Rost City’s dungeon was…certainly not a welcoming place, Alexa thought.

  Compared to the wider hallways and slightly better lit up interior of Perlenstadt’s Great Dungeon, Rost was more of a discount version of it. It was dark, with cobwebs and dust nearly everywhere. Quite frankly, now that the Battle of Perlenstadt was over and Alexa’s more refined tendencies returned, she was starting to struggle.

  She was sneezing and coughing more. The dust was getting to her. It annoyed her nose and inflamed her eyes a bit. Maybe it wasn’t the fact that she was unused to this though, as even Adele and Phoebe were having brief coughing fits.

  Even Wilhelm had his hand over his nose.

  “What a badly maintained dungeon,” Alfred muttered. “For an entrance, it seems like this place has been abandoned for a while.”

  “Aren’t dungeons usually raided constantly?” Alexa asked.

  In this world, dungeons were a major part of the world economy. The thing was, dungeons offered an abundance of monster cores and at times, extremely refined magic crystals. A lot of ancient items and materials could also be found in rarer dungeons, which were sought after by many adventurers.

  Unfortunately, some dungeons would have too high monster spawn rates. Others had monsters too powerful for the locals to overcome. It was for this reason that a lot of dungeons were less explored than others.

  Still, it’s not as if this place wasn’t explored…

  Alexa looked around her.

  Rost is a massive city, so there’d be no reason for them to stop activity here.

  “It’s likely because of the economic downturn,” Wilhelm said, frowning. “Rost was a city of eighty thousand back then. Now it’s down to forty. A lot of people are moving out, because of a lack of work, most of which is concentrated in the Perlenstadt Metropole.”

  “Is that so?” Alexa curiously asked.

  Now that she thought about it, for a backward fantasy world, Perlenstadt was quite a massive city. Official records say that there were eight hundred thousand registered citizens in the city, and the city itself had a city government voted in by those who were registered.

  It was one of the few latent democratic institutions she knew of in this place so far.

  But in any case, Alexa doubted the eight hundred thousand figure. That was only the people who were registered. Certainly, she wouldn’t be surprised if it were at most double that figure, taking into account the people who moved recently to the Imperial Capital.

  “This is most unfortunate,” Alexa lamented. “So it seems back then, the people were moving to the Imperial Capital just to find opportunities. Now, it’s gone, and they have to go back to poorer places.”

  “Much of the Schengen Region’s population was hollowed out by the development of Perlenstadt,” Wilhelm said, as they made a turn. “Now that it’s half gone, the rest of this region is going to have a long path before recovery.”

  No wonder the revolution happened. After an incident as big as this, a lot of people will lose so much of their living standards, and, in the original novel, I did very little to help.

  Instead, Alexa Theresa enjoyed cake and sweets in the Monile Palace, waiting for the Grand Academy to reopen, all while she remained unaware of the refugee crisis and the growing monster threat in the region.

  I really have to do more!

  “Heads up!” Alfred called out, drawing out his sword. “Obsidian skeletons ahead of us!”

  Wilhelm’s shieldguards immediately rushed forward, forming a battleline with the swordsmen behind them. Meanwhile, at the rear, Wilhelm’s crossbowmen and Alfred’s Royal Guard knights formed up on the gaps of the shieldguards.

  They got to work rather quickly.

  The obsidian skeletons, which seemed like monsters truly made out of a human skeleton who held these short swords, charged at their lines. Quickly, they were met with a hail of crossbow arrows and spells. Those lucky enough to reach the shieldguards were quickly met by their melee.

  Wilhelm’s shieldguards were quite an interesting bunch. While their armor was indeed standardized and definitely magically enhanced, as were their massive shields, they held wildly different melee weapons, based on preference, it seemed.

  In this case, two shieldguards carried large warhammers that flattened the skulls and bodies of any skeleton near them. One of them carried a broadsword, and the last, well, he just carried a battle axe.

  The three girls behind watched as the men fought. Alexa watched Phoebe for a bit, as her eyes darted left and right.

  “What are you doing?” Alexa curiously asked the nervous girl.

  “I…I just don’t want any of them to be hurt,” Phoebe mumbled. “I have a skill called ‘Health Check’ to see their health status. If any of them is hurt, I’ll use my holy magic to heal them…as best as I can, at least.”

  “Ah…” Alexa smiled. “Makes sense.”

  In the story, this was the usual role Phoebe played in her team. While her lovers, the currently absent noblemen she played heroine with back there, fought, Phoebe used her awakened holy magic to practically keep them in the fight forever.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Only in dire situations did she ever truly fight, as Phoebe, as one could see, was for a long time, quite the meek girl.

  By the end though, she would be a truly determined saintess, just like the same Phoebe Alexa saw in Perlenstadt. Someone who’d take her staff to save everyone herself. For now, though, Alexa didn’t want that.

  Because I want my bags of XP first!

  “If I get hurt, make sure to heal me, okay?” Alexa asked with a smile. Adele’s eyes widened behind. “I’m just going to join in.”

  “W-wait, Your Highness—” Adele called out in vain, but Alexa was gone in seconds, joining in the soldiers and knights fighting what seemed like an endless horde of skeletons.

  When she was near the front, Alexa gleefully aimed her wand at the gap made by the shieldguards, and she went ham with her fireballs.

