A Demon Lord's Tale: Dungeons, Monster Girls, and Heartwarming Bliss

Into the Forest Depths(3)

After a short breather, we called it quits for the day and dispersed.

Rir returned to the forest, while Enne and I relaxed in the bath and reported the day’s events to Lefi.

“Well…it looks like you ran away from something, but I’m glad to see that you made it back without injuries.”

“Ah… We were easily found by that thing. It had a ridiculous detection range, attack range, and offensive capabilities. For the first time in a long time, I thought I was going to die.”

Enne chimed in too, “…It shot a beam at us, a beam. It was cool.”

I couldn’t help but reply to her, “That beam was definitely cool, but I felt like I would have been vaporized if it hit me.”

“Hmm, what did you run into?”

“A golem. There are some ruins deep in the west area, Lefi, do you know anything about them?”

“…Ruins?”

“Yes, ruins. They were so weathered by the years that it was hard to tell what they were anymore.”

Seriously, it was practically swallowed by nature.

Barely retaining any artifact-like form, that was.

Then Lefi put her hand to her chin and started thinking.

“…I didn’t know there was such a thing in that forest. All I know is that the forest had been a magic forest since long before we were born. I did mention to you before about [The place where God died], though that is the most that I have known.”

Come to think of it, we talked about that a long time ago.

About the Demon Forest being the place where a God had perished.

“Well, when I think about it, there is a point that I am a little concerned about. Why would a forest name be handed down by our elders, even though the place had no real importance with our race?”

“…Yes. Certainly from an Ancient Dragon’s point of view, monsters in the Demon Forest are just a little stronger than those outside it, and it would not have mattered.”

As expected of the most powerful race.

And my wife was the strongest among them.

Hmmm, that’s nice.

“Kaka, well, a lesser dragon might have a little trouble, but to an ancient dragon, there’s no problem. Then, again, I am curious why the reputation of this place has spread among the dragon race. In fact, I came here first because I somehow knew about this place.”

I wonder.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but it was certainly a point of concern.

Did the Dragon race receive any information about this place?

I said in an excited tone, “…Okay, this is starting to be fun. I guess this is where I’ll start. I’ll be exploring the west area for a while.”

Enne also added without missing the beat, “…Hmmm. I’m going to have a lot of adventures.”

“Mm, go for it. But be sure to come back safely.”

◇◇◇

We spent the next few days gathering information on the Golem which was named Asura Golem when I identified it.

First, the difference in level between me and the golem was too great, so I could not use any analysis skills on it.

So, for now, we started by identifying where the attack range of the golem was.

This was surprisingly easy to figure out because of the lack of monsters beyond a certain range. I also noticed from the nearby monsters that they didn’t approach after reaching a certain distance, probably in order to not be killed by the golem.

The monsters must have learned from this and stopped going beyond a certain range.

What I meant by that was that even the monsters in the west area would avoid it.

We also learned that the sky side was bad.

Because of the open area, the visibility was wider, and with a wide visible area, it could find targets farther than on places with more obstacles.

One fortunate thing was that he was, after all, a golem.

In other words, since it was not a normal life form, it would not do anything beyond what it was set to do.

If we took even one step out of its attack range, it would not pursue us any further, or rather, it would hardly move from its fixed position.

That didn’t make its attack performance drop, though.

Once, using my DP catalog, I bought and sent out dozens of quadrupedal golems called “Hounds” with “Evil Eye” and small combat golems that I had never used before, and had them all charge at once from multiple directions…but they were all destroyed by the beams.

Some of the beams that were fired wildly flew right at us, and we almost got hit by a stray bullet, which made us break out in a cold sweat.

Because we were being so loud, the monsters came close to us, and we had to run away in a hurry. It was really scary.

Also, it made me want to cry a little because I wasted a gorgeous amount of DP.

I had spent a lot of DPs to prepare a number of them so that I could precisely determine the attack range and performance of the golem, but I didn’t expect for all that I had summoned to be erased, which wasted a lot of my DP.

Maybe I wouldn’t be able to use any more DP this month….

Oh, due to the fact that the adult members of our family could use some of the functions related to the dungeon, DP was currently treated as pocket money and the amount available was fixed.

Of course, I had a much larger amount of DP at my disposal than the other members of the adult group, and I was allowed to spend as much as I really needed to…but when I wasted a good amount of DP in the past, they got mad at me, and this was the result.

A Demon Lord with an allowance system.

Very undignified.

–I’m not going to let my DP go to waste.

I had learned something from that simultaneous assault.

The order in which my army of golems was destroyed was not in the order of those who approached first.

They were destroyed in the order of what the golem noticed first.

Those that were hidden by trees and grass and could not be seen were attacked later, even if they were close by.

In other words, there was a high probability that the enemy was detecting targets visually.

“…Okay, I’ve decided. Tunnel tactics.”

“Kuu?”

[…Are we digging holes?]

“Yeah. Let’s dig a hole to his feet, prepare all the bombs and traps we can find, and drop him.”

Normally, it would take tremendous effort for one person, one animal, and a sword to dig a hole, but I had the power of the dungeon’s terrain manipulation.

After several days of exploration, I had already incorporated this area as my dungeon area, so I could alter it at will.

Hahaha, I finally made it to the west area!

…Oh, I would have to explain to my wives later how I used the DP and that I didn’t waste it.

They’ve been bonding a lot lately, or rather, colluding with each other so much that it’s making me feel twice as helpless.