Chapter 389: Premonition
After setting up the entrance to the Dungeon so that we could harvest at any time, we moved on to the next location. I must have repeated this process about ten times. I had only been able to sample around three types of ingredients.
Ingredients have their seasons, and it’s only natural that there are more that cannot be harvested. My Appraisal Skill, which I had applied to the Spider TYPE, couldn’t determine the seasonal availability, so it couldn’t be helped.
“That was quite a surprise earlier,” Phonia remarked.
“I had goosebumps all over,” Ivan added.
“There were so many of them!” Rio chimed in.
While digging for tubers in the Forest, we were suddenly attacked by a swarm of bees. They were about fifty centimeters long and surprisingly agile. I managed to scatter them with a Wind Area Magic spell, but some of the bees that I failed to catch fled in a specific direction, suggesting there might be a nest nearby.
“I wonder if we can get some honey?” Phonia mused.
“That wasn’t included in the Spider TYPE’s investigation results, was it?” Rio asked.
“No, it wasn’t. Maybe we can’t appraise it from outside the nest?” Phonia speculated.
“Perhaps we haven’t gathered any information on anything other than food,” Ivan noted.
“That’s true,” Rio agreed.
Now that I thought about it, we must have been using the Appraisal Skill to determine whether something was food, so there might be some accumulated information after all. It would be convenient if we could search through this data. Huh? It can be done for 100,000 DP? Then let’s do it. Now, what was the name of that bee monster again…?
“Found it! It’s called the King Crimson Bee.”
“That’s quite a name for a monster,” Ivan remarked.
“King Kurimuzon Bee?” Phonia mispronounced.
“Ahaha! That’s a bit off,” Rio laughed.
Phonia’s slip of the tongue struck a funny bone. It was a bee monster, not an undead. Ivan was crouched down, stifling laughter with his hand over his mouth.
“Hehe. Well then, shall we go collect some honey?” Rio suggested.
“Yeah!” Phonia replied enthusiastically.
Though Phonia had been tilting her head in confusion, she started walking when Rio urged her on. After about thirty minutes of walking, we discovered a massive beehive clinging to a giant tree. The buzzing bees flying around were quite noisy, but since we were all covered by a Barrier, none of their attacks reached us.
“Alright, I’ll go take a look,” I said.
“Be careful!” Phonia called out.
Stepping out of the Barrier that enveloped everyone, I cast a new Barrier just for myself and approached the beehive. The tree stood about seven meters tall. Half of it was lush with greenery, while the other half was completely covered by the beehive, leaving only a few patches of green visible.
“Hmm.”
Using Spatial Magic to scan the inside of the beehive, I could discern its general structure. It seemed to be filled with various items in the lower layers—this must be it. I used Wind Magic to slice through the lower section and pull it out, revealing a glistening golden surface, confirming my suspicions.
“I got the honey!” I shouted.
“I got it too!” Phonia echoed, mimicking my gesture of holding it high above my head.
Now, the question was how to process our harvest.
“There’s a lot here…” I said, returning from my exploration.
I immediately consulted Mesaria-san. We had gathered a decent amount of honey, but I wanted to sort it out and research various ways to use it. I also wanted to delegate the investigation of the areas the Spider TYPE had surveyed, but for the distant locations, I might have to go myself. Alternatively, I could create entrances to the Dungeon at regular intervals.
“Understood. I’ll manage somehow,” Mesaria-san replied confidently.
As expected of Mesaria-san; she was incredibly reliable.
“Thank you!” I said, sharing information about the seven locations we couldn’t harvest from due to timing issues. Considering that others might also use these entrances, it seemed wise to prepare a layer with doors shaped like the land we received, leading to various locations.
For now, I decided to offer some of the ingredients we had to our chef at home. He might be able to whip up something delicious. Today’s spoils included Beberage, yam-like tubers, potato-like tubers, and honey. The yam-like tubers seemed to grow horizontally underground, and I accidentally broke one when I first dug it up.
“By the way, have there been any updates from our classmates since then?” I asked.
“No, there doesn’t seem to be any movement at the moment,” Mesaria-san replied.
Having returned from my escapism, I checked with Mesaria-san just to be sure, and it seemed that there hadn’t been any activity in just a day, which was a relief.
“However, there’s another matter regarding a person with a strong dialect that we previously tagged as Insect TYPE,” she continued.
“Did you find out anything?” I asked, intrigued.
I recalled that peculiar duo who had a Kansai accent. They had come to our base entrance and turned back without doing anything. …Come to think of it, one of the adventurers who came to dissect the Giant Fish also spoke with a dialect.
“No, I don’t have any details, but it seems that there has been an increase in people speaking with dialects in the city recently…” Mesaria-san explained.
“Hmm?” I pondered.
“Come to think of it, there were some of those types at the Adventurer’s Guild too,” Ivan reported, tilting his head.
There were a few adventurers who spoke in somewhat difficult-to-understand dialects.
“I wonder what that’s about?” I mused.
“I haven’t gathered enough information from the residents to confirm, but it seems there aren’t any nearby towns or villages with such dialects, so it’s been on my mind,” Mesaria-san added.
“That’s quite a mystery,” I said.
“Could it be that people just appeared out of nowhere?” Ivan speculated.
“Hey, don’t tell me they’re like Shu and the others, who can use Spatial Magic?” I joked.
“Even if they exist, where did they come from…?” Ivan pondered.
While I didn’t think it was impossible, I couldn’t recall hearing any rumors about someone who could wield such power.
“In the worst-case scenario, we could capture them and interrogate them for information,” Mesaria-san suggested.
“Whoa, whoa, let’s not go that far,” I replied, stopping her before things got too grim. For now, it seemed like the only countermeasure we could come up with was to keep an eye on everyone.