Day 16 Evening - A long trip with ups and downs

“Hmmm… According to my map, we should go this way,” I told my slightly unwilling companion as I closed the DMI and pointed towards an unbeaten path through the mushroom forest.

“A-Are you certain, Mistress Mafter?”

I sighed and waved at Eriza dismissively. “I told you to stop calling me that. Also, watch out, the ground is uneven over there.”

“Th-Thank you for the warning, Mistress Mafter.”

“Argh, whatever…”

Saying so I turned around and continued walking. We left Razzie’s mansion around noon and have been on the move ever since. Now, I had to admit that having an accurate, real time map of the entire dungeon made navigation waaaaay simpler than when I had to do it with just Smaragd leading the way, but it was far from easy. For starters, while I've tried to measure the dungeon by eye before, once I discussed the topic with Razzie, I could actually get a concrete idea about the size of the caverns, and it turned out I was underestimating the scale of the floor. According it our Floor Master, the area of the first floor was roughly one thousand and three hundred square kilometers. I say roughly, because I had to jump through a few hoops to convert the local measurement units to metric. Now that may sound huge, but just some elementary math knowledge should be enough to figure out that the circular floor was ‘only’ forty kilometers in diameter.

Now that doesn’t sound so big anymore, does it? It’s a thirty minutes long ride with a car, so one would be tempted to think that getting around on the floor wouldn’t take long. Well, they would be wrong. So wrong, I'd be tempted to smack them over the head with a rolled up newspaper.

First and foremost, there were no roads. None. Oh, there were a few footpaths local animals, monsters, or the visiting adventurers left behind, but even those were on rough terrain. In fact, everything was rough terrain. If it wasn’t dense woods, it was swamps. If it wasn’t steep hills, it was rocky cliffs. The entire floor felt like it was specifically designed to hamper traveling… and as far as I knew, it actually was. After all, Lux was gathered from the adventurers on the floor. Forcing them to travel at a snail’s pace meant they spent more time on the floor, resulting in a greater net profit for the dungeon. It was pretty ingenious, to be honest.

Unfortunately for me, the lack of roads meant that we also had to travel on foot and through the same unbeaten terrain as everyone else. I asked Razzie if we could just teleport there, like how Shorkuz moved me directly to his throne room, but he said it was something only the "Sovereign" could do. It apparently cost a couple of Credits too.

While I was thinking about this, we reached another hilltop and I looked over the wilderness spread out in front of me. We were in the borderland between the 1-A and 1-C areas, and on the right of me, I could see the marshlands of the Sahuagin. I originally planned to cut through there and maybe pay a visit to the local Area Guardian in the process, but then Razzie foiled my plans in a very unexpected manner: he gave me clothes. A lot of clothes.

Now, I was never a fan of fashion, but it wasn’t hard to see that if I refused his offer/tribute, my only other source of clothing for the foreseeable future was the rough fur stuff the goblins could make, and to be honest, I wasn’t really a fan of those. Needless to say, trying to take a bunch of fine clothes through a swamp was just an accident waiting to happen, so I decided to take a detour and pass through the spider forest. My handy little DMI map showed me the location of every monster on the floor, so avoiding the White Widows was a trivial thing to do, and even if they went out of their way to seek us out, with my new levels and the fact I could call on Little Flame for assistance, I wasn’t particularly worried.

I was just about to move on when Eriza stumbled into my view. She was panting like she was about to collapse. I Observed her, and noted that her stamina was indeed dangerously low already. She must've found my scrutiny embarrassing, as she immediately began apologizing.

“P-Please excuse me… Mistress Mafter… I… I'm just… not used to the terrain. Please… don’t mind… me.”

“Is it just the terrain?” I asked back incredulously, and she looked over herself.

“Yes,” she told me, thought her voice was still trembling a little.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t doubt she wasn’t used to physical exertion. She had a pretty low Body score, and as far as my grasp on the leveling system could tell me, that meant she didn’t move enough between level ups to experience a ‘surge’ and level up her attribute. However, there were two other variables in play. For one, she was still wearing the same outfit she wore in the service of Raznok, a light-green one-piece dress with white sleeves and collar. It complemented her red hair and pale complexion surprisingly well, but it wasn’t exactly hiking gear.

Speaking of suitable outfits, contrary to his initial objections to the idea, Razzie somehow managed to get me a pair of trousers made of a thick brown fabric that felt remarkably like jeans. I also received a matching set of a long-sleeved dark green tunic that reached down to my thighs, and a brown quilted vest. They were both decorated with embroideries of dragons, phoenixes and other mythical beasts using black thread, so while they were decorative, they didn’t feel too gaudy. I liked them, and it was easy to move in them to boot.

But back to the exhausting details: the other things that made our travels more strenuous, especially in the case of my companion, were on our backs in the form of two large satchels. On the surface, they looked quite unassuming; simple bags made of soft, brown leather held together by metal clasps, but they were actually rare enchanted objects.

Name: Leather Bag of Space Reduction

Description:Items placed inside the backpack retain their weight, however their volume is drastically reduced. Capable of storing up to three cubic meters of volume in total.

Now, while that whole "space reduction" thing might've seemed awfully specific, according to Razzie it was because there were three kinds of these carrying bags in use. The most common was the space reduction kind, as it was used by adventurers who could spend anywhere between a week to a month on an expedition in a dungeon. Because of this, they had to carry a lot of food on the way in and a lot of materials they would sell on the way out, and so needed a lot of space in a small package. The second kind of enchantment was ‘mass reduction’. It would allow people to carry relatively small but heavy stuff like, say, gold or precious minerals, without it weighing them down. The third kind was ‘time reduction’. It would just make it so that perishables put in such containers wouldn't spoil nearly as fast.

