Chapter 126: Slow and Steady
"Uuuooh! I'm so excited! We finally get to enter a Dungeon...!" exclaimed Riko, scrunching her body and squeezing her fists excitedly as the Party prepared to enter the indisputably safest of the F-Rank Dungeons, known as the Snail Forest.
"Save the celebratory energy for when we all return safely..." said Vahn, plopping his hand down atop Riko's helmet. Since they were the clothes she would be wearing into the Abyss, she had swapped her training attire for an upgraded version of her Delver outfit. It looked virtually identical to her old one, but instead of being made from ordinary leather and layered cloth, it was formed from the hide of various monsters, elevating it from F to C-Rank.
"Right...!" responded Riko, taking a moment to adjust her helmet before facing Roxanne and Fran with a determined smile and stating, "Once we head inside, we'll secure the area around the portal. The Snail Forest may have the lowest difficulty, but we shouldn't underestimate the monsters who inhabit it. If you spot a snail with a yellow or purple shell, be wary of their paralytic and poisonous gas."
"Understood," responded Roxanne, sporting a markedly relaxed smile as she offered an affirming nod.
"Nn...safety first..." appended Fran, her usual taciturn self but modeling a focused, determined look. Like Riko, she had also exchanged her training attire for an outfit and equipment that wouldn't appear out of place in her original world. Specifically, due to Roxanne's influence, she was modeling form-fitting black pants, a white tunic with black accents and somewhat billowy sleeves, stylish black and white knee-high boots, forearm-length black gloves with thin but durable metal plating on the back, and a simple but functional black, wyvern leather breastplate. A black buckler adorned her left arm, and since the monsters they were facing were susceptible to crushing attacks, she had swapped her usual silvery-white shortsword for a one-handed hammer with a pick.
Following one final gear check, Roxanne took point, passing through the nebulous blue vortex that would transport them to the Snail Forest, with Riko, Fran, and then Vahn following. What awaited them on the other side was a fairly ordinary-looking forest, but the ground was largely devoid of grass and detritus, the result of enormous snails with cartoonish eyes and colorful, rounded shells slinking about at a slow and gradual pace.
"Oh, wow, they're much bigger than I expected..." remarked Roxanne, her reddish-brown eyes wide with curiosity as she eyed a snail with a pale red shell a short distance from the portal. It was nearly a hundred and twenty centimeters tall from the forest floor to the tips of its eyes, situated on the ends of antennae-like protrusions, and its rounded, pale red shell sat even higher atop its nearly three-meter-long body.
"Well, if they were the size of normal snails, it would make much sense for them to be classified as monsters," remarked Vahn.
"Alright, everyone, let's stay focused...!" interjected Riko, suppressing her almost instinctual urge to approach and try riding the giant snail. Instead, she took aim at it with a weapon that looked like a pistol but with a round, egg-shaped barrel and a large opening at the front. It was a rare weapon from her world known as a Relic Gun, and when fired, it used compressed air to propel exceptionally dense spherical projectiles that either impacted the target with impressive force or exploded like tiny cannonballs.
POP POP POP
Though the type of Relic Gun Riko was using typically had a capacity of one round, requiring continuous reloading, the Equip Function vested by the Tower's System allowed her to store as much ammunition as he had in a slot reserved for ammo. Rapid firing reduced the velocity of each bullet and increased the likelihood of a jam, but it was extremely convenient in a pinch.