My father decided to cook some Walking Fish. He used magic to create a large Magic Bonfire, put some stones surrounding the fire, and then put took a table. He began using a knife to take out the scales of the walking fishes and then cut their heads off. After that, he decided to open their bellies and get all the disgusting entrails outside. When that was done, he began using all sorts of spices and a lot of salt. Pretty much covering both enormous fishes with them, and then stuck them into large metallic sticks, leaving them slowly grilling over the fire.
The smell of the delicious fish began to quickly permeate our surroundings, as I decided to make some fruit juice for everybody with the fruits I had stored in my little pouch. Which is also like a smaller version of father's dimensional bag. After the fish was finally done and we were drooling, father took the out and put them over the table, we all sat around the table with chairs he brought inside this bag, and we enjoyed the feast.
"Ooh, the meat is so soft… I never thought a monster that lived in blackish water like that pond would be this tasty." Said Zack.
"The salt and spices you put over the fish gave it a very tasty flavor, uncle!" Aquarina said.
"Yeah, well done papa." I said, enjoying my food.
"Hahah, this is just some improvised dungeon food, when we get back home we'll have a proper dinner with everybody." My father said.
At the end, we devoured both fishes until just bones were left, even the skin, after having been descaled, was very delicious, and added a lot to the flavor and texture.
"Phew, that was so tasty! I never thought mere fish would satisfy me." Ignatius was resting over my head while feeling full.
"Foo!" Naturia, despite being a Nature Spirit, partake in the feast and also ate a lot of fish.
"I never thought Spirits could also eat… Do you want to eat too?" Zack asked his own spirit, but the little cloud seemed to not understand what he as asking for. They'll need to train their communication a bit more. The only thing Zack does with his spirit is asking the creature for magic power.
"Pyuku ate another fish by himself too." Said Aquarina. "But I guess it was raw. I think he prefers raw and bloody stuff, with as many entrails as possible."
"Pyuuuu!" Pyuku seemed to be agreeing to her words.
"Welp, let's go to the fourth floor then. I wonder how many will we have to complete though? I hope this doesn't get too long… Ah well, if the time's up, we'll end midway through and go back home." My father said.
"Eeeh? So soon?" I asked angrily.
"Well, there's at least two more hours before we go back. Maybe you can complete two more floors while we are at it. Don't worry, we can come back where we left it. The gimmick of this dungeon stays the same and register the adventurer party members, if they enter the dungeon again, they'll appear where they left off." Said my father. "Of course this only works if we use Ariadne Threads to teleport outside, if not, we would need to naturally walk all the way back to the stairs that lead outside." My father said.
"Ah, please no… That sounds like a real pain." I sighed.
When we reached the Fourth Floor, we were greeted with a more family-friendly and simplistic layout, it was almost the same as floor 1, with a few corridors here and there, and a small room that had nothing inside. However, at the end of the corridor we found something. It was a nest made out of bones and leather of various monsters, and there were like four Large Centipedes twisting and coiling around one another.
They were large, probably as long as four meters and incredibly chunky, with strong exoskeleton as well, and big and sharp jaws. With many legs that were as sharp as blades. How can we even defeat these with mere weapons? I feel like the same situation with the Mimic will happen… Unless we push them even harder.
Ugh, whatever, fire it is.
I told everybody to back down as I wanted to test how far my fire magic could go, so I stood there while the centipedes had yet to notice us and started gathering Embers like there was no tomorrow. Several Embers were generated with each passing second, and in around a minute, I already had an enormous concentration of Fire in my hands, which I constantly made more and more compact until it resembled a small ball of red light, but that was so incredibly dense that it generated an aura that seemed to have a small gravitational aura of sorts.
I will call this… Small Nova.
I quickly moved the Small Nova with my will, as the floating mass of concentrated and explosive flames slowly and almost stealthily flew towards the nest of the giant bugs and remained floating above them…
The red dot suddenly flashed with bright red light, the centipedes, who seemed to be mating or something, were too late to notice its brilliance, as a second after, an explosion of flames was unleashed.
The fire spread out through the corridors but we protected ourselves by hiding inside the room we found earlier. When we heard that things were over, we slowly moved back there, finding that the four centipedes were… dead.
"Wow, that was amazing…" Aquarina said.
"You could had done that before as well!" Zack said.
"Hah… Not really, it took a lot of effort to make it up. It needs dedication and everything else… It's not something we can do easily, sadly." I sighed. "Unless I practice more, I cannot make it into a big battle, I fear."
"Well, that's certainly a way to get rid of those highly armored centipedes…" My father was left almost speechless. "I never had this much magic power when I was a kid, you really inherited this from your mother…"
[You earned 1600 EXP]
[Ignatius] earned 2240 EXP]
[Ignatius] has reached Level 5!]