Because of the events of the day before, I decided to have a slow day, so I decided to get out to hunt for an apartment as a semi-permanent place to stay. Sleeping in an inn was good and all, but with four people in one room it got a little cramped, and there was no room for privacy.
I talked with Rya about it, and we made a budget. The apartment shouldn’t cost more than 1000 gold a month, which was something that was doable with the money we already had and the money we could possibly earn inside the dungeons. I narrowed it down to 500 gold so that we could have a buffer in case we had a slow month.
“We should ask the adventurers guild,” Rya said. “They most likely have some discounts for us.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Just some benefits adventurers get. Some things get cheaper the higher your rank is. The discounts won’t be huge, but every bit of money counts.”
Aside from the fact that it was a good idea, it also opened the opportunity to bring the sisters to Frederick. I wanted to see exactly how strong they were, though I also didn’t want to force them. In the end, it would be up to them.
“So being affiliated with an adventure guild can get you benefits,” I said.
“Well, yeah,” Rya said. “Adventurers risk their lives to protect the innocent. If anybody could protect themselves, we wouldn’t have been needed.”
“What about mercenaries?”
“They get their benefits from the mercenary guilds.”
“So it isn’t just the adventurers guilds.”
“Every guild has benefits. Adventurers get benefits on a broader range, and most other guilds give you benefits based on what the guild is about.”
The guild was pretty busy, though that was to be expected. The mornings and afternoons are two of the busiest times, as most adventurers leave early and get back before or around sunset. In the evening, most facilities are closed, though the bar is open at that point.
“Rivers, welcome,” Frederick said. “I see you’ve brought your companions.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve talked to them before heading here. They agreed to at least meet you.”
“That’s nice. Well, if you two are up for it, could you come with me?”
The girls agreed, and I followed.
“Yo, boss, do you mind if I walk around for a bit?”
“Go ahead,” I replied. “And stop calling me boss.”
“Okidoki, boss!”
While Rya went around the guild, I followed Frederick and the girls to the training grounds. It wasn’t a big place, but there was always enough room for people to train, mostly because most adventurers would just go out on adventures instead of using this place.
“Now, watch closely,” Frederick said.
As he said that, he extended his arm towards a training dummy.
“【Phoenix Flames】!” Frederick shouted.
As he shouted these words, a flaming bird appeared from his hand and flew towards the training dummy, engulfing it in flames. When it dissipated, the training dummy was still intact.
“Now you two should try,” Frederick said.
“Do we have to shout the words?” Jeanne asked.
“You don’t have to, I just think it sounds cool.”
The faces of the girls told me that they thought the opposite.
After Frederick prepared two dummies, it was time for the girls to cast their magic. Jeanne started first, and as she began to cast her magic, a heat radiated from her hand, where a bird began to appear. Unlike Frederick’s, her bird seemed to have more detail, you’d almost mistake it for a real bird.
There was however another difference. This bird seemed more like a predator, with a certain killing intent. Its flames were fiercer, almost shifting towards blue. When she finally unleashed her magic, it left a trail of fire on the ground, and when it hit the dummy, a giant flaming pillar appeared, reaching and scorching the ceiling. Even Gilian’s dummy didn’t come out of it unharmed, leaving several scorch marks. When the flames subsided, the dummy seemed to be fine, but there was a visible circle around the dummy.
Next, it was Gilian’s turn. She too summoned a bird, just as detailed as Jeanne’s, but this was a more gentle bird. That didn’t mean the fires weren’t fierce, in fact, the intensity seemed to be on par with Jeanne’s, but it had a different feel. Even as the bird flew towards the dummy, it was different, it still left a trail of fire, but it seemed suspended in the air, and when it hit the dummy, the flames engulfed it in the shape of an egg.
“Are these the same spell?” I asked.
“They most certainly are,” Frederick replied. “Magic doesn’t always express itself the same for everyone. A spell is just a word, or a phrase, that gets associated with a certain kind of magic. The way the magic expresses itself all depends on the wishes of the user.”
