chapter 67
After two days of relaxing on the beach and swimming, I found myself about 20 minutes inland, looking at a building that housed the portal I came to clear.
The building itself looked like a small fortress—meant to protect the outside world from what’s inside, instead of the other way around.
Varkun was too busy to come with me, but I’m supposed to meet the team that would escort me for this first delve into a portal here.
I would have liked to go alone, but that’s not possible, at least not legally. They will also be my evaluators, so in the future I could go in alone or, hopefully, with my own team. As I walked up, I needed to show my ID to the security guard.
“So you're Remi. Varkun informed us that you were coming and that you’ve already purchased the next portal clear. The portal is still not yet ready, but it should be at maximum in the next 8 hours, though most likely it will be a lot sooner than that. Go through those doors and then head right. The waiting area is there.”
“Thank you,” I answered back while stepping past him, soon opening the doors inside.
Everything was made out of metal, most likely for added structural integrity. It didn’t take me long to reach the waiting area. There were some nice sitting places, and from what I understand, there were even rooms further back so adventurers could sleep here.
Most likely, the team I would be going in with was currently in those rooms. It didn't take me long to find my way up to the battlement. The guards up here didn’t seem to be worried that I was there.
Down below, at the center of the courtyard, was the portal itself. It was my first time seeing one.
Currently, it looked like a grey portal-shaped shimmering doorway that looked unnatural. It was surrounded by a gateway. It was thick, heavy, and looked incredibly expensive—and it actually was. The gateway around the portal was what kept it from disappearing after it had been cleared.
I had always wondered how things were kept safe, if portals could pop out anywhere, and if they stayed too long, monsters could come out. But it turns out this was the solution. It was possible to turn a portal permanent, and when doing so, no other portal would appear nearby.
Varkun also explained that you couldn’t always enter a portal, as after you cleared it, it turned grey until it recharged itself and turned blue once again. The raw materials for the gateway on average cost about 300 million, and if you're lucky, you could have it constructed for about 200 million.
During the last two days, I’ve had some chance to get some explanations of how the adventuring side of things worked from the adventurers I talked to who were around.
It seems that before a gateway is built around the portal, people go in and clear it at least a little bit to see how profitable it could be. In the end, it still came down to being a little bit of a gamble as to how profitable it could actually be.
Around here, there were G-ranked portals, and one run could net you around 400,000 to 5 million mana credits. That meant it could take a year or two for it to turn profitable if you were the owner of that gateway and were running it yourself constantly. But in most cases, it was a long-term investment, as you usually sold out the portal runs to adventurers.
For me, it cost 4 million to fully buy out the rights to this portal. Normally, things aren’t done like that. Adventurers usually pay a smaller upfront fee in exchange for giving a portion of the loot to the owner of the gateway around the portal. In this case, that being Varkun’s adventuring guild.
Because of my detrimental innate ability, the only way I could get a delve was to fully buy it out. What I also needed to do was pay out another 2 million for the team of experienced adventurers, who would also have no claim to any of the loot. Once again, that was because of my detrimental innate ability.
It took the portal an hour and about 20 minutes to turn into a vibrant blue. It was fascinating to see this process happen with my mana sense.
It was like the mana was flowing into the portal, and at the moment the portal became active again, it was like an explosion that pushed away ambient mana. Soon after that, everything started to flow towards the portal once again.
Making my way back to the waiting area, I saw that a team of five seemed to be waiting for me.
Every portal had some limitations on how many people you could bring with you—normally about 5 to 10—with this one allowing seven. It was one of the reasons why this portal was used to initiate new adventurers, as you could go with your full team and still bring new adventurers with you.
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All five of them were dwarves, but they were dressed quite differently. Two of them were wearing heavy armour, but one of them was especially heavy. I was surprised he could even move around. Two others were wearing medium armour, while the last one wore light armour.
One of the ones in medium stepped forward. “I presume you are Remi Graves?” I nodded.
“Good. Do you know what we’re stepping into?”
“It’s a cave-type portal with only one type of opponent, that being mountain wolves. The numbers fluctuate between 187 to 221, with the den mother being the boss. It can give all surrounding wolves a sort of berserker buff, which would allow them to ignore pain. There is also a low chance of some copper-bearing ore.”
The monsters inside actually weren't wolves, but they were close enough, with a flatter head and more powerful back legs that were better for jumping.
“Excellent. And from what I see, you can use guns. Good. I will presume that they can penetrate at least class 2A armour?”
That was equivalent to about a two-centimetre steel plate, so I gave another nod.
“Since you knew how many monsters, does that backpack hold more ammo? Do you have any close combat weapons?”
I nodded while pulling back my trench coat to reveal the long knife I had and all the bullets there meant for my revolver.
“Not the best, but it will do. We will be observing how you do things and only step in if you either call for our assistance or we see you’re being overwhelmed. Is this acceptable?”
“It is more than acceptable.”
“Excellent. Then lead the way, we will be behind you.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in, then turned around and followed the corridor that led to the inner courtyard where the portal was.
Everything was happening so fast, and before I knew it, I stepped through the portal. I felt a bit cold as I passed through it, finding myself in a dark cave with my rifle already pressed against my shoulder, ready to be fired.
