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nInsectoid monsters have no ability to think and move solely on instinct.

nUpon hearing this, one might think that this would make it easier for Tamers such as those with the Animal Trainer skill to control them. However, the reality is that their instincts are too powerful for humans to manipulate.

nThere have been those who came up with ways to use special herbs, incense and certain sounds to control them to a certain extent, but the final result was too unstable to be called taming. It was a dangerous method where one mistake would end with the would-be tamers being eaten.

nAnd thus, the fact that insectoid monsters and Undead cannot be tamed became widely-known.

n“Is that how it’s supposed to be?” Vandalieu asked after listening to Borkus’s explanation.

nBuzzing.

n“It is,” replied Borkus.

nMore buzzing.

n“I find that hard to believe.” Vandalieu had been captured by the countless Cemetery Bees and was now being carried around by them.

nThey’re so friendly, though.

nIt apparently happened to be the time of year where the Cemetery Bees would change the location of their nest when Vandalieu had found them. And then they had been caught by his Death-Attribute Charm.

nThere had been a previous incident where the Undead in a Dungeon were friendly towards Vandalieu, but he hadn’t managed to tame them and bring them outside the Dungeon back then. However, these bees had followed Vandalieu’s party even down to the next floor.

nIt was likely because the level of Vandalieu’s Death-Attribute Charm skill had increased since back then.

nOr perhaps it was simply that Cemetery Bees were more compatible with Vandalieu.

n“Ghouls, Vampires and Cemetery Bees. This Death-Attribute Charm works on a lot more things than I thought,” said Borkus.

nCemetery Bees were originally one of the types of monsters created by the Demon King to fight against humans and take over this world. It is possible that they were actually created by an evil god who rules over death.

nEither way, if Death-Attribute Charm levels up any further, it might be a good idea to start avoiding Dungeons and Devil’s Nests where there are lots of Undead.

nIt would be pandemonium if I was followed by hordes of Undead each time I entered and exited such places. It might be an effective way to gather forces quickly, though.

n“So what are you going to do about that guy?” asked Vigaro, pointing at the mid-boss on the twentieth floor of Borkus’s Sub-Dragon Savannah.

n“GYAOOOOHN!”

nThe Rank 6 Venom Wyvern spread the wings that were attached to its front limbs as it let out a roar.

nIt was a Wyvern that had grown older and increased its Rank, becoming larger and evolving to gain the ability to secrete deadly venom from its claws and the enormous spike at the end of its tail.

nIts intelligence was still just at the level of being relatively intelligent for a beast, and it was still incapable of spitting some form of deadly breath. However, the speed and mobility of normal Wyverns couldn’t compare to those of the Venom Wyvern.

nIt was said that it would be impossible even for C-class adventurers to defeat this monster in close-range combat without being able to fly themselves.

n“I’ll try fighting it alone, just as we planned at the start.” Vandalieu had been planning to use the mid-boss that appeared before the boss of Borkus’s Sub-Dragon Savannah as a test for himself.

nEven if he leveled up and his Attribute Values increased, it would be meaningless if he couldn’t put them to use in real battles. He wouldn’t be able to confidently say that he had become strong enough to not be killed instantly by the Dragon Golem.

nFor that purpose, he was to fight the Venom Wyvern one-on-one and see if he could defeat it. Of course, without using a Mana Absorption Barrier to remove the Mana from its wings and bring it to the ground.

nOf course, even if he was able to defeat the Venom Wyvern, there was no guarantee that he would be able to avoid an instant death at the hands of the half-destroyed Dragon Golem.

nThat Dragon Golem was overwhelmingly superior to the weak Dragon that was currently flapping its wings threateningly in front of Vandalieu.

nWell, this is just to get an idea of how strong I am. I know I’m not going to gain any special abilities or anything from beating this mid-boss. If I win, I’ll try going down to the Dragon Golem again and if it’s still not going to work out, I’ll just have to come back and do more training.

n“Make sure you don’t die,” Borkus warned him.

n“Do your best, boy. Do not forget that we are all watching over you,” said Zadiris.

nReceiving this encouragement, Vandalieu stepped forward to challenge the Venom Wyvern on his own.

n“I failed this time, too,” said Vandalieu.

n“Well, it can’t be helped. I heard that C-class adventurers need to have a lot of talent or put in an incredible amount of hard work.”

n“Vandalieu works hard for his age, but it’s one-on-one… you’re a Tamer, so you don’t need to worry about it, right?”

