NOVEL NEXT Chapter 22: Cockroaches
Just as planned, on Monday morning, I woke up early. I prepared some things we’d need for the dungeon. Garth managed to get Nikola dressed and ready before 5:30.
Nikola yawned and complained while we were on the rickshaw. “Why are we leaving so early? We didn’t even get breakfast.” Dixon and Woodie were still in bed when we left.
“If you’re hungry, just eat what Garth prepared.” I’d already instructed Garth to make us all the meals we’ll need for the next week, plus a little extra.
“What would you like? I have bacon sandwiches, sausage sandwiches, egg-”
“I’ll have bacon.” She stopped him from listing the whole menu.
“Alright.” He rummaged through the space expansion bag and pulled out the bacon sandwiches. Then handed her one. “There you go.”
“Thanks.”
By the time Nikola finished her sandwich and was licking her fingers, we were at the dungeon.
“Is it fine to go in without telling the guild?” Garth asked.
“We already told them. You have the permits from last time, right?” There was no need to get the guild’s approval every time you entered a dungeon. As long as you had the permits, you could go in. And the permits we got last time covered all the F-rank dungeons in the area.
“Ah, let me.” He rummaged through the bag and found the papers. “Yeah, got them.”
“Good,” I said as I took them from his hands and walked towards the entrance of the dungeon. I gave our permits to the guard. They knew it was good as soon as they saw it and handed it back.
“And her.” The guard said, signaling out Nikola.
“Oh, right.” Nikola went through her pockets and pulled out her permit.
She was wearing new cargo pants and leather armor she’d bought with my money. Garth was wearing a similar getup, and I was wearing a humble red pants suit.
“Alright, you can go in.” The guard approved.
Nikola yawned and took out her sword as we walked past the entrance hall of the dungeon. We saw one other group who’d come early. We saw them use the teleportation platform to go deeper into the dungeon.
Maglo, like Pinksdu, has been around for a long time and has been explored so many times that humans had redesigned the interior to make monster-hunting more convenient. Light stones brightly illuminated the tunnels. There were stairs, paved floors, signs warning of danger, etc.
Just as Otto explained to them, giant cockroaches the size of raccoons crawled towards us. Though they’re a creepy thing to look at, their danger level was low.
Nikola held her sword with one hand, charged towards them, and sliced them apart.
“Wait! Let me test out…” She didn’t listen to me and freely chopped them all to pieces.
I’ve tested out [telekinesis] outside the dungeon a little bit, but for the most part, I’d restrained myself from using it. Two days ago, I tried lifting a beaker with [telekinesis] and shattered it. I’ll need to train it a lot before using it outside. Even then, I plan on never using it on humans unless I want to kill them. It was too dangerous. Even the slightest loss of concentration could cause misalignment. Even slight misalignment of cells and tissue could severely injure or kill someone.
Garth went forward and sliced up a few too. They were following the strategy we used last time. Ignoring my desire to train.
Green blood dripped from their swords as they stood in the middle of dozens of cockroach corpses.
“Hey,” I said, “Don’t attack them next time. Let me test out my [telekinesis].”
“Telekinesis? Master, did you level up?” Garth asked.
“Yes. So let me test out my powers.”
“Wait? You leveled up?” Nikola looked shocked. She was still level 8 after all, jealously was natural. I smirked. “Wait, that boy. How many experience points did he?..”
“Maybe I’ll let you use him later. Hahahaha…” I laughed. “Floppy ears, you’re too cute,” I said, patting her shoulder. “You should work harder.”
“Hmrm…” She grumbled.
We continued down the tunnel, and more cockroaches ran towards us. “Stand back,” I said.
Garth got behind my back and said, “You should come here too, Nikola.”
She puffed up her chest and said, “Why would I hide behind her back.”
I looked over at Nikola and saw that she was covered in green blood. She didn’t scream like Garth but looked at me dissatisfied.
“What?” I asked.
She then ran forward and killed the rest of the cockroaches.
Garth hid behind my back for most of the day. Controlling [telekinesis] was a lot harder than [lightning].
Nikola didn’t seem to mind getting messy, though. She fought even while I trained. She was splattered with green blood multiple times but continued to fight. It looked like she was training to avoid the blood. Whenever my [telekinesis] went wrong, she did all kinds of acrobatics to avoid the splattered blood. Garth cheered for her from behind my back.
“Nikola! You’re amazing!”
“Hey, don’t shout near my ear,” I told Garth. “She has big floppy ears. She’ll hear you just fine.” We saw Nikola’s ears twitch when I said that. “See, she heard me.”
She turned towards me and said, “My ears aren’t big!”
“Oh.” So she’s accepted that they’re floppy. I nodded, stroking my chin.
We reached the first teleportation point by the end of the day, just as we’d planned. Nikola looked exhausted, but I still had plenty of mana and health.
I smacked her exhausted bum and said, “Come on.” And climbed on top of the teleportation platform. “Let’s go to the 4th floor.” The options popped up. I choose the 4th floor.
