Chapter 136
"Goodbye, handsome."
After the Loki Familia party said their farewells to Kiriya, they set off toward the deeper floors.
Along the way, Tiona noticed how weighed down with thoughts Ais looked and came over to ask, "What’s wrong? Something on your mind?"
"Mm." Ais thought about it and nodded. "It feels like I’ve always been the one being looked after by Kiriya, without ever doing anything for him myself."
Tiona blinked, surprised that this was what Ais was fretting over, but then she smiled and offered some comfort.
"Didn’t Finn already give him that intel? That stuff’s worth its weight in gold—you couldn’t buy it for any price."
Tiona wasn’t exaggerating, either—she was simply stating a fact.
Because in the Dungeon, information often meant life itself.
For a party of adventurers, the most frightening thing wasn’t how treacherous the road ahead might be—it was not having the faintest idea what dangers lay on that road at all.
How many adventurers had come to grief in exactly that pit called "not enough information"?
In a Dungeon riddled with hidden dangers, even a relatively safe route, or a monster’s weakness and its habits and patterns of movement, was precious, life-saving intel.
And the deeper you went, the higher the price of such information climbed—sometimes it couldn’t be bought with money at all, because intel on the deep floors was usually held tightly by the great first-rate Familias, who wouldn’t part with it easily.
It had been paid for with the blood, and even the lives, of countless of their members—it was the very foundation on which they secured their place in the world.
So for Finn to hand over all the intel on the thirty-seventh floor and everything below it, and to provide supply support at the eighteenth-floor safe zone on top of that—that was already an enormous show of good faith.
Ais knew all this perfectly well, of course, but she still shook her head.
"Finn is Finn, and I’m... me. I... I want to do something."
At this, Ais looked at Tiona, unusually earnest. "Tiona, how should I show him how I feel?"
Tiona gave a mischievous little grin, stole a glance around, then leaned in close and whispered.
"That’s easy. Handsome already told us, didn’t he? Scrub his back for him."
"Ahem!"
No sooner had the words left Tiona’s mouth than a cold "hmph" came from beside them—Riveria.
That icy stare sent an involuntary shiver down Tiona’s spine!
She turned her head and found Riveria wearing the stern look of someone watching "a delinquent leading my sweet daughter astray."
Tiona forced a laugh. "Kidding, I’m just kidding."
Then she turned and slipped away behind Ais.
Ais watched her retreating back thoughtfully. Just a moment ago, Tiona had given her a silent, mouthed confirmation.
’It really works,’ her lips had said, without a sound.
Watching Ais lost in thought, Riveria felt rather conflicted herself.
In all fairness, Kiriya was genuinely generous in what he did—she couldn’t find any fault to pick at.
Even though she knew full well he had less-than-honorable intention with Ais... well, who didn’t have a few selfish thoughts of their own?
What was more, seeing Ais so full of hope thanks to ’Sage Mode’—with noticeably more smiles on her face than before—Riveria, for all her conflicted feelings, was happy for her too.
But... it was still too fast!
A young girl really ought to show a bit more restraint.
And besides... if that Loki got wind of this, she’d probably tear the Twilight Manor down to the ground!
’Haah... what a headache this is.’
...
Meanwhile, Kiriya watched the Loki Familia’s figures disappear into the distance and gave a long, lazy stretch.
"Finally, I can really cut loose."
Back when the Loki Familia had been around, Kiriya had held back from snatching too many kills out of consideration for their feelings, always fighting with one hand tied behind his back—even during the fight against the floor boss, the Amphisbaena.
It had all left him feeling less than satisfied.
And when it came time to divide up the spoils, he’d had to keep the others in mind too, which came with its own inconveniences.
Now, though, he could finally throw himself into a real fight.
Crk—crk—
The walls shattered, and once again a mass of monsters came drilling out of the cavern’s walls and ceiling, loosing ferocious roars at Kiriya.
In answer, Kiriya broke into a smile as warm and gentle as could be.
"Kehahaha—little cuties of the Dungeon, here I come!"
With that, his body turned into a bolt of lightning and charged straight into the swarm!
...
In the days that followed, Kiriya’s life was busy and full.
By day, he pushed downward on his own, seeking out the places thickest with monsters and diving right in, then throwing himself into frenzied training.
Sometimes, like Minato Namikaze, he used the Flying Thunder God in the midst of dense, high-tempo combat, sharpening his skill with the technique while honing his own nerves and reflexes.
Sometimes he tried working in shadow clones and wood-release clones to fight in tandem, drawing out the "one plus one is greater than two" effect.
Other times it was various ninjutsu combinations, improving the speed of his seals, the precision of his chakra control, and his sense of timing for casting techniques.
And sometimes he tried slipping into Sage Mode mid-battle, deepening his command over it.
On top of that, to truly maximize the training benefit to each of his abilities, Kiriya would sometimes deliberately restrict his own methods.
The Flying Thunder God, for instance—unless it was during a stretch specifically set aside to train his proficiency with it, or in a truly dire emergency, he wouldn’t use it, relying instead on his own reflexes and movement to dodge and to take hits.
He turned, leapt, dodged, guarded, advanced, and retreated.
In wave after wave of the monster tide, he threw himself into the most dangerous situations he could find, fighting with taijutsu and swordsmanship, doing everything in his power to sharpen his technique and his strength.
Where others cleared the Dungeon for magic stones and dropped items, to raise their base ability values, Kiriya, beyond all that, was also consciously tempering and refining his tactical system.
To that end, he’d drawn up a detailed training plan.
He split each day’s time into a number of segments, every one with its own dedicated training theme and subject, using his time down to the very last drop.
Once his stamina and provisions had been worn down about as far as they’d go, he’d use the Flying Thunder God to return to the eighteenth-floor safe zone to resupply and rest.
Of course, it wasn’t the kind of thing where he could just—whoosh—flash straight back to the eighteenth floor from some other floor.
For one, his sensing range was limited; he couldn’t push his senses across more than a dozen floors to detect the Flying Thunder God mark in the safe zone.
For another, there was the peculiar nature of the Dungeon’s space.
The Dungeon as a whole wasn’t a single, complete, self-contained space, but more like a vast collection of independent spaces nested and linked together.
One floor and the next were entirely separate spaces, and Kiriya couldn’t use the Flying Thunder God to teleport directly from one space to another—he could only shift back and forth within the same space.
Even so, his speed was still dozens of times faster than a party that walked the whole way step by step.
And that saved him a great deal of time for rest and training.
And so, half a month slipped quietly by.