Tamer 16
Chapter 16: Magic Circle
TL: Cnine
ED/PF:
Part 1
「Hmm. Can’t this thing be restarted somehow?」
I tried touching the magic circle, just to test it.
Nothing happened. Maybe it needed fuel? Or energy? I placed my hand on it again and focused, but my MP didn’t drop, and there wasn’t even a hint of mana being drained.
Nothing across the board. No response, no feedback. I was completely stuck.
「Oi. Do you know anything about this?」
「Gyan」
「Not you.」
As if I’d ever ask a goblin for advice.
I wasn’t talking to the goblin. I was talking to the pixie.
「Oi, pixie. You’re a fairy, right? So if you’re a fairy then… what are you doing?」
The pixie that had been serving as the whip’s tip was currently restraining another pixie from behind.
So even fairies had infighting among them...
I watched in silence as the struggling pixie was forcibly pushed into place, made to take over the role of the whip’s tip.
I see.
Being used as the end of a whip must be excruciatingly painful. Compared to that, the goblins who were treated like clubs probably had it easy. As a whip, the pixie was taking far more damage.
In short, the pain was so unbearable that the role was forced onto another pixie.
Yeah, I get it. I would’ve done the same. Not that I care about it, though.
「But what do I do now…?」
If I could use this magic circle repeatedly, my levelling speed would skyrocket.
With the Dungeon Association possibly closing in on me, I couldn’t afford to take it slow. I had to jack up my levelling pace here and now, or things would get ugly.
※Author Note: He's seriously being delusional.
Just yesterday, some stranger I didn’t recognise casually asked me, “Got any tips for going solo?”. No doubt about it. They’re trying to squeeze information out of me.
※Author Note: He's seriously being delusional.
Anyway, determined to try everything that came to mind, I placed an onigiri on the magic circle.
These kinds of things sometimes require a sacrifice. The onigiri wasn’t alive, but I figured it was worth testing.
「Not working, eh.」
It didn’t activate at all.
Fair enough. A magic circle that activates with my lunch would be weird.
「Alright then. Slime, you’re up.」
I plopped a slime right on top of the magic circle and waited to see what would happen.
The slime just sat there, wobbling like jelly on a plate. Nothing else.
「You’re completely useless.」
「Jigglejiggle」
If I hadn’t discovered the EXP bug, it would truly be good for nothing.
「What’s missing here? Or maybe the whole thing just doesn’t reboot…」
Wait. Hold up.
If it’s lacking energy or mana, then it should be possible to replace it with an external source.
I took a magic stone from the goblin in charge of carrying them, one taken from the ghoul we had just defeated, and placed it on the magic circle.
The moment it touched the surface, the circle burst into brilliant light, and a ghoul appeared right before us.
「Yahoo, it works!」
Without missing a beat, I struck it down with my 20-pix whip, turning it straight into EXP.
EXP gained: 3,100. Looks like I’d cracked it.
「With this, levelling up is going to be smooth sailing.」
By drastically cutting down travel time, this method pushed my number of kills per hour to an overwhelming level.
To increase efficiency even further, I instructed the goblins to throw the ghoul’s magic stone straight back into the magic circle the moment it was defeated. That was how the ghoul revival system was completed.
With this in place, my levelling efficiency reached heights that simply could not be compared to before.
After spending the entire afternoon relentlessly whipping ghouls, my level had risen to a degree that was almost unbelievable.
「Status」
===
Status
Name：Sakura Kikyo
Occupation：Monster Tamer
Lv：93 ↑17
HP：395 ↑88
MP：555 ↑114
SP：27
Skill
Monster Taming54 Monster Recovery7 Monster Enhancement7 Monster Fusion Monster Reborn
Monster Evolution
Tamed Monster
GoblinLv93×7 GoblinLv92×8
SlimeLv93×2 SlimeLv92×2
PixieLv77×35
EXP to next level: 65436
===
In just one afternoon, I defeated 472 ghouls and raised my level by a whopping 17 levels.
Because the magic circle summons ghouls using the magic stone thrown into it, no new stones are produced, making it useless as a money-making method. That was admittedly a drawback. However, since it would be a while before magic stones could be converted into cash anyway, I decided not to worry about that for now.
「Tomorrow, I’ll push efficiency even further.」
So yeah, here’s how it goes. Toss a magic stone, a ghoul pops up, I whack it. The whole thing takes about thirty seconds.
The stone toss? Instant. The ghoul kill? Also instant. The problem was the awkward, soul-crushing wait before the thing respawns.
There were five magic circles, though. If I made the goblins chuck stones into them one by one with a bit of timing, we could speed this grind way up.
◇◇◇
16th Day
「Good morning, Kikyou. Beautiful weather today, isn’t it?」
「Morning. Not that weather really matters in a dungeon.」
「Ah… r-right. Still, it’s been a little over two weeks since you started coming here, hasn’t it? Have you made it to the 3rd floor yet?」
「Uh… No」
That was close. Way too close. One extra word and I’d have blown everything.
A solo rear-guard rookie reaching the 3rd floor in two weeks is basically impossible. Normally, it takes a solid month just to push past level twenty.
Was she testing me just now?
※Author's Retort: It's pure goodwill.
Alright, new plan. From now on it’s: “Good morning, I’m off exploring,” said in one breath, then gone.
No chatting. No vibes. No emotions. Just full-on NPC dialogue mode.
「Sana is new in this area, and I don’t really have any friends yet. If you want, maybe we could go out together so--」
「Good morning. I’m heading out to explore.」
「Eh?」
「Good morning. I’m heading out to explore.」
「Are you an AI?」
I slipped past the receptionist, chanting “Good morning, I’m heading out to explore” like some kind of defensive spell as I headed straight for the dungeon entrance.
◇◇◇
「Alright, goblins. Today you’re tossing the magic stones into the circles one after another, with a time gap. Don’t mess it up.」
I set my smartphone timer to beep every ten seconds and started issuing commands.
「Five of you, line up behind the magic circles. Each time the timer sounds, throw a magic stone in, starting from the right. Watch carefully.」
The timer chimed. I lobbed a stone into the rightmost circle.
The circle blazed to life, and just as the ghoul was about to reappear, the timer rang again. I immediately threw another magic stone into the second circle from the right, then lashed the ghoul emerging from the first circle with my twenty-pix whip.
「Got it? Do it right, you get rice balls. Screw it up, you get whipped.」
I snapped the whip loudly. The goblins exploded into frantic screams.
Say it like that and they’ll remember for sure. Classic carrot-and-stick scheme.
I hadn’t let a single monster die, and I’d even prepared proper rewards. Honestly, I’m a textbook example of a model monster tamer.
The pixie at the tip of my 20-PixWhip kept staring at the rice balls with blatantly greedy eyes. Shameless little thing.
Still, one grain of rice wouldn’t hurt. Being stationed at the whip’s tip must be the roughest job, so a little preferential treatment was only fair.
「You’ll get one grain of rice later.」
「PIIIIIIIIIIIII!」
The moment I promised the reward, the pixie perched at the whip’s tip raised her hand happily.
If she was willing to work happily for a single grain of rice, that was an outrageously good deal.
Pixies were tiny, girl-shaped monsters about ten centimetres tall, each with slight differences in their faces and hairstyles. The pixie at the tip stood out as the only one with long hair, so for clarity’s sake, I decided to give her a name.
「Long hair, babyish face, and oddly cute…」
Alright.
「From today on, your name is Bargain Girl. Got it?」
「Piii!」
She threw her hands up, beaming with joy, thrilled just to have a name.
Truly a Bargain Girl.