Hellmode ~A Hardcore Gamer Becomes Peerless in Another World with Retro Game Settings~

Allen's group stole the key from the 70th floor's boss Andre and headed to the 81st floor.

Along the way they found two doors that needed keys, and when they opened one they found a room with some protuberances on the wall which shone with a golden color.

"These are all orichalcum ore deposits."

"It seems so."

Sophie's eyes widened as she looked at that with Allen.

There were many different types of ore deposits in the Earth Labyrinth, which required a pickaxe to mine the actual items.

(So I can obtain divine orichalcum on the 80th floor.)

There were 2 types of orichalcum in this world, one was a copy made by the God of Magic Isiris, and the other was created by the God of Earth Gaia.

The one made by the God of Earth was called divine orichalcum to differentiate the two.

The orichalcum made by the God of Earth could be harder depending on how much Divine Power it had imbued.

Sometimes the copy could be stronger than divine orichalcum if it had too little Divine Power in it, but when it had more it could become far stronger.

"Wait, Sophie, open the other door too."

"Yes, Cecile. Here I go."

*Poof*

"Oh, a key broke…"

Inside the room there were many buildings like some sort of facilities.

"There's a furnace here. And a forge!"

Cecile walked into the room and began checking what was there.

Furnaces were necessary to extract orichalcum chunks from ore.

[Earth Labyrinth notes (10)]

-An orichalcum pickaxe is needed to mine orichalcum ore from an orichalcum ore deposit

-An orichalcum ingot, instant charcoal, and explosive grass are needed to make an orichalcum pickaxe

-A furnace is necessary to turn orichalcum chunks from orichalcum ore

-To work on orichalcum chunks or craft weapons and armor, one needs a hammer, bellows, instant charcoal, and explosive grass

(Orichalcum ingots to make pickaxes appear from the 51st floor after all.)

They had the chance of obtaining many orichalcum pickaxes between the 51st and 80th floor.

But if they took the time to make a pickaxe, they would run out of time to use the furnace and forge.

On top of that they had lost time to Andre.

Even if they brought the orichalcum ores back to the surface, working on them would take longer than doing it inside the Earth Labyrinth.

According to Habarak, the [Furnaces] and [Forges] of the Earth Labyrinth were much faster than those of the surface, as making an adamantite weapon from ore would take around 1 hour there, while on the surface it would take around 10 days even with the best equipment.

Orichalcum could easily take way longer than that.

Allen actually remembered having to wait upwards of a month to get orichalcum weapons and armor.

'I see. So this was built so we gather all the materials we can in the previous floor, and then craft orichalcum equipment with whatever time we have left. Doing that a bunch of times sounds really hard though.'

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"It seems so, Shea."

'But we're after the 99th floor now. Let's get moving.'

"You're right. We just sacrificed Merus too after all."

'I didn't die. We didn't have a Tsubamen so I just gave up on getting out.'

(We'll need 1 Tsubamen if we want to use that strat again then. We'll try it out next time.)

Merus complained from within his card, but the group had to keep moving on.

The group returned to the corridor and continued forward until they reached a room.

There was a large hole in the center of the room, which meant the stairs were there.

There was a magic circle drawn in front of the stairs, like some sort of ritual, and a sculpture held up a hammer with both hands, almost like it did not weigh anything.

'Allen's group, congratulations on getting through the 80th floor.'

"Thank you very much. Is the hammer you're holding the Divine Artifact Earth Hammer?"

Allen landed on the floor and asked if that was the Divine Artifact.

'It's your reward for getting this far. Let whoever is fit for it pick it up.'

"Is it a weapon?"

'It can be equipped as a weapon, but it's the type of hammer a blacksmith uses to forge weapons and armor. Also, you'll need this hammer to craft the orichalcum made by Gaia.'

In other words it was a Divine Artifact exclusive for Habarak.

"Habarak, you heard it. Could you take Gaia's Divine Artifact?"

"O-okay, got it."

Habarak also landed on the floor, and then walked into the magic circle.

'Habarak will be registered as the Earth Hammer's user then.'

(That makes sense, we can bring weapons with us to this dungeon after all.)

Equipment like weapons and armor could be brought into the Earth Labyrinth, but items like magic bags or healing items and food were banned.

"Please do."

The magic circle lit up as something was registered, and then Habarak became the owner of the Divine Artifact [Earth Hammer].

(So the Earth Hammer just looks like a common iron hammer.)

Including the handle it was 1 meter long, with a wooden handle and a tip that looked like a lump of iron attached to it. But it was glowing slightly, giving it a divine appearance.

In a way it made sense for Gaia, who was known for having an unrefined personality.

"And this is all thanks to Admiral Galara relinquishing the rewards."

