Chapter 87 – Great Reward?

Bernir dropped down onto his butt after seeing the monster finally go down. The bloody battle was finally over and the monster had self detonated after getting its core cracked by the man wearing the crimson armor.

He thought back to how this day started. Bernir had just recently joined up with a fresh adventurer party. Not as a part of it, more as a freelancer that was doing odd jobs for them for money. There was a reason why he was here all alone and without his family.

This young man was close to 170 cm in height with red hair. He had a scruffy beard that was in the same color along with large brown eyes. His stature was a bit wide and his hands had some meat on them. He was wearing a cheap set of leather armor but most of it was just dark cloth.

Being a half-dwarf half human made his upbringing quite hard. The particular village that he grew up in didn’t take too kindly to his father marrying a human woman. Then calamity struck, the village was attacked by monsters, and he and many others were left with no parents.

The people that were against him living as a half breed there took this chance to slowly shun him. In time it was too much and he decided to try hitting it off on his own. The news of the new dungeon city getting built caused him to dream of a new beginning. There was no work in the village he was in, none of the dwarven blacksmiths or artisans were willing to hire him, so it was time to leave.

It took some time to get here, the journey wasn’t easy as he didn’t have much money. He had to perform tasks for the caravan that he joined and sometimes sleep outside with nothing but the night sky above him. After about a month the new city was on the horizon and the dream of an easy life was close to being grasped.

At least that was his initial thought but reality tended to be different than a person imagined. He wasn’t greeted with warmth but with spite as well. The smithies that he applied for didn’t take him very seriously. At most, they would let him carry the materials around but never let him continue his craft of blacksmithing. He was left with only a promise that if he did his time they might allow him to work on some horseshoes in the future.

Thus his money problems started, he was forced to perform odd jobs again. He wasn’t strong in any meaning of the term so the only thing worth the time was helping the adventurers carry their items.

This line of work wasn’t what he had in mind when he came here and it barely paid the bills. He was left with a minuscule amount of what the adventurer’s sold at the guild. His tasks were to pick apart the monster corpses and carry all the equipment that the adventurers couldn’t be bothered with.

Bernir had seen Roland wandering town from time to time. He always had peculiar unmatching armor on which made him stand out. This half-dwarf was someone that was aching to work with his hammer. The only thing he could do was watching other craftsmen create.

Then came this fateful day, the armor that Roland was wearing today was different than usual. The craftsmanship had improved and the application of runes made Bernir’s mouth water as he bumped into him when they were leaving for the dungeon.

The party he was a part of consisted mostly of steel ranked adventurers with the leader being a fresh silver rank. There were six of them and he was the seventh member. Bernir wasn’t really considered as part of the group, he was always getting ordered around left and right. Left with only scraps at the end of the day after having his hands bloody.

Besides the leader, all the others were in their high 40s in levels. After the leader finally advanced it was decided to wander below the 10th level. Bernir felt that it was too soon with only one silver rank adventurer around but he didn’t have a say in this. They told him to shut up and just hide in the back as always.

From his perspective things were actually looking good, the team was beating all the monsters quite easily. Even when they got to the 10th level the guards in front of the boss monster’s chamber weren’t all that tough to beat.

So finally the party ventured forth to battle the maze boss. They weren’t even planning to do this, to begin with. The original plan was to go fight some tier 2 monsters at the starting point a bit past the boss monster chamber. Instead, they found the passage closed and with a fresh tier 2 monster waiting for them on the inside.

They all knew that this was risky but also that it could be very lucrative. Everyone knew that after defeating this monster there would be some kind of prize waiting at the end. This 10th level monster was hard to fight as a lot of adventurers were willing to set up camp before the entrance and farm for items.

For some reason, it was open this day. Greed got the better of Bernir’s party and the rest was history. Roland arrived not long after to save his life. While his party members were trying to fight the golem he was shivering in the back while trying to distribute potions.

The monster was slow but its stamina was unending. One hit was enough to devastate anyone from this party. The party of adventurers gave it all but after their shield warrior was pounded to meat paste it was over. The rest started falling like flies going down mostly in one hit. This boss clearly out leveled their leader which was that shield warrior that fell first.

Bernir’s chest was still pounding even though it was over. The rocky bridges that connected this room to the exit were now slowly rising back up. He had looked around if anyone survived even before the explosion but everyone was dead.

He was the only survivor and was lucky enough to have gotten away with it with only some minor bruising. At this moment he was looking at the man dressed in crimson armor that had saved him. This warrior was walking over to the spot that the Ruby Golem detonated, there wasn’t really anything left besides some broken off gems.

“I might have to go back to the guild and report this…”

Bernir heard the man mumble to himself while kicking around the golem parts. Soon he turned around to face him which caused the half-dwarf to stand at attention. He didn’t think that the man was hostile after he had already saved him but there was always a small possibility that he could end up dead.

It was possible for this armored man to see him as an eyesore. Some people would get rid of all witnesses and then rob the adventurer corpses of all their belongings. Though in this situation there wasn’t much left of them.

The large detonation pushed almost everything into the lava below the boss chamber’s platform. The only thing that was worth something was Bernir’s backpack that he still had with him. It was a spatial item that was worth a lot but it wasn’t his. It was an item that was given to him by the adventurer party but they were all gone now, so it would belong to him as the only one that survived. That is if this armored warrior didn’t see a problem with that.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Hey, you.”

“Y-yes?”

He snapped back to reality after the man in the red armor called out to him. After poking around through the monster’s remains and gathering some of the materials he finally focused his attention on Bernir.

“Can you walk?”

“Ah, y-yes.”

Bernir quickly jumped up to his feet to show off that he was fine.

“Good, we’ll have to make a report to the guild so you’ll have to come along with me. The golem’s core wasn’t totally destroyed, it should be enough as proof…”

The other person in the armor started talking. It looked like he didn’t have any ulterior motives and wanted him to report to the guild about this situation. Bernir let out a sigh of relief as it looked like he would be getting out of this in the end.

“Ah… also sorry for your loss.”

The man was about to turn around but then slowly faced him again. Bernir just nodded while scratching his head.

“T-thank you, we weren’t really that close though…”

He replied while the man turned around to look at the monster’s remains, he picked up some of the crumbled rubies and started looking over them. Before he pocketed them, Bernir opened up his mouth.

“You shouldn’t take that, without the golem’s core those gems will turn into regular rocks soon.”

He was in this business for some time now and had done some research. He knew that golem remains were slightly different, they might have looked like resources ready for plucking but that wasn’t entirely true.

“It will?”