I was shaking off the ashes and patching my bruises, after I dealt with the dragon behind the scenes.

In total I lost a little less than 50000 HP. Almost 2/3 of my total pool.

However, I also found out that killing me would take a few crazy buffed dragons, or a loli goddess, one of which was grooming her tail.

“This Akagi-sama warned you not to fire. Now look at what you have done. This dust keeps sticking to my fur.” The kitsune was not even looking at me, and all I could see was her back. If it wasn’t for needing that fox’s bandage spawning skills, I would’ve went somewhere by now.

Luckily, the everlasting stuff spawner (Akagi-sama) didn’t mind supplying me with enough first aid kits to at least make me look less charred.

Though it was her fault in the first place. If she helped me seriously, I wouldn’t be hearing ‘Fire on all decks’ for the past 10 minutes.

Our silent treatment of each other continued for a long time, but right after we were done with our own problems, it was time to continue going.

We passed through a few halls of the dungeon, with me having to kill the mobs, until I finally heard the beloved ‘ding’ sound for the first time since this reincarnation.

‘Ding’

‘You received 1 upgrade point’

My misfortune did not stop on receiving this huge reward. Right in the next hall I suddenly walked into an entire horde of goblins, neither of which yielded even a copper. Furthermore, while I was fighting off the pests, the helpful goddess was VERY BUSY filing her nails.

And when I was about to think it couldn’t get even worse, we walked into a dead end.

“Brilliant…! So, what are we going to do now?” I leaned on the wall, and gazed at the undisturbed fox.

“Before you are going to surrender completely, how about you open your eyes for a change?” (A)

“They ARE opened.”

“Uhu.” The loli kitsune’s apathetic glance was followed by rumbling sounds from where we came from.

As the sounds approached, I prepared for combat. Soon, two metal golems stepped into the hallway, blocking our escape path.

“Good luck~?” The fox girl grinned, and stepped away. As always, she didn’t even bother doing anything and just watched how the golems approached.

[Well, no use crying over a spoiled fox…]

I aimed the 100mm guns, and fired two quadruplets.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

BANG BANG BANG BANG

My fire damaged a golem, but it was far from destroying it.

“Hey, is this how it is supposed to be? I’m firing large guns, and to no avail?” I glared at the bored loli.

“Adamantium. This place was built to safeguard the artifact, so…” She nodded towards the mercilessly approaching golems.

Looking at the golems was not going to destroy them, thus I continued peppering them with the light guns.

BANG BANG Bang BANG Bang

With each shot the golems were taking more and more damage, but there were no critical hits yet.

‘Fwoosh’

Then, both golems fell apart.

“You are too slow. This Akagi-sama is getting even more disappointed.” She sighed, and turned towards the dead end, where the wall started slowly rising.

The hidden path was opened, and the dungeon was cleared.

When the door completely opened, we entered another hall, but this time it was an overgrown cupola with a beam of sunlight coming from its top. The beam was lighting a small pedestal, to which my surely-not-useless companion headed.

However, when the two of us looked at the pedestal, we found nothing.

“Hey, is this supposed to be like this…?”

“No.” (A)

“Then…?”

“It looks like we were late. Coming to think of it, we already did encounter the consequences of the Clock’s use…?” Akagi-sama pondered, and started looking around.

Even though neither of us could notice anything notable.

But then a peculiar thought crossed my mind.

“Akagi-sama, when exactly have you seen that artifact the last time…?”

“Hm? A-bo-ut… Erhm… 54 years ago…?” The way she tilted her little head would be cute. But instead it caused a huge desire to facepalm.

“Dear Goddess… Did you think that artifact would remain here for half-a-century…?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” While I was slapping my face from this nonsensical goddess, she continued talking.

“There is no need to be worried. If we cannot outright take it, then we just need to call for a bit of help.” She led me to back into the dungeon, and the stone wall closed the hall behind us.

“Wait a darn moment?! Are we going to fight through this dungeon again?!”

“Don’t worry~.” The goddess smiled, creating a tiny blue flame in her hand…