"You were so hesitant to eat it, and then you went and gobbled up a whole bunch."
"Don't say that. The person who could eat something like that on first sight is the weird one."
A few hours after the octopus tasting, I decided to play it safe and skipped diving into the lake, instead focusing on sorting. Jin and the others continued helping, but since the rough categorization was already done, the pace was leisurely enough. Jin, who'd responded to my muttering, had apparently come over while carrying items to the women handling the small-item sorting — half break, I supposed. By the way, Garat and Branca were also moving items around just like Jin, and Grandpa was using water magic to clean grime off weapons and armor. Slarin and the others were deep in their afternoon nap.
"First of all, octopuses are basically sea creatures, right? I don't know about Lina, but me, Garat, and Menace — we're all inland-born, inland-raised, and on top of that, we mainly operate in dungeons. It's only natural we wouldn't know what an octopus is."
Jin had a point, but that had nothing to do with treating my octopus dish like it was poison. When I called him out on that, he obviously tried to dodge the subject, turning his face away and starting to whistle. As I stared at him with a deadpan look, he apparently couldn't take it anymore and tried to change the topic.
"That aside, it's pretty impressive you managed to find this much. There's stuff here from decades ago just lying around everywhere."
As he said that, the necklace Jin had picked up was, according to Grandpa, the kind that had been fashionable about thirty years ago — a style you hardly ever see anymore. However, most of these had been worn by adventurers, so they had no gemstones attached and were rusted and battered to the point of being worth almost nothing. Still, a few were apparently in decent condition, so if cleaned up, some collector with niche tastes might want them. When I asked Jin and the others — the women in particular — whether they'd want any as part of their reward, not a single one of them did.
For the items Jin and the others didn't want, I had them sorted by metal type. When I get the chance, I'll consult with Master Ganz about melting down anything usable into ingots.
"All right, we're going to head back up soon, but you're staying here, right, Tenma?"
By the time the sorting was nearly finished, it was apparently time for Jin and the others to return to the surface. They'd originally only come here so I could show them around, so they'd only planned to stay a short while.
"There are still plenty of areas left to search."
In reality, more than half the lake remained unexplored, but thanks to today's injuries and the unexpectedly poor visibility, I was barely on schedule — actually, I was running over. I'd need to pick up the pace from tomorrow if I wanted to finish in time.
(Well, if I pushed myself a bit, I could probably search more efficiently... but I don't want to do that...)
If efficiency was the concern, I could just use Search and be done with it. But using it came with one major problem: a terrible headache.
Whenever I tried using Search to find something, my brain's processing speed just couldn't keep up. And when searching for items of unknown location, I had to examine every fine detail, which placed that much more strain on my brain — and once it went past a certain threshold, the strain turned into pain. I think it's similar to the symptoms you'd get trying to play an online game on a computer that didn't meet the specs, where the game would freeze or slow to a crawl. On top of that, this lake was teeming with small creatures that would trigger Search, piling on even more strain. It wasn't the first or second time I'd suffered headaches from using it in ways that cranked up the burden.
It might sound like a pretty unwieldy ability, but when used the way I normally did — in a limited fashion, like searching a narrow area, looking for something I already knew about, or doing a rough sweep — there was no problem at all.
"I see. Well, good luck with that."
The nearest warp zone from this lake was on the upper floor, so Jin and the others would head back to the surface from there. They all made sure to take the rewards I'd given them without forgetting anything. As for me, I barely knew what any of the four had chosen. All I knew was that during the sorting, they'd been comparing notable knives and swords they'd found, and that not a single one of them had picked any jewelry or accessories.
"What about you, Grandpa?"
"Just me? I'm staying behind. I want to practice my barriers, and besides, I've got nothing but time."
Grandpa had apparently intended to stay here from the very beginning—he'd even gone back to retrieve the carriage.
"I'm staying too."
"If the young lady is staying, then naturally I am as well."
It turned out Branca and the others had also planned to stay behind. They'd locked up the apartment and left the key with Amy.
Having all of us away at the same time could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for anyone with ill intentions. Although, apparently nothing had been left in the apartment, so it would be like sneaking into an empty treasury. And without stealing anything, they'd end up being hunted down as criminals by us. Well, that was assuming they could escape whatever anti-theft measures Grandpa had apparently set up.
After Jin and the others left, we'd been about to head to the upper floor to prepare for camping, but Grandpa suggested that with four of us here, camping by the lake would be a good experience. So we set up our campsite along the far wall, as far from the lake as possible. We also sorted out the rotation for lookout duty during rest periods. The rotation followed a three-shift system: me (with Slarin, Shiromaru, and Solomon), Branca, then Grandpa and Amour. The idea was that since Amour and I had no experience camping near water, we'd be assigned to the lighter shifts at the beginning or end. On top of that, I'd have Slarin and the others to boost our numbers, and Amour would be paired with the experienced Branca to make up for any shortcomings. However, since Branca had asked Grandpa to look after Amour instead, the rotation ended up this way. The reason Branca had made that request was: "If it's the same people all the time, the knowledge pool tends to get skewed."
