"He is the Crown Prince, Mister Roost. Whatever the reason, hurting him was a great sin. If the worst comes to pass, the Empire might start targeting you. Do you hear me, Mister Roost? If this escalates, we'll be troubling Professor Golmind and the Academy again! Even your family and the restaurant will also get involved..."
I scratched my cheek while walking.
"I know, I know... Sorry, but don't worry. He will not report it to the Empire."
Tizmilly pursed her lips.
"Why are you so confident when it was the first time you talked with him!?"
Of course I was confident with him, since I knew his personality well after playing the game for so long. However, of course, I couldn't just replied her words like that, since she wouldn't believe me.
"You didn't understand, Theo, how shameless was that gu—I mean, Lord Agraviel was. He will do anything to win over something once you made him lose!"
And she continued on and on. I didn't know whether it was my imagination, but the air felt colder when she was staring at me.
'I never expected Tizmilly, the Villainess, to become like this when she was agitated...'
When we were like that, the pinkhead, Raffassa, suddenly approached us.
"W-wait, how could you defeat Lord Agraviel!? He was the 3rd most talented student in the Academy, you know! It doesn't even make any sense! You must be cheating, aren't you!?" She yelled at us, her face told me that I had greatly shocked her by beating their crown prince.
Following after her, Tizmilly's ex-big-brother, Lideon, also came to us.
"Tizmilly, who is that guy? I had never heard a student that was stronger than Lord Agraviel except you and that kid named Huggbuch!"
They started to accusing me of cheating while leaving Reffion alone to take care of the Crown Prince. Huh, what should I do now?
I exchanged glances with Tizmilly. She shook her head, gesturing for me to stop provoking them even more than this. However, no way I could forgive them that easily. Especially this supposed big brother of our Miss Villainess. It's tolerable for Agraviel to be seduced by Raffassa since he had interiority complex, but him? What was him? Why did he even got attracted to a petite girl like her? And because of that, he convinced his Family to erase Tizmilly's name from their family lineage?
"Oh, what's wrong, Senior Lideon? I just use pure physical strength there. I used no magic there, even though I was born with a Magic, because I thought it was only fair for the Crown Prince that way, and you said that I WAS CHEATING?"
The two shut their mouths after they heard my words. Even you yourself knew it, that I was fighting fairly, right? So why did you even accusing me for cheating? These guys really were pain in the ass...
I couldn't help but recalled about how much trouble I had when playing Ahlia before whenever Ahlia had to be together with these Love Interests. I mean, was there really no better guy somewhere other than these useless guys?
The more I looked at them, the more irritated I became. How could these Whippersnappers be chosen as people who were accompanied Ahlia to prevent the end of the world?
"Or what? You wanted me to use my Magic, so it could be a FAIR FIGHT?" I asked them while taking steps forward.
Thanks to my superior height, I could look down at them. Even Lideon, who was 3 years older than me, couldn't compare to my height. My Dungeon diving days had trained my body well, so I grew faster than most kids my age.
Raffassa gritted her teeth, clearly frustated. However, she couldn't say a thing after I checkmated them.
Tizmilly sighed seeing that, her fingers pulled my sleeve. "That's enough, Theo. Let's go," said Tizmilly with a tired smile.
Dealing with idiots really was draining. I nodded at her and turned around. After this, we still had to kill some more monsters to descend to the next floor. We better preseved our precious energy rather than wasted it to these brats.
However, maybe because I hadn't beaten her, that pinkhead just couldn't shut her lips.
"Don't you know that that girl, Tizmilly, is a bully!? Are you fine with her, knowing how she was a woman with that filthy personality!? You are destroying yourself befriending her!"
'Should I give her a punch before we go?' I cupped my fist and began to think about turning back to them, but Tizmilly stopped me, so I ignored them and continued to kill monsters with Tizmilly.
They kept yelling at us, but I focused more to killing monsters. Maybe even used these poor monsters as my sandbags.
Ten minutes later, we finally fulfilled our kill quotas. We immediately descended to the next floor, fearing that those brats would come to us if we lingering around to long at that floor.
...
The 15th floor of The Bank of Water was different from the previous floors.
