The Pharaoh's Dual Scimitars
The Sphinx spent the last of its strength and died. Its death throes, however, began only after death itself.
Rrrrrumble—!
A grinding roar filled the chamber as stone dust rained from the ceiling. I felt like Indiana Jones who'd just tripped the wrong trap. The Sphinx's final attack was the kind of cheap last gasp every villain in fiction pulls before the credits.
A sudden time attack had begun, but I had room to spare. I knew the fastest way out of the pyramid. First, though, there was something I needed to do.
"Open that sarcophagus."
I pointed to the coffin beside the massive throne. Luna and Sera took hold of either side of the enormous lid and heaved. With a harsh, grinding scrape, the giant sarcophagus yawned open. The stone lid was plated in gold and would have been too heavy for several grown men working together — but Luna and Sera's strength outstripped that by a comfortable margin.
Inside lay a shabby male mummy, wrapped in yellowed bandages. It was a pitifully meager corpse to call the master of a pyramid this vast. In life, though, he would have been a formidable ruler who held this entire place in his grip. Resting above the mummy's head was a jar of pure gold — the vessel that held the viscera of the embalmed body.
I claimed that first. Empty the organs, wash it clean, and it would easily fetch dozens of gold. That alone would more than recoup our investment.
The sarcophagus was packed with jewels, ornaments, and sculptures of every lavish description. I took everything worth taking. I'd originally planned to turn most of the dungeon's loot over to the mercenary guild, but these I would convert to cash on my own. They looked like they would fetch a handsome sum.
The most important item of all lay crossed in an X over the mummy's chest: a pair of slightly curved scimitars.
◈ A matched pair of gold-adorned curved blades
◈ Transcendent performance far beyond the dungeon's level
◈ One of Solari World's Hidden Pieces
These were the Mythic-grade weapons this dungeon had to offer — Pharaoh's Dual Scimitars. A pair of blades whose power had no business existing in a dungeon of this caliber, and one of Solari World's hidden pieces.
"These are yours now."
I drew the scimitars from the coffin and held them out to Luna. She gazed at the blades with a look of naked awe. They were beautiful things, sheathed in gold from hilt to curve, as befitting weapons pulled from a pharaoh's sarcophagus. In the real world, anything this flashy would usually be all style and no substance — but with game items, the cooler they look, the harder they hit.
"Are you certain I may accept something so precious?"
"Buhihit! These were prepared for you. Take them. And get stronger. That is the path that serves me. I'll find Sera a weapon next time."
"I'm fine with just these claws."
Sera held up her hands as she said it. Even as we talked at our leisure, the pyramid kept coming down around us. Time to leave.
"Let's move. Follow me — and watch the traps."
"Yes, sir!"
We retraced our steps and slipped out of the pyramid. Knowing the walkthrough really is cheating. In game terms, it's a map hack and a money hack rolled into one. We walked out without a single threat so much as grazing us.
Rrrrrumble—!
Once we were outside, the great structure began to come down in earnest. The pyramid collapsing in a rolling cloud of dust had a grandeur all its own. If we'd tripped even one trap on the way out, we would have been buried alive in there — the same fate as the dead pharaoh himself.
"It's finally over."
Luna's voice was thick with feeling. The journey had taken a lot out of her. It had been exhausting, but the haul had more than made up for it. As we stood watching the pyramid fall, a pearlescent portal bloomed in the air before us — the same kind we had seen on the way in. The dungeon's exit.
"Looks like this place knows we've finished the job. We're leaving. Finally — some real rest."
And with that, we walked out of the dungeon.
After clearing the dungeon and returning to the house in Coulon, I settled accounts at once. First, I turned most of the items we'd taken from the dungeon over to the mercenary guild.
The three of us were promoted to E-Rank Mercenary in a single stroke. Ordinarily you had to sit an exam to advance a rank, but our results this time had been so outstanding — and the pile of items we'd submitted so large — that they skipped the test entirely. It was a promotion bought with a bribe in all but name, and that suited me just fine.
I didn't forget to cash in the haul from the pharaoh's sarcophagus, either. Coulon was a major city, and shops dealing in precious antiques were everywhere. The golden jar that had held the pharaoh's viscera would have been expensive even as raw precious metal, but its value as an antique ran higher still.
"Oho! An object steeped in tremendous mana. I can smell the weight of history on it."
The antique shop's owner was a man of seventy with a special jeweler's loupe of sorts fitted over one eye — a man who had been handling antiques for twice as long as I had been alive. He turned the golden jar this way and that, gasping in admiration.
"Condition's excellent, too. Barely a mark of use on it. Looted from a tomb, I'd wager."
"Buhihit. As expected of an expert. Close enough. We found it in a dungeon — the tomb of that dungeon's king, as it happens."