nAfter failing for the fifth time, Vandalieu had returned to Talosheim and was resting while developing more weapons, making katsuobushi and doing other various things.

nHe was currently attending a meeting between Bilde and the other mothers who were busy raising their children, where ideas regarding childcare were being exchanged. He was also practicing death-attribute magic at the same time.

nThe food menu was mostly Japanese, consisting of miso soup containing katsuobushi and wild vegetables, acorn powder udon and agar soaked in honey for dessert.

nHe had first tried making katsuobushi around this time last year, mass-producing failed products that had been made using a process based on his knowledge from Earth of over twenty years ago, but he had finally become able to make it successfully and reliably recently.

nI should have learned more about katsuobushi and smoking food. Well, I’d never imagined that I would be making katsuobushi in another world.

nHe had tried to connect the pieces of his vague knowledge of the process from television and whatnot and executed it as best as he could, producing large quantities of failures as a result. He got the feeling that the fillets were supposed to be smoked near a charcoal fire, but it was likely that he remembered it incorrectly or the method he remembered was some kind of unorthodox one.

nAs for the udon, it had been made using acorn flour that was smoother than wheat flour with the eggs of the Giga bird that Gorba had captured to bind the flour together. He had originally wanted to make ramen, but he had been unable to make lye water*.

nTLN*: Apparently this is something that is necessary for acidity regulation in the ramen-making process.

nSodium carbonate and potassium carbonate are the main ingredients of lye water; in other words, it is a special kind of alkaline solution. Vandalieu was currently trying to think of ways he might be able to make it. Even the spirits of the researchers in Origin that Vandalieu had listened to hadn’t made their own lye water.

nHe was trying to devise a method, so he would likely be able to make it in a few years’ time.

nVandalieu had been surprised to learn that noodles didn’t exist in Lambda. There was no udon, soba, ramen, not even pasta. So when he had first made udon, everyone’s impressions had been something along the lines of, “This bread is quite long and thin. It’s interesting that you’ve used boiling water to make it.”

nWell, that was why spreading the Japanese custom of slurping when eating udon and soba seemed like it would be fun.

nHe had thought that there would be at least udon or pasta, but… Considering that there was no smoked food either, perhaps there were only simple foods and recipes in this world. Perhaps the reason was that the people hadn’t had the freedom to invent them, or the fact that delicious monster meat and produce could be obtained from Devil’s Nests, eliminating the need to invent such food.

nAnd the agar used for the dessert was something that Vandalieu had made from tengusa, while the honey was, of course, from the Cemetery Bees. Vandalieu had tamed… or rather, been forced to tame the Cemetery Bees, who were now building an enormous nest in Talosheim’s royal castle.

nEven though it was winter, worker bees were being sent into the Devil’s Nests to produce honey. Incidentally, the Cemetery Bees mainly ate meat. There was no problem with giving them the meat of monsters that wasn’t suitable for eating, such as that of Goblins.

nThe honey of the Cemetery Bees had a powerful scent and rich taste. The combination of agar with this honey had become very popular. With things like tengusa and kombu being major food ingredients, the inhabitants of Talosheim were forced to reconsider their opinions on the value of seaweed.

nThey required effort to make, however, as they couldn’t be created through the cast of a spell like miso and fish sauce.

n“Come to think of it, Van, isn’t it a bad idea to give honey to the children?” asked Basdia.

n“This is honey that has had everything harmful to the body removed, so there’s no problem,” said Vandalieu.

nVandalieu had used Sterilization and Disinfect to remove any components that could cause harm to the body from the honey while preserving its quality. It would be impossible for anyone to collapse from eating this honey… though he couldn’t change the fact that one would gain weight if they ate too much of it.

n“So I suppose it’s fine for them to eat.”

n“Uu~.” The baby in her arms made a strange noise.

n“But it’s still too early for you to eat baby food, Jadal.” Basdia readjusted the way she was holding the baby, who was reaching a hand out towards a plate full of honey-covered fruit, so that the baby was further away from it.

nJadal was Basdia’s daughter who had been born towards the end of summer. Perhaps in return for Basdia having gone through so much trouble getting pregnant, the birth and delivery had been surprisingly straightforward. Now Jadal was growing quickly.

nHer gray-brown, puffy cheeks were very adorable.

n“Jadal-chan has grown big, hasn’t she?” said one of the other mothers. “Ah, are you trimming her claws properly?”

n“No, it seems like she hasn’t grown any yet,” replied Basdia. “When did Varbie start growing them?”

