Chapter 347 – Hidden Meeting.

“This is the last one, let’s see… some gems but no other items…”

Roland looked at a small sack filled with various precious gems. After letting his calculation-related skills do the work he was given a gold price of around two hundred gold coins. For a normal person, this was quite the amount of cold hard cash but for someone that could spend more in a week, this was nothing.

‘So that leaves me with a shield, one trapped chest, and these gems, other than that there is nothing left on this level besides the undead monsters.’

“Woof!’

“These aren’t mana stones Agni.”

Agni moved his big nose toward the bag filled with sparkly items. After a couple of sniffs, he gave out a resounding sneeze. Even though he liked to snack on mana stones, regular gems with no mana in them didn’t really interest him. Luckily nobles in this world were still vain, they would buy out precious gems and even pay an extra if they knew they were unearthed from a high-rank dungeon.

‘Some of these can be used by mages if prepared correctly.’

Even though these gems had no magic in them, they were created by the dungeon. To his knowledge, there were some techniques that could potentially turn these into something that could go onto a mage’s staff. Some could also be used in various alchemical concoctions that he was not aware of. He’d need to go to an alchemist to have them analyzed as his specialty was more in line with metallurgy. Transforming crafting materials into something else, was in their field of expertise.

‘I wonder what happened to that old gnome?’

While packing up the stones into his own spatial backplate he started to reminisce about the past. His old boss was a crafty alchemist, if he had someone like that around then perhaps he wouldn’t have to spend so much money on side materials for crafting. Having a steady supply of stamina-boosting potions with no side effects would have been great too.

‘He probably lured in another unsuspecting youth with one of those contracts.’

After shaking his head Roland left the third hidden chamber on this level. Now that he had some time to explore this place he realized of its vastness. All the chambers were large and spread apart by long corridors that were patrolled by undead creatures. While the dungeon levels were bigger here than the ones in the lesser dungeon, the monster population was smaller.

‘The concentration of hidden room is greater though, I never found more than one hidden chamber on each level and here there are three… This might be a gold mine for treasure.’

The dungeon level he was in wasn’t the lowest or the highest. He could climb up and find weaker monsters and probably lesser rewards if he went up. If he went down, however, he would reach unexplored areas with harder mobs waiting for him. Going up might decrease the experience gain but it would allow him to grab some free treasure.

‘I need to figure out the time it takes for the chest to respawn. It shouldn’t take more than a week if this place is anything like other B-ranked dungeons and A-rank ones are similar too…”

“Awoo.”

“I’m coming, it’s been half a day already, we need to return to those three.”

His thought process was interrupted by a bump to his side. A paw made its way toward his thigh to make him finally leave the room. The wolf that this paw belonged to looked a bit saddened by the fact that they needed to return. Killing the skeletal beings here was clearly bringing him joy.

“The next time we get here, you’ll probably reach the limit of your levels… I wonder what you’ll turn into…”

“Worf?”

Agni tilted his head to the side as if he didn’t know the answer to the question. The choice would be up to Roland and he had already studied the evolutionary process of a Ruby Wolf. He was worried that Agni would get too large to fit into the house that he already had problems with. If this was the case then perhaps a large doggy house would need to be created.

Both of them made it back to the initially hidden chamber where Armand and the rest were waiting for him. At this moment there were no undead monsters in the area and the group was following his advice to stick to the hidden chamber. Throughout the journey here he had kept watch over their dots. Whenever another adventurer party wandered through they would wait inside and only came out when the coast was clear.

“Wayland!”

Lobelia called out to him after leaving the hidden chamber. His dot on the map device that he left them was colored purple so they could easily spot him approaching. Right as they entered his field of vision he decided to glance at their stats. To no surprise even only after half a day of grinding their levels had gone up. At this pace, within this month it would probably be possible for all of them to reach level hundred fifty.

‘I wonder if rich nobles power level their kids in this way too… It’s probably harder to do without targeting the weakness of a monster.’

He knew that it was possible for the rich to use items like the ones he created to do the same. However, this didn’t mean that there weren’t other limitations like a good grinding spot for their offspring. Not many parents were fine with sending their young into a dark cavern filled with monsters. There was also always a chance of subterfuge, enemies were everywhere and constant battles for inheritances raged. Even if they had the means, it wasn’t that easy to get someone trusted to help them level.

This reminded him of the goblins his family kept down in their own dungeon. Perhaps instead of sending their kids away to adventure, they brought monsters back to their estate to be farmed for their experience. This method would be safer but also a lot slower than just waiting for a mob to respawn

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“Do we have to go back? Can’t we just get a few more levels, I’m so close to getting another one!”

“Yeah, how about we stay here for the night!”

Armand along with Lobelia started chattering up his ear. He could understand how they were feeling, being able to gain multiple levels in just a few hours must have felt wonderful. For people like them that had to push themselves out of the dirt, this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

“I know how you feel but you shouldn’t push your luck, this was supposed to be a test run, you probably don’t have that many scrolls left either.”

“Sir Wayland is right, if we happen to run out of the magical scrolls we won’t be able to leave this place without his help.”

“If Mary is on your side then I guess we should go back…”

“Hm?”

Roland noticed that Mary was acting a bit more docile than before. She instantly agreed with his plan, even Armand for some reason was agreeing with her.

‘Did they grow a new bond during this time? They were stuck in that cramped room for a while between monster respawns.’

He wasn’t sure what happened there but at least they weren’t at each other’s throats. For a time he expected the two parties to not work well with each other. On one side there was a maid with a lord complex and on the other, there was a perverted muscle-bound idiot with his thief little sister. He could only attribute it to the fast leveling progress, with this kind of carrot dangling on a stick before them, they could do nothing more than work together to progress even faster.

“Good, we will leave now and get back here in a few days, prepare for a longer trip we will try to stay here for a few more days.”

“Woo!”

Lobelia jumped up and cheered while Armand did a fist bump. The two looked ecstatic about the thought of them leveling up and even Mary was the same. Soon the small group of four and a wolf returned to the mine area. There they encountered more scavengers plundering the site and fighting with each other. Just like before he made sure to capture their faces for later use.