Cave Exploration 4
The cave walls of the 21st floor had hidden devices that reacted to mana ore. Channel mana into one to stimulate the mechanism behind it, and the cave would transform into a maze — a maze that held a giant golem. Defeat the thing, and you could find your way back out—
"Roland, you know what I'm about to say, right?"
"I know. But look, we've got the evidence right here."
"Honestly, if you hadn't come with Hanna, I'd have written it off as some drunk joke."
At my explanation, Elise's expression shifted oddly as she held the mana stone. I'd spent ten years in the Tower, but the people of this world had lived alongside it for nearly thirty or forty. That meant they'd been researching it ever since breaking through the 20th floor — long before I ever arrived in this world.
After decades spent with the Tower, learning only now that a hidden magical device existed on the 21st floor was never going to go down easy. Still, our reliable genius mage Hanna had brought back stone fragments and a mana stone, so at least it was proven I wasn't lying.
"It's a hard story to believe, but… with evidence sitting right here like this, I've got no choice. You're submitting the mana stone to the Magic Tower, right?"
"Uh, no. I'll only submit the golem remains. The mana stone, I'm keeping for myself, Unnie."
"Hmm?"
As Elise started gathering up the golem remains spread across the table, Han Se-ah quietly slipped the red mana stone into her inventory. Elise seemed to accept it — Han Se-ah was a mage, after all — but I found it suspicious.
Han Se-ah might have been a mage and alchemist, but that was only because she could use the game system window as a player. The only magic she could actually perform was charging her staff with mana — the kind of parlor-trick manipulation you'd expect from a street peddler. What use could she possibly have for a mana stone?
At the sudden turn in the conversation, I casually shifted my gaze to Han Se-ah's stream window.
"Ah, damn. Nobody else has even been to the 21st floor besides me, so this is frustrating. Does the golem only show up after you've spent enough time in the maze, or was I just so unlucky I only ran into it after a whole hour? If next time I have to walk around for another hour straight, I'm gonna be pretty annoyed."
Watching Han Se-ah carefully tuck it away in a corner of her inventory, it seemed the golem's mana stone was some kind of quest item — given how the maze had appeared like an event. Keep killing golems and collecting mana stones, and maybe a hidden passage would open?
You know how some games have a true ending tucked away. Play normally and you get the normal ending, but collect every specific item and progress a certain way, and the true ending unlocks.
Apparently Han Se-ah and her viewers believed that on the 21st-floor cave terrain, you needed to find a hidden maze on every floor. Collect ten mana stones — one per floor — and there'd be extra rewards waiting on the 30th. That was the theory, anyway.
"So you're not commissioning the Magic Tower — you're carrying it around yourself?"
"Um, well, this feels kind of like a… mana key? You know, the maze opened when we poured mana into it, so maybe this stone's power could open a hidden space, or something…?"
Since the party hadn't heard any of this either, I gave her a little nudge to explain, and sure enough she fumbled her way through the words. When she was improvising on the spot off viewer suggestions rather than delivering a prepared lie, she still got tongue-tied.
Still, the improvisation was quick enough that the party nodded along. An unknown mana stone from a labyrinth that could fetch a nice pile of gold if sold — and not a single person in the party was greedy for it.
Looking at those faces full of trust and faith, I turned back to Elise.
"So, I want to post a major commission."
"You want to post a commission, Roland?"
At the sudden announcement that I wasn't taking a job but posting one, the party's eyes went round as they stared at me.
But walking that maze had taught me something. Better to solve this with money than waste time like that. How long would it take to go around pressing every cave wall from the 21st to the 30th floor with a torch-type magic tool?
"Spread the word: anyone who finds one of these unusual structures we talked about and just reports the location gets ten gold coins."
"Ten gold coins… are you serious?"
"Yeah. Or bring me one of those golem mana stones for the same ten gold. Something weird just happened in the labyrinth again — if ten gold can get us ahead of the competition, it's a bargain."
Better to throw money at the problem and hire people.
I'd been diligently saving for a comfortable retirement — a mansion, magic tools, servants — but now that clearing the Tower was the goal, gold coins had become items meant to be spent.