n“For Varbie, I suppose it was just before she turned a year old. But sometimes they can grow them as early as three months after they’re born, so make sure you trim them properly.”

n“Children can hurt themselves with their own claws, after all,” said another mother. “Did that happen for you, King?”

n“Vandalieu started growing his claws after only three months, but he was already very smart by then,” said Darcia.

n“Really?! Smart at the age of three months, that’s amazing.”

n“He was only a year old when he came to our village, so I think it’s a bit late to be surprised.”

nDarcia was smiling as she joined in on the conversation between the Ghoul mothers. She had only been visible to Vandalieu and the Undead up until now, but now she was able to be seen by Basdia, Bilde and the others as well as converse with them thanks to the Visualization spell that Vandalieu had invented, though it did make her appear rather transparent.

nHe had thought that Darcia would be less stressed if she could communicate with others more smoothly, so he had created the spell with that in mind.

nWell, since it also made the whip-marks and burns on her spirit visible, it would be difficult to use in human societies, unlike in Talosheim where everyone knew about her circumstances.

nVandalieu wanted to resurrect her and make this spell useless before entering human societies.

nMeanwhile, Vandalieu was playing with the Ghoul children nearby.

n“Nao~.” Another of the Ghoul babies made a noise.

nAs Ghoul boys had the heads of lions as soon as they were born, they looked just like kittens at this age. They didn’t have paws, but they were very cute.

nBone Man didn’t seem to be able to deal with them, however. Vandalieu was really glad that he had instructed him not to harm any cats without thinking.

n“Papa.”

n“I’m not your papa,” said Vandalieu.

nI know you’re really attached to me, but I’m not your papa. Let’s make this very clear.

n“Nii-nii.”

n“That’s right, Nii-nii is correct.”

nIf by “Nii-nii” you mean “Onii-chan”, you’re absolutely right. I’m three years older than you.

n“Nee…”

n“Not Nee-nee, Nii-nii.”

nI’m not your onee-chan.

n“The King is kind of girlish, I guess,” one of the Ghoul mothers commented. “Like the shape of his head.”

n“You’re right; if he had the same skin color as us, you’d never think he’s a boy,” said another.

nAs Ghoul men had the heads of lions, from Bilde and the other mothers’ perspective, Vandalieu had feminine features and a girl’s head. However, it seemed that this didn’t apply for the Undead Titans like Borkus or Zran who had large, robust bodies with beautiful muscles.

n“Muh… Once my voice changes and I hit my second growth period, I’m sure I’ll be like them, too.”

nAnd by the time I’m an adult, I’ll have a cleft chin, arms like logs, a broad chest, abdominal muscles like the caterpillar tracks of a tank and thighs thicker than a woman’s waist. I’ll definitely be as macho as a Hollywood star.

nI have the Superhuman Strength skill that increases my muscle strength, so I’m sure of it.

n… Probably, I hope.

nPauvina, with the other children riding on her back as if she were a horse, passed happily by Vandalieu as he was feeling strangely insecure about his future self.

nShe was almost one year old, but she was already big enough to look five or six. She was currently obsessed with letting the other children ride on her back.

nShe was definitely not showing off her future promise of becoming a muscular individual right in front of Vandalieu.

n“Come to think of it, what happened with clearing the mid-boss?” asked Basdia.

n“Once I’m finished with this break, I’ll be going to challenge it for the sixth time,” replied Vandalieu.

nVandalieu had repeatedly lost to the mid-boss on the twentieth floor of Borkus’s Sub-Dragon Savannah.

nOf course, it wasn’t as if his life was put at risk during these fights. In a fight to the death, he would win. But simply based on the rules he had set, he was losing.

nHe fought the mid-boss one-on-one. This included the restriction of the use of Golems created through Golem Transmutation.

nOn top of that, he wasn’t allowed to use Mana Absorption Barrier to rob the mid-boss of its mobility.

nThe time limit he had set was determined by an hourglass, which took roughly five minutes for all of its sand to fall.

nVandalieu had fought the Venom Wyvern under these rules five times.

nHe couldn’t land his attacks on the Venom Wyvern, and even if he did, they were ineffective, and five minutes would quickly pass. He had repeated this process several times.

nUsing Disinfect removed the venom inside the Venom Wyvern’s body, which meant that he didn’t need to worry about being poisoned until it produced the venom again. His Impact-Negating Barrier was more than enough to stop the Venom Wyvern’s direct attacks.

nBut Vandalieu’s attacks hadn’t been able to deal a decisive blow, either.

