Hell Mode: Volume 6, page 6
Agility: 9,000
Intelligence: 9,000
Luck: 9,000
* * *
“You get ’em, Tam-Tam!”
After Tam-Tam, with Meruru at the helm, effortlessly mowed down the one-eyed giants, Krena and the others rushed to the toppled foes and began killing them one by one.
The experience gained from the fallen cyclops appeared in Allen’s grimoire.
“Oh yeah! Leveled up!”
Dogora shot up nearly 40 levels in one go, sending his stats flying. He hefted his now much lighter greataxe as he shouted out in excitement.
They took out the first wave of cyclopes within mere minutes of the battle starting. Newcomers quickly began to surround the party, though.
“Gwaaaaaargh!!!”
The cyclopes let out low, thunderous roars, but perhaps because they were wary of Tam-Tam and Krena, they did not go on the offensive. Regardless, their numbers continued to increase until there were over a hundred of them. Just as the party was about to be completely surrounded by a wall of enemies, they deemed the timing right and rushed in all at once.
“Here comes the experience! It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a death stage, so let’s earn us some points!”
“I got this!” the now-leveled-up Dogora shouted back in response to Allen’s prompt, and the battle continued.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Well, it’s almost evening. Best to pack it in.”
Allen glanced down at his magical watch. They had spent three days in the dungeon gaining experience. In the past, they would only stay in the dungeon for half a day at a time, but they had changed up their plans due to now needing to grind levels in light of the Demon Lord Army having stolen Freyja’s divine vessel.
Thanks to Krena getting them teleported to a death stage, they had pulled quite a few weapons and armor pieces from the treasure chests, as well as maxed out Dogora’s, Keel’s, and Volmaar’s levels at 60. This was their most impressive yield yet.
“Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired.” Dogora grinned as he rested the greataxe that had seemed so heavy when they first entered the dungeon easily on his shoulder.
Upon arriving back at their home base, the group joined Helmios and his party for dinner.
“We got a boatload of experience today.”
“That we did. We also got quite a few treasure chests, and thanks to Krena getting that death stage on her first try, we also got you three to max level.”
Krena beamed at the compliment.
“Hee hee, I did pretty good there.”
Heh, in normal mode you can max out your level with 250 million experience points. That’s pretty easy to do in a Rank S dungeon.
“Using a death stage to level up is pretty much unheard of outside of you guys,” the Phantom Thief, Rosetta, chimed in with an incredulous look on her face.
Large numbers of Rank A monsters appeared on Floor 4’s death stages. To make matters worse, because death stages existed on a plane outside of the floor, you were unable to escape until you found the cube-shaped object used for teleportation. This was hardly a safe proposition, even for a party of Helmios’s level.
“By the way, I’m going to need to use you as an excuse again tomorrow, Helmios.”
“Again? I mean, it’s fine, but don’t do anything too weird, all right?”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Allen smiled back at him, but Helmios could only let out a sigh, wondering what Allen meant by that.
＊ ＊ ＊
Allen made his way to the Adventurer’s Guild early the next morning. Upon arriving at his usual counter, a staff member quickly took notice of him and made his way over.
“Well, if it isn’t Master Allen. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
Considering that the sheer volume of loot Allen intended to trade in would not fit on the counter, the staff member led him and his party to a separate room. Once there, the first order of business was selling off the items they had acquired in the dungeon. Dogora and Krena unloaded the weapons and armor onto the table, then several other staff members joined them in the room.
“I’ll leave these with you. Please just do what you always do.”
“Certainly.”
The staff members would evaluate the items the Gamers dropped off to determine if they should be put up for auction. Allen left it up to the Guild to best maximize profits when selling the items.
“Sorry for making you lug all that stuff here, Dogora, Krena.”
“It’s no big deal. Are you sure you don’t need us to stick around?”
“You’re really okay with us heading off?”
“Yeah, this will probably take a while. I’ll meet you back at the base when I’m done.”
After the two left the room, Allen opened up his grimoire, set it on the floor, and addressed Cecil.
“Could you put all the magic stones into my grimoire?”
