The Riverwater Salvation Blade

Every resource that comes out of a dungeon falls under one broad name — dungeon resources ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— and the range that name covers is enormous. In the first place, it simply means anything that never existed on the old Earth and can only be found inside a dungeon. Energy sources, to start with. Then wood, stone, grass, herbs, mushrooms, animals, plants, fish. Even water.

If a thing can be used at all, someone is already researching how to use it, and a truly wild variety of those resources have already replaced what Earth used to run on.

"Earth is a lower dimension. Resources from a lower dimension obviously aren't as efficient or as valuable as the ones from higher dimensions. The Rift Dimension has the highest-tier resources of all, so the things that come out of its dungeons have to be better than Earth's, right? At least a lot of them?"

That was how Ruru wrapped up her answer to my question.

So the Earth I lived on was a lower dimension, and the Rift Dimension was a place where rifts from all sorts of dimensions came pouring in — though most of the time, the odds favored a link to a highest-tier dimension. How, then, did dungeons full of Rift Dimension resources ever appear on Earth? Now and then, apparently, it just happened. That might even be why a test game called Farming World had opened here in the first place.

None of that was the important part. The important part was that armor and weapons made from those dungeon resources — or dropped off monsters already finished — counted as dungeon resources too. So did the equipment hunters actually used. And the ones that were hard to get had a way of changing hands at high prices. Very high. Absurdly high.

I didn't need to ask Ruru about that. I knew it better than she did.

Hunters are the most important means of extracting dungeon resources. Fail to hunt the monsters guarding a dungeon, and humans can't clear it even with modern weapons out in front. Just carrying those weapons into a dungeon is hard enough. Monsters themselves come packed with traits that leave them all but immune to modern arms, and harvesting the resources intact is what matters — modern weapons were never any good at carefully sparing all of that while only putting the monster down.

In the end, a hunter has to do it. And a hunter is still human.

When you have to fight monsters while stuck inside a frail human body, the only things that can promise you any safety are a strong weapon and solid armor. People forge armor out of every kind of resource, but none of it compares to the performance of a true item, dropped already whole.

That's why hunters with blacksmith abilities — enhancement, armor forging, weaponsmithing — command such high prices. Process dungeon resources with modern technology and you can still make armor that performs well enough. Make it through an ability, with supernatural power, and a special effect comes attached to the armor or the weapon.

There's a limit to how many weapons and how much armor a human can wear anyway. Layer things on, wrap yourself tight, and you can squeeze in more — but the moment your movements go dull, you might as well not have equipped any of it. So if you're going to wear something, wear something better. Even a single option is worth having, and the only ways to get one are to have an ability-wielding hunter craft it, or to obtain an item that already carries an ability.

Naturally, among those items, the higher the rank and the bigger the numbers, the farther the price punches through the ceiling.

Mother's Touch was no exception.

Read the description and I could practically see the tearjerker: fifty-one Big Rats slaughtered, and Big Rats Mom dying a glorious death as she tried to protect them. My conscience twinged. Then I looked at the options, and I'll gratefully put this to use came out of me all on its own.

"A full rank of Agility is seriously good."

Among pieces of armor, gloves are one of the most popular slots. In Farming World and in reality both, once you're actually fighting, the hands are the part that gets hurt most often, and at the highest rate. Grip a weapon and scrap it out, and you pick up countless little cuts. They're the most exposed part ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of you. Sometimes the weapon itself is what injures the hand.

Even outside of combat, whenever you're working or exploring a dungeon, the hands go in first. That's why gloves get chosen for safety more readily than any other piece. A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pair with Defense +8 already on it can command a high price on that alone.

Simple example. Step into a dungeon like a tropical rainforest biome and you can get scratched hacking through thick vines before you ever fight a monster. If those vines happen to be poisonous, it's a genuinely humiliating way to get hurt — but you can still end up limping out of a dungeon wounded without having fought anything at all.

Which is why a B- rank pair of gloves is expensive by itself. And on top of that, it hands you +1 rank in a stat?

If there hadn't been a ceiling that capped the effect at B+, I would have put the glove on myself right then.

"Maybe I should just wear it."

Honestly, if it weren't for the stat-boost option, I would have. Equipping an item with what people call auction-grade options felt like a waste. It wasn't something I needed right now anyway, so I tossed it into the pack I'd be taking out in a couple of days.

Of Big Rats Mom's boss rewards — and there were only two — both were jackpots.

A B- rank weapon ought to sit at a base Attack of +11. This one had rolled a little higher, and the special option riding on it might as well have been a permanent free buff for any Agility-focused hunter who used daggers.

Take it to auction and it would fetch a pretty steep price too, wouldn't it?

I set it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠aside for the moment. There was a sword among the dungeon reward-chest items piled in the yard, and I'd meant to check that first. If the dagger turned out better, I was planning to run it as my main weapon for a while.

The Wooden Sword's performance wasn't bad in itself, but next to the Snaggletooth Dagger the gap was simply too wide. No reason to cling to swords out of stubbornness. People say a sword is the most balanced weapon, and the best one to use, but an SSS+ Rank in Melee Weapons doesn't fuss much over weapon type — and Leap Slash isn't something you can only use with a sword, either.

"Ooh."

The look of it, at least, was my style.

The Snaggletooth Dagger had no real boundary between grip and blade. Mishandle it and the handle could slip until you were grabbing the edge, and the blade itself was short. It was a dagger, so that was only natural.

The sword from the chest had a blade a little longer than the Wooden Sword, and the leather of the grip locked into my hand the moment I closed my fingers. Hilt and blade were both a deep black — something worn about it, and something like a hidden treasure.

"It's the color of a sewer!"

"Shut up. You'll jinx it."

Put kindly, that was the feeling. Put unkindly, Ruru's blunt description was exactly right. For a sewer, it had a rather antique sewer aesthetic — and as it turned out, the name matched.

"Holy... shit."

I immediately flung the Snaggletooth Dagger on top of Mother's Touch.

A Heroic-grade reward chest was in a different league entirely. The dungeon itself was only D-rank, but maybe because the boss had been B- rank, an A- rank item had just come out of a Heroic chest.

Brag about that on the Farming World community and the insults would have piled on instantly.

I probably would have left a comment in that exact spirit myself.

Either way, it was such an obvious god-tier weapon that there was nothing to debate. I pulled the Wooden Sword out of belt slot one and seated the Sewer Sword in its place.

"The name's a little rough, though."

Sewer Sword. No matter where you'd picked it up, it sounded like you'd fished a blade out of a drain. The feeling clung, unpleasant — but the options were outright cheating.

Especially for me, since I'd chosen Leap Slash as both my movement skill and my attack skill. +50% effect on mana skills, and −20% mana cost, was enormous. A hundred meters of travel stretching to a hundred and fifty, and the mana cost dropping from 5 to 4, was the same as saying that ten uses in five minutes had just become twelve.

Once I'd picked up a single A- rank sword, the other nineteen items failed to stir much feeling at all.

Dungeon reward chests are always like that. One or two items actually worth something, and the rest petty junk with a use somewhere, or tools. They'd be good for something eventually, so for now I dropped them into the fourth and fifth little boxes — the ones that had been sitting idle.

"That's so cool, Master."

I ignored Ruru, who was only flattering me so she could get at the snacks, and lay down on the bed.

At last, the day I could go home had come.