted to give shouting at the sea a shot.

White sand with not even a speck of garbage, a transparent blue sea, and bright, refreshing sunlight.

It’d be the best if there were a beach house or something to take a nap in though. Napping with a seaside breeze… well, it’s not summer so it’s alright.

There’s a place made to be a sightseeing spot meant for nobles closer to the capital from what I here, but there aren’t any buildings there either… Haku-san’s planning on taking Rokuko to a spot being converted into a tourist attraction later on.

Well, the place we came to today is this beach with nothing on it. We got here with Dolche-san’s—a member of Haku-san’s party—Teleport.

It seems as though all of Haku-sans’s party members other than Misha can use Teleport.

Right, other than Misha, who after being slimified by that big tentacle slime yesterday and who somehow defeated it in the end with a physical attack, thinking, “Can’t I just clad my fist with magical power?”, it seems they could all use it.

Dolche-san, who wore a white robe that looked like a certain RPG’s white mage, was exhausted and was laying flat in the shade of a big rock. She was in human form and she didn’y have any particular problem with the sun, but as expected, with her origin being a wraith, she didn’t seem to be that good with bright places.

“Ueh, the sun can just die… I’m melting…”

“Umm, excuse me, there are a lot of sea roaches.”

“… I’m fine. I like insects and spiders. Fufufu, scutter scutter…” 1

… Let’s leave Dolche-san alone.

Maybe there’s some shade nearby that I can sleep in too? I brought a parasol and beach chair just in case though.

“Wait, we came here for the preview where to build the dungeon, not to sleep!”

“… Right… Aah~, doesn’t that cliff over there look like it has an awesome vibe to it? Like a criminal would get chased on to it.”

“The heck? Please do the inspection properly.”

After thinking about it, even if we inspect the area, we’re going to be making the dungeon underground, so it doesn’t feel like it’ll change much depending on where it’s built.

I could use as much salt water as I want here, maybe I could make some salt?

… Salt, yep. Come to think of it, I wonder what Rin’s up to around now?

“This is the first time I’ve come here, but this place is smelly isn’t it?”

“That’d be the smell of the salt water. The smell is a bit weaker than the ocean I remember, but I don’t really dislike it.”

“Smells fishy… Hey, Kehma. Could we use the sea’s monsters?”

Sea monsters huh… maybe. Something like a kraken or sharks?

I opened the DP catalog from the menu.

… Hohoh, there’s even a shark with two heads. I wonder if there’s stuff like ghost sharks or flying sharks?

For right now, the ones that stand out are the giant squid, giant octopus, and giant nautilus. There are ones pretty close to humans like sahagins and mermaids, as well as plenty of sea creatures like jellyfish and sea cucumbers. 2

… Dagon? Feels like I shouldn’t look to closely at the catalog. It doesn’t really matter this time though. It costs more than 100,000,000 DP. 3

And then I noticed something.

Various sea-type things were cheap in the DP department… In exchange for that, mountain-type things like Heat Source or a wyvern, which were both unconnected to the sea, were more expensive.

Even something like the iron golem, which was 500 DP each at Tsuia Mountain, had quadrupled in price up to 2,000 DP here.

“… Could it be that DP changes depending on the location?”

“Heeeh, let me see… Un? Goblins didn’t change, they’re still 20 DP.”

Why was the first thing you checked goblins? As expected of Rokuko.

… Ah, ghost-types are cheaper? I guess they would appear more often at sea. I would’ve thought that they would in mountains as well though.

“I see, so there’s a difference in DP depending on the situation, matching the characteristics of the area… It seems the dungeon core and master increase or decrease the various costs as well.”

“No no Kehma, what’re you saying… it would’ve been impossible to get another world’s rice if it weren’t Kehma.”

Oh yeah. So it was my characteristics that made it so I could buy Japanese goods with DP then? Maybe golems as well since they’re human-type? Haku-san was also using humanoid bipedal monsters that used both hands.

… In that case, it’d be better to learn about our opponent. Looks like we could take advantage of it for some countermeasures.

“Hey, Rokuko. What is our opponent this time like?”

“Nn? Umm, the first one is Team Dragon’s three cores, a snake, a frog, and a slug.”

What a three-way deadlock. Reptile, amphibian, and… what was a slug? A shellfish? Seems like those guys would get creepy-slimy monsters on the cheap. 3

“Well, the Demon Lord Team’s was in human form, but… umm, Core No. 666 is…. what was she? Sorry. I don’t know!”

“… I’ll try asking Haku-san tomorrow.”

For now I took out the beach chair and parasol I’d put in my Storage for just this sort of occasion.

Stabbing the parasol’s pole into the sand, I laid down on the beach chair under the shade.

The sound of the waves made for a really pleasant background sound. Looks like I’ll get some good rest here.

“… Meat, doesn’t it look like it’d be really fun to make a castle where the sand meets the sea?”

“Yes, I’ll join you.”

By the way, when I woke up in the evening, it might’ve been washed away by the tides or maybe they just didn’t make it, but there was no sand castle.

Footnotes:

She uses a sound effect in her speech here that can also mean damp

/humid and gloomy

/depressing. Return

Sahagins are a monster from Final Fantasy, as well as from D&D Forgotten Realms, though they are known as Sahuagins there. Return

A lovecraftian monster. Dagon is a deity who presides over the Deep Ones, an amphibious humanoid race. Also known as Father Dagon, he is a Great Old One and the consort of Mother Hydra. Return

The ‘three-way deadlock’ (raw version) is a reference to The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya–the story that influenced a major portion of the Naruto anime. There was a reference I’d missed in the Dungeon Core Assembly chapters.