Chapter 224: Things to Think
———Lerim———
<11: 47 am>
“...Are you for real?” I said, completely taken aback by the information being given.
“It’s certainly a heavy task that I don’t even think you should be involved in, but it is true.” He answered. Great. Just great. Now why the hell am I being called there? Do they really think I’m obligated to help? “I suppose they are looking for any help they can get, and from their perspective you should be able to go up to the northern border in time.”
“I swear this country is going to be the death of me.” I said before pinching my forehead. Here I thought foreign invasion stopped being a thing, but I guess in this case it’s not exactly an army of another nation. It’s a small army, but it seems to be some sort of renegade faction.
I feel like I’m going crazy. When did I start getting robs related to terrorist attacks and other stuff that shouldn’t befall on a stunning beauty like me? If I start getting wrinkles or scars that won’t go away I’m genuinely gonna flip. “Okay, so when the hell will this take place?”
“Two days seems to be the earliest the conflict could break out.” …Great, lovely. I love a short timeframe. I don’t even know how long the travel time is going to take. If I want to be conservative with my mana spent I definitely can’t make it over there in less than half a day.
“One of these days you and the others should find someone else to abuse.” Relying too much on one person is a massive mistake. I know he is way too occupied with work to train much, and his strength has clearly atrophied, but we have a bunch of people still around and being active. Do they know how embarrassing it sounds to have a fashion model be their main muscle? “Alright, get me the location and I’ll go there in a day. Got that?”
“So you accept?” He said, looking unsure if I’m being serious or not. Look, even I can’t just ignore something on that scale, as much as I wanted to.
“Yeah. I mean who else gets anything done here nowadays. At least those chumps downstairs know to take care of themselves a little better.” Hopefully nothing goes wrong, and hopefully there ain’t any super strong fighter on the other side. With things being so unpredictable right now I can’t imagine them not at least having one heavy hitter on the team, but I just hope they don’t have something that’s a massive overkill.
“...I can’t thank you enough.” He said. Don’t go sobbing on me now. “I’ll send you the details onto your phone. Don’t stress too much over it, I know you have a lot to deal with, yeah.”
“Whatever. I’ll go downstairs and chill for now.” I said before leaving the office and going back to the lobby with a lot of people feasting on the rest of the leftovers. It’s good to see them having a good time with those.
As for me. I already ate more than enough early in the morning. I’ll skip lunch and go straight for dinner after I get some practice in.
“What meat did you use this time? It seems like everyone has a harder time digesting it.” Evari asked as I sat down.
“…Something more hardy.” I don’t really want to waste the corpse of the giant alpha monster, so I used its meat to make a massive amount of food. Very gamey, but nothing seasoning and such can’t fixed.
“So it is something different.” Evari muttered while picking up a piece and showing the meat with a more purplish color. “Definitely not some normal meat, that’s for sure.”
“Whatever gives that away?” I asked with a little bit of sarcasm seeped through.
“I’m surprised no one has made a bigger fuss over this. Could be poisonous for all we know. Some toxic stuff doesn’t kill you before multiple hours have passed.” She remarked. “I do trust you on this though, just because you don’t seem like the type to poison people to kill them.”
“You’re saying it like you expect me to go kill people for fun.” That was a very unflattering reasoning. Can’t you say I’m a good person or something and just leave it at that?
“I mean… I just wanna cover my base with what I said.” Excuse me?
“You’re way too careful with your words. I know people get riled up over anything anyone says, but no one here is going to care about that.” In the first place, the only one she’s talking to is me, and last I remember, she was never the type to be extra safe with what she said. She’s no influencer or public figure.
“Hey, we can never be too sure.” Now she’s just sounding like she’s making up excuses for being weirdly sensitive just now.
“…By the way, how has your dungeon been going nowadays?” You know what, let’s change up the topic from that. Who even cares about choice of words right now.
“Could’ve been better, but I’ve been consistently getting to at least twenty floors before bowing out. What even is an average on that anyway?” She answered. That should be pretty good. The only statistic that I actually got is from Karra who mentioned it off-handedly once…
“Fifteen, from the little I can find on it.” I answered. Admittedly that number is a bit dated but from what I gathered there hasn’t been any evidence that most people have gotten a lot stronger over the months.
“Oh. I guess I have been doing better than I thought. How much do you do in a day anyway?” She then asked me in return.
“...I practice outside of dungeons nowadays, so I can’t really say I have a good idea on my current average.” Last I counted, it was over sixty, but I was trying to not push myself too hard.
“Ain’t that convenient.” She remarked. I guess that excuse was a bit weak. “…So where did you even find that number anyway?”
