Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 119: An Afternoon In Life Of Nom-Nom

To any normal adventurer, the Hollow Stone Caverns’ oppressive ambient mana would have been a weight on their heart at the very least.

The air was thick, damp, and reeked of wet earth and blood.

To Nom-Nom, it just smelled like money.

-ROOOAAR-!

A massive, four-armed Rock-Troll lunged from the shadows the second she stepped into the first clearing, its boulder-sized fists swinging down with enough force to crush a carriage.

Nom-Nom didn’t even break her stride. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

She simply swung her greatsword upward in a casual, one-handed arc, letting her violet draconic flames roar along the edge before shearing through the troll’s stony hide like warm butter, neatly bisecting the one-ton beast.

-Thud-!

The cavern floor shook as the two halves hit the dirt.

Resting the flat of her blade against her shoulder, Nom-Nom looked down at the giant pile of rock and meat.

"Okay," she murmured, doing the mental math. "Master said seventy percent goes to the System for credits, and thirty percent goes to the processing plant outside."

She reached out, tapping one half of the troll, and with a faint shimmer, the massive chunk vanished directly into the party’s shared inventory.

As she turned to the remaining half...

[Wait...] Her violet eyes slowly widened as she stared at the chunk of dead troll.

Real life didn’t have an auto-loot function. To get paid by the Guild, she had to physically drag the monster corpses out of the dungeon to the appraisers.

[I forgot the cart!]

Outside the cavern entrance, the knight at the checkpoint had just finally managed to get his heart rate under control.

Letting out a long sigh, he had just reached for his ledger when-

-WHOOSH-!

A violent gust of wind nearly ripped the ledger from the table as Nom-Nom blurred past the barricade, sprinting back out of the cave.

The knight froze, dropping his quill as the towering dragon-girl ran over to the long wooden shed at the base of the mountain.

She cheerfully slapped a few silver coins onto the attendant’s table, grabbed the handle of the largest heavy-duty wooden handcart available, and immediately ran right back.

"Forgot my basket!" she beamed at the terrified knight, waving happily as she effortlessly dragged the massive, iron-reinforced cart back into the dark dungeon with one hand.

Tossing the remaining troll-half into the creaking cart, Nom-Nom strolled deeper inside, humming a happy tune.

It didn’t take long for the rest of the dungeon’s inhabitants to realize their territory had once again been breached by the Dragon.

The ground began to tremble as a herd of Iron-Bristle Boars charged out from the connecting tunnels, their red eyes glowing in the dark as they stampeded toward her.

[Ooh! The crunchy ones!] Nom-Nom’s violet eyes instantly lit up.

-BOOM-!

Breaking the sound barrier, she vanished and reappeared dead center of the herd, unleashing a devastating horizontal sweep that instantly incinerated the front half.

The rest of the beasts roared before dashing at the grinning Nom-Nom in a frenzy.

And a mere 5 seconds later-

"Inventory, inventory, cart, inventory," she chanted happily, walking through the carnage as she sorted her groceries.

She tapped three massive boar carcasses to send them into the inventory before grabbing a fourth by its hind leg and tossing it onto the cart.

-Crash-!

Between the groans of her cart, Nom-Nom began her math [If thirty percent goes to cash... seventy percent to the credits, after taking my cut of the credits... I can buy two grilled gryphon skewers just from this bunch alone! Ha!]

"Here, piggy piggy!" she called out, happily dragging her blood-soaked cart deeper into the darkness.

The descent felt less like an expedition and more like industrial harvesting, but crossing into the fifty-fifth floor changed everything.

The oppressive ambient mana physically thickened, pulsing with a deep, rhythmic heartbeat. Even the very stone walls had taken on a deep red, fleshy tone pulsating with each heartbeat.

Dungeons were near-sentient, magical labyrinths that actively reacted to foreign threats, using monsters as a living immune system.

And just like yesterday, Nom-Nom’s rampant slaughter had acted like a shock to the system, forcing the Hollow Stone Caverns to launch a full-scale autoimmune response.

-RUUUUMBLE-!

The sprawling underground valley she had walked into cracked open as the labyrinth aggressively burned its mana.

The deep red stone bubbled like mud, spawning thousands of four-armed Rock-Trolls, Iron-Bristle Boars, and towering Stone-Shell Tortoises.

Thousands of red eyes illuminated the cavern, creating a localized warfront, turning their feral heads toward the lone, seven-foot-two girl before letting out a unified, deafening roar that violently rattled the stalactites above.

Nom-Nom just stood there, staring down at the endless sea of red eyes with a slow blink.

Her violet eyes gradually widened as her mind instantly began crunching the numbers.

[Thousands of them...] she thought, gently letting go of the wooden cart’s handle with a soft clack. [Seventy percent to the System... thirty percent to the Guild... for thousands...]

A wide, terrifying grin stretched across her face, [I’m set for the month!]

-FWOOSH-!

Her draconic aura violently erupted into a towering pillar of dark purple flames, illuminating the entire cavern in a sinister, apocalyptic light.

"I’m set for the month!" she cheered.

Bending her knees, Nom-Nom pushed off and instantly shattered the stone ledge, launching herself directly into the dead center of the monster army like a localized meteor.

-BOOM-!

She crashed into the vanguard, the sheer kinetic force of her boots, and the sweep of her Dragon Fire instantly turned a dozen Iron-Bristle Boars into a splatter of crushed, melted metal and bone.