“So what exactly is this spell? What is 【Phoenix Flames】 supposed to do?”
“【Phoenix Flames】 is both used as a defensive spell as well as a support spell.”
I took a look at the dummies, specifically at Gilian’s, and noticed that where there were previously a few scorch marks due to Jeanne’s flames, there were now none left.
“So you wanted to see how well they did with this spell?” I asked.
“Not really,” Frederick said. “I already know their potential. No, 【Phoenix Flames】 is a spell I designed myself. It isn’t a particularly strong magic, it’s only supposed to look flashy. There is no functional use of shaping the flames into a bird other than to show off.”
“Then what is it?”
“Maybe it would be better to talk about this in private, when there aren’t other people around.”
It sounded serious, so I agreed, and we followed Frederick to a private room.
“Do you two know about the skill 【Perfect Understanding】?” Frederick asked.
The sisters shook their heads.
“It allows you to learn certain types of skills by only having to see it once,” Frederick said. “It’s a skill that the two of you have, and while in your case it’s only limited to magic skills, it seems you excel at it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like most skills, 【Perfect Understanding】 has several grades, or levels. At a low grade, people can learn new skills by seeing it once, but only understand the most simple form, a lower grade version of that skill. Naturally, with a lot of training and discipline, one could raise its grade to the point where they can perfectly replicate one’s skills.”
“So they can replicate any spell they see.”
“Yes, and no. They can replicate a skill, but on top of that improve upon that skill.”
“What do you mean?”
“In essence, the spells they replicated are the same as mine, and as far as I can see, even the magic formula is the same. Yet, their spells are a bit more powerful than what I demonstrated. And that’s with less mana than I normally provide for such a strength.”
“Wait, are you saying they need less mana to perform spells?”
“Theoretically, yes, but actually, no. In time, I could learn how to do it myself, and with magic that has already been as optimized as possible, I don’t think their input would differ too much from what normally is accepted. Honestly, I don’t know what this means.”
“Maybe it’s because of a gift given by the Goddess.”
“Goddess?”
There was a look of confusion on his face. I assumed there were known gods and goddesses in this world.
“Are there not supposed to be gods in this world?”
“There used to be. About five thousand years ago.”
Frederick and I decided to meet up later in private. For now it was time to look for a new place to live in. Benita was a thriving city, and its housing reflected that. There were quite a few high-rise buildings, similar to those in my original world, though with a more organic design and feel. This design is the result of the way these structures are built. For a lot of these buildings, a scaffolding is created using nature magic, around which concrete-like material is being shaped. In order to reinforce the structures, steel is often used, although in some cases more durable alloys are used instead.
That isn’t to say that all buildings are built that way. Some older buildings that look more like the buildings in my previous world were built in a more manual way. The buildings as they are built now are shaped in this way to save on construction time, and they do have the disadvantage of having a certain build height limit. That doesn’t mean the build height can’t be overcome, but in this world there is still a lack of knowledge when it comes to engineering.
Housing wasn’t cheap, but that was to be expected. The cheaper apartments were too small for our needs, so in the end, we settled for one that would cost us 450 gold a month, this was with the discounts we got from the adventurers guild and was based on Rya’s rank, since she had the highest rank of us all.
“Which building is it, actually?” I asked Rya.
“It’s this one,” Rya replied, pointing at the building that was about a kilometer away from the guild.
“That’s fairly close, within walking distance at least.”
“Yeah, but its distance from the dungeon is pretty big.”
For now, we still had to stay the night at the inn, since all the paperwork had to be finalized first. It wasn’t a big deal anyway, it at least gave us time to shop for furniture. Of course I could use my skills to create the furniture, but we decided it was better to actually purchase them. Not only would it be less exhausting for me, the quality would be a lot better, and we’d support the local businesses. Our budget wasn’t that big, but it was enough to at least afford that.
“So, where should we get the furniture?” I asked.
“The shopping district isn’t that far away from the inn,” Rya said, “and if you want your furniture custom made, the artisan district isn’t too far away from the guild.”
“What would you recommend?”
