The next morning, after making sure to clean up, we checked out in the corridor. We only made it one corner before the map showed an enormous flow of ghosts. The ground started to vibrate, and I immediately signaled our retreat before they even popped into view. Wasn’t this a bit too aggressive? How was anyone supposed to complete a dungeon when they were allowed to act so defensively?

“What will we do now, Master?” Lydia asked.

I looked at the door blocking the library from the roaming ghost floods. I shook my head.

“Let’s head up.”

“Eh?” Lydia blinked.

“Up?” Miki added.

“I originally only headed down to satisfy my curiosity, gain some strength, and help Celeste. Now, I feel like I have a good understanding of what happened. I don’t think the final mural is going to tell me something I can’t predict. We don’t need to risk our lives. Rather, it’s much smarter to get the entire Adventuring Guild together and do a mass quest to wipe this dungeon out. What we need now can’t be overcome by strength. We need numbers.”

“I… I understand Master…” Lydia put her head down and sighed.

“What? What is it?” I asked.

Lydia shook her head. “D-don’t mind me. Master is absolutely right! I was just getting used to seeing how awesome Master was… I always saw Master completing it on his own.”

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“…”

“As I said, Master is right! I do not want Master to risk his life! Please don’t try to be cool. I-in fact, I’ll be angry if Master risks his life needlessly!” Lydia puffed out her cheeks.

I chuckled and patted her head. I understood what she meant. I’ve been in this dungeon for over a month. I’ve had many life or death battles. In many ways, it felt anti-climactic to give up on it now. If anyone deserved the final award, whether it be some dungeon points or some treasure at the end of everything, it really should go to us.

“The highest we can teleport is the 9th floor, then we’ll work our way up from there,” I explained, and then turned to Celeste. “Celeste, will you be willing to come with us? It may be some time before I can speak to the true “queen”, but you’re still my slave and house fairy, and I don’t want to leave you behind here.”

I didn’t know if Celeste understood all of the words I used, but she did tilt her head thinking about it for a moment before she gave a nod. I smiled in relief. I had worried that she’d be disobedient or even flee. Ever since I had used Order Slave on her she’d be very obedient and didn’t seem to complain about anything. The other two girls seemed to like her too.

The three of us put our hands on the kiosk. “Level 9!”

The white light and the familiar pull took us to a much higher level, hopefully much away from the flood. Would the fairy queen send the flood up to us once she realized we were going up? I didn’t think it would be a problem if she saw that we were leaving.

{Some of your party has teleported to another part of the dungeon. You must register with both kiosks to reach that floor.}

“Wait… what!” I glanced to see Lydia and Miki next to me, but Celeste was absent.

There were only two floors I haven’t registered with. Somehow… I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t level 1 that Celeste was on.