“Ten,” I said quietly, interrupting Radd.
“Huh?”
“That’s the number of Goblin Slaughterers I had to sacrifice during this fight.”
The sword I’d transferred Final Break’s effects on to was undamaged, but I’d still had to lose the initial Goblin Slaughterers to activate Final Break. Furthermore, since I couldn’t unequip Goblin Slaughterers normally, I had to literally wait until the exact moment I used Final Break to also use Fast Swap. To top it all off, each Goblin Slaughterer I lost was 5,000,000 wen down the drain since I could use alchemy to transmute them into valuable raw materials.
“The less I have to use this technique the better! It costs me 5,000,000 wen with each attack! I already lost a lot of my Goblin Slaughterers in the fight against Bring, and now I had to sacrifice another ten!”
Of course, we’d been in a real pinch there, so I’d burned the cash without a second thought, but the loss of that much money with each attack had really stung. I’d managed to economize a bit by killing the last two bats in one attack, but that didn’t change the fact that I was now 50,000,000 wen poorer. And that had only been thirty seconds of combat!
Aaargh! I shouldn’t have tried to look cool in front of everyone and just asked Radd and the others to help me out!
Although, if I’d done that, there was the possibility that someone else would have taken the werewolf’s surprise attack. In which case fighting alone may have been the correct choice.
As I was agonizing over whether or not I’d made the right call, Prana walked over to me. “Rex...” she said softly, looking into my eyes.
I couldn’t read her expression at all, and I waited with bated breath to hear what she’d say next.
“I dub this technique of yours, Money Torcher.”
“Nooo!”
I had an ominous feeling that name was going to stick.
Radd let out a groan as he peeked into the next room. There was another coffin in it, and the room’s layout was identical to the one he’d been ambushed by the bats in.
“Nah, this one’s probably fine...” I said, stepping forward as I noticed what was inside the coffin.
“Wait, old ma—?!”
Before Radd could stop me, I walked over to the coffin and looked inside. “I knew it.”
Unlike the coffin which had held the bats, this one was already open. Lying inside was someone’s clothes. They were laid out to make it seem like the person wearing them had simply vanished, leaving just their clothes behind. There was one other thing in the coffin.
“What’s that?” Radd asked, walking up and peering inside.
There was something stabbed into the left side of the shirt. I silently reached down and pulled it out.
“That’s...a weapon, right, Rex?” Nyuuk asked.
I nodded. “Yep. The Dagger of Regrets. It’s a thrusting weapon that’s especially effective against certain types of undead.”
As I looked down at the dagger, I heard a low rumbling sound from outside the room. It sounded like something heavy was being dragged across the floor. Walking back outside, I found part of the floor in the corridor had slid away to reveal a staircase leading downwards.
“So that dagger was the hidden switch that revealed the next floor?” Mana asked as she peered down the staircase.
“Hell yeah, let’s go!” Radd shouted, excited.
I held out a hand to stop both of them. “Not so fast. It’s getting late, let’s call it here for today. We can come back later.”
We’d accomplished the primary goal we’d come here for, and considering our current level of strength, going in too deep didn’t seem wise.
“Come on, old man! I’ve got plenty of energy left!”
I shook my head firmly. “The farther down you go, the stronger the enemies get. I wouldn’t say the enemies down there are so strong you can’t beat them, but fighting them will be a lot more risky. Remember how we got ambushed in the last room?”
Radd choked, then stammered, “B-But, if we find ourselves in a pinch you can always just fight us out of it, right?”
“I don’t want to waste any more of my stock of rare weapons, and more importantly if I fight with you guys you won’t get any experience. It’ll defeat the purpose of coming here.”
Though the monsters here were stronger than me, they were still technically around level 40. Since I was level 52, me fighting would cut down the experience Radd and the others got to almost nil.
“Well... Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“For now, just do some basic Guild quests and grind out some class experience. We can come back here once you guys have gotten a bit stronger.”
Though unhappy, Radd looked convinced. I thought that was the end of that, but to my surprise it was Nyuuk—who was always so cautious—who protested next.
“I’m curious as well. Why are the monsters living down here? Is it possible that at the bottom of this dungeon is some terrifyin—”
“Nyuuk!” I interrupted him in a loud voice. “Don’t jinx us, okay? There’s plenty of places that turned into dungeons since monsters just happened to start living there. I’m sure there’s nothing special at the end of this one either.”
“But...”
Nyuuk didn’t look convinced so I added, “Besides, we can come back here any time, right?”
“I suppose...” Nyuuk said reluctantly.
I could tell from the look Recilia was giving me that she wanted to say something as well, but I silently started leading the group back.
Because of how BB worked, defeated monsters took a decent amount of time to respawn, and we were able to make it back up through the floors we’d already cleared without encountering a single enemy. I opened the secret door that served as the entrance and exit to the dungeon, and the six of us came out into a mansion I knew well. Orange sunlight filtered through the mansion’s large windows, dying the furniture a dark crimson.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to natural light again. “It’s already sunset, huh?”
As I’d feared, it was easy to lose track of time when you were underground.
“It looks like a completely different world,” Recilia muttered, and I glanced out a window at the city of Freelea. Everyone was going about their peaceful lives, unaware that they were only a short walk away from a den of monsters.
This mansion was known as the Rose Manor, and it was a special dungeon that existed within the city of Freelea, rather than out in the wilderness somewhere.