「Dr. Yamanashi!? And the people from Nara City Hall too. Why are you here――and those children――」
One of the police officers looked at us and started panicking, but…
「Explanations later. How is his condition?」
「We’re trying to stop the bleeding, but we don’t have enough equipment」
「Ichino-kun」
「Yes, use this」
「A potion!? Thank you!」
Saying that, the officer gave the potion to the wounded policeman, who was delirious and grimacing in pain.
Thanks to the potion, they managed to stop the bleeding.
「Ichino-kun… Um, can’t his arm be healed?」
「No. Potions only restore HP. They can handle things like stopping bleeding, light bruises, and scrapes, but that’s about it」
The higher an explorer’s level, the less visible damage they tend to show even after taking attacks.
Unless the gap in strength is overwhelming, their HP seems to absorb the damage for them.
When the mimic bit me earlier, it hurt like hell, but I didn’t have any visible wounds.
Instead, my HP dropped significantly.
If your HP drops further and you continue taking damage, then things like massive bleeding or losing body parts can happen.
Potions are meant to restore that HP.
Though if the difference in strength is too great, you can still lose an arm even with plenty of HP remaining.
「If we at least had his arm, we might have been able to reattach it」
「…A monster tore it off. There’s nothing left」
「I see」
A healing medicine made from lizard tails can repair minor missing body parts, but it doesn’t have enough power to regrow an entire arm.
As far as I know, there are only two ways to treat major limb loss.
One is the Regeneration skill.
It consumes magic power to heal injuries.
It can even restore lost body parts.
There are also skill beads for it.
The other is the Hero’s Elixir.
A miraculous medicine said to heal any injury as long as the person is still alive.
I had that too.
But I had no intention of handing over either of them.
Both the Regeneration skill and the Hero’s Elixir were incredibly valuable items.
What if I used them here, and later someone important to me like Milk, Ayame, or Hime suffered a critical injury and I had no way to heal them?
That’s why my party and I had already discussed it beforehand and decided that no matter who needed the medicine, we wouldn’t use it.
Even if someone died because of that decision.
Drawing that line is actually pretty difficult.
If Tuna, Aoki, Mizuno-san, or even Shizuka-san needed the Hero’s Elixir, I would probably use it.
But take Kondou earlier, for example.
If the mimic had eaten him and my Damage Transfer hadn’t made it in time, leaving him critically injured――I would let him die rather than use the Hero’s Elixir.
That was the level of resolve I had already prepared myself for.
Of course, if there was any other kind of treatment I could provide, I intended to help as much as possible.
「Sensei, how is he?」
Shizuka-san checked on the wounded officer’s condition.
「He’s lost too much blood. He needs a transfusion immediately――」
A transfusion, huh.
There wasn’t an item for replenishing blood, was there?
Was there some other way――
「…Taira-sama, we can use the sleeping bag」
Tuna made a suggestion.
Sleeping bag?
Right, the Absolutely Safe Suspended Animation Sleeping Bag!
We didn’t actually need to treat him here. We could just transport him to a hospital in this condition.
I pulled the Absolutely Safe Suspended Animation Sleeping Bag out of my inventory and explained its effect.
「Suspended animation? Isn’t that dangerous?」
「It’s safe. We’ve used it several times before」
Tuna and Hime had, anyway.
We placed the injured officer inside the sleeping bag and stored him in my inventory.
For the inventory, I’d been explaining it as an Item Box.
It’s an extremely rare skill too, but the name itself is publicly known, and I’ve used it on stream plenty of times, so I figured it wasn’t a problem.
Still, everyone was shocked that I had stored a person along with the sleeping bag.
Come to think of it, normal Item Box and Inventory skills can’t store living beings.
If abused, you could do whatever you wanted, like smuggling people across borders.
What if this led to explorers with Item Box skills facing restrictions on international travel?
After finishing the treatment, we checked on the overall situation.
Apparently, the person Shizuka-san had been talking to earlier was Miyama-san.
『Hime, we’ve joined up with Miyama-san』
『Yes. I saw it through the broadcast crystal. I’ve already arranged ambulances along with the buses, so the injured can be transported immediately once you reach the surface. Also, several high-level explorers are heading toward the unmanaged dungeon, but it’ll still take time for them to arrive』
『What about using a helicopter like before?』
『The area is covered in forest, so there’s nowhere for a helicopter to land』
Jumping down with parachutes or rappelling by rope――well, only trained people could do that.
Explorers are dungeon specialists, not people trained for helicopter insertion.
I couldn’t do it either.
-0-
『My bunshin and Ayame are heading there too』
『That helps. But obviously Ayame too, don’t push yourself too hard, Hime bunshin』
『I’m only sending a shikigami, so it’s not reckless at all. Besides, I don’t want to hear that from Ichino-san, who’s the most likely to overdo it』
『Even if my bunshin dies, the real me won’t die. More importantly, you’re the one in danger, Taira. No matter how strong you are, prioritize your own life first』
Hime scolded me.
Would she get angry if I told her I had taken Kondou’s damage with Damage Transfer earlier?
『So, how’s Milk doing? Did she meet Danpon?』
『Sorry, I’m stuck in traffic. I should’ve taken the train instead of a taxi』
As usual, her luck was terrible when it mattered most.
There was no guarantee Danpon even had the information we needed anyway, so we decided to keep moving.
「Chinota-kun, we’re heading out again soon」
「Shouldn’t we rest a little longer? The atmosphere feels pretty heavy too」
「The mood is definitely awful. Nobody died, but after seeing a police officer critically injured right in front of us, that’s only natural. Still, considering the time left before the stampede, I want to get to the upper floors as quickly as possible」
Even Shizuka-san still didn’t know how large the stampede would become, but that uncertainty was exactly why she wanted to hurry.
Normally, monsters don’t move between dungeon floors, which is why stairways are considered safe zones.
But during a stampede, that might no longer be true.
Like the Evil Ogre from the Expo Park Dungeon before, or what happened in the Black Dungeon, monsters capable of moving between floors could appear.
We all climbed the stairs together, aiming for the exit.
There was no map.
All we could rely on was my Sixth Sense.
「This way」
I couldn’t show hesitation.
If I hesitated, everyone else would start feeling anxious too.
So far, though, it felt like I was finding the stairs through the shortest possible routes.
My Sixth Sense skill was seriously overpowered.
Shizuka-san instructed us to slow down.
Apparently, some people were starting to fall behind.
We ended up taking breaks more frequently.
And something else started happening just as often as the breaks――
「Stop. I sense monsters」
Little by little, it felt like the number of monsters was increasing.
And we still couldn’t see the exit yet.
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