Itai no wa Iya nanode Bōgyo-Ryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu

They returned to the town and checked to see if what they were looking for was in any of the discovered dungeons.

“Oh, Maple. Here it is.”

“Ohhh! Really!?”

“Yes. Well, it’s a famous location. That being said, it’s on the fifth floor. And it isn’t a tourist spot, but a real dungeon. So we’ll have to prepare properly.”

“Mmm. I’ll do my best then.”

Compared to the first layer, there would surely be more monsters that posed an actual threat to them. Unlike the field of flowers, there would be a boss inside of the dungeon.

“It doesn’t say anything about the view being good, but since it’s really high up on the fifth layer, it’s bound to be pretty.”

“Mmm! I can’t wait!”

“Alright, let’s go then.”

“Yes!”

They decided they had enough potions, since Izu had given them a lot. And so they headed to the floating castle immediately.

“It’s been a while since I was on the fifth layer!”

“And it’s as blindingly white as before.”

The walls and floor of the fifth layer were all made of clouds. And like Sally said, it was blindingly white.

Apparently this floating castle had been discovered here very recently, and it took a while to reach it. After they changed their equipment so they would be battle ready, Sally explained what she knew to Maple as they made their way to the floating castle.

“We’ll have to use a magic circle at the end, so we can’t go directly with Syrup.”

“Hmm. Hmm.”

“The road there is not too hard. If anything, it was just easy to miss. That’s why people didn’t know about it until recently.”

“I see! Uh, it must be so exciting to be the first person to find such a place!”

“Yeah. Well, you’ve discovered a lot of places too, Maple.”

Maple would not be what she was now in terms of skills, if she hadn’t discovered anything.

“I want to continue exploring a lot of places! If there is any equipment that you could use, I’ll give it to you, Sally!”

“Same here, Maple. Oh, here it is.”

“Here?”

It was a dead end surrounded by very high clouds. As there were other places that were like this, no one had thought it strange.

“I don’t see anything here...but if the information is correct...”

Sally approached the wall of clouds and pushed it with both of her hands. After repeating this in several places, her hands suddenly sunk into the wall.

“Here! We can go through here.”

“Ohh. Amazing... I wonder how they found it.”

“Probably by accident? Isn’t that usually the case with you, Maple?”

“That might be true!”

As they had successfully found the path leading to the floating castle, the two stepped into the cloud. Their surroundings were even more white now. And so they had to carefully wade through the clouds and look for the next hidden path.

“Woah, it’s really pretty, but...I can’t even see where we are supposed to go.”

“I guess that’s why it’s a hidden dungeon. Well, we’ll use the information from our predecessors and keep going.”

“Yes!”

Sally walked in the lead and checked the route as they turned right and then left through the clouds.

As there were no monsters here, they made good progress in spite of the path being complicated.

After nearly half an hour of walking.

“Phew. We walked quite a lot...haven’t we?”

“It’s disorienting when there are clouds every way you look. Still, if we haven’t made any mistakes, then we should be very close...yes!”

Sally waded through some clouds to see what was on the other side. And then she raised her voice in triumph. Maple rushed to her and stuck her head through as well. There was a building that looked like a temple made of clouds. And in the center, they could see a glowing magic circle.

“Sally, is it here?”

“Yes. Well, this is where it really starts.”

“It would look so pretty from above...”

“You can take a photo later.”

“Hehe. I’ve been taking a lot of photos on the way!”

“Well, there will be monsters now, so don’t let your guard down. Okay?”

“I know!”

They both walked to the magic circle and stepped on it together. And like that, they were teleported to the floating castle.