I had no need for an extra source of light, as I could see in complete darkness, but I deployed one of my drones to give light just in case. I deployed another two drones that would be responsible for collecting all the coins that would be dropping.
As I looked back, the others seemed to be surprised seeing the drones flying about.
I wanted to be done with this quickly, as I hoped to be able to run at least two more portals—this time alone—so I could start testing out my innate ability properly, because right now all I could do was just let it do its thing, fully turning everything I killed into currency.
My sensors and the drone sensors were already displaying the map of the caves as we were mapping everything out. Already I was seeing a few red dots indicating living creatures. And since everything here was hostile, they were colored red.
I moved forward at a fast pace, just shy of running. I wanted to keep a fast pace to see how I could handle myself if I needed to do things quickly.
FH-02 was a bit more unwieldy, as I had a silencer also installed. So when I fired, only small thumps were heard as the first two wolves dropped dead from being hit in the head.
Almost immediately, the wolves disappeared and turned into coins.
“I knew it was going to be a looting ability. Pay up,” one of the ones wearing heavy armor said to the others, after which an exchange of coins happened between all of them.
I continued to move forward toward our next target as the drones behind me picked up the currency dropped by the monsters dying, and my innate ability activated automatically, turning everything they were into small coins of different value.
We swiftly continued to move forward as more and more pathways were being mapped out and more and more red dots were appearing.
Most of the time, I managed to kill the wolves in one shot, but some of them were a bit bigger than normal. While they were completely dazed from being hit in the head, they managed to shake it off. Another two hits usually killed them off.
The real trouble was actually the smaller wolves that were faster and sometimes managed to dodge bullets. That was impressive, but I had a magazine for a reason. A few hits to their bodies slowed them down enough that I could finish them off properly.
I was surprised to actually find a copper-bearing ore vein, but the value of it was low enough that it wasn’t worth mining.
What I did do was add resource-gathering drones to the list of things to make. Because why not let them gather while I continued to clear the rest of the portal? It would definitely be helpful in the future.
It took me an hour to reach the last section where the den mother was. This fight was probably going to be harder. On the map, in a circular cave room, there were a total of 28 wolves, one of them was a lot bigger than any I had come across before.
Drones had already gotten me a picture of what was inside. For the first time in this portal, I slowed down to get as close to the entrance of the den mother’s room as possible. I already had the location of where she was. I quickly broke cover and aimed directly at her, rapidly firing five bullets at her head.
The first one simply bounced off. The second one managed to expose the skin. The third one, once again, bounced off. The fourth one seemed to draw a little bit of blood. The fifth one also bounced off as the den mother moved her head just a bit.
Damn, she was tough, and now every wolf was up, some of them already rushing toward me. I could feel mana gathering around the den mother’s throat, but after those five shots, I wasn’t idle as I had thrown out four flashbang grenades.
Before she could activate her skill, the grenades went off, stunning almost everyone. It would take a while to get through the tough skin of the den mother, so I focused on the other wolves.
In their stunned state, it was easy to finish them off, but there were still nine left when I needed to reload.
Everyone shook off their stun faster than I expected, and already they were rushing toward me. Unfortunately for them, I was good at reloading, so even before they were halfway to me, I started to shoot and kill the wolves who were approaching.
I stumbled a bit when the den mother finally let out her roar. Unfortunately for her, that didn’t help much, as there were only three wolves left.
They got closer with every moment, but I didn't panic and continued to fire. The last one managed to leap at me, but I ducked under it, turned around, and fired, finally killing it.
Turning back around, I switched my rifle to full auto and aimed at the body of the den mother. Her defenses were strong, especially around her head, but the rest of her body wasn’t as strong. The bullets still didn’t penetrate, although they did stagger her, interrupting her charge toward me.
Quickly, I reloaded and emptied another magazine. I only had four more fully loaded magazines.
When there were two magazines left, she was bleeding but still coming toward me. She let out pained screams as I emptied another magazine. She finally dropped to the ground, no longer having the strength to move toward me, yet she was still alive.
“You really are incredibly durable.”
With the last magazine inserted, I moved just a bit closer and finally aimed at her head. It took half the magazine before she finally died. A moment later she turned into currency with my mana reserves almost empty from the constant use of my looting ability.
“Well done, although I do recommend you bring some better ammunition next time,” the team lead said from behind me, and I agreed with him.
Of course, I also had my revolver, and it had a few bullets made from the armor we were using to build my ship. It wouldn’t have had any problems piercing the skull of this monster. But it wasn’t the best idea to reveal everything I had to a bunch of strangers.
“At least the cleanup is easy,” one of the others said, and the rest seemed to agree. Although, as we got out and they realized how little I made, all I got were pitying looks.
All the currency together was worth about 480,000 mana credits, just a bit better than the lowest expected income for a delve. Yeah, I could see why my innate ability was classified as detrimental.
I, however, was actually really pleased with how things turned out. Especially how I could feel power circulating around my core, slowly being incorporated.
The feeling of strength that gave me was intoxicating. Now, this one run didn’t give me much—I knew that—but it still felt so good actually feeling like I was getting stronger.