It was the time for my first real-life dungeon exploration.

If it wasn’t for the door being closed.

“How are we supposed to open it?”

“It needs to be fed with mana to open. That is the way the adventurers open them. However…” The loli flicked her fingers, and the door started opening.

When I looked at her with a silent question, she just shrugged and said something about ‘other ways’.

After the stone door was completely opened, I turned on the spotlights of my gear, and stepped forth inside a dark tunnel.

The power of shipgirl-grade spotlights was more than enough to illuminate the tunnel all the way to its end, where the tunnel split into left and right turns.

For now, everything looked calm, so I was not getting worried about anything. Anything except that little goddess who suddenly overtook me, and gestured for me to stop.

“What is it?”

“There are some monsters inside. Dealing with all of them would be a pain, and an idiot like yourself will just collapse the entire place. Stay behind me.” The loli created a tiny blue flame on her palm, and looked deeper into the tunnel.

She brought the palm and the flame closer to her tiny mouth, and lightly blew, making the tiny flame slowly float towards the split.

Then…

‘FWOOOOOSH’

Everything was consumed by a bright light and scorching heat. I was standing right behind the tiny foxgirl, whose body barely reached my belly, but her standing there created some sort of a bubble in the crazy blue flame that was jetting outside.

My HP was rapidly going down, and some of my rigging felt like it was melting. Even being in the hottest sauna was not even close to approaching the feeling I had of the temperatures right outside my body.

But half a minute later, the flames settled. Leaving only the stone walls glowing with crimson, and the floor that turned into lava…

“Let us get going.” As if nothing happened, and as if she was not walking on the fizzling lava, Akagi-sama headed towards the smoking remnants of the dungeon.

[I have no idea if she was just trying to intimidate me, or she was just too lazy to deal with this dungeon…?]

“Don’t worry. This farsighted Akagi-sama has simply eliminated the currently spawned monsters. It should be enough to reach the middle of the dungeon without having to stop and fight.” (A)

Arguing with her that this was ‘too much’ was of no use, so I cautiously probed the molten floor with my foot, earning myself another disappointed gaze of the goddess.

‘Fwoo’

She blew, and the ground in front of me covered in ice.

“Stop fooling around.” She frowned, and gestured me to follow.

Like this, from one gust of ice to another, we crossed several halls filled with nothing but ashes. By that time the lava has cooled to the point my shoes were not melting and I was not taking additional damage. This short section of the dungeon has drained a little bit less than 30.000 HP. Not much.

[NOT MUCH AT ALL, RIGHT?!]

Of course, my mental howls fell on a deaf fox ear.

Just like the fox goddess said, we didn’t encounter a single monster on our way. Not a single living one that is, since from time to time I could see charred corpses of magic creatures, surrounded by solidified stone.

And just like she said, somewhere around the middle of the dungeon we had our first encounter. At first it was just a dying wounded creature which was already charred and waited for its agony to end, but the further we went, the more of such we were seeing, until we walked into a group of goblins in pristine condition.

They were in another hall, just like all the monsters in this dungeon were. And while the hall was large, I didn’t dare firing my guns. Simply because it is large didn’t mean it won’t fall on my head. Especially after everything here was molten by the fox fire.

[But, another advantage of being a battleship is…]

‘Ping’

“HEY, LET ME FINISH!” I barked at the dumbfounded goblin archer.

[Another advantage is…]

‘Pom-pom’

“Argh… Those pesky, little…!” I started waving off the pesky vermin, and accidentally sent one of them flying into a wall. With the expectable result.

[So, being a battleship shipgirl also means my strength is ‘a ‘tiny’ ‘little’ bit’ ‘higher’ than the human. Thus…]

‘Fwoosh’

With one swing of the rapier that hung on my hip the entire time, I turned the goblins into a mash. I didn’t even need to cut or pierce them, it was all done via breaking their bones.

Regrettably, those really were just some vermin, in comparison with the other creatures…