Admiral Galara had been offered a reward before, but he rejected it in favor of Habarak, and thanks to that Habarak obtained the Skills and tools to work on orichalcum.

"Hey, stop saying stupid stuff, we need to move forward."

Galara had heard Allen's mutter, since his golem seemed to have a long range microphone.

Now that Habarak had the Earth Hammer, they had to rush forward.

They had to get to the 99th floor in around 6 hours.

[81st floor, 6:18 left]

Allen looked at the mini-sculpture's timer and then spoke to his companions.

'Everyone, this will be a fight against time now. We have no shovels so let's move swiftly.'

"Got it!"

Cecile replied with a loud shout next to him.

They all went back to formation and quickly began to descend the stairs.

Below the usual brown corridors of the dungeon extended forward.

*Pukupuku

Pokopoko*

"Hey, seriously? There's already traps in the air! Flame Lance!!"

*BOOOOMM*

The first thing Cecile saw on the 81st floor were countless balloons floating in the air.

There were no rocks attached to the balloons, but when Allen looked at them with Kuwatoro's Thousand-mile Eyes, he saw the balloons were marked with magic circles.

If they got close or the balloons were popped, the traps would be set off.

"Keep moving! We can't reset our Skills again!!"

They began to speed up while maintaining their formation.

"Hm, it seems having higher Luck makes it easier to read fortunes. Next turn right, and I'm suspicious of what comes next. Rosetta, help with Trap Detector."

"Alright."

Thanks to the Spirit God's Blessing, everyone's Skills became more powerful.

The ghosts and the traps left by the God of Earth made it easier to save time.

Now they were ignoring all shops and treasure chests to move faster.

[90th floor, 5:22 left]

(We got here really fast thanks to all the traps.)

(So we're finally on the 90th floor. And just as Allen said, the 90th floor is another maze.)

An adamantite maze spread out in front of them.

"I'm really sorry, it was my fault…"

"Sophie, don't worry about that. Your luck is the best compared to Allen's."

"Thank you, Cecile."

Allen closed his eyes and silently admonished Cecile's actions, believing that it was bad to put someone else down when cheering someone up.

They had no shovels left, but they had managed to reach the 90th floor in less than 2 hours.

(The mazes take around 3 hours to get through without a shovel.)

Even with Temi and Rosetta's help, it took some time to get through the mazes.

"Make a left turn next."

"Be careful about teleporting traps too."

They could not afford to fight the ghosts in larger rooms, so they just traveled with a tighter formation so that if a teleporting trap was activated they would all go together.

There were no pitfalls in the mazes, so they just had to keep going until they reached the stairs.

Even though they traveled through the shortest route, it still took them around 2 hours to get there.

[91st floor, 3:05 left]

It was not the best run, but it was a good result for the circumstances.

Now they just had to get to the 99th floor from the 91st one.

The ghosts became more powerful, and the number of earth lumps increased.

"This is so weird. Why did it get so much harder!"

"Well, it makes sense considering how good the reward will be."

"It's only fair for the reward to be equivalent to the hardships needed to get there after all!"

Cecile ended up talking just like Allen usually did.

Many of the members of the group there were already in Extra Mode and had passed the trials of Gods.

But going through the Earth Labyrinth was so hard that even they were unsure if they would go through.

The Earth Labyrinth was one of the hardest trials from a God they had encountered so far.

"I'm sorry, it seems there's 3 ghost dens, and we need to get through at least 1 to reach the stairs."

While they discussed the difficulty, Temi mentioned an unfavorable fortune.

Previous floors only had 1 ghost den at most, but after the 91st it became common to find 3.

Allen could almost feel the God of Earth's efforts to force them to do more runs.

"Stop whininggggg!! This is a critical moment, so act like it!!!"

Admiral Galara shouted loudly, and everyone from his party replied vigorously.

After that they spent around 50 minutes to get to the 99th floor.

They just had to get to the end of it to conquer the Earth Labyrinth.

[99th floor, 2:18 left]

Allen kept looking at the mini-sculpture time and time again, in case his eyes had seen wrong.

"Hey, is it even possible to get through this..?"

Cecile's face went pale when she saw the 99th floor.

The walls and floor were made of the shiny black material they had seen before.

The corridors went far into the distance too.

The 99th floor was a maze.

So far they had learned that they needed around 3 hours to get through a maze unless they had a shovel.

'But we've come too far to give up now. Maybe the stairs are somewhere nearby. Let's go!!'

Shea was the next to speak.

"But…even if we continue…"

Cecile still did not feel like going forward when it felt so hopeless.

But then Sophie spoke next.

"...I have an idea!"

Everyone turned to look at Sophie.

"