My Reincarnation Skills Are “Playing With Dolls” and “Playing With Clay”, but What Am I Supposed to

Chapter 48: The Fifth Floor of the Labyrinth

"Ah, it's working! The healing effect seems to have increased after all. Mmm, feels good."

"Please stop making weird noises."

With "Great Healing" cast by Kalena, my nearly crushed body recovered.

In a normal situation, these severe injuries could have left me disabled for life. But in this game-like different world, with high-level spells, injuries heal effortlessly. Modern medicine wouldn't be able to achieve such a result. On the other hand, there must be many lives here that cannot be saved even with modern medicine.

Having regained my strength, I, along with Gureon and Cecily, used our own magic to drag Medusa, who had turned into a stone statue, to the edge of the barrier.

The reason for this was that the barrier would break the moment Medusa was purified, causing the ground to collapse, and we didn't want to get caught up in it again. We've learned our lesson from previous encounters and now act more cautiously.

"Now, 'Purification.'"

Kalena calmly chanted the spell and obtained a quite large magic stone.

As soon as Medusa and her minions were purified, the area within the barrier collapsed and sank.

And, strangely enough, along with the collapse, we discovered a treasure chest that was buried right nearby. Why is it always hidden by the barrier?

From the unlocked chest came some nuggets and small round pills made of grayish sand, resembling fingertip-sized stones.

"I wonder what these are. Beth, any idea?"

"I'm not sure. I've never seen them before, but maybe... could they be the cure for petrification, Lena-san?"

"I see, that's possible."

Kalena looked convinced. Indeed, it's quite typical in games to receive the cure for a particular status ailment after defeating a boss character who possesses that skill.

We were worried that if Kalena got petrified, for instance, as there's no guarantee that every party would have a high-level priest, it could have been quite a challenge to find a cure here.

Beyond the sunken area, we could see the entrance to the next labyrinth, which would be the fifth floor.

Though the presence of monsters was dense, we didn't sense any strong hostility nearby.

"Is everyone okay? Well then, let's go explore the situation for now."

With the hope that this will be the last floor, everyone started descending one by one, securing the rope in place.

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The impression of the fifth underground floor was somewhat like a habitat for lower organisms.

Unlike the previous floors, it was moist overall, and the ground we stepped on was covered with moss-like substances, making it slippery. We thought about using the armored vehicle we had used on the fourth floor, but it seemed dangerous as it might get stuck in the soft ground due to its weight, so we gave up on that idea.

From the walls to the ceiling, there were less sophisticated plant-like substances, such as moss and vines, and they faintly emitted a soft glow.

Small insects, leeches, and worm-like creatures were crawling around on them.

Some of them were labeled as "<Carnivorous Vine LV2>" or "<Magic Leech LV1>," but many didn't display any information even when we used identification skills.

However, one thing was for sure: the magic density here was higher than in any of the previous floors.

As we looked up in response to a creepy noise, a poisonous-looking frog with red and green patterns, about the size of a cat, hopped over and extended its tongue, which was longer than a human's hand, to catch a small insect.

It was labeled as "<Labyrinth Frog LV5>."

Beth seemed quite frightened, walking nervously at the back of the group, afraid of being left behind. I recall she was not comfortable with snakes or insects.

As for me, I didn't have much resistance either, and I worried about something falling on us from above... Oh no!

"Snake on the ceiling!"

"Yikes!"

Almost simultaneously, Laruuk threw a dagger at the snake, and Beth let out a weird scream.

The creature, labeled as "<Madara Giant Snake LV8>," responded with a sharp, angry hiss when the dagger cut off the tongue that had been flickering in and out of its open mouth. Then it wriggled its large body menacingly.

It was huge; it could easily swallow a human whole.

I transformed Lina into a magic user mode. Kalena's arrows hit the snake's body, but they didn't seem to cause much damage.

On the contrary, the snake got angrier and started stretching toward us. When Lina hit its face with fire, the fat on its body seemed to catch fire, and it burned brightly.