"I figured as much. I could give you fifty gold for it."
Fifty gold.
An enormous sum. Even for someone as flush as I was, it was the kind of number that made greed stir in the gut.
"That's the price I can offer, however, if you sell me all those ornaments as well. Those would come to about thirty gold altogether."
"Hmm. Those are all in excellent condition too, aren't they? I think you could go a little higher."
"Come now! Don't even think about haggling with me. I've spent decades in this marketplace looking at nothing but dust-covered antiques. Those pieces may be in good shape, but the forms are extremely common. Thirty gold is already generous."
"Well then. I suppose I haven't much choice. We'll do it your way."
Raising or lowering a price against a merchant that seasoned is brutally hard. Truth be told, as a slave trader I ought to have been a seasoned merchant myself — getting pushed around by veterans like this stung more than I cared to admit. What would the real Derick Walker have done in this situation?
"Here's eighty gold. Come again."
"Buhihit. I'll be back if I have more business."
Still, eighty gold was decent money. In the early game, you couldn't earn a sum like this without exploiting a bug. The fact that I had taken over Derick Walker's identity and fortune was a bug in all but name — which was precisely why I'd been able to earn it at all.
Making this kind of money, though, brought home all over again just how staggering Derick Walker's wealth had been, sitting on dozens of platinum coins. In real-world terms, the man had been a small-to-midsize corporation walking around in a body.
"Hm? A new skill?"
A skill I had never seen before had appeared out of nowhere. I opened my skill window. An unfamiliar entry caught my eye.
[Business Lv.1](A-Rank)
↳ Grants an exceptional sense for business.
It seemed I had picked up a new Root Skill from selling monster byproducts in the real world, and from selling slaves and items here in Solari World. I already knew you could learn Branch Skills through training, so this wasn't particularly strange. That said, Business felt different from anything I had acquired so far.
Most of the skills I had picked up were combat-oriented. The only real exception was Sex Mastery. Setting that one aside as a somewhat unusual case, this looked like it could be an excellent support skill depending on how I used it.
It would probably come in handy even in the real world, working as a Dungeon Hunter. Just as I had done here, exploring a dungeon on Earth always ended with selling off the byproducts — that was the process that actually generated a Dungeon Hunter's income.
With a genuine sense for business, I could squeeze more profit out of those situations. And in Solari World, I wouldn't get pushed around helplessly by veteran merchants the way I just had… would I? The skill level was still low, so I couldn't expect miracles yet.
"Once it grows, this won't be a bad skill at all. Buhihit!"
Pockets heavy with gold, I headed home. I had spent a fair amount furnishing the place, and the house that welcomed me back was genuinely beautiful. Flowers and trees of every kind lined the garden path, and the brick house standing at its heart would not have been ashamed beside a grand palace. Luna came out to meet me and opened the door herself.
"Welcome home, Master."
Luna was in her maid uniform. I had commissioned a Japanese-style maid outfit for her, a perfect harmony of black and white, and had her wear it. The stockings were patterned. Black and white, yin and yang, in flawless balance.
"You're back? Did the items sell well?"
Sera poked her head out from the kitchen to greet me. She wore the same maid uniform as Luna, but her cat ears and tail pushed the moe factor into another league entirely. She could have walked into a cosplay contest looking like that and walked out with the trophy.
"Buhihit! Eighty gold. Not a bad haul."
I gave my pouch a jingling shake as I said it. A rich, greasy smell was drifting from the kitchen — she had been grilling meat. Surprisingly, Sera was a capable cook.
You'd expect beastfolk to eat their meat raw, but according to the lore, their culture had a well-developed tradition of grilled meat. They were especially fond of packing their cooking with wild spices that humans had trouble getting their hands on, and I didn't mind the uniqueness. The slightly spicy, spice-forward dishes were quite good.
They couldn't compare to real-world cooking, of course. That was a difference of eras, and there was nothing to be done about it. Maybe it would be a different story once I hired a genuinely skilled chef.
"Lunch is ready. Would you like to eat now?"
"I would."
Luna attended me through the meal. This really was heaven.
"Master. Strange rumors have been circulating of late."
Luna, slicing meat beside me with smooth, even strokes and placing each piece in my mouth, spoke up. I had ordered her to keep a close watch on the gossip moving through Coulon, so she collected the city's rumors every day from the mercenary guild and the taverns. I had given that order for a perfectly sound reason, of course.
"Strange rumors? Would that be about a thief?"
"Yes. Recently a thief has been targeting only the wealthy in the city. It does not appear to be an empty rumor. There have already been ten victims. Some say it is a petty thief taking advantage of the city's unrest, but I do not believe that is the case."
No petty thief in the world could rob the homes of the rich — not when those houses were packed to the rafters with magical security.