Chapter 145: Dungeon Problem...?
Chapter 145: Dungeon Problem…?
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After Kamei acquired her Mana Core within a few minutes of having been suggested, Frank glanced at the pile of Mana Cores he had gathered, there were around fifty more left, although most of them were F-Rank, so the amount of world essence they could offer was small in comparison to higher Ranked ones such as those he got from Zero or the Giant Scorpion King Boss.
If he wanted for everyone to properly get to Rank 2, including his tamed monsters, the whole group would have to keep grinding a lot more, but they had months before they were to finally go to the capital, so Frank was confident that it could be a doable goal.
Alongside the Mana Cores, there were also other ways to increase Mana Core Cultivation, such as using Divine Power or App Points to buy items in the Dungeon Item List, which could be said to be a pseudo shop of sorts, although it was not intended that way when it was designed.
Frank also hoped to forget his bonds with Gwendolyn and the rest some more, and finally finish that one quest he got at the very beginning of this journey so he could unlock the App Shop, where more things could be acquired as he hoped.
Vheslia, however, was dead set on going to beat some monsters today and did not listen to Gwendolyn about teaching the kids how to use magic properly and other stuff, although she bought some Grimoire to gift to everyone, she decided to save them for the moment until her classes were to finally begin…
Because Frank and everyone else didn’t really mind waiting, they decided to bring Vheslia to the Dungeon to grind more Mana Cores and corpses to sell in the guild, and like this, the rest of the day was spent killing monsters.
Vheslia was a Dark Attribute Witch, and her ability to use her Dark Attribute was masterful, many of her Spells were made by her, something is often seen incredibly hard compared to simply getting new Spells through the precious Grimoires.
She was good at pretty much everything, offense, defense, cursing, enhancement, and utility.
She was able to create whips through the Dark Whip Spell to entrap and grab enemies, large spears of darkness through the Dark Spear Spell to kill enemies with ease, inflict status ailments such as paralysis or bleeding through the Paralyzing Dark Bolt and the Unhealing Wounds Spells, and she was even able to heal to an extent through the Darkness Absorption Spell, although it only worked on Dark Attribute Magus and weirdly enough, on Frank too, although this might be because of his Dark Death Devil Magic, which has the Dark Attribute.
On the second day of grinding the Dungeon seemed to have fewer monsters, and Frank had begun to fear that they might hunt down the entire population and have to wait a week for the monsters to repopulate the area again, at the end, the party managed to kill around 40 monsters after around six hours of constant non-stop grinding.
If it was not for Frank’s ability to drive the monsters near them, it might have been an even harder thing to accomplish.
As the party walked out of the Dungeon, they saw many Adventurers complaining outside about the monsters becoming too rare, some even had gone hunting for even longer hours than Frank’s party and only found one or two monsters at best…
Frank was now very worried, as if he were to completely wipe out of monsters the Dungeon, he might end up affecting the economy of the Town and even the pockets of the Adventurers that made up such economy too.
However, there was another Dungeon within the town, the one filled with Goblins, where most Adventurers were going after having experienced this strange ‘dryness’ of monsters in the Dark Lair.
Frank even began to consider if it could be a good idea to ask Axitl to make more Dungeons around the Acacia Town, but that might be too much to ask.
Of course… there was another option.
To begin killing Adventurers to extract their Mana Cores for the benefit of his group, while raising them as useful Undead soldiers…
But that was too much, although the idea came to his mind, he was not evil nor he desired to do such a thing, even without guilt, he still found it to be way too extreme, and would sooner or later drag unwanted attention and troubles to his life.
“Man, that was a good grind! My Level was going up all the time, all thanks to Kamei-chan!” said Vheslia, petting Kamei’s silky black hair with a smug.
“Vheslia-san, you were going pretty crazy in there, you should have calmed down a bit, or you might have called the attention of other Adventurers…” said Kamei.
“Yeah, what if they begin to think that we are suspicious? After all, we were fighting a lot of monsters there!” said Hilvera.
“Yeah, and the Adventurers here are all complaining that they haven’t found as many as they usually do…” said Asterion.
“It would be a pain if they told us that we were cheating or something…” said Annabelle.