nAt first, he had tried using the no-attribute spell, Flight, to match his opponent, but he had been completely unable to keep up. If it were just a matter of speed, he would have been able to move faster by simply spending a great amount of Mana, but the Venom Wyvern was far superior when it came to performing tight turns.

nTo begin with, the no-attribute spell, Flight, was simply a spell that used Telekinesis to move the caster’s body. It wasn’t a match for the skillful, complicated flying techniques of the Venom Wyvern that employed the use of wind-attribute Mana in its wings.

nAnd then he had tried defeating it from a distance. He had tried aiming at it with Mana Bullets, but this had failed due to their problematic range and projectile speed.

nAt any rate, Mana that wasn’t affected by any attribute dispersed easily. The Mana Bullet spell was a spell that gathered such Mana to prevent its dispersion as much as possible.

nHowever, there were limits to how much he could prevent it from dispersing. Their range was only several dozen meters normally, and even when Vandalieu poured ten thousand Mana into a single projectile, it didn’t even last a hundred meters. Even using Multi-Cast to release multiple Mana Bullets at the same time had the same result.

nTheir speed was inferior even to arrows, never mind bullets fired from the guns on Earth, and their trajectory was linear, making them very easy to avoid. Dodging them was child’s play for the Venom Wyvern that could fly in any direction at high speeds.

nVandalieu had tried methods like twisting the shape of the Mana Bullets to alter their trajectory, but still none of them had managed to hit. If they did, they had enough destructive power to burst the Venom Wyvern’s flesh and organs, however.

nIn any case, as Vandalieu was unable to engage it in close-quarters combat and Mana Bullets were ineffective. This meant that he was left with the indirect methods of poisoning it, infecting it with disease, using Soul Break to somehow take its Mana away and distracting it with a Lemure to create an opening.

nBut even when he had managed to get poison created using his Deadly Poison spell into the Venom Wyvern’s eyes and mouth, it wasn’t effective as it seemed to possess the Poison Resistance skill.

nThings had gone well when he had done the same thing with disease, but five minutes passed before the disease began to work.

nSoul Break was a skill that had no effect if Vandalieu couldn’t land any physical or magical attacks on the enemy, and since the Mana drained by the skill was equal to the amount of damage dealt to the body, he couldn’t drain any of the Venom Wyvern’s Mana.

nThough Lemures had worked on lesser Wyverns, the Venom Wyvern hadn’t shown any large openings despite being surprised by the bloodthirst that the Lemure suddenly produced.

nAnd then Vandalieu had remembered his battle against Sercrent and amplified his Impact-Negating Barrier at the moment of the Venom Wyvern’s attack, managing to trap its claws and tail in the barrier and creating an opening for the first time.

nBut before he had managed to move into an attack, it twisted its long neck to bite off the tip of its tail and its trapped paw to escape.

nIt was even more resolute than Sercrent had been. This wasn’t something that even a wild animal would be able to do immediately. It was only its fighting instincts as the mid-boss of a Dungeon and the knowledge that it would die instantly if one of Vandalieu’s Mana Bullets struck its torso that allowed it to do this.

nAnd after that, the five-minute time limit passed again.

nAfter their battles, Borkus and the others had quickly dealt with the Venom Wyvern, continued on to defeat the Dungeon boss on the thirtieth floor and taken the loot in the treasure chamber.

nThis had given him experience and caused him to level up.

n“I can definitely win next time,” said Vandalieu.

n“Vandalieu, you don’t have to be in such a hurry, you know?” said Darcia. “If I’m resurrected five years, ten years or even a hundred years from now, I don’t mind.”

n“It’s alright,” said Vandalieu. “I say this every time, but it’ll be alright this time.”

nDarcia seemed uncertain, but Vandalieu knew he had a chance to win this time.

nHe had gotten an idea for altering the Mana Bullet spell to create a new death-attribute spell.

nVandalieu had thought that death-attribute magic had limited ways to deal damage directly to enemies, but if there were limited ways, he just had to invent some.

nHe had postponed the invention of such a spell because he didn’t gain any experience from defeating enemies himself, but he could devote his efforts to it if necessary.

nAs a result, he had successfully finished developing a new spell yesterday. This spell was a projectile affected by the death-attribute with long range, high speed and a difficult-to-read trajectory.

n“I’ll definitely win next time. There won’t be a seventh time,” Vandalieu declared confidently.

nUnlike the regular monsters, mid-bosses and bosses that appear in Dungeons are produced by the Dungeon’s core.

nThat is why no matter how many times a boss is defeated, once a certain amount of time passes, a monster of equal strength appears in its place.