A four-armed Rock-Troll immediately lunged through the dust cloud, its boulder-sized fists swinging down to crush her skull.

Nom-Nom simply raised her bare hand and caught the descending stone strike right in her palm.

The troll’s eyes widened right before-

-CRACK-!

Nom-Nom casually crushed its stony fist into gravel before violently ripping the one-ton beast entirely off its feet.

She spun on her heel, using the monster’s massive body like a makeshift club, flattening the charging line of Stone-Shell Tortoises with a-

-CRASH-!

Their carapaces shattered into shrapnel as the beasts were flattened in a messy pile of crushed shell and limbs.

Stepping right into the newly opened gap, she gripped the hilt of the greatsword with both hands and unleashed a devastating horizontal sweep, roaring out a massive crescent of dragonfire that ripped through the cavern, ripping through a dozen leaping Rock-Trolls.

Nom-Nom fought with the casual, terrifying brutality of an apex predator.

When a Stone-Shell Tortoise launched itself through the air like a spinning cannonball, she baseball-batted it out of the sky with the flat of her blade, sending the massive monster crashing completely through three Rock-Trolls.

-BOOM-!

Dust and debris rained from the ceiling as Nom-Nom slaughtered her way deeper inside the horde, laughing happily into the darkness.

Her free hand continuously tapped the severed beast parts, sending them straight into her inventory before they even hit the ground.

[Twenty... forty... a hundred skewers...] she calculated, her fanged smile growing wider with every brutal swing.

All the while, the dungeon violently pulsed around her, frantically pumping more mana into the floor, birthing hundreds of new metal and stone-plated beasts, practically burying her under a tidal wave of feral bodies.

"Too crowded," Nom-Nom grumbled, her voice vibrating with a deep draconic rumble.

Planting her boots firmly into the bedrock, her purple aura violently flared into the ceiling as she raised her greatsword high above her head before condensing the apocalyptic amount of Dragon Fire into a blinding roar of violet light.

"Make some space!"

She brought the sword down in a single, world-ending vertical cleave.

-KRA-BOOOM-!

The sheer kinetic force of the swing shattered the bedrock a fraction of a second before the flames even hit, physically buckling the cavern floor and launching dozens of multi-ton tortoises straight into the air like weightless pebbles.

And then, the dragonfire detonated.

A blinding tsunami of violet heat roared forward, violently shredding a massive, glowing canyon straight through the heart of the monster army.

The apocalyptic temperature instantly flash-melted the iron-plated boars mid-charge and turned the rock-trolls into pillars of glass before completely vaporizing them into falling ash.

The attack annihilated the entire back half of the cavern, leaving absolutely nothing behind but a massive, bubbling trench of molten magma and a sudden, terrifying silence.

The remaining monsters froze, their feral instincts short-circuiting against the sheer terror radiating from the girl amidst the burning wreckage.

Resting the smoking greatsword on her shoulder, Nom-Nom wiped monster ash from her cheek and flashed a bright, happy grin.

"Who’s next?"

-ROAAAR-!

The monsters roared their frenzy before barrelling at her as though having understood what she said.

"Thee-Hee!"

And so the war... or rather the slaughter raged throughout the entirety of the day, transforming the Dungeon’s 55th floor into an absolute meat grinder before the sentient labyrinth finally gave up.

Standing atop a literal mountain of crushed stone and mangled beasts, Nom-Nom let out a series of heavy pants, her black clothes completely soaked in dark, viscous monster blood.

The massive cavern surrounding her lay half-melted ruin, full of the walls still glowing a dull orange from the sheer apocalyptic heat of her continuous sweeps of Dragon Fire

"You were especially feisty today..." Nom-Nom murmured, tilting her head back to look directly at the scorched ceiling as she addressed the dungeon itself.

Lowering her gaze, she stared at the weapon gripped in her right hand, only to find her massive greatsword shattered.

"I’ll ask Master to get me a new one," she decided with a casual shrug, tossing the ruined hilt away, sending it clattering against the rocks.

But as the metal hit the ground, she noticed the melted bedrock shifting beneath her boots.

The dungeon had begun to actively absorb the mountain of monster corpses back into the floor to reclaim its lost mana.

"Oh no, you don’t!" she gasped, her violet eyes going completely wide as the horrifying reality of losing her snack money and funds for annoying chicken at home set in.

She immediately jumped down from the peak of the corpse-mountain before sprinting frantically across the scorched valley, swiping her hands wildly through the air to shove every carcass, limb, and glowing core she could reach directly into her inventory.

But even at her Mach speeds, the valley of the 55th floor was simply too massive.

"Aww..." She watched in sheer tragedy as hundreds of precious, crunchy boars slowly melted back into the stone before she could save them.

Giving the molten cavern one final, sweeping glare to make absolutely sure she hadn’t missed a single stray core, she let out a heavy sigh and began walking back to her wooden cart.

Effortlessly hauling the physical bodies she had saved from her inventory, she piled as many massive Rock-Trolls and Stone-Shell Tortoises onto the reinforced wagon as it could physically hold before gripping the handle of her cart, and finally calling it a day.

[Time to ask Master for a new toy... or maybe a bunch of new toys,] she thought before pulling up the Party Module interface.

[Fighting with weapons is really fun!]