“A magic bag, huh? I thought it would be great if we managed to find a second one, but I really didn’t think it would happen,” I said.
“I didn’t either,” said Estelle. “And I especially can’t believe we found it here, in a relatively shallow part of the dungeon. Your financial luck may actually be a potent blessing.”
“...Really? Are you sure this isn’t just a coincidence?”
“Last time, we encountered an armed reptila on the fifteenth floor, which is fairly exceptional, and this time, we found a hidden passageway. I don’t think you can brush off both events in combination as mere coincidence. Advastlis-sama himself bestowed that blessing on you, so it’s hard for me to believe that it had nothing to do with this.”
Uh, the description of the blessing includes a “maybe,” and plus, there’s a question mark at the end of its name, so I don’t think it’s actually that useful. I mean, it’s possible that it had an effect, but...
“To be honest, I feel like the trials that we’ve had to overcome have been way too harsh,” I said. “It was like we only had two options, fortune and death, you know?”
Clearly whatever blessing I had wouldn’t just result in me running into a treasure chest full of coins while wandering around the dungeon. Given how far we’d had to go to get a good spear and a magic bag, it seemed more like a high-risk, high-reward deal. The rewards were definitely worth it, but I still wasn’t sure if I would call that a “blessing.”
“I believe that as an adventurer, you should be grateful for opportunities to earn rewards like those,” said Estelle. “If death were guaranteed, I of course wouldn’t want to face these trials, but this time and in the past, there were alternatives open to us.”
“Sure, we had the option of retreating, but did we really have other options back then when we were stranded?”
We had been in a situation where we couldn’t escape the dungeon unless we defeated the boss of the fifteenth floor.
“But we did have other options,” Estelle insisted. “We could have returned to the sixteenth floor and trained there before challenging the boss room. It’s simply that it wasn’t a realistic option considering our mental health at the time.”
If we’d had to train before challenging the boss room, I was pretty sure our temporary party would have fallen apart before we were ready. Parting ways after an argument would probably have been one of the better outcomes, right? Honestly, if we’d acted differently than we did, we could have doomed ourselves.
“Does this mean that you trust me a bit more now, Estelle?”
“...You shouldn’t directly inquire about things like that, Sai.” Estelle glared at me, but she quickly averted her eyes and continued, “More importantly, let’s hurry and return to the guild in order to report this hidden passageway.”
“Huh? We’re heading back already? Defeating these reptilas ended up being pretty easy, so it wouldn’t hurt to continue exploring until tomorrow like we originally planned, would it?”
We had used a lot of mana during the battle, but we still had plenty left because we’d been conserving it until now.
But Estelle shook her head. She had a serious look on her face. “Do you remember the rules that apply to adventurers exploring this dungeon, Sai?”
“Rules? Oh, are you talking about taxes? D-Does that mean the guild will confiscate this magic bag?!”
Adventurers had to pay a twenty percent tax on anything they acquired in the dungeon. I’d had to pay a hefty sum on my current spear. I had no idea what magic bags were actually worth, but there was no way I could actually afford to pay for this one. Maybe Estelle could afford it, but...
“No, but that’s a good guess,” said Estelle. “The rule that I’m thinking of is a minor one that most adventurers probably aren’t aware of for the simple reason that it isn’t relevant to them, but it happens to apply to the situation at hand. The rule states that items found inside of hidden rooms or unexplored areas of the dungeon are exempt from tax for a certain period of time.”
“Seriously? That’s great for us, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. But it only applies to adventurers who swiftly report cases like this to the guild.”
According to Estelle, treasure chests inside hidden rooms could respawn, so the rule she mentioned had been established to prevent adventurers from keeping the treasure chests they found to themselves. The temporary tax exemption, meanwhile, existed to incentivize adventurers to venture deeper into the dungeon.
During the exemption period, the guild would suffer a loss of income, but dungeon cities would never grow if exploration slowed to a halt, so apparently it was more profitable in the long term if adventurers could discover and bring back new items and materials from unexplored areas. However, hidden rooms were rare and hard to find, and high-rank adventurers were the only ones who could explore new areas, so I got what Estelle meant about the rule being irrelevant to most people.
“By the way, what happens if some other adventurer informs the guild about this hidden room before we do, Estelle?”
“If that happens, we’ll lose the tax exemption and the magic bag will be sold at auction.”
Estelle went on to explain that if someone else told the guild there was nothing in the hidden room before we had a chance to report the magic bag, it would become impossible for the guild to determine whether we were telling the truth or lying in order to avoid taxation. If the two reports came in around the same time, then it was possible that we could get a favorable verdict given our positive relationship with the guild, but the guild relied on taxes for a certain percent of their revenue, so it was far from certain that they’d side with us.
“Y-Yikes! L-Let’s hurry!” I exclaimed.
Despite the fact that Estelle had been so excited about the treasure chest, she was serious now, and she stopped me before I could dash out of the room. “We need to get back to the guild as soon as possible,” she agreed, but then she pointed to the reptilas. “First, however, let’s gut these.”
We swiftly dealt with the reptilas, then rushed out of the dungeon.
★★★★★★★★★
Estelle and I visited the reception desk at the guild to notify them that there was something important we wanted to discuss as soon as possible. The staffer who ended up getting assigned to us was the same guy who’d helped us the other day when we were dealing with Estelle’s fiancé. Even though we’d shown up with no warning, he immediately guided us to a conference room. We might have been getting favorable treatment because of Estelle being a Rank 5 adventurer.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Estelle-san. Has a problem arisen regarding the contract that was drafted the other day?”
“No, not at all, but thank you. We’re actually here to talk about something that we encountered in the dungeon,” said Estelle.
“In the dungeon, you say? Did a problem arise during your latest expedition?”
“No, not exactly. To be more specific, we found a hidden room on the tenth floor.”
“...Huh? A hidden room on the tenth floor of the dungeon?” the guild staffer repeated, sounding confused.
Estelle nodded, and he froze up for a few seconds. Suddenly, he shot to his feet, eyes wide.
“P-Please wait here for a moment!” he shouted, then dashed out of the room.
“Whoa, he definitely seemed surprised,” I said.
Estelle laughed. “It’s the natural reaction,” she explained. “It’s quite rare for hidden rooms to be discovered, especially on the upper floors, which have already been thoroughly explored.”
We barely had any time to chat before the staffer returned and put a map of the tenth floor on the table along with some scratch paper.
“C-Could you please indicate exactly where your party found the room? And please summarize the events leading up to your discovery as well!”
“Um, I believe it should be right around here,” said Estelle. “Right, Sai?”
“Hmm. We turned here and walked straight, then found the passageway that led to the hidden room about halfway before the next corner... Yeah, it’s right about here.”
“I see,” said the staffer. “It was far from the standard routes, then. Most adventurers tend to rush past the tenth floor, so that could explain why the room hasn’t been discovered until now. What precisely happened? What kind of hidden mechanism did your party discover?”
“We’re actually not quite sure ourselves,” said Estelle. “You see, we suddenly heard a sound and noticed that the wall ahead had retracted, and...”
Estelle slowly recounted what we’d seen, but we were still pretty clueless. Before heading out, we had investigated the passage to see if there was any way to close it, but the wall with the engraved handprint had retracted completely, so we had no way of manipulating it, and we couldn’t find any mechanism that would have allowed us to return the passageway to its original state. Something must have happened to trigger the sound we’d heard, but since we had no idea what it was, our account ended up being pretty vague.