"I've said my goodbye, but I'm still aliv— Ow. Ow. Ow…" I grimaced in pain. "…Uugh. My head hurts."
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Brain load: 97%
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I just had been involved in a fairly massive explosion and blasted away for quite some distance, leaving my HP under 15%.
"Cough— cough! What the hell was that!?" From behind me, Verdra propped herself up after being blown back by the same explosion—she's fine, not badly burned as me. "I didn't even have time to react— cough, cough— Yuu, are you okay?"
The center of the explosion had left behind a massive crater roughly 30 meters in diameter. I was lying right at its edge, my body covered in severe burns.
"Of course not," I replied flatly. "I'm hurt all over."
"If you can still reply with your usual sarcasm, that means you're fine." Verdra stood up and dusted herself off. "So what actually happened just now?"
It's not sarcasm, though…
"You're merciless as always." I slowly sat up and pulled out an Elixir of Life from the Book of Safekeeping, gulping it down in one breath.
"Ugh… why is this thing always so bitter?" I stuck my tongue out in protest.
I waited a moment for the elixir to do its work before explaining everything to her.
I told her that the explosion had been caused by my own skill. It was hard to explain properly, but in short: I tried to manipulate the plasma inside her Hellfire to raise its temperature even further. The moment I touched the energy within it using Plasmakinesis, the plasmas inside became wildly unstable and uncontrollable—like endlessly pumping air into a balloon while desperately trying to keep it from bursting. An impossible task.
It devoured my brain load at an alarming rate, even with how ridiculously high my Intelligence stats are now.
"…And that's what happened. All thanks to my new skill," I finished.
"So, you nearly got yourself killed by your own ability?" Verdra asked, unimpressed.
"…Yeah," I admitted after a brief pause.
"How foolish…"
"Oh, come on. It wasn't as bad as the first time we fought the Chimerberus yesterday, am I right?" I tried to lighten the mood.
"Mmgh." She flinched.
"I got chewed up pretty badly by his wolf head, after all."
"…Yeah." Her voice softened. "I really thought I was going to lose you for a moment there."
Back then, we had no idea what the Chimerberus was capable of. Nearly half my body had been bitten and mangled like bubble gum by its wolf head before Verdra rushed in to save me— hence, I am still alive and kicking right now.
Nowadays, I could stockpile as many Elixirs of Life as I wanted thanks to the countless high-Lv monsters in the deeper floors of this dungeon. As long as an attack didn't instantly killed me, I wouldn't die no matter how severe the wounds were.
"So," Verdra asked after we rested for a few minutes, "can you still continue?"
I stood up and brushed off my singed clothes. "My head still hurts a bit, but I'm fine. Let's wipe this floor clean."
"Alright." She turned and started walking. "Let's go."
"Right behind you."
We planned to stay on the 9th floor for a while. We needed to Lv up more before descending to the 10th floor—a floor I was sure with 99.99% certainty was a boss floor.
The 9th floor consisted of enormous tunnels lined with ancient ruins. The area was brightly lit by the same light crystals used throughout the dungeon. The ceiling stood about 50 meters high, with tunnels roughly 60 meters wide—spacious enough that Verdra could maneuver freely through the air during fights without worrying about hitting the ceiling.
Despite its size, the floor was still a labyrinth filled with branching paths and dead ends. It was the largest floor we'd encountered so far. It took us nearly 3 weeks to explore it before locating the boss—and that was without needing to return to the 8th floor's save zone each night. We could rest inside ruined buildings instead.
Luckily, there were no traps in this dungeon. Well—if you didn't count the monsters themselves. Each floor had a massive Lv jump, so I supposed it has other ideas of trapping you. After all, I was literally trapped in here, with no way out even after crawling it down for more than 4 months.
The 9th floor was unique. Unlike earlier floors that featured only a single monster type, this one contained the giga buffed versions of nearly every previous boss monster as its mob—excluding the 4th floor's Doppelganger and the 7th floor's Vulcanyclops—their appearances didn't change much, but their Lv are adjusted to the level that are worthy of the Hellhole Dungeon's 9th floor, it's hovered around 5400 up to 5600. It also introduced our first non-humanoid type monster: the Chimerberus… yeah, only the Chimerberus.
The mob monsters of the 9th floor were as follows:
Super Minotyrant (Buffed 2nd floor's boss)
Super Yeti Shogun (Buffed 3rd floor's boss)
Super Satyr Warlock (Buffed 5th floor's boss)
Super Queen Arachnea (Buffed 6th floor's boss)
Super Kijin Ōu (Buffed 8th floor's boss)
Among them, the Satyr Warlock stood out as a particularly troublesome opponent. Ordinary Satyrs were already proficient magic users, but the Warlock variant operated on an entirely different level. They could cast large-scale fire magic almost instantly, and their mana reserves were likely comparable to Verdra's.
