The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 54

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#054

 

The pond that Sung-jun had dug was quite large, but it wasn’t enormous enough for 700 people to wash simultaneously.

 

There was no need for everyone to bathe at once anyway, and it was necessary to separate the men’s bath from the women’s bath.

 

After roughly gauging the size of the pond, Sung-jun asked Shindo Ayaka to organize groups so that 20 men and women could wash separately.

 

And while Shindo Ayaka was assigning bathing schedules, he began preparation work for smooth bathing.

 

“This should be enough for a partition.”

 

After installing a massive dark curtain across the space between the men’s bath and women’s bath, Sung-jun set up illusion magic to separate the exterior and interior of the baths.

 

From the outside it would just look like a wall, but if you pushed through with your body, you could enter the bath inside.

 

And at the entrance, he even installed a separate changing area where clothes could be removed and placed.

 

“First, go inside here and remove all your equipment and place it on the floor. Then when all 20 people enter the inner bath, shout that everyone’s inside. After all 20 people finish washing, come outside and put your equipment back on.”

 

After finishing the group assignments, Sung-jun explained to Shindo Ayaka how to use the makeshift bathhouse he had created.

 

Then Shindo Ayaka touched the equipment she was wearing and blushed with embarrassment.

 

Despite managing it as best she could, her outfit couldn’t be called clean by any stretch of the imagination.

 

No matter how much they washed their bodies, if they put back on the dirty clothes they were currently wearing, it would seem meaningless to have bathed with such effort.

 

Then Sung-jun nodded as if he understood Shindo Ayaka’s thoughts and said to her.

 

“I’ll solve the equipment problem too.”

 

“…Thank you.”

 

When the first bathing group selected went inside the illusion barrier and gave the signal, Sung-jun entered the changing area and lifted the 20 sets of equipment left on the floor into the air.

 

Then he began washing the 20 sets of equipment using laundry magic he had created by applying the magic he used to wash dishes before.

 

With each piece of equipment’s position exquisitely fixed in mid-air to prevent accidents from equipment colliding and getting damaged, a giant water droplet was summoned that engulfed the clothes and various equipment.

 

After going through about 3 minutes of washing process, Sung-jun finished drying all the equipment, placed the gear back on the floor as it had been stacked, and moved to the changing area attached to the women’s bath.

 

Then he began repeating the same process until it was finished.

 

10 minutes per group based on male Awakened.

 

Until all 700 members of the massive raid party finished bathing.

 

***

 

“For having over 200 people wash before us, the water is incredibly clean. I was worried we might end up bathing in dirty water.”

 

Kurosaki Ryusei, the clan master of Black Spear, a raid clan of Osaka Dungeon who participated in this raid as a backup member, dipped his hand in the water that sparkled with a clear light like a bath no one had entered, and let out an exclamation of admiration.

 

Then he looked around inside the bath and grasped the structure of the makeshift hot spring Sung-jun had created.

 

“Hot water comes out from one side and water continuously disappears from the opposite side. Rather than a pond, is this some kind of river-like structure?”

 

Massive magic stones that Sung-jun had taken out from subspace were glowing and supplying magical power to the magic circles that generated water and the ones that made it disappear.

 

Examining this closely, he reached toward the magic circle with eyes filled with greed.

 

“Master. It’s not ours either, so touching it is a bit…”

 

“Ah, right. I almost made a mistake. If I carelessly mess with it and something goes wrong, I might receive tremendous criticism from the people waiting behind us.”

 

In any case, what was important now was utilizing this precious bathing opportunity that would have been unimaginable before.

 

Having made that judgment, Kurosaki Ryusei immediately immersed his body in the bath where fast currents were flowing.

 

“Ahh… this feels good… I really feel like my fatigue is completely melting away.”

 

“If we just had soap here, it would have been absolutely perfect.”

 

“Let’s suggest adding soap and shampoo to the supply materials next time.”

 

“But being able to pull off this kind of feat inside a dungeon is because of that man who newly joined Goddess’s Guidance, isn’t it? Without that man…”

 

Kurosaki Ryusei’s expression darkened as he listened to his clan member’s words.

 

Even if they brought soap or shampoo into the dungeon in the first place, without a large amount of water to use them with, it would obviously just become luggage taking up weight.

 

Of course, it wasn’t like there was no method.

 

Just like Guidance of the Goddess Clan brought Sung-jun to this raid, they could also bring that man named Sung-jun to the Osaka Dungeon raid.

 

The problem was whether Guidance of the Goddess Clan, who knew that man’s value, would readily lend Sung-jun to them.

 

“Is there any possibility?”

 

“If that man belonged to our clan, would you lend him to other clans?”

 

“I’d absolutely never lend him.”

 

“Then we have our answer. Let’s not be greedy for what we can’t have and focus on what we do have. We only have 10 minutes to wash like this anyway.”

 

What Sung-jun provided was only clean, hot water generated almost infinitely; he hadn’t provided soap that he didn’t have, so Kurosaki Ryusei immediately roughly pulled out wet wipes from the corner of the bath.

 

Then he began roughly scrubbing his body immersed in the hot water.

 

***

 

“There’s soap?”

 

Unlike the over 600 male Awakened among the total 700 people, the number of female Awakened was less than 100.