“Okay, okay! Sorry…” said Vheslia, she was acting like a brat now…
Thankfully, although the party was speaking something that should not be spoken aloud, Frank was able to combine his Silence Skill with his Aura and create a small pseudo domain around him and his allies, so whatever they talked about was never heard outside of such domain, being a very convenient way to talk about important things without having to care so much about people spying them.
“About the Dungeon Problem… Well, we are most likely the cause,” said Frank.
“Yeah, we figured as much…” said Cathyl.
“But we can’t do much about it, we really need all these resources so we can grow quickly! After all, we have to get to Rank 2 in these months…” said Gwendolyn.
“Hm, but we should alter in between the Dungeons if possible, perhaps tomorrow we’ll use Dark Lair and then the next day the Goblin Dungeon,” said Frank.
“Well, sounds fine I guess,” said Cathyl.
“Yeah, a new dungeon to explore would be fun!” said Hilvera.
“Although Goblins… aren’t they ugly?” asked Kamei.
“Well we have killed some already, what are you fearing on about?” asked Frank.
“Ah, well, a certain anime left me a bit traumatized with Goblins…” said Kamei.
“Eh? Kamei! You shouldn’t have watched Goblin Slayer, that isn’t for kids!” said Frank.
“Sorry! It was just so controversial when it came out, I just wanted to see what it was all about… Haha… It was, well, something else… I still liked the action and the characters, the elf girl was pretty cute,” said Kamei.
“Indeed, she was rather adorable- Still! You shouldn’t have watched it… Haahh, well, not like I can do much at this point… Anyways, I hope you don’t get all crazy with all the Goblin variants we’ll meet there,” said Frank.
“O-Of course not…!” said Kamei while averting her gaze.
“Goblin Slayer?” asked Gwendolyn in confusion.
Frank sighed as he slightly explained what animation was, alongside the Goblin Slayer story.
“Animation is like… moving pictures?! Crazy!” said Asterion.
“I wish we could go visit Earth someday, it sounds like such a wonderful place!” said Hilvera.
“That’s right… The food from there is so good, I love the chocolates and candies that Frank has saved on his Inventory, although they’re running low now…” said Annabelle.
“Haha, those candies were originally for Abraddon, but I never gave him anymore as he never asked me for them anymore either…” said Frank.
“So Abraddon-sama is such a person, huh? He enjoys the mortal pleasures!” said Gwendolyn.
“Yeah, he’s kind of like us, what a cool God,” said Cathyl.
“I don’t think that could be a good characteristic in a good god…” said Frank.
When the party finally reached the guild, Frank contacted Clishya through the back door, where they did the transactions around.
Clishya could not help but be surprised about the large number of corpses that Frank sold once more… Even more now that the Adventurers were complaining that there were so few monsters around this day.
However, instead of being suspicious of Frank, she decided to simply shrug it off and happily buy the corpses, nonetheless, as it could bring profit to the Guild anyways, and it would not be wise to not buy them, especially because rival shops might do if Frank were to them.
Because monsters were such a crucial and vital thing in this world at this point, many shops bought the corpses, not only the Guild, in fact, the Guild bought them just to resell the butchered pieces to these shops, which specialized in the creation of items through Alchemy, Food in Restaurants and Butcheries, Clothes, armor, and weapons in Blacksmiths and Tailors, amongst many others.
It was an almost entire economy surrounding this constant grinding of materials from the monsters of dungeons, this is why Adventurers were a very vital part of the owner of acacia.
“Is it my idea or… your Mana Aura is very strong now?” wondered Clishya with a gentle and shy smile.
“Oh… Well, it might be, but please keep it a secret…” said Frank.
“A-A secret?! S-Sure thing…” said Clishya embarrassedly.
The door opened as a large minotaur came in carrying some leather bags filled with a few monster corpses and dozens of Mana Cores.
“There we go, butchered and separated everything, the discount is already made as always, thanks for your preference, boy,” said Asran, the Minotaur Butcherer, as he walked away promptly after.
“Very well, here’s your pay, the money of the quests plus the sold corpses and then the discounted money of the services of Asran… It should be 1 Gold Coin, 10 Silver Coins, and 60 Bronze Coins!” said Clishya, counting the money and then handing it over to Frank through a leather bag.
“Thanks a lot, Clishya, I shall get going then, see you tomorrow,” said Frank with a gentle smile, saving things inside of his Inventory and walking away, as Clishya glanced at his figure go away with more and more intrigue of who this boy really was…
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