In general, monsters could use magic without incantations, which made magic-capable enemies difficult to predict. On top of that, Satyrs were extremely nimble thanks to their goat-like legs. Verdra had been especially irritated during our first encounter with them—they dodged her attacks with ease while mockingly dancing and waving their hands around frantically.
Physically, they weren't that strong, though. Once you got used to their movements, dealing with them became fairly straightforward.
Arachneas, on the other hand, were my personal nightmare—no, wet dreams.
They had the upper body of a human woman and the lower body of a giant spider, attacking with threads that looked flimsy but were incredibly durable. Those threads could bind, pierce, or skewer their targets with ease.
So far, Arachneas were the most difficult enemies for me to fight.
The problem was their upper bodies—their human women's bodies, a very voluptuous one at that, too. Especially the Queen variant. And since they were monsters, they wore absolutely nothing to cover themselves. The way their bodies moved was… far too distracting for a young boy like me.
Verdra found them even more irritating than the Satyrs. Every time I take a glance at their Jiggling physics, I froze up for half a second, and in an instant, her mood would visibly turned sour. Eventually, she sworn that she would kill every single Arachnea 'on sight' before I even had the chance to lay my eyes at them.
Lastly, there were the Kijins.
They had humanoid builds, red skin, and a single horn protruding from their foreheads—very similar to Oni from Japanese folklore. They wielded a katana and used lightning magic, and they were incredibly fast.
Observing their use of lightning to reinforce their legs was what inspired my 'Reinforced' ability. Before fighting them, I hadn't even known that lightning magic could be used to enhance physical movement like that.
Perhaps even the so-called 'complete magic guide' I borrowed from the elven palace wasn't truly complete after all.
We explored all the areas that were still unmapped on my mini map. The 9th floor turned out to be enormous; it took us another week after defeating the Chimerberus for the 2nd time to fully explore it. Along the way, I also tested out my new abilities.
My new Electrokinesis ability, Nega-Electrokinesis, was simple enough to understand. I got the hang of it in just a few tries. It was basically Electrokinesis, but with black lightning—a type of lightning with much stronger voltage than the bright-colored one. It was pretty similar to Verdra's Lv10 lightning magic ability, Black Lightning.
Plasmakinesis, on the other hand…
"Yuu— Achoo!!" Verdra sneezed, hugging her sleeves tightly around herself. "Why did the temperature suddenly drop? We're not on the 3rd floor, right?"
At the moment, we were staying inside one of the somewhat still-standing buildings among the 9th floor's ruins. It was a concrete structure about 5x5 meters wide, with a single wooden door on one side and a barred window beside it, dimly lit by the light outside. We hadn't had proper rest for the last 2 days, so we decided to stay the night here. We had already wiped out the surrounding monsters, and they wouldn't respawn until tomorrow at the earliest, so we could rest without worry.
There was no concept of day or night inside this dungeon, though. I only checked the time through my menu.
"Oh— sorry. I forgot you're bad with the cold. I'll return it to nor—" I paused mid-sentence. "—mal… I can't."
I tried to melt the fist-sized ice cube I was using for my Plasmakinesis experiment by heating it with Pyrokinesis.
"Why?" she asked.
"It just won't melt. Wait a second, I'll add more power…" I increased the output of my Pyrokinesis, but— "…this isn't working."
The ice cube remained frozen solid, without even a hint of melting.
"What's taking you so long? Step aside! I'll do it myself." She shoved me aside and snapped her fingers.
A small Hellfire eruption struck the ice cube sitting atop a broken pillar I was using as a makeshift table.
"Whoa— stop that! You'll collapse the building!"
"Fuuuh, that's a lot bette— Achoo! Why is it still cold?!"
As it turned out, the ice cube was still frozen solid, only slightly reduced in size.
"It's not melting at all?!" she continued complaining, glaring at me.
"Wow… this is amazing," I muttered in awe, completely ignoring her glare. "Just a single ice cube was enough to chill the entire room. Plasmakinesis really is something. I might be able to make a super refrigerator with this skill."
The ice cube had been made by freezing a cup of water with Cryokinesis, then increasing its density using the Lv10 Cryokinesis ability, Picno-Cryokinesis. After that, I lowered its temperature even further with Plasmakinesis. The result was an ice cube that could withstand Verdra's Hellfire. Of course, it wasn't even a quarter of her full power, but it was impressive nonetheless.
It ate up a stupid amount of my brain load, though. Just making a fist-sized ice cube consumed around 35%. I could only make about 2 and a half before overloading my brain.
"Re-v-ref what— That's not important right now!" She pointed at the ice in exasperation. "Do something about that!
"Okay, okay, I got it. So could you stop looking at me like that?"
