Danmachi: Is It Wrong To Devour Monsters In The Dungeon - Chapter 6.1 (Patreon)

As I suspected, on my way to the dungeon, I stood out a bunch. People stopped and stared, and other adventurers around me, mostly the lower levelled ones like myself stared on enviously.

After all, while my armour was free to me, it looked extra super duper expensive.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some Soma Familia members tried to shake me down in the dungeons or an alleyway or something.

As it was, I just grinned and basked in the stairs. After all, if I'm gonna make the Hestia Familia the best and greatest of all Familia's, I've got to bring in that reputation.

They'll see a newbie familia, with a newbie captain equipped with this epic gear and then my exploits will spread and people will want to join.

Not that I'm going to allow the standard scrub to get into the Familia. There's tons of trashy bastards around here after all. And even then, I'm not really interested in the familia growing too large and being full of absolute nobodies who I couldn't even remember the names of.

The decent ones, I'll shunt off to the Miach Familia. If my plan works out, they'll be more or less subordinate familia to the Hestia Familia, treated more like treasured allies, but there will be no contest on which Familia has the power in the relationship.

Though, that is the big plan, who knows if it will actually pan out like that.

My first stop in the dungeon was the first floor.

That was kind of obvious really since everybody had to pass through there to get to the deeper floors.

But, what I meant was that instead of going straight down, I took a leisurely walk through the first floor, checking every nook and cranny and made my way towards the first floor pantry where the spawned monsters came to eat.

Along the way, I tore through dozens of goblins and kobolds that burst out of the walls in an attempt to kill me.

Not that they could. They were incapable of harming me while in my armour. Despite how hard the crystal was, it had a surprising flexibility to it and even the armour joints weren't weak at all, so there wasn't really any point of the set of armour where it was weakest.

…Well except the face guard when I lifted it up and the open visor for my eyes.

"I really need a supporter." I mused, tossing the last of the magic crystals I'd torn from the slain monsters bodies up into the air and catching it between my teeth, before biting down and shattering it, swallowing the shards.

Cutting the magic stones out myself was hella tedious.

'It's not like I've not tried though.' I sighed, continuing on my way towards the pantry. I've been keeping my eye out for Lili, but I've not caught sight of her at all.

I want her, it's that simple. Not only because she was a hot little midget that could switch her appearance on the fly, but also because I want to pick her brain about her skill.

Artel Assist.

A skill that compensated for the weight of items the user was carrying. If I had that, I would be able to carry heavy objects with less strain and it would make even large powerful weapons much more wieldable.

'And it would help a hell of a lot with armour as well.' I mentally noted. Despite all the benefits this armour provided.

It was incredibly heavy. Way heavier than standard metal I'd say at that.

I was already beginning to breathe heavily.

A minute or so later I arrived at my destination. The pantry. I'd actually been spending quite a bit of time around here the last few days and checking in every so often.

I was looking for something specific.

My eyes scanned the wide open room that was the pantry. It looked like little more than a wide dark cavern space, except for the large quartz pillar at the end of the room secreting a dark liquid that flowed down forming into a large sticky puddle.

A large sticky puddle that had dozens of monsters, goblin and kobold alike gathered around it, bent down and feeding from.

And a golden feathered rooster that seemed totally out of place.

Huh.

I blinked slowly for a moment. That was what I was looking for. Had been for a while. Since my first trip into the dungeon actually.

A Jack Bird.

…I just wasn't expecting it to be here. Hoped for it and checked in just in case, but wasn't at all expecting it.

A wide grin spread across my face and I stepped into the room. My foot steps thundered through the room due to how heavy my armour was and the monsters all stopped feeding, whipping around to look at me, and a split moment later, growls, howls and roars resounded through the room, eyes a glowing crimson red with rage glaring my way before they rushed me.

My eyes were on the golden rooster though.

It was about forty or so feet away-

It moved.

Something seemed to shimmer around its thin legs and feet, before a split moment later it sped forward, a blur to my eyes.

Fast!

Even with my stats in the D-five hundred range, I could barely track it with my eyes and if it got passed me there was no way I was catching it!

I don't think I'd be able to hit it right now at all physically either way.

It's a good thing I have options. And that I'm standing at the entrance so it needs to come towards me to get through me.

With my face guard still up, I took a deep breath, drawing upon my magic energy, compressing it within my chest and then exhaled, throwing my head forward and releasing a wide spread wave of flame from my mouth.

The flame breathe ability I received from the first Infant Dragon magic crystal I devoured. I could use it in two ways, a weaker area of effect style like I am now, or a stronger, more narrow compressed version.

