Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

The enemies this time are, once more, a group of Green Caterpillars.

(Fire Storm!)

I activated Fire Storm, and the sparks it created began to fall in the vicinity of the enemies. Most of them got burned down on the spot, but two of them actually survived, meaning that we were once again put in a situation where both Roxanne and I had one enemy to defeat. When the one I was closer two approached me, I slashed it with my Copper Sword and got body-slammed in return. It didnt hurt all that much, but it was all too evident that this shitty Copper Sword was not Durandal. If I had it with me, this bug would have been turned into shishkebab in a jiffy. I managed to avoid the second body slam that was heading my way and then wanted to launch magic at the Green Caterpillar in return, but before I was able to cast Fireball or another Fire Storm at it, it used that brief gap between my actions to get closer to me again

Damn it! Why did I allow something like that to happen! Now, if I was the previous, close combat oriented me, then I would never allow such a blunder to happen, but now that I have switched my specs from sword-fighting to magic casting, it became all too apparent to me that I simply started paying too much attention to the process of casting spells, which resulted in me not paying as much attention as I should have to the monsters themselves!

A moment later, Fire Storm finally activated, and its sparks managed to catch the Green Caterpillar just as I was in the middle of backstepping to create more of a distance between us. The flames swallowed it, and in the next moment it moaned loudly, keeled over and died, turning into a puff of green smoke.

Ugh

Just like I have previously said, fighting with monsters while being a magic user is much more difficult in comparison to having a purely physical build, and it made me groan a little in frustration. If this is how it is on the second floor, then a part of me cannot help it but get worried about how tough the things are going to get once we eventually reach the higher floors.

In this world, someone like me who had no other talents besides those I gave myself while I was creating my character (and all those I have obtained through performing countless Character Resets) has no other way of earning money for sustaining himself aside from hunting monsters and exploring the Labyrinth. Maybe I could try mercenary work or some other job requiring physical strength on knowing how to swing a sword, but there is absolutely no guarantee that it would get me more money per day than foraging into the Labyrinth would give me. Fighting monsters in the Labyrinth might be a difficult depending on the floor you are exploring and you have to put up with the constant risk of certain death looming over you the entire time you are inside of the dungeons halls, but other than that this so-called career path is easy and simple enough for someone like me to understand: go into the Labyrinth, kill everything that moves and acts hostile towards you, pick up any items the monsters might leave behind when they will die, sell those items back at the city, profit, repeat as many times as necessary. And speaking of items dropped by the monsters, I went and picked up all of the Green Caterpillar Threads that have been left behind by the monster we defeated just now.

Roxanne, give the Green Caterpillar Threads that you picked up. Im going to store them all in the Item Box.

I called out to Roxanne as she was picking up the Drop Items near her.

In the Item Box? Not the backpacks?

Yeah, into the Item Box. Right now I should have the necessary space to handle putting that many items inside, so no worries.

Just recently I have hit Lv.20 as an Explorer, and since the overall capacity of the Item Box depends on the level of the Explorer Job, then the space of my Item Box has increased considerably in comparison to what I had when I was just starting in this Labyrinth crawling business. To be more specific, since I am a Lv.20 Explorer, I can now have 20 spaces for items, each of which can hold up to 20 pieces of small items. Before I had to be really selective with what I was putting inside there, but now I have more than enough to safely store all of my gold coins, silver coins, some pieces of spare equipment and various medicines, and I will still have some space left in that sucker! And since the only monsters we have been hunting in the Veils Labyrinth for a while are Needlewoods of the first floor and the Green Caterpillars of the second floor only drop Needlewoods Branches and Green Caterpillars Thread respectively, there wont be any problems with fitting them all inside there.

Normally I would keep all of my coins in the string pouch in my backpack so that I could have an easy access to them at any time, but since now I have quite a lot of gold coins, which make the bulk of the entirety of my current monetary possessions, I decided to store them all in the safety of the Item Box where no one would ever rob them from me even if they tried. Its possible that Im getting a bit too paranoid about all of this,but we can never be too cautious when it comes to the safety of our funds, but even then we cannot be too sure of our moneys safety. Who knows, even if Roxanne does not know about it, there is a tiny sliver of a chance that there might exist a spell that allows others to steal items from the Item Boxes without their owners even knowing that they are getting robbed.

Uhm, forgive me for being too curious about the matters that have nothing to do with me, but may I ask what is your current level, master?

Roxanne asks about my level in a timid manner as if she thought that she was doing something that she wasnt supposed to do. She wants to know what my level is, huh? Well, I see no reason for keeping it a secret from her, so

My Explorer level, right? Currently I am at Lv.20.

Lv.20?! As expected of someone as amazing as you, master. In that case your Item Box should still have a lot of free space for all the items we obtained today!

She must know about the Lv. = number of spaces in the Item Box, but she didnt know my exact level, and thats why she wanted to ask for confirmation. I have to say, being praised by her for how big my level was felt quite good, almost as if she was saying that something else about me is quite big, if you know what I mean. So come on, Roxanne, praise my level some more!

Then again, I guess me having such a high level can actually be considered to be pretty abnormal, since normally it looks like the process of gaining levels in this world is typically associated with aging, similarly to how back on earth there was this saying that with the age comes experience. This world is like an example of putting that saying into practical use, except for the fact that there is a way of gaining EXP faster than normal people, but it has one prerequisite: youd have to be a child of the nobility, and then youd be taken to the Labyrinth from an early age so that you could have more EXP and the money until youd reach an age where you could start going there by yourself. But I am not a child of nobility according to the fake backstory I told to Roxanne. To her, I am just another country bumpkin, so it is understandable that she might be amazed at how someone whos supposedly no different from any other regular person is able to gain levels so fast.

Thinking about it that way, I guess the level of my Explorers Job might be considered a little high for my age, but it should not be that much of a deal. True, right now I am earning x20 more EXP points due to The Bonus Skill I have taken exactly for that purpose, and it was that that allowed me to achieve such a level in such a relatively short amount of time, while normally getting to Lv.20 in any Job would take a few more years, at least according to what Roxanne said at one point.