"Honestly… if you suddenly ask me to talk, I don't even know what story I should tell."
Iris smoothed her pale-blue bangs, her gaze drifting off into space.
"Then why don't you talk about what happened before and after your mother went missing?" Leon suggested. "You know—if a divination has more detailed context, it's easier to interpret."
"So that's it!"
Iris thought to herself that maybe she could trust him a little more.
Leon's "divination" didn't actually need the full backstory.
But the expansion material he'd read in his previous life had been more of a skim. If he could get more information, it would still be useful.
Iris took a deep breath and began to speak.
In her telling, Hamla was a strong, beautiful, kind hero with a fierce sense of justice. Over the many years she traveled the continent, she had done countless great deeds—rescuing suffering slaves, hunting down slavers, punishing wicked nobles, and slaying savage monsters.
Leon nodded. This matched what the expansion had shown.
Before she neared corruption, Hamla was undeniably an extremely upright figure—decisive, methodical, and capable.
Iris went on to say that because of early experiences, Hamla held little goodwill toward most nobles.
At that, Iris deliberately turned to Leon and emphasized:
"Leon, don't worry. I do have a lot of bias against Holsha's nobles—but that doesn't include you."
Leon smiled. "To be honest, I'm not really a 'proper' noble of Holsha anyway. If you just think of me as a country bumpkin, I'd be even happier."
"I won't define you by labels anymore."
Iris looked away, unsure why she'd suddenly said that. Had she started believing him without realizing it? No—stay alert!
Even so, she didn't stop. She briefly described how she had defeated many peers during the Light Elementalist awakening ritual.
Because Hamla had once committed a wrongdoing in the Holy Land, the Holy Land's people treated Hamla's return with subtle differences. So the young Iris had swallowed her pride and resolved to seize the rare extraordinary class of Light Elementalist—proving Hamla's worth.
And so, in the peer battles, she advanced fiercely. With combat experience accumulated from traveling the continent, she ultimately took first place.
But after that, when Iris entered the holy site of Ohatra to receive her awakening enlightenment, Hamla seemed to be running around dealing with "injustices" happening inside the Holy Land.
"Injustices inside the Holy Land?" Leon was puzzled. In the Sword, Magic, and the Holy Land series, the Holy Land was home to elves with extremely high moral standards.
Of course, elven morality differed somewhat from human morality.
But the Holy Land's residents were undeniably strong and disciplined, and the society was fairly harmonious.
Even Hamla, despite her past wrongdoing, hadn't been openly condemned. Iris's "chip on her shoulder" was really more about the subtle atmosphere and attitudes.
"Yes," Iris said, nodding. "I only heard later. Apparently, around those days, a fallen dark elf infiltrated the Holy Land and tried to lure more pure-blood elves into corruption. Not only that—several young ones were also abducted by internal collaborators."
"And your mother disappeared while tracking that fallen dark elf?" Leon asked. "So she wasn't hiding her identity for some other reason?"
"So it seems, for now."
Leon asked a few more details, and time passed.
With that special Minotaur jerky, their mana and stamina recovered noticeably faster.
About an hour later, they packed up and set off again.
…
After that, they encountered more second-tier monsters, but all of them were weak types:
second-tier slimes, lone second-tier goblins, second-tier skeleton-men—easy wins, low cost.
Then, at the far end of the 14th floor, they ran into a group of red-skinned spiders that spat silk.
Fire and wind magic couldn't easily break through their tough webs.
They weren't "powerful monsters," but there were many of them, so the fight still wasn't easy.
In the end, Iris spent 14 mana to cast an intermediate spell—Light Mirror Labyrinth—trapping them all in one place. Then Leon used eight beginner freezing spells combined with two beginner gale spells to form a pseudo-intermediate spell, Freezing Cold Surge, finally taking down the dozen-plus red-skinned spiders the size of sandbags.
Since the mana expenditure was significant on both sides, after finishing they began sorting the loot and prepared to rest again.
As an aside, the red spiders' silk was fairly valuable and could be used to make magic tools. What they collected here would likely sell for thirty to forty gold—making it the second-highest profit since entering the dungeon.
The other parts weren't worth much.
Meanwhile, the spiders' nest had red spider eggs stuck in clusters to a corner of the rock wall—dozens upon dozens, wet and packed together, the kind of sight that would trigger trypophobia instantly.
Even Leon felt uneasy, so he simply used a micro-flame spell to roast them.
Then—
they ate them!
Each egg was about the size of a quail egg. The flavor was similar to duck egg—slightly fishy, but with a good texture.
After Leon ate fifteen, he immediately recovered 2 mana and 2 stamina—ridiculously effective.
"These restore mana even better than Minotaur meat," Iris said, full of praise, peeling shells at lightning speed and popping spider eggs into her mouth like roasted beans. "Eggs really are the best essence on a monster."
Leon couldn't help laughing at how boldly she was eating now.
"Ha—wasn't it you who was making a face and refusing to eat these things earlier?"
"I—I wasn't making a face!" Iris argued, blushing as her eating slowed. "Don't make things up! I was just worried they were dirty! And besides—those eggs stuck wetly in the corner… you don't think that's disgusting?"
At first she'd only tried them because she'd watched Leon eat seven or eight in one go, looking like he was enjoying it, and she finally gave in with her nose pinched.
"Sure, it's a little gross," Leon admitted. "But red spider eggs are premium. I've seen them in the Oradu Dungeon Monster Cuisine Guide. If we had better cooking conditions, we could make amazing egg dishes."
"I've never even heard of that book."
"It's my top-secret strategy cookbook I bought specifically for this expedition," Leon said with a smug grin. "Of course you haven't heard of it. Study harder."
"Fine… I guess what I learned from my mother as a child still isn't enough to let me go farther in the dungeon."
Iris puffed her cheeks, reluctantly admitting her lack of knowledge.
In truth, that "Guide" was something a lifestyle-focused gamer from Leon's previous life had made—there was no way Iris would've seen it.
After clearing Part One in his previous life, Leon had also played "life-sim" style for a while, so he remembered many edible monsters.
A normal person, seeing a wet clump of eggs stuck in a corner, wouldn't think "eat"—they'd think "collect and sell."
At worst, they'd smash them to prevent more fierce monsters from being born.
The two continued eating the roasted eggs while waiting for stamina and mana to recover.
They really were good—but to fully return to pre-fight condition, they still needed to rest a bit longer.
Since roasted eggs were inconvenient to carry, they decided to finish them on the spot.
But when Leon ate his thirty-second egg, he started getting sick of it—his mouth full of fishy aftertaste.
Then he noticed a panel update.
[Repeated consumption of high-energy food: Stamina Cap +1]
[Primary Stats: Vitality 30 / Mana 27 / Stamina 31 / Strength 31 / Agility 40]
Interesting.
So red spider eggs didn't just speed up mana/stamina recovery—eating enough of them could directly raise stamina?
Looks like his panel could even identify the effects of monster food.