Apparently, Yooma is a pretty nice guy.

Ever since taking Kotori’s party under his wing, he’d (it's the abbreviation of he had) been surprisingly helpful, and while Kotori had declined, he had been training Amelie quite a bit. Amelie had even started calling Yooma “Shishou”*. He was apparently teaching her a fighting style from his hometown. 

*teacher/master in Japanese typically used in martial arts as a way to refer to one's teacher 

[Wait isn’t this just Ninjitstu!] Kotori thought as she watched the black-clad Amelie jump from tree to tree in the dungeon.

Her movements were quite graceful, but Kotori was surprised to find that Amelie was just learning a fighting style from her old world.

Amelie, although she was a battle idiot, was a poor fit for the wood elf’s style of bashing and slashing their opponents. She couldn’t really be blamed for this though, as she was only half wood elf since her father was a human. Although she was bulkier than the average human she could not compare to the Amazoness builds of wood elves. 

This ninja style suited her much better.

Incidentally, the dungeon they were in was a perfect training ground for her, the heavy trees cover and the multitude of monsters to ambush made it a great fit for her. She also already had climbing skills from her time as a scout and thus it was even more of a good fit for her.

It was a heavily forested dungeon much like the ones near the wood elf village. The monsters in this dungeon were different though.

Unlike the various lizard-like creature this dungeon only had monkeys.

 

Great Ape

Race: [Dungeon beast] Age: 0    

HP: 79

Mana: 0

Agility:  43 

Strength: 56

Defense:  35

Karma: [N/A]

Skills: [Roar]

Traits: None

 

Lower Chimp

Race: [Dungeon beast] Age: 0    

HP: 34

Mana: 0

Agility:  37 

Strength: 23

Defense:  12

Karma: [N/A]

Skills: None

Traits: None

 

[These damn apes!] Kotori thought as she brained another monkey monster with her fist.

Kotori was frankly tired of it. All the monsters in this dungeon were some variety of apes. There were troops of chimps who would attack you in groups. Although their individual stats were low they were small and frankly very annoying to kill since they were relatively fast.

There were also King Kong-like gorillas that would have ear-piercing screech which would lead the Chimp groups. In combination with the troop of chimps was a particularly annoying group of monsters to kill.

This was already the third group of apes they’ve run across and Kotori was at her wit's end. Amelie had an easy time taking them out but Kotori who had no such dexterity or agility was stuck chasing them around. In addition, she couldn’t use her mana buff or else it would run out so she was weaker than she usually was when doing encounters with monsters. 

She was taking this time to eat some MonMochi though, even if they tasted disgusting. The MonMochi from the apes tasted like old licorice and made her retch. Shu and Umi didn’t seem to mind and happily ate them up.

Incidentally, Shu and Umi seemed to be working very hard. It seems they were competing to show off to Kotori and were busy trying to kill as many monsters as possible. Umi had her [Water blades] and could snipe monsters in the bushes but Shu also had his [Rock Bullets] while Shu was slower at killing the chimps he was able to take on the Apes with some help from Kotori. The amount of MonMochi they made was about the same, but Umi seemed to declare it her victory as she had killed “more” monsters.

[These pets are a handful] Kotori would think

Yooma himself didn’t really do much and said things like 

“Killing monsters is for the youngsters”

He spent most of his time coaching Amelie and giving her pointers on how to move with better agility. It seemed like he felt bad for putting the slave collar on her and wanted to make up for it by helping her get stronger.

Kotori took this time to ask something that had been bothering her ever since they met Yooma in the sewer.

“Yooma why were you patrolling the sewer that night”

He looked at them and scratched his head

“Well, we got a tip?”

“A tip?” Kotori asked

“Yeah we were told that there would be some smugglers there” So I took some guards and went to check

[That’s odd?]

The only person who knew what they were doing was Giorgio and his associates. And the two other adventurers. Kotori was beginning to feel like something was off. Giorgio had also disappeared after the smuggling incident and she was still unsure about the fate of the Shun and Anya who were with them that night. Yooma said they had also been recruited but she hadn’t seen them anywhere in the city. It wasn’t completely unlikely that they could’ve been assigned somewhere else but still, the whole situation made her feel uneasy.

At the very least she was steadily growing. Kotori had also begun to investigate further on the nature of dungeons. She was initially confused as to why there was a random forest in the middle of nowhere but soon found out that the forest itself was made of mana much like Nero’s boss room. 

Kotori began to formulate a theory on mana. 

“Mana” was a resource that could make anything. The effects and powers it could create dungeons and monsters. If monsters were localized instances of mana then what was a dungeon that was also an unstable pool of mana?

Could, Kotori in fact

....

Eat it?

 

Author note: On another food-related note, I made Oyakodon(mother-son rice bowl) today. It was quite good.