I was curious if there was one that combined all three effects, but Razzie only looked at me like I asked if he could make the moon into a sausage, so I figured the fabled "inventory" of computer RPGs was not feasible in this world. A pity.

But I was getting sidetracked again. Here’s the important bit: Since we both had Space Reduction bags, it meant I could carry my entire new wardrobe and a few other things on top of that. When I put anything in there, the item, along with my hands, shrunk down like I was looking at it through a wide-angle lens. It was a little trippy, to be honest, but I got used to it pretty quickly.

Now, while I admittedly filled my bag to the brim with stuff, it was also mostly light things, yet it ended up weighing so much it dug into my shoulders and made my feet sink into the soil at times. I could manage thanks to my high stats, thought my stamina drained faster than usual. As for Eriza… considering she had a bag with the same capacity as mine, and she had to carry all of her personal belongings, I was surprised she could even stand. I tried to take the satchel off her shoulders on a number of occasions already, but she refused the offer every time and continued to struggle. I used [Healing Magic] on her a few times to recover her Stamina, but I was getting worried that she would cripple herself if she kept it up.

“All right,” I concluded and gestured towards a tree-trunk a couple of meters to our left. “Let’s take a short break.”

“Let’s,” she agreed immediately and sat down, dropping her bag with a very heavy thud. I followed her example and sat down as well, though I treated my satchel a bit more gently. I opened the smaller pocket on the side and retrieved a waterskin I recently refilled with my [Ring of Fountain]. Eriza followed my example and we both relaxed for several minutes in silence. It wasn’t particularly awkward, but I could still feel the distance between the two of us, and it bothered me a little. I began to think about how to break the ice when she unexpectedly yawned, giving me the perfect opportunity to speak up.

“Are you sleepy?”

“Yes…. I-I-I mean, no, Mistress Mafter! I'm fresh and ready for the journey!”

I let out a low groan and pointed a finger at her. It made her shudder for a moment, but I didn’t care.

“I told you, stop calling me "mistress".”

“T-Then… Milady?”

“That’s even worse! Just call me by my name!”

“I would never be so rude!”

“It’s not rude. It’s not even my real name.”

“It’s… It’s not?”

“No, it is a name that the System gave me by accident. I didn’t even have a choice in the matter.”

“I… see. So, what should I call you?”

I gave her a skeptical look and spoke slowly.

“I told you already, just call me Mafter.”

“U-Understood.” She nodded fervently, prompting me to roll my eyes.

“Now back to my original question: Are you sleepy?”

She looked conflicted for a moment before she sheepishly lowered her gaze.

“I… Uuuu…. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Oh? Did you have a farewell party?”

“You could… say that.”

“Hm,” I smiled and stretched my arms. “It must've been nice.”

“It was very nice,” she answered with an awkward blush.

“I can imagine,” I told her as I stood up. “Stand still for a moment.”

Eriza stiffened, which I ignored, and I used [Healing Magic] on her. Since she wasn’t injured, the amount of Stamina it restored was fairly low, but since her max Stamina was pretty low to begin with it still filled her up in a couple of seconds. Once I finished she let out a pent-up breath and blinked at me with unfocused eyes.

“Thank… you?”

“Was that a question?”

“No. I mean… auu…”

I shook my head dismissively and picked up my bag.

“Let’s get going.”

“Mil… I mean, Mafter?”

I paused and let my bag back down.

“Yes?”

“If… If I may be so presumptuous, could I request that we… Um… Could we please not climb any more hills today?” I might have involuntarily given her a weird look, as she began waving her hands and sputtered, “I-I-I didn’t intend that as a demand, n-not at all! Only as a humble request!”

I glanced over my shoulder and pointed at the landscape.

“I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it’s pretty much impossible. We are surrounded by hills.”

“Y-Yes, but… Um… N-Normally people go around the hills and don’t just climb all of them in a straight line.” My expression must have been getting out of hand, as she once again began to sputter. “F-Forgive me! I am not questioning the way you wish to travel, it’s just that… Uuuu…”

I grimaced, this time on purpose, and let out a heavy sigh.

“So what you're trying to tell me is that your bag is heavy and you are having a hard time with the climbing, so you want us to stay on level ground and go between the hills instead. Did I get that right?” Eriza hung her head and refused to look at me, but at last she nodded. “Well, the only problem with that is that doing so would double the time it would take for us to reach our destination.” Eriza hung her head even lower, and I couldn’t help but groan in exasperation. “Oh, fine. You don’t have to act that depressed. I'll plot out a less exhausting route.”

“I’m sorry! Y-You don’t need to…”

“Apparently I do,” I told her sharply to stop her. Geez, I didn’t know if it was a side-effect of living under Razzie’s [Dominance], or if she was like this to begin with, but her constant apologizing was really getting annoying. That said, I opened the map of the DMI again. “All right, follow me.”

I turned around and began walking slowly enough so that Eriza could catch up with me. Once she did, I glanced back at the map and came to an abrupt stop again.

“I-Is there a problem Mist— Erm…?”

I raised a finger to her lip to silence her and glanced up from the map. I slowly turned my head to the left and squinted at the woods on top of the next hill a couple of hundred meters behind us. It was dark there, even by dungeon standards, but my [Third Eye] allowed me to clearly see a pale white shape scuttling between the fungal tree trunks.

“Mafter?” Eriza asked again, her voice getting increasingly agitated.

I stared at the woods for a few more seconds, then I averted my eyes and looked at my map instead, or more specifically, at the marker that was steadily moving away from us. Only once I was sure it wasn’t trying to circle around did I look up at the nervous girl at my side.

“It’s nothing. I just noticed a familiar face, that’s all.”

“Familiar… Oh, wait!”

I decided not to explain myself and instead I assumed by “inscrutable powerful being” façade and began walking down the hill with a stern expression.