A moment later, I was at the start of the 4th floor.
Garth and Nikola showed up a moment later, and I commanded Garth, “Set up the camp. We’ll rest for today.”
“Oh, thank god.” Nikola collapsed to the ground. I ignored her.
“And give me a stool.” Garth took out the foldable stool and gave it to me. “And my dinner.”
“I was going to make dinner, master.”
“No sandwich?” I could’ve gone for a BLT.
“If you want one. I can give you one.” He said.
I saw a dozen cockroaches approaching us. “Forget it. Set up the camp.” I said and walked towards them.
With [energy manipulation, lightning], I thinned their numbers, and with the rest of them, I practiced [telekinesis].
While I practiced my [telekinesis], Nikola crawled over to Garth and sat on my stool. “How can she still keep going?” She asked him, hunched over.
“I think you should be able to do the same when you reach level 12,” Garth said.
“Please tell me his name?” She begged him with puppy dog eyes.
“Ah,” Garth scratched his head, “I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Ha~” She sighed once. “Fine.” And she sighed twice. “What are you making?”
“Beef stew.” He said, setting up the cookware and taking out the ingredients.
“Oh, that’s nice.” She watched him bring out the ingredients one after another and add them to the pot. “I guess tomorrow we’ll try to do another 3 floors.”
“Yeah, she wants to finish the whole dungeon in a week.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yeah.”
“This is just the first 3 floors. It becomes worse as you go further down. Didn’t she listen to Otto at all?”
“I think she wants to reach E-rank.”
“Why is she in such a rush?”
Garth thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “Don’t know.”
I came back to our camp, dragging along a few corpses.
“Give me an empty jar,” I said.
Garth went through the space expansion bag and took out some empty jars.
First, I cut out the yellow core and tossed it beside him. “When you’re done eating, go get the cores from those bodies too.” I pointed with my thumb.
“Okay.” He said, stirring the pot.
I cut out the cockroach’s gizzards and put them in my jar.
“Eh, what the hell are you doing?” Nikola asked, disgusted.
“Golden Centipedes love these,” I told her.
“What? The A-rank monsters?”
I nodded and continued to cut up the corpses.
***
Nikola and I took turns keeping watch for monsters. A few showed up while I slept, but Nikola took care of them.
Early next morning, we packed up our things and got back on the trail.
On the 5th floor, we encountered some upright cockroaches. Standing on their two hind legs, they commanded their crawling comrades. Though they weren’t great at commanding and made them march forward the same as usual, they were better at fighting. Able to dodge Nikola’s simple attacks. They’d dodge the sword by jumping back and then jump forward and attack. Thankfully Nikola was quick to adapt. She did a spin kick to stun the opponent and then stabbed it with her sword. After the first upright opponent, she didn’t swing her sword carelessly but became more measured and attacked, knowing they’d dodge the first strike. Thus she’d throw a feint, so as the cockroach dodged and jumped forward, she already had her sword ready to stab.
I got much better at controlling [telekinesis] by the end of the 6th floor. I was finally able to do what I’d wanted to do on the first floor. Pick them up and smash them against each other.
We went down to the 7th floor and set up camp again.
I continued to practice [telekinesis]. I combined my magics together [energy manipulation, lightning, telekinesis].
***
On the 8th floor, we encountered a problem.
“Treasure!” Nikola shouted and ran towards it.
Nikola thought she saw treasure, but of course, I with my [look-a-look] knew it wasn’t. “Stop!” My warning was too late. She stepped on the teleportation trap and instantly disappeared.
“Nikola!” Garth was shocked. “What? What happened!”
“Stop!” I blocked him from running into the trap. “It’s a teleportation trap.” Right in front of the fake treasure box was a malicious teleportation circle.
“We have to save her!” He shouted into my ear. He was panicked. “We have to find her!”
“I know. I know.”
“Then what are we doing!? We have to go after her!”
“Ah, will you calm down?”
“But! We have to-”
“I know. I know. Hand me the bag.”
“Ah, oh, a, okay.” He gave me the space expansion bag.
I rummaged through it and found what I was looking for. “Eh!” It was heavy. I put the bag on the ground and used my legs to pull out the tank. Thanks to the magic on the bag, the bag was lighter than the tank. I put the tank on the ground.
“That is?” Garth wondered.
I rummaged through the bag and got out the magic hose. Again I rummaged through it and pulled out two straps. I attached the straps to the tank and screwed on the hose.
“Help me out,” I said. Garth lifted it up for me, and I put the straps around my shoulder. I secured it tightly and said, “Okay, you can let go.” I can’t jump, but I can walk. “I didn’t want to use this so early, but O well.”
“What is it?” Garth asked.
“Insecticide,” I said.
“Insecticide?”
“Yeah, I whipped it up before we entered the dungeon.” I already had all the ingredients ready and only needed to fill up the water and mix them. So I did it the morning of the day we entered the dungeon. “Come on,” I said, stepping into the teleportation trap.