Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi

d a good metre shorter, bringing its neck within my reach.
Yosh! I stepped forward and stuck the point of my Mithril short sword easily into the Troll's thick wide neck, meeting no apparent resistance.

“Guoooooh-” the Troll issued a last sorrowful moan, slumped forward onto the stone floor and stopped moving.

Did I really beat it? By myself?

“Wow! Wow! I did it! I did it!” I defeated a Troll all by myself! I'm the greatest! After a little while, the dead Troll gradually became more and more transparent and finally disappeared, along with its severed legs.
I felt more confident now, certainly more confident than I had been before I decided to enter the boss room.
And even better, a drop item! A Troll skin was left behind.
I quickly scooped it up and tucked it away in my Item Box, a piece of loot I had won by my own endeavours.
I'd cherish it, now what about the other monsters? I looked around, ready to- Ah.
What other monsters? The battle was over and of course my contracted monsters hadn't even suffered a scratch dealing with a horde of gigantic opponents including the three immense Spriggans while I had been fighting with a single measly Troll.
Ah well.

I went around the boss room collecting the drop items scattered on the floor.
There were two drops from the Spriggans, one was a magic stone and the other was some gems, a ruby and an emerald.
They were both small but sparkled nicely with no obvious flaws.
Sweet! Skins and monster products were all and well but gems and treasure items were, well, what you'd really expect from a dungeon.
Still, that Troll skin, the one I had earned by my own efforts was something special, really, I told myself as we headed down the stairs at the back of the boss room to the 23rd level.

After that we proceeded to clear the 23rd, 24th and 25th levels that comprised the rest of the Giant Zone, pausing only to eat lunch.
As we went lower, the number of rooms in each level increased as did the number and strength of the monsters we encountered.
This didn't faze Fer, Dora-chan and Sui of course, if anything they got more and more enthusiastic at the prospect of beating up on more and stronger opponents.
Of course I didn't forget to collect the many drops left lying around after each unequal battle.

We found and opened two treasure chests on our way to the end of the 25th level, one had a diamond ring and the other had a tanzanite necklace.
Jewellery was a very welcome drop because it supposedly sells for a high price on the surface.
We also encountered 3 Mimics but only one of them dropped a treasure box.
However this was not a small one like a jewel box but rather a large decorated box the size of a treasure chest.
It looked to be another high-value item.

Taking our time to clear each level of monsters, defeat the bosses and collect all the drops meant we decided to stop for the “night” in the safe area before the 25th level's boss room, to rest and eat before descending to the 26th level the next “morning”.
There were, of course, no other Adventurers in the safe area room, not this far down in the dungeon.

Fer said that the 26th level “smelled different”, in his words, than the 22nd through 25th levels, the Giant Zone.
That meant there was a good possibility that the dungeon's structure would change again.
What would it be like? I fell asleep with mixed feelings of anxiety and hope but I reassured myself that I had Fer, Dora-chan and Sui with me so I'd be fine.