If I could clear the Tower with Han Se-ah, see the ending, and actually leave the game… even tens of thousands or hundreds of millions of gold coins in this world would mean nothing. No matter how much gold you had, once you left the game it was just deleted data scraps, right?
"Certainly, if you think of it as securing the information first, ten gold coins is…"
"What are you talking about? T-ten gold coins?!"
"That's right, Roland. Aren't you overdoing it?"
The young lady raised in a ducal household nodded along in agreement, but Grace — from a slash-and-burn farming village — and Irene — born and raised in the Temple — both jumped in shock, grabbing my arms to hold me back. For commoners who'd never been adventurers, even silver coins were a lot of money, never mind gold. Of course they'd be startled.
Their pure, untainted reactions made a smile tug at my lips. Han Se-ah had casually pocketed a mana stone that could fetch gold if sold, and they weren't even thinking about that.
"Overdoing it? What are you talking about. An Upper-grade adventurer who's been raking in gold for over five years isn't going to start whining over something this small."
"That's true. You did scrape gold together like mad saying you wanted to buy a manor somewhere quiet."
Elise immediately backed me up. Part of it was wanting to soothe Grace and Irene because she liked pretty faces, but she also wasn't about to miss a chance at a big commission fee. After all, the Adventurer's Guild made its living off the fees from adventurers' commissions.
After coaxing Grace and Irene off me, Elise leaned in and whispered by my ear.
"Roland, including the fee, that's ten gold coins and fifteen silver per job."
"Aren't you taking too big a cut?"
"Come on, this is a commission that starts on the 21st floor. I'll spread the word far and wide to the sharp-eyed scouts. You want to monopolize this fast even if it costs a lot, right? And it's a per-job fee, so if nothing gets found, I don't get anything either…"
"Fine, alright."
Elise beamed at my permission.
I let it slide — her work ethic, at least, was rock solid.
A few days after posting the commission through Elise, one evening while we were still exploring the 21st floor—
"I heard you're buying golem mana stones here!"
Burly arms mapped with scars-turned-to-scars, broad shoulders, no gear but clearly the type who'd serve as a party's tank. A man who expressed his fandom of me with his entire body approached, snorting with excitement.
In his rough, massive hands was, sure enough, a red-tinted golem mana stone. He could have submitted it to the guild and gotten gold through Elise — had he waited for our party to show up?
Dealing outside guild receptionist Elise meant no commission fee, but wouldn't that put him on her bad side? Hearing about a commission and then cutting a private deal was basically stabbing the guild in the back.
"I did post it as a guild commission. Did you wait for us?"
"Yes! It's just — I don't want the gold!"
Elise glaring sulkily from the counter behind us was a bit of a burden, and this weathered-looking man blushing right in front of me was a much bigger one. When someone approached this blatantly, you could tell exactly what they wanted.
I'd had a feeling, and sure enough — he strode right up and suddenly held out an old steel shield. Well-maintained enough that it wasn't rusted, but covered in scratches — clearly equipment he'd used for a very long time.
"This is the shield I used back when I was a beginner. Now that I'm seriously aiming for Upper-grade adventurer, I won't be able to use this guy anymore."
"…And?"
"If it's not too much trouble, could you grip this shield with both hands and leave some handprints…"
Even in a different world, people thought alike, huh.
Never in my life did I expect to be asked for a handprint, and certainly not on someone's old gear. His lips twitched as young eyes that didn't match his weathered exterior stared up at me, full of anticipation.
Well, if he was asking for handprints instead of ten gold coins, that much wasn't hard. I filled both hands with mana, gripped the shield, and squeezed — the steel crumpled like clay.
"Uwahaha! Thank you!"
Taking the shield that had transformed from a scratched-up piece of gear into one with palm-shaped dents, the man left the guild with a spring in his step, grinning ear to ear.
…It was so absurd I could only let out a hollow laugh.
"There really are a lot of people who like you, Roland."
"Yeah. By the way, I didn't expect there to be this many golems."
"…Right? I wonder what these are even for."
Collected that way, the golem mana stones already numbered six — just from the 21st floor alone.
One per floor, my ass. Looks like about ten were going to come out of a single floor.