“I’d say the shopping district, it’s way cheaper.”
She had a point. We didn’t really need expensive furniture, just furniture that’s durable, and we needed quite a few things, at least four beds. I wasn’t planning on sharing a bed, and I assume that Jeanne and Gilian would want their own as well.
There was another reason why going to the shopping district was better. One of the main reasons the furniture in these districts is cheaper than the ones at specialized artisans is because most of the time the furniture is mass produced. There is less detail, and because of that you can essentially automate its creation, or at least simplify the production. The main advantage of this is because all these furnitures look the same, it wouldn’t seem suspicious if I ended up with a bunch of them when I use 【Item Creation】.
Rya already had a list of furniture we needed, we just needed to purchase them and store them in my 【Storage Box】. We had two options for the furniture. We could purchase them pre-assembled, or we could assemble them at the apartment ourselves. Naturally we chose the latter, since that was cheaper, plus, 【Item Creation】 would make assembling the furniture a lot easier, and since the base components were now available, it wouldn’t take that much mana to use.
After we were done with our main goal, we decided to stock up on items that could help us in the dungeon. This meant things like potions. Because mana is everywhere, potions in this world are rather effective, and this effect is only increased the higher the concentration of mana is. You just have to drink it and the effects would immediately spread all over the body. This does mean that it can also be used for malicious reasons, though rare, as such effects can easily be counteracted.
Because we still had a lot of time, we decided to head into the dungeon, mainly to see what the dungeon was like. Once we entered the area around the dungeon, the entire atmosphere changed. It really felt like a completely different place. Even though there were stalls everywhere, it all felt dark and heavy. There were a lot of people, ranging from adventurers to merchants, and of course guards, and yet, it felt like I was alone.
“Ya get used to it,” Rya said.
She probably sensed my discomfort. This place did make me anxious, and I wasn’t sure what caused this.
“Is this normal?” I asked. “This feeling, I mean.”
“I guess so,” Rya said. “A dungeon is a dangerous place, you need to remember that. Joke around and you’re dead. And even if a dungeon prevents that, you should always treat it as if it doesn’t.”
This was the first time I’ve seen Rya this serious. I guess she had good reasons. Monsters found in dungeons could be a lot stronger, and any reckless behaviour could be fatal. This is why there is this golden rule when it comes to dungeons. Never assume you’re getting out of a dungeon alive. There might be something stronger waiting for you. Even if a dungeon prevents death, this rule should always be followed, because the next time you enter a dungeon without this protection, you might get too careless.
While it was pretty busy outside the dungeon, it was completely different inside. Each floor of a dungeon is massive, and it’s easy to get lost if you’re not careful. It was also unknown how deep this dungeon is, the deepest any adventurer group went was the 126th floor. I guess this was the reason why we didn’t encounter anybody in the dungeon.
The main goal was to explore the first two floors, mainly to get some experience, but also to get resources, either to sell or to use ourselves. On these two floors, we’d mainly encounter slimes, rats and bats, perfect low-level enemies to test out our abilities, though if we really wanted to get better, we’d eventually have to go to the lower floors. But for now, these two floors were perfect. It even allowed us to complete certain quests, allowing us to raise the rank of the sisters more easily.
I was finally able to use 【Status Appraise】. There were indeed some limitations, but I didn’t know how limited it was until I was finally able to use it. Indeed, I was only to use most of the functionality with consent. Using this skill is actually noticeable by the one it’s being used on, which is why consent is required, as the target could easily just mentally block access, often without any effort. It’s also why this skill is mainly effective against beasts and monsters.
Another problem was the fact that the skill couldn’t properly see the skills of a person, or rather, one could easily hide skills, and with some effort fake having certain skills. The level of the skill indicates how effective it is in detecting this, but it still can’t overcome the need to ask for consent. This is also true for the stats of somebody. You generally only see the aggregated values of their stats, and it’s in fact easier to just ask the person themselves. Things like base stats are hidden, though most of the time you wouldn’t have any use of this information anyway. Skills like 【Judge】 can overcome some of these limitations, though for a more effective skill I had to search for 【Scan】, which could only be obtained through special means. This skill isn’t too rare, though you’d have to find it in places like the lower levels of certain dungeons, including this one.