“Ask someone with much better access to the data.” I answered. I don’t even know how she even got that number. “And no, I’m not ratting them out.”
<<< 46 Days ago <<<
———Karra———
<7: 01 pm>
“You know what. I don’t know why I don’t expect you to browse DieChan.” I said.
“…That almost sounds like you had a higher expectation of me.” Wiina remarked. Well I guess she could say that. I just find the idea of a pretty girl browsing that horrid site kinda impossible… even though I also browse it very rarely. Not to toot my own horn but I’m certainly not unattractive.
…Admittedly maybe that kind of mindset is a bit too harsh, but DieChan isn’t a place known for civil discussion and having people of all kinds frequenting it. There’s a reason the first image comes to mind to be a guy with no friends and prejudice for multiple things.
You know what, that’s just not something I wanna think about further. I shouldn’t really be calling her out when I also use the site, however infrequent it is.
“More or less.” I said, feeling like my comments made things awkward in a way I didn’t really expect. Let’s talk about something else and forget about the past few minutes. “So… dungeons. We didn’t actually go to one since even they know we basically ruled over it with an iron fist at this point. You got any extra insight into that?”
“You mean into the dungeons or how the school is monitoring people?” She asked for clarification… Are they really doing the latter or what?
“...Dungeon.” I don’t want to think about the latter topic. Let’s wipe that from my memory.
“Well. For one. It’s obviously not something that occurs naturally just because the planet is now filled with mana. Perhaps on the leylines there will be a lot of monster spawning would count, but it’s not really a dungeon. Monsters could spawn in droves both in structures and out in the open, not to mention the lack of a reward system. This current version of dungeon is most definitely not something that just occurs without any intervention.” Seems weirdly long for an explanation for essentially ‘someone built up these things’.
“...So do you think someone is tracking what people are doing inside a dungeon?” Not sure what else I should ask.
“Most likely, not that I know for sure.” She replied. Probably some sort of magic to track everything, if some sort of spying is actually happening. “What? You want some sort of statistics? Are you planning to talk about it in your next stream?”
“No…” I don’t even have a plan for one right now.
“Okay then.” She said before looking to resume her browsing. I mean…
“Maybe the average of how far people go? Something like that? Without the obvious outliers.” Since we reached this point I might as well get some sort of neat tidbits to think about.
“Hmm…” Wiina mumbled to herself before pulling out her phone. Is she texting someone? It doesn’t look like she’s willing to show me what she’s doing, at least. Just be something super secretive. “Wait a bit. I’m asking someone right now.”
“Alright.” I replied. No need to be hasty. I don’t think that sort of data would just be sitting around anyway. “So do you just have someone with the info on speed dial?”
“No, just from someone who knows someone.” She explained. So it’s not a direct connection. “Ah. There we go. Fifteen floors seem to be where most people are stuck at.”
“R-Really? Everyone here can breeze through twenty or more floors pretty easily.” That number seems kinda low.
“That’s just due to the standards being higher here. Specifically for the people in our class.” I mean, I would’ve imagined that other places have their own group of stronger adventurers as well to bump up the average. “Believe it or not, most people don’t even engage with the dungeons, and those that do aren’t going to risk their life. Dungeons aren’t exactly something people technically need to concern themselves over.”
“...You’d think the guild program would’ve helped.” I pointed out.
“It did a bit, but it’s never going to be someone’s main revenue stream, and the risk is too great. I’m pretty sure some people even said it’s comparable to being a coal miner.” I can see why that sort of comparison exists, but as far as I know dungeons don’t really collapse on you or have a bunch of toxic stuff in there. Well, maybe the monsters are comparable. The first few floors aren’t hard at all the moment you grind up your strength a bit. The only reason I was in so much trouble early on was because I got a bit cocky.
“There really needs to be some sort of training facility or something in place.” I pointed out. The tiny room in the guild for people to test their strength is not it.
“No way they’re gonna make those. The budget for the guild operation is already tiny as is.” She pointed out. What even is the budget on that, actually?
“Do you know the actual budget?” I asked, since it seems like she has some sort of inkling on it, at least.
“No specific numbers, but I did hack into the database for some clues.” …Oh right, she can hack. I almost forgot about that. I know she has all sorts of crazy abilities, I’m not sure why hacking is that weird. “Mind you, I didn’t hack into all the government files, just specific ones I was curious about.”
“Yeah yeah.” That’s such a crazy thing to say in the first place. I think most people who get to that point would’ve just scramble to get all the data and store it somewhere. She’s talking like she’s just scrolling on some random public pages to waste time. “So when it comes to strength, where do we land right now?”
“Not very promising.” She stated simply. Not really a lot to go on there.