“Sure thing.”
Cecil grabbed one of the sacks in the corner of the room and poured its contents into the grimoire. The rest of the Gamers then followed suit, taking turns emptying the rest of the sacks.
These sacks of Rank C, D, and E magic stones cost two thousand gold apiece. Up until recently, Allen had paid one thousand gold per sack, but he doubled the price since he was in a hurry to raise his Summoning to Lvl. 8 now that he knew Freyja’s divine vessel had been stolen. Administrative fees had also tripled, given that there were not nearly enough magic stones to be had inside the city within the Rank S dungeon, which meant that stones needed to be transported by air from the capital of Baukis. Even so, Allen did not mind.
The room in the Rank S dungeon’s Adventurer’s Guild that Allen and his friends had been brought to was quite large, and the staff had even left tea, snacks, fruit, and more for them on the table—which Allen was quick to eat up. He figured the room was probably meant for entertaining nobles and that he had likely been taken here because he spent thousands upon thousands of gold here each month.
“We’ve finished with the magic stones,” Allen called out to the Guild staff member waiting beyond the door.
The staff member looked a bit taken aback to find the massive collection of magic stones now gone but did not say a word. Though incredibly expensive, magic bags similar to Allen’s Storage skill did exist in this world. Magic that could manipulate time and space also existed, so making all the stones disappear was not a completely unnatural phenomenon.
“Next up, Helmios has entrusted me with some more materials that I’d like to leave with you.”
The staff member looked stunned at this. “A-Are you sure? You’ve already given us so much.”
“Yes, I’m sure. This parchment here, if you’d—”
“Oh, uh, the guildmaster said that he would like to take the documents personally this time. Please wait here while I go summon him. I’ll be back shortly!”
With that, the man left the room without even waiting for Allen to respond.
After waiting a short while, a bearded, muscle-bound dwarf—the guildmaster—entered the room with the staff member from earlier.
“Mighty sorry ’bout that. Didja wait long?”
Though they had only had to wait for a few minutes, Allen was already fast asleep on the sofa. Cecil jammed her elbow into his side.
“Wake up, Allen. They’re here.”
“Mm? Oh, I’m truly sorry about falling asleep like that, especially considering that you’ve made time to meet with us.”
“Nah, it’s no big deal. Anyway, name’s Popokka. I’m the master of this here guild. So, what’d ya bring us today?”
His cutesy name definitely doesn’t match his physique.
Allen once again held out the parchment.
“First off, these are the updates to our information on the Rank S dungeon.”
Popokka unrolled the parchment and let out a gasp of surprise. “Wow, this is impressive.”
On the parchment was a map of each of the dungeon floors, with the locations of the hidden cubes and treasure boxes marked along with a list of what each contained. The list also contained information on the spawn rate for each type of hidden cube, the item drop rate for treasure chests, rates of monsters disguised as treasure chests, and more. Allen compiled this information twice a month and provided it to the Adventurer’s Guild free of charge.
“This one also includes an addendum based on our research concerning how many kaiser sea serpents Crimson will call at once. According to the report, it seems that the limit is a hundred.”
“What?!”
Popokka practically tore the next piece of parchment from Allen’s hand and pored over it. When he finally looked up, he stared at Allen with a look of disbelief on his face, his shoulders trembling.
“So what do you think?”
Crimson, the Floor 4 boss, was able to call forth a number of monsters known as kaiser sea serpents. Since no one had ever been able to actually count them before, it was assumed that Crimson could call forth an infinite number of them. According to the report Allen handed over, however, Crimson stopped summoning these monsters after a hundred were defeated.
More specifically, the report noted that they had conducted the experiment on five different days and even listed how long it took for the kaiser sea serpents to reappear. In other words, that meant that they had slain at least five hundred of them.
“Is all this true?”
“These are the results of Helmios’s survey.”
“Is the Hero really that strong?”
“As a matter of fact, he is. Though when you meet him, he looks just like an ordinary, albeit charming young man.”
Allen simply went along with the flow of the conversation. In reality, it was he and the Gamers who had conducted the survey.
