Exploiting a weakness isn't always best.

"Burn my enemies away, Fireball!!"

From the tip of Dea-kun's staff, a basketball-sized fireball flew straight and hit a Grasshopper—a locust about the size of a cucumber. The Grasshopper burst into flames with a whoosh. It let out a death cry like air being squeezed out, then burned to a nice crisp.

"Small fry like this go down in a single fireball."

"I can't compare to Onee-san's magic, but I am an elf after all."

Dea-kun puffed out his chest proudly with an "ahem."

By the way, this dungeon has a lot of insect-types, and many of the monsters here are weak to fire. Thanks to that expensive staff, he says he can cast another hundred or even thousand spells.

"Master, Dea-sama. I hear buzzing from over there. Sounds like there are a lot of them."

"Ugh, a swarm of flying ones… Dea-kun, can you handle them with Fireball?"

"Depends on the number and size, but I should be able to hold them back with Fire Wall."

Ooh, nice… Oh, four fist-sized bees came flying at us. Yellow Hornets. Gotta watch out for their stinger attacks.

"Block my enemies, Fire Wall!"

Dea-kun's magic burned the bees. One tried to go around, so I cut it down with Spatial Magic.

"You know, when you say 'a lot' and only four show up, it's kind of anticlimactic… Yeah, let's work on arithmetic, Aishia."

"Huh? Oh, yes. If Master says so."

I wonder how she handled money when she was traveling as a bard.

"Oh no, I burned up the stingers that serve as the Proof of Subjugation too."

"Ah, so fire magic has that drawback… This much should still be fine, right? It's only half-burned."

"Please put them in the backpack, Master."

Aishia turned around so the backpack faced me, and I stuffed them in. Of course, I'm actually storing them in spatial storage. But this is practice for when we come with Sati-tan later.

"If I remember right, hornet-types produce beeswax from their bodies? Called honey wax or something."

"Ah! They coat themselves in layers of it as armor, so fire magic ruins that too. Sorry."

The beeswax from the ones Dea-kun killed had melted from the heat and seeped into the ground. I could recover it with Spatial Magic, but it's not a valuable enough material to bother.

"Exploiting weaknesses isn't always the best approach, huh. Well, don't worry about it."

"Maybe I should try aiming only for heads next time."

Also, it smells nice now, like shrimp. I wonder if you can eat these too?

You have to process them before cooking? I see.

"By the way, there's something I've been wondering. There are tons of monsters in this dungeon. Like, doesn't overhunting deplete them? Where do they all come from…?"

"… Who knows? I never really questioned it, just figured that's how dungeons are."

"Oh my, Master and Dea-sama don't know? Then allow me to explain."

With that, former bard Aishia began speaking proudly.

"The dungeon, that is the birthplace of demons; the dungeon, that is where mana returns. Mana fills the dungeon and condenses into droplets, from which monsters are born before cycling back once more… or so it is said."

I see. So dungeons are spaces that gather magical power and increase the monster spawn rate… In that case, culling them by hunting will eventually deplete them, or at least reduce their numbers.

However, over time, magical power accumulates again and monsters start spawning once more.

"Huh, that's impressive. Does it work the same way for ore and stuff?"

"The Armor Ants here eat iron ore to thicken their armor, so it seems likely that ore and such is produced here too."

So you can mine infinitely. Amazing.

Anyway, since today we dove in just to get a feel for things, we hunted a few more monsters on the shallow floors before returning from the dungeon with time to spare.

From the collected materials and Proofs of Subjugation, our earnings after deducting admission fees totaled three silver coins.

Hmm, if a quick dive nets this much, going all in could earn way more. Dungeons might be pretty delicious after all.