Amour had wanted to pair up with me, but after the two veterans dismantled her reasoning theoretically, she ultimately nodded in agreement—though during my shift, she'd tried to sneakily use Shiromaru as a pillow to sleep. She was promptly dragged off to the carriage by Branca and Grandpa.
Incidentally, when switching shifts with Branca, I had a bad feeling and chose not to go inside the carriage. Instead, I slept outside behind the carriage, surrounded by Shiromaru and the others. On top of that, I had Branca wake me when she swapped out with Amour, and only then did I go sleep inside the carriage. When morning came, the completely sleep-deprived Amour grumbled at me, but Branca told her it was her own fault.
That day, everyone except Amour resumed their tasks from the day after breakfast—me searching for Mithril, Grandpa practicing barriers, and Branca sorting through the spoils. Slarin and Solomon went for a walk, while Shiromaru served as Amour's body pillow.
"Guess I'll ramp up the alert level today."
Diving into the area where I'd left off yesterday, I applied the lesson I'd learned and nearly doubled the range of my Search. When I say doubled, I mean I expanded it to about a twenty-meter radius centered on myself, with enough precision to detect creatures three meters or larger within that range—so it wasn't much of a burden. Ideally, I should have made it sensitive enough to pick up smaller creatures, but pushing the precision too far wasn't wise either. Using yesterday's octopus as a baseline, I figured anything three meters or under posed minimal danger even if it got the drop on me.
"Well, if creatures of that size were lying around everywhere, the Guild would surely have this area mapped out already."
With that, I cautiously patrolled the lake floor. I came across the occasional mangled piece of armor, but no sign of octopuses. When I reached the shallows, I ended the morning's activities and headed back to the others.
"Is Amour still asleep?"
"Should we wake her?"
"She'll get up on her own once she smells food. Let her sleep until the last possible moment."
Since Branca, as her guardian, said that, Grandpa and I tried to keep noise to a minimum. That said, just as Branca had predicted, Amour was wide awake the moment I started preparing the meal.
After we finished eating and everyone was taking a brief rest, we heard hurried footsteps coming down from the upper floor. We weren't the type to miss something like that. We immediately stopped resting, grabbed our weapons, and took up positions, ready for whoever was approaching... Though I had already identified them with Search and knew they weren't dangerous, you never knew what could happen, so I kept it to myself.
"We're from the Guild! Please don't attack!"
The footsteps belonged to the staff of Seigen's Adventurer's Guild. There were about five of them, all people I had seen before, one of whom was the Guild Master himself.
"Sorry for barging in like this. Earlier, Dawn Sword came in with some information, so I came to verify it... Is it true that you defeated an unidentified Monster in this lake?"
Apparently, Jin and the others had come by that morning and, while cashing in, mentioned the octopus. The Guild Master happened to be out at the time, so they couldn't come right away, but once he got back and heard about it, he rushed over immediately. As it turned out, Jin's party had already left town on a job before the Guild Master returned.
"This would be what you're talking about?"
I pulled out the octopus with two of its legs missing and set it in front of the Guild Master and his staff.
"Oh, so this is it... Actually, there's a chance this could be a new species, so I'm sorry, but I need to take some records of it. Of course, I'll pay the information fee and inconvenience fee upfront. Also, depending on the situation, would you sell us at least the torso? We may need to send it to the Royal Capital."
With that, the Guild Master pulled three gold coins from his coat. Before accepting them, I laid out a few conditions — things like help with the dissection as part of the record-taking, and the purchase of the innards I had been planning to discard. To the Guild Master, this was a welcome deal, and he agreed right away.
After that, we proceeded with recording and dissecting the octopus together with the Guild staff.
"Looking at it again, this thing is absurdly huge for an octopus."
It looked like any octopus I knew, but the size was on an entirely different scale. The head alone — or more accurately, the torso — was three and a half meters long. Below that were eyes over forty centimeters across, legs stretching roughly ten meters for the longest ones, and the mouth between the legs measured about sixty centimeters.
The records were full of surprises, but the biggest shock was the beak, also known as a karasutonbi. One of the staff members, who had been touching it while taking measurements, had his finger slashed open the instant he made contact carelessly. He hadn't applied much force at all, yet the wound reached all the way to the bone. He healed it with magic right away so there shouldn't be any lasting damage, but that sharpness would rival a blade forged by a seasoned craftsman. On top of that, it was made of something at least as hard as mithril — pieces of mithril armor that looked like they had been crunched apart were found in the stomach — so if you were bitten by this thing, one or two of your limbs could be torn off in an instant. Octopuses and squids tend to spread their legs wide and wrap around their prey when hunting, so in a way, I considered myself lucky.