I heated the ice with even greater Pyrokinesis until it finally melted—after burning through another 30% of my brain load. With my current power level, I could probably kill 4 or 5 Lv5000 monsters with that amount alone. Now that ice cube honestly kinda scared me.
"You know, couldn't you just warm yourself up with Warmth?" I asked as I remembered she was a fire mage. "I mean, you have plenty of mana anyway. Is there really a need to get this worked up over a slight— I-I mean, sizable coldness?"
"Hmph!" She turned her face away, sulking.
Why is she sulking now?! I just don't get it. Aargh…! times like this make me wish I'd interacted with girls more before.
"Uh… please don't sulk," I pleaded, though a little irritated, she just won't tell me what's her problem. "At least tell me why you've been cold toward me lately. There's things that can only be conveyed with words. If there's something you're dissatisfied with, please, just tell me. You're the last person in the world that I want to hate me."
Hearing that, her expression softened. Then she pouted as she demanded, "I'm still cold. I want you to warm me up yourself."
I gulped.
"…G-girls shouldn't say things like that to a healthy young boy!" I protested, my voice rising slightly, face was definitely red. "You'll make their imagination run wild!"
"Then let it run wild," she replied, still pouting.
I gulped again—audibly.
"You asked why I've been acting cold toward you, right?" she continued, her tone more resigned now. "It's not that I'm doing it intentionally, even if I tried to suppress it, it's just slipped sometimes. I guess— haaah… maybe it's just… my frustration of your cowardice building up over time."
"M-my cowardice?" I managed, feeling slightly intimidated.
"You always keep your distance, like… there's a barrier between us. At first, I thought it was kind of cute, but nowadays— I-I want more. Maybe I'm just greedy." She lowered her gaze.
"I'm sorry if my attitude made you misunderstand me," she continued. "But you can rest assured, I'll never hate you. It's just…" She paused, gripping her elbow and turning her face away, her expression lonesome. "You love me, right?"
"Of course," I replied instantaneously, my tone low and serious. "There's no one in this world I love more than you."
Her cheeks reddened as she looked straight into my eyes. "Then let me rephrase it. Do you love me as a girl… or as a comrade?"
"Both," I answered immediately with 100% sincerity, meeting her gaze. "I love you as a comrade because you're reliable and easy to talk to, very much so—w-well, lately, it was quite rough to be honest. As for why I love you as a girl was becau— b-because… d-do I really have to say it?"
"Finish what you started!" she insisted, voice raised slightly.
"It was because I'm just a simple-minded guy who loves attractive girls who shower him with affection—especially someone as stupidly attractive as you!" I blurted out. "After being together for months, it's practically impossible not to develop romantic feelings towards you! It's just Impossible not to! I repeat— impossible! Hah… Hah… Hah…"
I ran out of breath from the rapid, lengthy confession. I clenched my fists and shut my eyes tight to held back my embarrassment.
Even though I've never said it out loud, we've already kissed so for many times… so why's she still asking?
…No, that's exactly the problem… I just told her to put her feelings into words, yet here I am, never once saying something that important myself.
Maybe, deep down, I still can't fully put my trust in others—
—but this is Verdra we're talking about. She would never betray me.
Man… what a hypocrite.
I really am the worst…
After steadying my breathing and shoving away my self deprecating thoughts, I opened my eyes and looked at her again.
"..."
"..."
…
We stared at each other in silence for nearly a minute long.
"W-why don't you say something?" I asked nervously, breaking it.
She looked down, covering her flushed face with both hands. "Why are you so good at saying such long, embarrassing lines like that?" I could almost hear steam coming off her face—probably my imagination. "I'm happy you love me that much, but now… I regret asking. Uuh… This is so embarrassing…"
"You're the one who started this!" I exclaimed.
"And that's because someone asked me to be honest about my feelings!" she shot back.
"T-t-that's… I'm sorry." I had no rebuttal.
"What are you apologizing for? I'm the one who should be sorry for being so hard to understand."
"W-well… what were we even arguing about again?" I asked, having completely lost track.
She lowered her hands and looked at me again. "I… I just wanted to feel more of your love." Her gaze softened. "As a girl, I think it's normal for me for wanting the person I love to love me back, right?"
"B-but considering how captivating you are, if I love you more than I already am, I might not be able to hold myself back—i-if you know what I mean." I said nervously. "What if I lose control of myself?"
"I never asked you to hold back."
Oh god! That phrasing was dangerous.
"I could stop you by force if I wanted to," she added calmly. "I'm still stronger than you, after all—well, physically."
She… wasn't wrong.
"T-then tell me, what should I do to love you back," I asked.
"L-like I said earlier," she replied feverishly, her cheeks burning as she looked up at me with upturned gaze. "I'm still cold… s-so warm me up yourself."
What part of her is cold?! She looks absolutely hot right now!
Despite my inner turmoil, I complied with her request.