n“Shaaah…”

n“Shuaaa.”

nSeven enormous snake heads large enough to swallow a cow whole were coiling around each other. However, there was only one tail.

nIt is one of the Dragon races, a serpent with multiple heads. When this creature hatches from its egg it has two heads and is the size of a Japanese rat snake, but the number of heads increases as it develops, as does the size of its body, the hardness of its scales, its regenerative abilities and the potency of its venom.

nAnd once it matures to adulthood, it becomes an enormous seven-headed serpent known as a Hydra.

nIt is Rank 6, superior to Wyverns among the Dragon races.

nIts intelligence is not much different from a normal snake and it is far less mobile than Wyverns.

nHowever, its powerful body can mow down a human with ease, and it is difficult to wound it through its scales with normal methods. And the substance secreted from its fangs is a potent venom that cannot be removed without a special antidote.

nAnd what makes this creature difficult to kill is its resilience that keeps it alive unless all of its heads are cut off and its heart is destroyed. If only one of these two steps are taken, its regenerative ability will allow it to make a full recovery in a matter of days.

nIncidentally, Hydras can develop even further to grow an eighth head, becoming known as an Orochi. Its name was no doubt given to it by one of the heroes from another world.

n“I want a rematch,” said Vandalieu, seeing the Hydra that had appeared for his sixth attempt at fighting a mid-boss of Borkus’s Sub-Dragon Savannah.

n“No, that’s probably impossible,” said Borkus, denying him immediately.

n“But I just invented a new spell to deal with the Venom Wyvern’s mobility…”

nThe Hydra was less intelligent and less mobile than a normal Wyvern. Of course, it couldn’t even compare to the higher-Rank version, the Venom Wyvern.

n“There’s nothing to be done about it,” Borkus told him. “It was actually really unusual that the same monster spawned five times in a row as the mid-boss in the first place.”

nNormally, the race of mid-bosses and bosses that appear in Dungeons are not fixed. They tend to be of around the same general strength, but they are generated randomly by the Dungeon.

nThis Dungeon would generate Rank 6 Dragon or dinosaur-type mid-bosses.

nThe Venom Wyvern was probably one of the stronger monsters that could have been generated. The reason it had appeared five times in a row was due to Vandalieu’s bad luck.

n“It’s not like that Hydra’s going to back down now,” said Borkus. “Try it out. That new spell of yours.”

n“Sure… Death Bullet.”

nAs Vandalieu lifted a hand towards the Hydra that was raising its curved necks, a black object resembling shimmering hot air appeared at his palm.

nHe fired the Death Bullet at the Hydra that had sensed some extraordinary presence and was trying to escape.

nThe Death Bullet consisted of death-attribute Mana capable of draining an enemy’s life-force, condensed using the same principle as the Mana Bullet.

nHe couldn’t fire them consecutively because he still wasn’t used to casting the spell, but their range and speed were on another level. They also had a homing ability that allowed them to chase targets to a certain extent.

n“SHIGYAAAAAH!”

nHowever, the Death Bullet’s projectile speed and homing ability proved unnecessary as it hit the Hydra with ease. A scream rose from the Hydra as its Vitality was drained, and its heads began lowering towards the ground one by one.

nVandalieu fired multiple more Death Bullets, and once all of its heads were lying on the ground, he fired one last Death Bullet at its heart to deal the final blow.

nWhat remained was the corpse of a Hydra that was dead despite being completely unwounded.

n“Oh, that’s pretty amazing,” said Borkus.

n“Considering that the amount of Mana I spent was equivalent to the entire Mana pools of a hundred first-rate Mages, not really,” said Vandalieu.

n“That might be true, but… that’s less than one percent for you, isn’t it? Anyway, you should be happy. You beat a mid-boss in less than a minute, never mind the five-minute time limit.”

n“I did, but…”

n“You don’t need to be so focused on the Venom Wyvern. The main thing is, you just need to become strong enough that the Dragon Golem won’t kill you straight away,” Borkus reminded him. “Isn’t that right?”

nYou’re right, but I still can’t feel satisfied.

nStill, as Borkus says, clearing this Dungeon repeatedly until the Venom Wyvern appears is wandering too far away from my goal. So I guess this will do.

nThe Dragon Golem is next.

n【The levels of the Death-Attribute Charm, Strengthen Followers, No-Attribute Magic, Mana Control, Cooking and Unarmed Fighting Technique skills have increased!】

n【You have acquired the Long-range Control skill!】

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