A magic stone was found in the octopus's head during the follow-up investigation, and it was officially classified as a Monster. A report would now be sent to the Royal Capital. The department there that managed Monsters would examine it, and only once it was certified as a new species would the information be distributed to other Adventurer Guild branches. Incidentally, the torso — including the eye region — was priced at five hundred thousand G, and if it was certified as a new species, the Guild would pay an additional five hundred thousand G bonus, and the Royal Capital's department would pay a five hundred thousand G reward on top of that.
"I'd rather have mithril than the bonus money..."
"Hmm? What's that — you'd prefer an in-kind payment? I'll see what I can work out."
The Guild Master picked up on my muttering and made the generous offer. And so, Seigen's Guild agreed to pay in mithril as well. Honestly, I wished they would sell me the rest of the mithril they had in storage, but apparently a contract with a blacksmith made that impossible. However, he said he would ask the Guild in the Royal Capital if they had any excess mithril. I set an upper limit of one hundred kilograms for now, and if I wanted more, I could place an additional order.
Normally, an individual couldn't use a Guild like a shop, but in my case, I was also operating as a member of Orasion, and having hunted an Earth Dragon and such, I was likely to receive some preferential treatment.
After that, the Guild Master and his staff headed back to the Guild, and we resumed our activities. Between then and the end of our planned stay, nothing particularly eventful happened, and we were able to finish exploring the lake without incident.
In the end, we obtained nearly two hundred and fifty kilograms of mithril from the lake alone, exceeding our expectations. Finding what appeared to be the octopus's lair had made a huge difference.
The octopus had apparently been dragging its captured prey back to its bed before eating, and mithril weapons and armor it couldn't crush with its beak were scattered near the sleeping spot. That single location yielded a hundred and fifty kilograms of mithril. With this, our total mithril was just shy of five hundred kilograms, meaning we had reached roughly half our goal. If I was willing to compromise, we could start working as soon as tomorrow.
But having come this far, it felt like a waste to settle. Finding mithril at this pace would be difficult, but since I had no plans to leave Seigen for the time being, I figured I might as well take my time and keep collecting.
While chatting with Gramps and the others about all that, we headed home—only to find a crowd gathered near the entrance to our apartment. Wondering what was going on, I pushed through the crowd and made my way inside, where I found several men and women bound and hung upside down, a handful of Golems standing guard over the inverted captives, and a squad of Seigen soldiers keeping watch.
Honestly, I had a bad feeling about this. But I couldn't exactly avoid going closer. While I was still wrestling with my hesitation, Amy and Aliyah spotted us and came over to explain the situation.
Apparently, sometime around midday today, those upside-down men and women had snuck into my room intending to rob the place. Gramps's Golems caught them in the act and strung them up. The commotion escalated from there, and soldiers eventually showed up—only the Golems tried to attack them on sight, likely assuming they were accomplices trying to rescue the burglars. As of now, the two sides were maintaining their distance and glaring each other down.
It was getting close to dusk, so those burglars had probably been hanging upside down for about five or six hours by now. That was long enough to start worrying about whether they were still alive, but Amy had checked on them an hour ago and reported they still had enough energy to mouth off, so they should be fine. Incidentally, Gramps had ordered the Golems not to harm Amy or Aliyah and the others, so there was no danger in approaching them. However, if Amy tried to help the burglars—loosening their ropes, for example—the Golems would gently intervene. She had actually tried to lower them to the ground at first, but the burglars hurled insults at her, so she and Aliyah decided to stick to the bare minimum of checking on their condition.
"Hanging upside down like that and they're still full of energy… If we let those guys go, they'll probably come back for revenge sooner or later."
They were burglars, sure, but we hadn't caught them in the act with witnesses, so there was a decent chance they'd get off with just a fine or a light punishment. What's more, they didn't look the least bit remorseful. That said, I couldn't imagine them posing any real threat to us—these were people who'd been thoroughly beaten by Golems. Still, if Amy and the others became targets, I couldn't guarantee we'd be able to protect them completely.
So I decided to give those burglars a bit of a scare. Fortunately, I'd done this plenty of times with Jin and the others, so I had some experience. On top of that, two people who seemed to excel at exactly this sort of thing were on hand, I could cast healing magic, and we had a full range of medicines—so they weren't likely to die.
…Probably.
I held a brief huddle with Gramps and the others, then approached the soldiers who were locked in a staring contest with the Golems. At first, they balked at my proposal—something that bordered on torture—but the burglars were still in our custody, and when I flashed them the royal crest given to me by the King alongside the crests of Duke Sanga and Marquis Samons, they cheerfully agreed to
look the other way.
I promised them I would bring the burglars to the guard station once we were finished, and the soldiers took their leave.
Now there were no more interruptions. Time for the fun to begin.