“Well I’ll be. I was already blown away by the stuff you’d given us before, but this is something else entirely. I’ll be sure to have the Guild relay this information to all the other adventurers.”
Be sure to review and verify all the information.
The guildmaster handed the parchment over to the staff member.
“Finally, I have one more thing I’d like to report. It took a bit of time to put it all together, but...”
Allen handed over another roll of parchment with a map drawn on it.
“And what’s this? It’s pretty big, but doesn’t look like a floor map.”
Popokka, unsure of what the map was depicting, showed the parchment to the staff member sitting next to him. However, he had never seen it before either.
“This is a complete map of the death stages, including where you’ll be teleported to inside the death stage and where the operating system can be found.”
“Huh?”
The guildmaster did not quite seem to understand what Allen was talking about.
“Wh-What?! I... I can’t believe it! Sir, this is truly amazing!”
The staff member sitting next to the confused guildmaster jumped to his feet, his hands clasped together.
“I jus’ don’t believe it. Makin’ something like this shouldn’t be possible.”
Popokka looked at Allen with an expression of stunned disbelief.
“That’s not true. According to Helmios’s survey, it appears that each floor has its own unique death stage. The layout is the same for each, though; the only thing that differs is the monsters that appear. You’ll appear at one of the eight random locations marked on the map when you teleport in from a normal floor, and the operating system you’ll need to access in order to escape can be found...” Allen explained the contents to the men in a calm, almost nonchalant tone. Then, he handed over additional materials on the death stages that contained information such as the rank, strength, and other detailed information on the monsters that appeared.
“Hm, and what’s this 1,829 number mean?”
“That’s the number of monsters killed, though apparently even more can keep appearing. According to Helmios, monsters kept on appearing even after slaying over a thousand of them, so it seems like there may be no limit.”
Allen once again casually explained the number. He figured that the most important thing here was to explain that the information was coming from someone who was already trusted rather than to waste time trying to earn their trust in the first place.
There’s nothing better than name-dropping the Hero if you want people to believe you.
Something Helmios had that Allen did not was the trust of the people. After having spent so many years as the Hero, slaying enemies and saving countless people and countries, he was trusted more than even most royals in this world. Within the Empire of Giamut, there were some royal families who would lend their ear to Helmios while not even giving the emperor the time of day.
“This all’s referrin’ to Floor 4, right?”
“That’s correct. However, as you’ll see on the report, the same test was conducted on Floors 2 and 3 as well, and monsters there also continued to spawn even after a thousand were killed.”
Popokka thought back on his own experiences. Only Rank A monsters appeared on the Floor 4 death stage, which lined up with the information written in this report. Was Helmios really so powerful that he was able to verify all this? Popokka would need to confirm that for himself.
“Hey, didja bring that thing I asked for?”
“Y-Yes, sir. Here it is.”
The staff member handed a roll of parchment over to Popokka, who unrolled it on the table.
“Let’s see here... He worked as a servant to the Granvelle family. There’s a possibility that he killed a murdergalsh at the age of ten, though when the guildmaster attempted to verify it, he was turned away.” As the guildmaster read from the document, Allen was initially taken by surprise but decided to remain silent. “While a student at the Academy, he cleared five Rank A dungeons. Now, this is the first time I’ve heard of such an impressive resume. Whaddya think?”
“Yes,” the staff member responded, “this is the first time we’ve ever seen such a case since the Academy system was introduced. Going further back through history, he’s maybe the third person to claim such achievements.”
The guildmaster nodded in agreement and continued reading.
“Hm? It says here that you took part in a war recently, but not much else.”
“My apologies, sir. I could not get any information from either Ratash or Rohzenheim with regard to that matter, so we don’t know any of the details,” the staff member explained.
“But still, you must’ve been quite busy. That much is certain. And you became a...grand strategist? A grand strategist for Rohzenheim? Jus’ what kind of successes didja attain on the battlefield to be granted such a prestigious role from a major country in your very first war?”
Popokka stopped reading and looked up at Allen.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Jus’ what’s yer goal, kid?”