The Jack Bird's speed wasn't great enough to get to me and passed me before the flames swept out over the room, washing over the golden feathered bird, the goblins and kobolds alike, howls and roars of agony filled the cavernous room, but were soon to die down.

I licked my now dry lips and admired my handiwork when the flames sputtered out. Dozens of charred and steaming monster corpses littered the floor of the pantry room.

"Yes!" I pumped my fist into the air and cheered when my eyes landed on one very specific monster corpse.

That of a now charcoal black feathered corpse.

I quickly made my way over, ignoring the smell of burnt flesh as best I could and picked the corpse up. The gauntlets I wore, were made with clawed fingers and so I used them to rip the corpse open and pull out the magic stone.

As I did, the corpse burst into black smoke and a golden coloured egg fell towards the ground which I caught before it could.

The golden egg, the guaranteed drop of the Jack Bird. I don't know what exactly it's good for, but the guild will buy it for a full million valis!

I eyed the golden egg with a massive grin and excitement thundered in my veins, 'With this, I'll be able to buy a bunch of monster crystals and still have loads left of cash left over.' I thought gleefully.

Hell, I could probably use the money from this egg alone to buy a decent house for me and Hestia.

I don't think I will though. I think I'll save up for now until I have enough to purchase a big ol' mansion.

Call it personal pride, but Bell won Hestia a massive luxurious mansion, formerly belonging to Apollo.

I need to get her one at least on par with it or better, or I'm a failure as the captain of the Hestia Familia, right?

'That's what the store is for.' I thought. He'd keep some of the valis from the egg back for personal things for him and Hestia to make life more comfortable and entertaining, and use the rest to buy monster magic stones to power up with and for renovating the store when he got it.

Grin on my face widening, I chowed down on the Jack Bird's magic stone, stowed the golden egg in my loot pouch and then started pulling the magic stones from the rest of the charred corpses littering the floor of the pantry room.

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When I was done with looting the corpses of the monsters within the pantry and devouring them, I left it behind. While I was super stoked about the golden egg, I still had plans.

So into the deeper floors I ventured.

I stayed in the fourth floor briefly to kill a few dungeon lizards. Huge brown scaled lizards the size of a standard dog that could cling to any surface. I'd killed a few before already in the last few days, but got my magic stones mixed up and ended up trading all of theirs in and not eating any.

I rectified that before I moved on down to the fifth floor, where things in the dungeon began to change a bit. The first to fourth floors were blackish brown and there was little light.

It was a lot brighter on the fifth floor and the walls shifted into a shade of light green.

It wasn't really a bother to me with how dark the upper floors were, since I had night vision, but for others, even if the monsters got a bit stronger, it made fighting a bit easier.

The fifth floor while brighter, didn't really have any new monsters, it just spawned goblins and kobolds, albeit, larger and stronger than the ones in the above floors.

And so it didn't take me long to arrive at my real destination.

"This is it." I found myself standing before a staircase leading down to the sixth floor. I looked at it for a moment, before shrugging my armoured shoulders and making my way down.

When I reached the bottom, I immediately found myself in a wide spread square shaped room, despite it being just the entrance to this floor, it was already wider than the largest room of the first floor, the pantry.

Crack!

Crack!

Crack!

As I was observing the room, I heard the familiar sounds of stone cracking and the walls broke apart to reveal three shadowy figures.

They were tall and thin, with inky black jagged claws and one singular glowing red eye each. They looked like the Getsuga Tenshou had formed into near humanoid shapes.

'War Shadows, they can sink into shadows and can't be hurt by physical attacks.' I thought, remembering what I read of them from the information book I got from Ron.

Well, they could be hit physically in one spot. Through the eye, where their magic stones were held. If he punched through there and destroyed it physically, it would kill them all the same.

But that would defeat the purpose.

Since War Shadow's had one of the abilities he wanted the most. Really, the only ones he wanted the stones of more than a Wall Shadow right now, were of a Blue Papilion…or the Goliath.

The ability to create healing powder, which I could heal others with and make a killing from and the power of regeneration.

Enough said.

Thank fuck for Infant Dragon's.

I took a deep breath just as the trio of War Shadows rushed me and then exhaled, releasing a burst of flame from my throat that swept over all three of them as they got close.

Piercing shrieks echoed through the room for all of a second, before disappearing entirely.

When the flames died down, it was to reveal a trio of small magic stones laying on the ground.

I wasted no time in picking them up and devouring them.

"One down, four to go." I mused.

Three of them I could find on the seventh floor, a Killer Ant, a Purple Moth and a Blue Papilion. But, the last one I could only find here on the sixth floor.

A Frog Shooter.