  +++

  “Hah, flavored mana potions are the best,” Alexa had a giddy smile as she sat on one of the stairs at the side of the battlefield after drinking a fancy mana potion.

  In one of the corners, one of the shieldguards bashed the skull of the last monster that appeared to attack them. It was a large spider that spat venom, but, well, there were at least a hundred corpses of the damned things around them.

  “Seventh floor,” Wilhelm muttered to the side as he placed another check on a notepad he was holding. “That should clear most of the monsters. Now, it’s up to Phoebe to reduce the spawning miasma here.”

  “Is there really no ritual room?” Alexa whined.

  “I would have told you that there is if we found one,” Wilhelm said. “But as far as my senses go, I know this is the last floor. We just need to reach the center where the dungeon’s control core is located.”

  “I wonder. Now that I think about it, can’t we just destroy the cores and end the possibility of monster attacks?” Alexa asked.

  “Not possible,” Wilhelm shook his head. “While mankind’s history only dates back so far, it’s clear that a lot of these dungeons are a product of an ancient civilization. There have been attempts to destroy dungeon cores back then, but it's protected by a shield spell that cannot be pierced so easily. It’s just a pointless endeavour.”

  “Not even those new shützes work?” Alexa asked.

  Wilhelm just snickered.

  “I once had a battle where I had the bright idea of trying to destroy a dungeon by hitting its core with a pre-positioned L?we shütze underground, right while demons tried to clear out my entrenched men down there. By the time we pulled out, so many of the dumbasses were still down there, so I activated the spell to remotely open fire. All it did was trigger a cascade reaction that intensified the spawning miasma.”

  He seemed quite satisfied with himself.

  “Sure, it didn’t destroy the damned dungeon and bury the demons as I was hoping, but, it sure did manage to cause a deluge of monsters to spew out of said dungeon, and the demons had to fight them for days while we retreated into our new defense lines miles away.”

  “Okay, I see,” Alexa looked away. “I’m never suggesting that idea.”

  “Hey, we can still try—”

  “Shut it!”

  Alexa stood up, right as one of the teams from Wilhelm’s group returned from a branch they explored, clearly unscathed. She heard Phoebe giving a sigh of relief, as no one was truly hurt. It did make sense.

  As far as Alexa knew, they were surrounded by some of the most powerful people of the Empire. Both Alfred’s knight company and Wilhelm’s Fuchs Brigade were absolutely no slouches. While indeed, the Fuchs Brigade was much, much larger, and in the grand scheme of things, more capable in actual combat due to their veterancy, logistics, and massed equipment, Alfred’s knights were still magically powerful to go toe-to-toe with them.

  Somewhat.

  Each one of them seemed to have dispatched an equal number of monsters as Wilhelm’s shieldguards. Even the two Royal Guard knights assigned as healers, Ms. Alicia and Ms. Elaine were such powerful mages that their light magic killed as many monsters as the eight crossbowmen attached with Wilhelm’s team.

  It’s quite the disappointment. Alexa thought. They just hog all the kills, so I can’t practice my spells just as much. I wish they’d let me have a few more opportunities to get kills…

  Kills after all with magic lent a bit more XP than just mindlessly firing it at the air, though, as far as Alexa knew, it apparently only worked when done to monsters or demons, not to humans. It made sense. There probably wouldn’t be ‘civilization’ if you could just kill humans for a 5% bonus XP points.

  “So,” Alexa spoke up, gaining everyone’s attention. “We’ll just move to the core and let Phoebe do her job?”

  “Assuming she knows how to use ‘Purify’ skill well enough now,” Wilhelm said, turning to Phoebe, whose cheeks burned slightly pink as she looked down.

  She truly didn’t like people’s eyes being aimed at her.

  “I…um, I practiced, I swear…” Phoebe managed to speak up, and Alexa walked close by to pat her friend on the head. Phoebe graciously accepted Alexa’s cheer-up method.

  “Heh, I’m sure she can do it,” Alexa proudly said. “Right, everyone. Onwards!”

  Everyone moved forward through the halls of the dungeon. In fifteen minutes, they found the core room, and as Wilhelm said, there was a shield spell around it that made it impervious to attacks.

  Therefore, Phoebe stood near the core, and as if she were praying with her staff, her halo glowed bright for everyone to see. Golden magic wafted through the massive room, as Alexa felt that nasty miasma that smelled like a subtle, rotten air, slowly dwindling.

  By the time she was nearly done, there was almost no miasma that Alexa could detect.

  Alexa turned to Wilhelm. He truly looked like a gremlin who just picked the best investment out there and was watching it pay off. She wanted to pinch his ears, but Alexa just stared proudly at Phoebe.

  I wish I could be like her one day.

  Not that she’d ever be the saintess level of powers. Alexa was just a side character after all, at least, right now. Back then, she was one of the villains. Phoebe on the other hand was the true heroine. She had every single quality of one.

  She was the chosen one. She was noble and idealistic. Most of all, she was truly one of the most powerful characters out there.

  But, Alexa still was the next Empress, and she wanted that damned Holy Mandate.

  I’ll save this world in my own way.

  Alexa smiled as Phoebe finally finished, looking at all of them like an innocent child asking for approval from her parents.

  “Alright, good job Phoebe,” Alexa said, rather quickly. “The first dungeon has now been pacified. But there’s more to go. We’re not going to rest until all of them are calm and stable.”