Benny pulled out a book that had been stepped on.
For some reason, Benny, still blushing, started flipping through the pages, eventually stopping at a specific section.
“This is it.”
“Did you find it?”
Leaning over, I peeked at the book beside Benny’s face, so close our cheeks were almost touching, but not quite—just the ticklish sensation of soft fur and warm body heat.
“…!”
Benny froze up like a startled goat, but I ignored that and examined the content.
“Let’s see… a crystal imbued with a special light?”
There were numerous illustrations resembling crystals holding moonlight, but each one contained a completely different color of light.
The problem was that while I could see the pictures, not a single word caught my eye.
Weird. Thanks to the automatic translation from my possession, I should be able to understand the written text, even if I can’t comprehend every word.
As I was tilting my head in confusion, Benny finally snapped out of it, hastily stepping back with a deep sigh.
“Hoo…”
“Benny, I can’t read this. What’s going on?”
“…What do you think? It’s security magic made for people like you! If you can’t input the registered mana pattern, you can’t read it thanks to a cognitive impairment spell.”
“Why go through all that trouble…?”
“Ask the guy who made this book.”
“? Didn’t you buy it somewhere?”
“I found it in the possessions of a dead mage in a dungeon!”
Oh.
Well, to be fair, Benny had spent quite some time as an adventurer, so it made sense they’d pick up stuff from other adventurers’ corpses.
“…Farming humans is more efficient than farming monsters.”
“What do you take me for?! It was already dead when I found it!”
“Sure, sure. That’s what we’ll say to anyone who asks.”
“I swear it’s not like that! Do you think I’m a looter?!”
“Benny wouldn’t initiate looting, but with all the enemies you have, you definitely seem like a prime target for looters.”
“…I can’t deny that. Things were explosive everyday until I formed a party with Lydia.”
Benny sighed again and started grumbling about how big clans were filled with nothing but idiots.
It seemed like there had been some trouble with the large clans in the past.
After complaining for a while, Benny finally wrapped it up with a boast about being the strongest, then got back to the main topic.
“Anyway, about the crystal that holds moonlight… the crystal itself isn’t that rare. Regular crystals can be transformed by dense energy like divine power to acquire the property to store specific powers. And the labyrinth…”
“The biggest scar left by the Godslayer War.”
“Right. The upper levels don’t show it much, but just going to the middle levels reveals traces of the Godslayer War. In the deeper layers, you can even find places that seem to have brought the battlefield right along with them.”
“The Seventh Floor, huh?”
“Yes. That damned Seventh Floor.”
The front line of the modern era is the Seventh Floor. It may sound like a significant achievement to have gotten that far among the twelve layers… but let’s not forget it took 1,000 years to reach it.
And out of those 1,000 years, they’ve spent 200 years just on the Seventh Floor.
No matter how deep you go, it gets tougher to conquer, but after 200 years of treading water, that seems a bit excessive…
But the guilds and high-ranking adventurers have their own unavoidable circumstances.
Namely, the Seventh Floor is the domain of the God of War.
The God of War, as fits his title, was one of the most active gods during the Godslayer War.
He wasn’t the God of Victory, so he couldn’t win every time, but he drew endless strength from the pervasive wars in the world.
However, the long and brutal conflict wore down the minds of his followers.
No matter how much they relished and worshipped war, a life filled with constant struggle tends to break one’s spirit.
Eventually, the followers became increasingly desolate, and the God of War began to prioritize taking care of them over his actual duty of war, but…
Just then, the God of Madness perished and laid a curse of madness over the entire world.
The followers of the God of War could not resist the madness that seeped through their already fragmented minds.
In the end, those who had completely lost their sanity turned into a murderous group, dedicated to slaughter.
The God of War did not abandon his followers. How could he forsake his own children and comrades?
Ultimately, he chose to end the war as soon as possible, completely incinerating the madness.
He began to eliminate the other gods one by one with an even more aggressive attitude—exclusively for the sake of his followers.
However, nearing the end of the war, when only about ten gods were left standing, he realized something.
Even if he became the one true god of the Pan Continent by winning the war, once the flame of madness was ignited, it would never be extinguished.
If they had no one to fight against, they’d turn on each other, and if that wasn’t enough, they’d declare war against the God of War himself.
