551 Navigating The Dungeon With A Map

I was going to ask if Yermine would join us to dive into the Dungeon but Sebastian clapped his hands together, prompting two maids to appear out of nowhere to pick the Meslatar up in their arms.

Before anyone could react, they had already disappeared along with the Meslatar.

That sad little man started sobbing after she had disappeared from his sight.

Lisa huffed at him, "If you were going to make such a big deal about her leaving you, why would you even challenge others to that Harem Battle in the first place? Wouldn't that have ended up with the same situation anyway?"

The Wrunch, whom I learnt was named Abigail of all things, sighed, "I suppose there's no point hiding it now… You realise that even though the winning condition was that you get to pick one of us as a prize, we didn't say that we have to go with you willingly… We could have simply spent a day with you and then said that we do not like you and return back to Wata's side."

Katsuki rolled her eyes, "And if you won, you would not have told us about this loophole, right?"

The Wrunch shook her head.

"And that bastard over there would have then tried to 'charm' us into liking him more while we were stuck with you?" Lisa asked.

She nodded again.

Motherfuckers, so this bastard was just trying to steal other people's lovers to add to his own. He's not a harem king, he's NTR-man.

In that case, I have no sympathy for him right now. He deserved everything he got from this.

The Trasif gave me a serious look, "Won't you consider returning Yermine to us? Wata was not lying when he said that she was his first."

I tilted my head at her, "I think that isn't the question anymore, is it? The person herself has expressed no interest in returning. In fact, I'd think that even if we were to force her to go back to you guys, she would be leaving you within the day."

I also decided not to point out the irony that this was the exact thing that they were aiming for in the first place, except they were in the receiving end for this.

They seemed to realise that what I said was fact and decided not to argue for that anymore.

Sebastian nodded at them, "Unfortunately, we are already behind schedule for our own plans so we will have to leave now. Please excuse us."

The others didn't respond to him, merely giving Sebastian a look before turning away.

I guess that's as good of a reply as we were going to get after 'stealing' one of their members from them.

Again, we weren't the ones who came up with this challenge so they have no one to blame but themselves.

And I would be more sympathetic to the girls of his party if it weren't for the fact that they were aiding him in this plan as well.

Putting that aside, I feel like I should ask where those maids that came to take Yermine away came from… But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get a straight answer from Sebastian even if I asked.

I guess I should just forget about it and pretend nothing happened.

Just like that, we left them behind and stepped towards the Dungeon entrance.

Before we stepped past the door, Sebastian pulled out another map and handed it to me.

"Aster, you will still be our navigator, use this to lead us to the next floor. Katsuki, you will remain as temporary party leader until I say otherwise. Once again, neither of you are allowed to ask the others for their opinions and Katsuki is only allowed to discuss details related to the map with Aster when needed. Understood?"

All of us voiced our affirmatives.

The Head Butler then led the way down the stairs to enter the Dungeon with me right behind him and Katsuki after me.

I took a look at the map I was given, expecting it to be in the same quality that I was given before this where it was just a sketch of some sort.

But surprisingly, it was actually a really well drawn map and it was even drawn to scale with the number of steps recorded down on the map.

That's… Really unexpected… But I guess this makes my work easier.

Even while we were descending down the stairs, I was already mapping out our route and found a pretty easy way to the next floor before we reached the end of the stairs.

Sebastian probably expected me to do that since he immediately stepped aside and turned to me with an expectant gaze the moment we reached the Dungeon floor.

I immediately took the lead and started leading the party on the path that I mapped out mentally.

According to the map, we just need to turn right here… Then make another left turn… And then we should go straight ahead until… Eh?

Following the map, I found that I had led the party to a dead end.

Odd.

I pushed against the wall expecting it to be an illusion only to realise that it was a solid wall.

Ok, really odd…

"Mistress? Is something wrong?" Katsuki asked.

I looked at Sebastian, silently asking if it was alright to talk about this.

Unfortunately our Head Butler shook his head, showing that I should be dealing with this on my own.

"It's alright, let me just check something."

It tried using [Screened] on the walls and floor, expecting this route to be some sort of secret entrance that I have to trigger to get it to open but nothing came up.

It seemed like this was indeed just a dead end after all.

Hmm… Did I read the map wrong?

I double checked the map again.

Right turn at the front entrance… Left turn and then a straight… Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the route I took and the map showed that this should be an intersection, not a dead end.

And since this was a Dungeon, I doubt it was a case of someone hiding in it like the case with the Auto from earlier…

Now this is definitely strange…

"Let's go back to the entrance, I think I might have read the map wrong."

Everyone obeyed without question and we returned again to the stairs without any issues.

Could the map be drawn incorrectly?

Let's just try another route first…

I tried to look for another way that we can use to go to the stairs and found another route that could lead us there albeit in a more roundabout manner.

This time I turned to the left instead before making a right at an intersection.

The map showed that the entire path should just be a series of corridors so when I made another left, I stopped when I found that we were now standing in a large room with a golem monster standing inside it.

The rest of my party was quick to enter combat stances as Katsuki took over and they rushed in front of me to engage the golem.

I would very much like to say that it was a tough fight but… Well… It wasn't.

All it took was just Odeta running up to it while the others had the golem's attention and punching it in the head, shattering it into tiny pieces.

Yeah… This Dungeon isn't supposed to be that high level in the first place so that was the expected result.

But still, the strange thing was that the map was wrong.

I turned to Sebastian, thinking that he might have given me the incorrect map but he quickly placed a finger on his lips before I could ask him.

Ah…

I get it now.

The map is wrong on purpose.

But I can't tell anyone in my party about it…

I don't really understand why Sebastian would set up a scenario like this but I guess there must be a reason for doing so.

The party is relying on the navigator to find their way through the Dungeon but the navigator ends up being a fraud or something? Or maybe what happens if the navigator gets a hold of a phoney map and starts leading the party into more danger?

Perhaps this is a test of trust between our party and me?

There's quite a lot of scenarios I can think of from this and he even intentionally set Katsuki as the party leader whom I know for a fact would most likely back me up no matter what happens.

She most definitely already knew about the golem's existence given her sense of hearing and smell before we turned the corner but yet did not question why I never warned them ahead of time.

How curious…

I'm also guessing that Sebastian knows that I probably figured something was wrong about this and is just keeping quiet at the back and watching over us.

Right… I suppose I should not be worrying about him right now. My role is to lead my party as the navigator through the Dungeon using the resources given to me.

So let's do my job properly!

Ah, I see we're at another intersection…

Eenie, meenie, miny, moe…