“Whenever you see a chest, they’re mostly safe on this floor,” Rya said.
Chests can randomly appear in a dungeon. People don’t exactly know why chests appear, and how they appear, as nobody has ever observed one being placed, or at least not in an unmanaged dungeon. Chests could just randomly spawn behind you when you’re not looking. There is a theory that is seemingly supported by dungeons that are managed by people.
Dungeons always absorb trace mana in the area around them, and convert the mana into something which can be described as dungeon essence. Said essence can then be used to create monsters, or expand the dungeon, and sometimes it could be used to create treasure. While the Benita dungeon is an unmanaged dungeon, preparations have been put in place so that its behavior was programmed to suit the city’s needs, like spawning treasure at random.
Another one of these behaviors is creating boss rooms every five floors. In natural dungeons, you’d often find strong creatures that stand in the way between you and the core, and this behavior was used to create these special rooms.
“How do we know these treasures are safe?” Gilian asked.
“There aren’t any traps on this floor,” Rya replied. “Traps only appear on the lower floors. There might be some puzzles that hide treasure, though.”
Suddenly Rya stopped, and looked around, or rather, she was sniffing around.
“Slimes up ahead,” Rya said. “Around two or three of them.”
“We can handle them,” Gilian said.
Jeanne and Gilian rushed ahead and disappeared into the darkness. When we caught up to them, the slimes were already defeated. Slimes normally only drop jelly and things it hasn’t been able to digest yet, but on rare occasions it can drop rare items, like a magic stone. Monsters generally drop magic stones, but smiles are rarely seen with one. This is due to the nature of how they reproduce, and the fact that they generally absorb anything inside their body, even their own magic stone.
Slimes found in dungeons however are often relatively new, therefore if you kill them within a certain time you could collect them before they’re dissolved. This still makes them rare, but people like Rya make the task of finding newly spawned slimes a lot easier.
“We found one,” Gilian said. “How many do we need?”
“Preferably as many as we could get,” I said, “but just one is enough to fulfill one of the harder quests.”
“There’s a quest for this?” Jeanne asked.
“There is. You’d need to find a slime magic stone of any grade. Anybody could take this quest on, but unless you’re lucky you’d almost never be able to finish it.”
“Yeah,” Rya said. “Which is why people who have search skills or a great nose like me are brought on these quests. I’ve actually helped quite a few people clear this one.”
Aside from completing the quest, slime magic stones actually make lots of money due to their rarity. This would help us sustain a living in this city. However, I also had personal reasons to get these magic stones. For now I decided to use 【Appraise】 on the stone we already had.
【Magic Stone - Slime (Grade 4)】
“It’s a pretty high grade stone,” I said.
“That’s good, right?” Rya asked.
“Might be, but we need more.”
“Do you need them for something?”
“I don’t know, maybe. I just wanted to do some experiments with them.”
It wasn’t long before Rya found another target for us, a giant rat. We had to collect at least ten rat fangs and five rat tails, both being separate quests. Aside from that, we also needed some slime jelly, bat wings and brown mushrooms. These were all low ranking quests, and the rewards weren’t that high, but they’d at least help the sisters rank up faster.
“Watch out for its fangs,” Rya said. “While they’re not venomous, the wounds they leave behind can easily get infected. Most healing spells won’t work against natural diseases, and we don’t really have disinfectants with us.”
“What did you just say?” Gilian said, as the rat burned to death thanks to Jeanne’s magic.
“Oi,” I exclaimed, while putting out the fire with water magic, “we still need the materials!”
We continued like this for the rest of the day, and the loot we brought back was more than enough to pay for another night at the inn. Not that we were strapped for cash, but it was at least nice to know that we could at least live easily in this city, though, given, we could have only done it because of Rya’s skills. Without her knowledge and her nose, we would have had a harder time finding anything, and we probably would have needed to go into the lower levels, where the monsters and creatures not only were more frequent, but also a lot harder to defeat.
