Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

This is Satou. Already, I’m the weakling who longs for the sun.

Dungeons are great in games, but...

Being stuck underground in dampness, fighting bugs, bugs, frogs, bugs, and snakes makes me sick of it.

◇

Six rooms have passed since then, but I still haven’t met a living human. I have seen some corpses though...

“Master, the demon core collection is complete.”

“Alright, let’s take a short break.”

I took a sip of water from my flask and passed it around to Liza and the others.

At some point, they started calling me “Master” instead of “Husband.” Seems easier to say, so I let it slide.

Liza dropped the flask.

Water spilled from the fallen flask...

“I-I’m terribly sorry! Master!!!”

Liza desperately picked it up. Her hands seemed unsteady.

Come to think of it, Pochi and Tama’s throwing accuracy was poor in the last battle too...

“Tired?”

“I’m so sorry! I spilled precious water. Punish me however you wish.”

...That’s an overreaction. But Liza seems to believe it seriously.

“Liza, we can get more water. More importantly, aren’t you feeling unwell?”

“I apologize... My body feels heavy and I can’t move as I wish.”

Pochi and Tama didn’t even have the energy to drink water and collapsed on the ground.

I checked, but there were no status ailments. It’s probably just fatigue.

“We won’t just take a short break; let’s rest properly.”

I picked up Pochi and Tama and gave them water.

I divided the sweet potato fritters among the three of them. All three seemed on the verge of falling asleep, but their hunger was strong enough they almost tried to nibble the hands feeding them.

“After eating, sleep for about three hours.”

Pochi and Tama slept with my legs as a pillow. Liza curled up a little farther away and fell asleep quietly.

While the three were sleeping, I observed their stats.

Every 10 minutes, their ability values increased by about one point, moving closer to their original values. After about two hours of rest, skills that were gray changed to white.

Speaking of skills, why did the three gain new skills after leveling up?

Don’t you usually have to do something to learn skills right away?

It seems that during sleep, the level-up effects are being applied to their bodies.

...It really feels like a classic labyrinth masterpiece. I’m scared I might age if I’m not in a stable place like a stable.

◇

We pushed through several more rooms. Since we seemed to reach our limit after gaining about three levels at the last rest, it’d be best to rest again after pushing through about two more rooms...

“Stop!”

It’s rare for Tama to warn sharply without dragging it out.

But there’s no enemy ahead?

“What’s wrong?”

“The ground—it feels strange?”

She asked in a questioning tone. Something’s off, but she doesn’t know exactly what. Looking closely, the texture of the ground is different. The color is the same though...

Before I could understand the difference with my eyes, the AR display showed, “Trap: Life Drain.”

Well, it’s a labyrinth, so traps are expected.

Since we hadn’t encountered any traps until now, I hadn’t thought about them much.

“Well done, Tama. There’s a trap there.”

“Yes!”

I patted Tama’s head and her cat ears.

After pulling the three back, I threw a stone at the trap location, but it didn’t activate. Judging by the trap’s name, it probably only reacts to living creatures.

The activation range isn’t displayed, so I can’t tell if we could safely go around the edge.

It’s out of the question to let one of the beast girls step on it.

The next room has rat monsters. Let’s try luring them out by throwing stones.

I threw three stones in quick succession.

“The rats are coming.”

After Pochi’s report, we pulled back. These rats are level 10 and weak, but they act in groups of 2 to 4. Some might trigger the traps, so we kept our distance.

At a point well beyond the traps, the rats were caught by black sparks. In the end, all three rats were caught by separate traps. It seems there were three traps set in this corridor.