When we're advancing through the big corridor, leaving the big door behind, Liza verifies our formation.
"Master, what should we do about the formation?"
"When we're moving, the center is Lulu with Mia and Arisa on her sides, the advance guards are Nana and Tama, the rear guards are Liza and Pochi."
With this formation, we'll be fine even if we get attacked from the front and the rear.
Moreover, they should be able to fight without me, and it might be better if I don't act too overprotective and let them grow up.
"Mia, use 『Bubble Searcher』 magic, and confirm the frontward okay."
"Nn."
Mia replies Arisa's request in short, and invokes a magic. It seems that they always use this magic first and foremost in the Spriggan training grounds to search for enemies.
This magic produces around 30 bubbles that float in the air. They're brittle as they will break if you just touch it, but you can feel the things around it like feelers. The detection range is only about 30 centimeters from the bubbles, but the bubbles can be separated several hundreds meters away from the user. Moreover, the effect lasts for about 2 hours if the bubble doesn't break, so it's quite useful for exploring labyrinths.
However, its weakness is that the magic will be canceled if the user uses other magic.
"Should I use lighting magic? I don't have light magic skill, but I can do at least that much you know?"
"No, there's no problem even though it's dim, so it's alright."
There are dim lighting equipments on one side of the corridor that illuminate only from knee-high to the ground. That's probably the Sign Monument. Just like what I've heard, its color changes from white to blue when we're approaching.
Moreover, Pochi and Tama can detect monsters and traps, while Mia's search bubbles can detect things that approach from outside their ranges. There are small passageways and cavities and shelters indistinguishable with the former piled with spiderwebs and dust on the corridor's wall that appear at fixed intervals.
"There's something~?"
"I hear sounds of battle from beyond the path nodesu."
"Nn, a battle."
Pochi and Tama noticed the battle ahead, and slightly later, Mia's bubbles seemed to have caught on the battle between six demi-goblins and five explorers 300 meters ahead.
There are air holes on the ceiling of the labyrinth corridors that constantly emit low-pitched noise, as the consequent, it's difficult to sense presences from faraway sounds. In fact, even Pochi and Tama seemed to be slower than usual to notice it.
The explorers and the goblins seem to be in a small corridor branched from the big corridor we are in. They're not too far away from the big corridor. They seem to have noticed us approaching, one of the explorer raises his voice to warn us.
"These goblins are ours. You go over there."
"Acknowledged."
I don't want to distract them too much, so I answer shortly.
It seems to be quite the melee battle as the explorers are hurt equally, even though they're only up against level 1-2 goblins. These explorers are around level 3, so they're probably newbies. Like I've thought, they're all warriors. Explorers that have magic skills are only around 5% of the whole, so they're probably scarce.
There are hardly any monsters in this first area we're in, maybe because there are too many explorers.
There are some corridors where monsters are moving within, but it seems they're not connected to where the explorers are, so we never meet it. After observing it for a while, battles begin in a faraway corridor that's connected with that corridor by the tunnel.
I see, so monsters POP up with this mechanism.