It's been a long time.

I collected the corpse of the Lunar Golem and sighed heavily.

Two months had passed since I had accomplished the request to kill Hercules with a temporary party (I had made up for it by offering to make up the expected profit from the sale of Hercules' corpse in cash).

I finally finished converting all the new Lunar Metal I brought back from the moon into Hyruna Metal.



For the past two months, I've spent most of my time refining Hyruna Metal.

This doesn't mean that I've been neglecting Suzaku.
In the first place, Suzaku is an evil god who acts in complete secrecy until he has a solid group of followers.
As soon as we failed to get his location from Zakuel, it became impossible for us to find him.

There was only one way to get rid of Suzaku.
It was a very simple method: "When Suzaku starts to move with powerful subordinates, we must beat it head-on.

To do this, we need to increase our strength as efficiently as possible. ...... There are only three main ways to do this.

The first is to "increase the number of followers and awaken them to strengthen our strength in terms of numbers.
The second way is to train other tamers so that you can form a party with multiple tamers who have awakened followers.
And the third way is to make Caucasus and myself stronger.

In this way, the first and second options would certainly seem more efficient at first glance.
I even gave Hercules to Aelyria's sister.
If we talk only about timing, it might have been a good time to start training the successor.

But in fact, there was a trap.
With the current strength of me and the Caucasus, it was impossible to get the materials for the Awakening evolution.

If the current Caucasus is lacking in strength, it means that the people of this planet are equally lacking in strength.
In other words, none of us will be able to defeat the demons that are the source of the materials for the Awakened Evolution.

And the last of the awakening materials I brought over from my previous life was the one I used in the Caucasus.

In short, the first and second options were never there from the beginning.

Therefore, by process of elimination, our goal was to make the Caucasus and myself stronger.

The key to this was Artemis's "reward.

When I saved Artemis for the first time, I was given a "divine power", a special power that no mortal could ever obtain.

Perhaps the next "prize" will be a reward of such an enhanced type.
That's what I've decided to bet on.

Since I didn't know when Suzaku would make his move, I couldn't take it easy.
That's why I've been immersed in the 43rd level of the labyrinth attached to the Elite Academy, except when I go above ground to check that Suzaku hasn't moved.

I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I'm not the only one who has a problem with this.

Yeah. The base golem ate a lot of it after it mutated, which was a big help.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

...... So.
In fact, even after the base golem ...... mutated into a lunar golem, it continued to eat lunar metal ore up to about 20 times the amount needed for the mutation.

The base golem's respawn was the rate-limiting step in lunar metal refining.
In other words, a 20-fold increase in the amount of Lunar Metal consumed per body meant a 20-fold increase in work efficiency.

Thanks to this, in a period of two months, which was not long, he was able to convert an enormous amount of Lunar Metal, about 200 times the amount consumed in five days.

Let's get back to earth.

Using the divine power that I had developed over the past two months, I skipped three levels back to the surface.

Once on the ground, I had the misfortune of running into that a**h*le in charge again, so I made another transfer.

Then, I took out the dipper from the storage magic and started to go to the red lake to head for the ...... moon.



"Hello, Valius.



"Hello, Varius. It's been a while.

"Yeah.

It's been about a week since we left the labyrinth attached to the Elite Academy.
We've arrived at the moon.

"This is the promised Heirnametal.

I said, and took out all the Heirna Metal from the storage spell.

"Is this enough?

'Yes. I'm not sure what to do with it, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

I was slightly relieved at Artemis' reply.
I can't tell the difference between Lunametal and Heilnametal.
If the Lunar Golems that were fed to the mutated Lunar Golems were not properly converted into Heirna Metal, there was no doubt that ...... was a concern.

I'm glad to hear that my fears were unfounded.


Artemis has now reverted to her bow form and is sitting quietly on my pile of hylnametal.

Perhaps the "quality of divine power" is changing now.

I'm suddenly looking forward to seeing what Artemis's "reward" will be.
I'm suddenly looking forward to it.