 

Since large-scale raids meant not being able to wash properly or sleep comfortably for over two weeks in the first place, the number of female Awakened who wanted to participate in such operations was extremely small.

 

If soap or shampoo were provided to only some of the over 600 men, not only would the quantity be insufficient but discrimination issues would obviously arise, so Sung-jun was able to provide soap and shampoo, though limited, only to the female Awakened.

 

Since this matter had been agreed upon in advance by all the Awakened anyway, Shindo Ayaka enjoyed her bath using soap and shampoo with a comfortable mind.

 

Then she came outside wearing the cleaned equipment together with her colleagues who had entered the bath with her.

 

‘This is really comfortable.’

 

The bathhouse where the small number of female Awakened had finished bathing became a space that male Awakened could use as is, so it didn’t take very long for all 700 raid party members to finish bathing.

 

After confirming that everyone had finished bathing, Shindo Ayaka immediately entered a strategy meeting for the next boss raid.

 

“How is everyone’s condition?”

 

“It’s the best. Previously, not being able to wash during raids was such a natural thing that I didn’t realize it, but just being able to bathe in the middle makes our condition incredibly better.”

 

In previous raids, whether they went through base camps or not, by the time they challenged the depths above the 50th floor, it was common sense for everyone to challenge bosses in an exhausted state looking like beggars.

 

The base camps in the first place weren’t facilities with proper amenities, but were closer to warehouse-like concepts for intermediate supply.

 

However, the man named Sung-jun had abilities that could overturn existing common sense in one stroke, and thanks to that, the current raid party’s condition was maintaining a much better state than when they left the base camp on the 50th floor.

 

As soon as they began fighting the boss of the 53rd layer in earnest, they could feel that effect with their bodies immediately.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Was I this strong?”

 

It wasn’t unreasonable for them to feel that way.

 

On the surface where condition management was possible, there was no need to fight with full power at all, and in the process of reaching the deep layers below the 50th floor where full power was needed, condition management was impossible.

 

So for them, this raid could be said to be their first experience of giving their all while their physical condition was intact.

 

And the power of that ‘condition management’ was strong enough to instantly defeat the layer master on the 53rd layer.

 

“Wait, does the bathhouse have some kind of effect?”

 

“Just from washing, it improved this much?”

 

It was a simple story, but condition couldn’t improve that much from simply washing.

 

The condition management effect they felt was generated by adding not just simple hygiene issues, but fatigue recovery effects from bathing in appropriately heated hot water, and psychological effects from enjoying a kind of ‘luxury’ of hot spring bathing in a dungeon that was previously unimaginable.

 

But whether it was psychological or physical effects, the fact that they could defeat bosses much more easily than previous raids was real, so the Guidance of the Goddess Clan members who participated in this raid burned with motivation as they headed to the next layer.

 

And finally, when Shindo Ayaka arrived at the 55th layer, the planned site for installing the 11th base camp, she officially declared that this raid had ended successfully.

 

“Everyone worked hard.”

 

“I feel like I could fight more if I wanted to.”

 

“Should we just break through to the 60th layer?”

 

Seeing clan members who would normally want to return to the surface as quickly as possible burning with motivation, Shindo Ayaka seriously considered whether to go deeper as her clan members suggested.

 

Then she concluded that returning to the surface was the priority for now.

 

“Let’s return for now.”

 

“But Captain. Returning to the surface will require over two weeks again. And it will take time to come back down here too. Fighting isn’t the problem. Movement is the problem. Besides…”

 

“We’re returning to the surface to solve that problem. As you all know, Ma Sungjun’s abilities can solve the problems existing raids have in one stroke, and to utilize that 100%, we need to change the structure of the currently operating base camps themselves.”

 

Shindo Ayaka asked numerous questions to utilize Sung-jun’s abilities 100% in the next raid where Sung-jun’s participation was promised.

 

And with the information gathered that way, she had completed in her mind the optimal base camp form utilizing Sung-jun’s abilities.

 

“As you experienced with the makeshift hot spring on the 53rd floor, using magic stones makes it possible to supply hot water through magic circles even without water. And that water is clean enough to use as drinking water. Moreover, Ma Sungjun’s teleportation magic has such enormous capacity that it can move not just food and water, but even materials for base camp construction all at once.

 

He said he’d have to test it to know for sure, but he said it would probably be possible to summon completed prefabricated buildings from the surface inside the dungeon as a whole. If that’s possible, there’s no need to raid below the 55th floor right now.”

 

Beds where you could lie down and sleep comfortably, bathhouses where you could wash cleanly and relieve fatigue, and even cooking facilities that could provide properly cooked delicious meals instead of canned preserved food.

 

The new base camp Shindo Ayaka planned was filled with facilities that would completely overturn the existing concept of raids.

 

“If we can install all those facilities as planned, future raids will be able to proceed in an environment hundreds of times more comfortable than now. If that happens, countless Awakened who were reluctant to participate in raids simply because they were difficult and dirty will flock to Tokyo Dungeon. And those countless people will bathe, eat, and sleep in the base camps we install.”

 

With an expression that she couldn’t contain her anticipation for what was to come, Shindo Ayaka said.

 

“From now on, we’re going to start doing business with those people.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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