The flames of madness incinerated not desires but souls, and ashes cannot return to wood.
In the end, the God of War regretted his own foolishness and declared his defeat, for the first time, by his own will.
He decided to sacrifice himself, along with the other gods, to bury himself in Pangrave.
Thus, the God of War fell into eternal slumber… and his maddened followers were buried alongside their god.
As a result, the Seventh Floor’s fields became a brutal battlefield, with mountains of corpses and rivers of blood running through it. The monsters appearing there are the followers of the God of War, known for their infamy during the Godslayer War.
Adventurers, who had been gradually deciphering the labyrinth’s mechanisms and exploiting the monsters’ weaknesses, now faced a completely new phase on the Seventh Floor.
War.
What was needed to conquer the Seventh Floor was not exceptional hunting skills but the ability to wage war.
It’s only natural that adventurers with a mix of explorer and hunter traits would struggle.
Moreover, there aren’t that many high-ranking adventurers who have reached the Seventh Floor.
While previously conquered layers allowed for character progression or defeating layer guardians to qualify for the next layer, the uncharted layers have clear conditions for clearing.
Unless these conditions are met, no amount of leveling up or defeating layer guardians can allow passage to the next layer.
And the clearing condition for the Seventh Floor is simply to win in battle.
Individual skill, strategy, numbers, armament status, and more.
In every aspect, the adventurers were inevitably weaker than the maddened followers of the God of War.
Thankfully, thanks to past records, they were making do by discovering the characteristics and weaknesses of the God of War’s followers, who were once all heroes.
However, considering that they couldn’t even leave the Safe Zone before, things looked a lot better now.
The number of high-ranking adventurers had increased, skills advanced rapidly, and they began to equip themselves with stronger gear while long-term research into the tactics of the God of War’s followers began.
So far, a few outstanding adventurers had paved the way to the next layer.
Now, the overall level of adventurers must increase to venture deeper.
“It’s gotten a bit lengthy, but anyway, the deeper you go in the labyrinth, the rarer the stored crystals are, allowing for more pure power to be stored.”
“Oooh…! So, what kind of level is this?”
Benny looked at the pale crystal I held out, nodding his head.
“We’ll need to leave the specifics to an expert, but… the moonlight contained within—in this case, the moon’s mana—well, based on the total amount of that energy and its purity, I’d believe you if you said it came from the Seventh Floor.”
“…Really? That much?”
It’s quite a high rank for a three-star item, but it’s the kind of material that drops in high-end content…
Wait. Is that only possible because of the Goddess of Love?
For mortals like us, the Seventh Floor has remained the front line for the past 200 years… but for the Goddess of Love, isn’t it just the Seventh among twelve?
Considering how much tougher it gets the further you go, it makes sense that a three-star item could come from the Seventh Floor.
In any case, knowing it’s an excellent item made my heart race as I looked at Benny, but the next words were a letdown.
“But one drawback is that the power contained within is quite ordinary. The moonlight—specifically, the moon’s mana—is a very common energy.”
“…What kind of effect does it have?”
“It’ll enhance ice, darkness, water, tranquility… things like that.”
If I put it in a martial arts sense, it amplifies the yin energy.
“Oh, but there’s one exception.”
“What is it?”
“If processed properly, it can enhance the physical abilities of lycanthropes or wolf hybrids.”
“Wolf hybrids? Would it have an effect on Ellie too?”
“Yeah. I’d bet Ellie already has plenty of gear that fits that description. Though this one might be unique.”
Then it’s settled. I’ll use this crystal to make items for me and Ellie.
Since the crystal is pretty large, there should be enough to create suitable items for both of us.
After a brief moment of contemplation, I spoke up.
“I’d like to make two rings out of this. Could you introduce me to a good artisan?”
“R-rings…? Hmph. So that’s what it was. Alright. If that’s what you want, Jonah. Ah, we’ll need to decide on finger sizes and designs anyway, so should we go check out the artisan district together? You and I might look like we have similar finger sizes, but you never know.”
Suddenly in a good mood, Benny started talking more as I tilted my head.
“Uh, one of these is for Ellie, though?”
“……”
The light vanished from Benny’s eyes.
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