The terrain was not a basic underwater ground, but an underwater ruins. The architectures looked kind of similar to ancient Egypt's building, but more alienated and with a magical touch on it.
The collapsed walls, pillars, statues, and etc. All were engraved with shimmering unknown symbols.
"They always said that the 15th floor of The Bank of Water was special, so it was the reason..." Tizmilly muttered while admiring the sight of the underwater ruins.
To be honest, I am also surprised. I never expected the floor to be multiple times more impressive than what I saw on the monitor.
We admired the sight for a while to forget about those brats, before I led Tizmilly to the east side of the floor. We navigated through the ruins carefully this time. We couldn't be as easy-going as before here, since the monsters here were already way stronger.
They had also grown a lot smarter than before, now capable of using the cover of the ruins to hide themselves and ambushes us.
We past a plummeted gate while carefully looking around. But then a tentacle ambushed us from above. Tizmilly reacted immediately and slashed the tentacle, before she pierced the body of the monster, which looked like a squid, to end it.
"They are getting more annoying now!" Muttered Tizmilly with disgust while looking at her slime-covered sword.
The slime would also disappear once the monster's body dessolved into mana particles and dropped behind an Elemental Gem, but having her sword covered by slime everytime she killed a monster must be uncomfortable for a girl like Tizmilly.
"But the squid monster number was indeed increased in this floor, huh?" I said while picking the elemental gem up and stored it into my waistbag.
Tizmilly's motivation wavered after I mentioned it.
"Ugh... It would be better if they will stop ambushing us, however," she mumbled displeasedly.
"If you disliked them that much, then I'll handle them."
Tizmilly immediately looked at me like I was her life-saver.
'Slimy monsters sure are hated by girls, huh?' I thought inwardly as we continued onward.
We kept encountering monster after monster attacks on the way. And everytime squid monsters appeared, I killed them before they could approaches Tizmilly.
After ten of minutes of walk, finally, we arrived in front of a building that looked like a shrine ruin. Moss and vegetation had crawled all over the place, spoke volume in how long had this ruin was abandoned here... If they ever abandoned.
It was never explained in the game, but now I wondered why ruins existed inside a Dungeon. Not just in this Dungeon, but others as well.
"So this is the place where we can get an Aqua Rune?" Tizmilly asked, interrupting my thought.
I looked at the ruin once more, and after confirmed that it looked the same as what I saw in the game, I nodded.
"That's right," I replied, gesturing her to follow me into the shrine ruin. "There was supposed to be a Magic Circle here..."
The shrine ruin interior was not dark, it was bright with constant light from the symbols that were engraved on the walls and everything. However, there was a circle of symbols that was different than other symbols when we reached the center.
I grinned as my eyes landed on that magic circle.
"We can get our Aqua Rune from there."
Tizmilly blinked. She looked at me and the magic circle.
"How?"
I leaned my spear on my shoulder.
"Of course, by bringing one hundred monsters into this shrine and killed them while the monsters were inside."
"O-One hundred...?"
With that, we started the ritual. For a whole hour, we were alternately bringing monsters into the shrine while the other was killing it. Bait, and kill, and repeat.
When Tizmilly's Mana was running low, we took a rest, then continued the ritual after her Mana was recovered. Elemental gems piled on the ground, left uncollected since we were too busy fighting monsters. Mana particles had also polluted the place and made it looked like a shimmering sauna.
We only stopped once the magic circle was started to producing light like other symbols.
Tizmilly immediately collapsed on her knees once she saw the light. "Finally... We finished it," she muttered with a tired face.
I could only laugh seeing how tired she was. Her stamina and mana were still too low at the moment. She need a lot more dives before she could reach my level.
"That's right—"
At that time, I paused.
I suddenly felt like I was forgetting about something important. And when I racked my brain to find what was forgotten, I found a horrible truth for the tired Tizmilly.
Tizmilly noticed my strange face, so she looked at me with a stiff face.
"Mister Roost?"
I looked at her, before I bowed at her.
"Sorry, but the fight was not over yet!"
I just remembered.
That we had to kill an Irregular Monster called Underwater King before we could get the Aqua Rune after we activated the magic circle.
Tizmilly's face slowly losing its color.
"... Eh?"