As the giant snake writhed in agony, it fell towards us with a splash. Wet ground was scattered everywhere, and Beth screamed again.

I felt like crying too.

I brushed away the disgusting insect-like remains that stuck to my face and created a large mass of clay above the snake's head, trying to crush it. Damn it! Because of that, a bunch of disgusting things scattered all over again.

Sorry, everyone, please don't give me that look.

I thought the 1-ton clay would crush its head, but even though it should have been crushed, the snake still seemed alive, writhing wildly and swinging its tail.

We kept our distance to avoid being hit.

Finally, Beth, who seemed to have settled down, released an excessive amount of flames, roasting the giant snake.

As the snake burned in flames, things that had seemed to be part of the wet ground started moving. Translucent creatures undulated and surged, seemingly trying to escape from the flames.

As soon as we identified them, we saw "<Magic Element Slime LV1>" and "<Magic Element Slime LV3>" moving all over the walls and ground.

Suddenly, countless red dots appeared on the map skill.

"Ge-!"

The voice wasn't mine. Even Larouque seemed puzzled.

"Concealment? Or perhaps a more primitive ability to blend in with the surroundings..."

Even the composed Larouque seemed a bit taken aback.

Fortunately, there were none right beneath us, but looking back, there were several that had passed by.

And there were countless of them ahead.

"Larouque, what are their abilities?"

Asked by Greon, he hurriedly reevaluated the situation.

"They don't seem to have any special attacks, but if you get absorbed, you'll be digested! Also, physical attacks won't work!"

In the first place, I couldn't even tell if you could count a swarm of gel-like slimes as one or two entities. Even amoebas become separate individuals when they divide, so maybe that was enough to describe them.

Even the LV1 small ones were larger than the slimes from that game, and there were even gigantic ones like <Magicite Slime LV12>.

They were big enough to fill up my entire cell. If I were swallowed by one, I would surely be dissolved.

"Bez, Lina, I'm counting on you."

"Yes, sir."

"Roger."

The flames of the two magic users continued to burn, clearing a path through the unending carpet of slimes and insects.

When the slimes were burned, either they were symbiotic with the insects or one was the other's prey; I wasn't sure, but small and large bugs, frogs, and snakes scattered and attacked us.

We continuously used our shields to defend and our swords to cut them down. When their numbers became overwhelming, we used clay walls to block them temporarily and had the magic users burn them down.

If we had used the magic power recovery pills Beth and I made yesterday, we might have been able to continue, but we decided to stop when everyone started to feel the suffocating lack of oxygen from burning too much.

"This is really endless."

"Yes, it is."

Cecily and Karina signaled a halt in unison.

We stopped at a point where the ground became damp enough that the slimes wouldn't catch fire.

"Based on the length of the previous floors, we should have about a third left to go."

I agreed with Larouque's assessment.

There seemed to be something like a small stream floating in the marsh at our feet, and about a hundred steps ahead, it appeared that water had accumulated.

There was also a strong presence of numerous monsters there.

Or rather, since encountering the slimes, the entire labyrinth seemed filled with dense magic power, making it impossible to sense anything else.

"Let's stop here. We've got a pretty good idea of what's ahead."

There was no objection to that.

Anyway, it should be considered a success that we managed to advance through an area filled with dangerous monsters without anyone suffering major injuries.

While it was quite different from before, we couldn't claim to have completely cleared the area of monsters we had passed through, but at least we built clay walls to separate them from the space ahead and then burned them down with the magic users' help.

When I noticed, the elliptical cave had a width of 7 to 8 meters and a height of over 5 meters. It was much larger than the first floor.

And they said this was the size of the worm that passed through here; it was truly enormous.

We formed a circle, holding hands, and Beth used the last of her MP to cast "Return." Everyone was exhausted.

As we felt the sensation of being sucked into the warp's different space, I earnestly wished that this would be the final floor.