บท 173: great labyrinth Orcus

The next morning Alex and the three girls awoke feeling refreshed after the nights activities, meanwhile Anne sat up from her bed with large circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. She directed a glare at Alex and the three girls, before she got up to get ready.

"Good morning." Alex said cheerfully, while Rias, Grayfia, and Kuroka also greeted her.

"Morning." Was all Anne said, a bit irritable from the lack of sleep. She then went downstairs to find something to eat while Grayfia summoned a tub of hot water for them to use. Though Alex and the girls didn't go as far as bathing in the water, they did use the chance to clean up as much as possible before joining Anne. They found her sitting at a table alone while eating some breakfast, which confused Alex since they didn't have any money left. The person who ran the inn appeared a moment later, and explained what was going on,

"As an apology for the disturbance last night I prepared a complimentary breakfast, I hope it's to your liking young master." It was obvious they thought that highly of him because of Grayfia, but Alex didn't see the point of correcting it. After sitting he had Kuroka place a barrier to keep others from hearing what they said, but not as powerful as the ones the night before, and started explaining their game plan.

"First thing, we'll need to sneak into the labyrinth. They check everyone who goes in through their status plates, none of us has one yet, and I would rather avoid registering at the moment to begin with. The reasons are that they record the status of a person when they register, meaning we'd be advertising ourselves unless we handle it carefully, and that I don't want them to have records of us entering the labyrinth. If we get registered as entering here, and don't come out it'll seem like we died. The exit for the labyrinth is in another area, so when we eventually reappear it'll raise a lot of flags for people, another thing I want to avoid for the moment." The girls nodded at Alex swords, also wanting to stay off the radar after what he told them the night before. As for sneaking in, it was an easy task for Kuroka, as she specifically trained for stuff like this and was on the run for years without getting caught.

Once they finished their breakfast they cleaned up anything they left behind, and left for the labyrinth. The girls were surprised when they saw what the outside of the entrance was like, as stalls were lined up and many people were gathered like a festival. The reason for this was that they wanted to be more convenient for adventurers when they exited the labyrinth, and earn a profit through them. With Kuroka cloaking them, the group enjoyed their last moment of sunlight for who knew how long, and plunged into the depths of the labyrinth. With kuorka using her senses to guide them, they avoid the magic traps and monsters to swiftly make their way through the first couple floors. Once they decided they were clear of any issues, kuorka stopped cloaking them and the group shot forward, navigating the floors with unimaginable speed.

Any monsters the group came across were almost instantly taken care of, with Anne storing the corpses away for later. Alex had been surprised to find that Anne had reached the hundred level mark before leaving her previous world, and got the storage ability to transport goods with. The good thing was that her storage froze the time of the objects placed in it, meaning that the corpses they saved would stay "fresh" when they needed to cut them up later.

While moving through the floors, Alex had Grayfia place a teleportation magic circle on every tenth floor they passed, marking it for easier travel once they cleared the dungeon. After less than twelve hours, the group arrived at the fiftieth floor, a pace for first timers that would make most veteran adventurers vomit blood. It was here that they had their first rest, and Alex started cutting up the monster corpses they had acquired already, while Anne actually fell asleep after taking the monster corpses out of her storage.

"We're moving faster than I thought we would through the labyrinth." Grayfia said as she curiously looked around. Alex nodded, and explained,

"We're actually pretty overpowered for this world, so it's not too unusual that things that seem hard for others would be easier for us. But you have to remember, there's two hundred floors we have to go through while we've only been through fifty so far, in other words we're only a quarter of the way through. And things start getting a lot more difficult after the first hundred, as it's only preparation for the second half." Grayfia nodded at his words, taking them seriously. It didn't matter how strong one was, a moment of carelessness could always claim ones life. Kuroka then asked,

"So what are we doing after we're done with this labyrinth, going straight to the next one~Nyan?" Along with her verbal tick, Kuroka's cat ears and tails had made a reappearance since there was no need to hide them in the depths of the labyrinth. Alex shook his head at her question, and said,

"There's a place we'll turn into our base somewhat at the bottom of the labyrinth, and spend some time here collecting resources and training. Since the monsters at the bottom levels are a lot stronger I hope that you guys could spend some time leveling jobs. At the same time there's various resources that are specific to this world, while training I want to collect as much as possible to send to Asora." He didn't say that the main one he wanted to give those resources to was Hajime, as he didn't want to explain everything to the girls right away, after all he had to leave some surprises. He also left out the part where he wanted to recruit a potential peerage member while down here, and that part of the reason for training was to get her caught up.

They rested for a couple hours while both Alex and Grayfia worked on the monster corpses, before setting off again. This time since Kuroka assured Alex there wasn't anymore humans ahead of them, he summoned his fire creations and sent them out to attack any monsters on that floor. Like he intended for them to grind job levels later, Alex intended to use this chance right now to grind his base level to reach two hundred. He hoped he'd reach it by the time they reached the bottom.

Like this they systematically moved through the dungeon floors at a more leisurely pace, resting at every tenth floor for a couple hours while a magic circle was left and monster corpses were dismantled. In this way two days passed, before they finally reached the hundredth floor, and moved onto the "real" Great Labyrinth.