It did become obvious that my job wasn’t exactly suited for combat. It seemed that 【Technopath】 was more of an artisan job class, which was actually pretty obvious, seeing as this job was more about creating things. However, that didn’t mean I wasn’t needed or helpful in the dungeon. Thanks to 【Analysis】, I was able to identify several contraptions and their basic functionality. There were still some limits, though.
For example, one of the puzzle contraptions showed me roughly how the puzzle was built, but due to how the skill works, we weren’t able to get any hints on how to solve this puzzle. Not that we needed any, since this puzzle was quite easy to solve. By rotating dials in a certain way using the hints found near the puzzle, you could open a secret chamber. They had to be turned in the correct sequence, otherwise you had to reset the puzzle. The entire puzzle was mechanical, and relied on simple things like gravity to make it work.
Our prize for solving this puzzle was a treasure chest. The contents weren’t anything special, it was basically just a book with a magic circle on the cover. Inside it, many more circles and symbols were found. I wasn’t sure what they all meant. There were certain strings of symbols that looked like words, but they weren’t in a language that I recognized. Jeanne and Gilian did claim that they could identify these circles thanks to their 【Spell Book】, but what most of these circles were for they couldn’t explain. The only thing they could tell me was that the circle on the cover was called a void circle, a kind of magic circle that could block the activation of any magic circle inside the book, perhaps to prevent people from accidentally activating any of them.
Since it was still early in the afternoon, I gave the girls some free time, while I decided to head over to the library. I had to find out what this book was. First I asked the librarian about it, but unfortunately there was no direct information about it, though I was referred to the ancient and dead languages section. While it didn’t give me any direct answers, it did help me a bit. The problem was to figure out the language, and while this section wasn’t really big, it would still take a while before I found something that would match. But more importantly, I had to actually learn the language. There might have been a skill that would allow me to learn languages more easily, perhaps even a cheat skill which would do this instantaneously, but as far as I knew I didn’t have one.
“Runes,” I heard, and when I looked around, someone was standing next to me. “Interesting…”
“Can you read them?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, though they look similar to the ones I know, they seem to be a bit different.”
I could finally see his face when he took off the hood of his cloak.
“It might be the language of one of my ancestors,” he said. He pointed at the cover. “This circle, if I’m correct, well, the name can be roughly translated as ‘voiding’. The text below says something along the lines of, ‘Prevents the usage of sigils within a confined space.’ This is a compendium about sigils, or magic circles, similar to the ones magicrafters have when they first start out.”
“So this book isn’t really rare,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say that. While these compendia are quite common, this is still an old book that uses a more ancient dialect of those used now. On top of that, there are some sigils that I haven’t seen before.”
“Well, thank you for your help.”
“You’re welcome. Oh, and I don’t think I have introduced myself. I am Laendrif of the Laefeir.”
“My name’s Rivers Neuwelt.”
Even though Laendrif was relatively young, only 26 year old at the time, he had long graying hair, the kind you’d see in old people. It wasn’t exactly a natural gray, as you could still see strands of hair that had his original color.
“This is an interesting book, though,” Laendrif said. “The sigils here seem to be less efficient than the ones we use now. Most of the time when we put a voiding circle on something like a book, we use a less powerful form, to prevent mana overdrawing.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Overdrawing can cause a magical item to wear off more quickly, and with books where you want to preserve the information as long as possible, you don’t want to have that. Though looking at this copy, it seems to be brand new.”
“Maybe it’s because we found it in the dungeon.”
“That might very well be it. The dungeon could have created it from the ground up, and it wouldn’t really be out of the ordinary to find such a book in a dungeon, not even books with content as old as this one.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Whenever anything gets lost in the dungeon, it doesn’t entirely disappear. Objects that get left behind by adventurers are, over time, absorbed into the dungeon, and its shape, its contents, anything an adventurer leaves behind will be remembered by the core.”
“So that the dungeon can use it as a template.”
“Exactly.”