“Huh?”
“Why’re you doing this? I’m sorry, but I’d like you to explain that to me. I get that this information is important, and I’m thankful for it, but this isn’t somethin’ any normal adventurer would do.”
Under normal circumstances, adventurers did not publicize the information they discovered within a dungeon due to the fact that it was a source of income. Those who took on these dungeons were generally only thinking of their own profits. Anyone who managed to earn a fair amount and leave the dungeon with their life did not discuss how they managed to survive nor even what they saw inside. If they were to share knowledge of where one could camp to earn money before they had earned enough for themselves, their profits would decrease. Therefore, even if they were to share the information with others, it would only be with those whom they relied on to survive—their fellow party members.
The same went for this Rank S dungeon, which claimed the lives of half who dared challenge it within any given year. In fact, it was especially true for this dungeon—adventurers could expect to earn thousands of gold pieces within a short period of time there, thus making the thought of sharing information outside the party inconceivable.
There were, of course, those who dreamed of clearing the dungeon, as well as those who were happy to share their knowledge with those outside their own party. Alas, the former were easily discouraged by the difficulty and typically ran away from threats, barely earning anything in the process, while the latter often died in the dungeon.
Which is exactly why I’m doing this.
The information Allen was providing in Helmios’s name was so valuable, sharing it was downright bizarre.
The last time he dropped off information—where BB, Scarlet, and Crimson roamed along with other details such as teleportation points—it caused a major uproar within the Guild. While many had thought that there was some sort of regularity to both the Rank S floor bosses’ pathing and the teleportation points’ locations, properly studying that hypothesis necessitated risking life and limb, so no one had ever actually done it. There were few parties who managed to escape with such intel, and among those who did, they often decided that it was something they could utilize for their own benefit. Those who thought otherwise were gambling with their lives.
However, Allen had been providing all sorts of information to the Guild over the past two to three months. Furthermore, he could identify where a Rank S floor boss would be at any given time with eighty percent accuracy. Not only did this lead to a notable increase in the survival rate of adventurers entering the dungeon, but it was precisely the kind of information the Guild had been desperately searching for.
Though all of these reports were made in the Hero’s name, in reality, they were all thanks to the black-haired young man sitting before them. There were even rumors circulating among the other adventurers about a boy fitting his description who possessed the strange ability to summon monsters.
The guildmaster figured that there must be something behind this mysterious young man providing information about the Rank S dungeon—albeit claiming it came from Helmios—that the Guild had never been able to get despite making numerous attempts. As such, he decided to take whatever information he could get.
Intelligence: 9,000
Luck: 9,000
* * *
“You get ’em, Tam-Tam!”
After Tam-Tam, with Meruru at the helm, effortlessly mowed down the one-eyed giants, Krena and the others rushed to the toppled foes and began killing them one by one.
The experience gained from the fallen cyclops appeared in Allen’s grimoire.
“Oh yeah! Leveled up!”
Dogora shot up nearly 40 levels in one go, sending his stats flying. He hefted his now much lighter greataxe as he shouted out in excitement.
They took out the first wave of cyclopes within mere minutes of the battle starting. Newcomers quickly began to surround the party, though.
“Gwaaaaaargh!!!”
The cyclopes let out low, thunderous roars, but perhaps because they were wary of Tam-Tam and Krena, they did not go on the offensive. Regardless, their numbers continued to increase until there were over a hundred of them. Just as the party was about to be completely surrounded by a wall of enemies, they deemed the timing right and rushed in all at once.
“Here comes the experience! It’s been a while since we’ve gotten a death stage, so let’s earn us some points!”
“I got this!” the now-leveled-up Dogora shouted back in response to Allen’s prompt, and the battle continued.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Well, it’s almost evening. Best to pack it in.”
Allen glanced down at his magical watch. They had spent three days in the dungeon gaining experience. In the past, they would only stay in the dungeon for half a day at a time, but they had changed up their plans due to now needing to grind levels in light of the Demon Lord Army having stolen Freyja’s divine vessel.
Thanks to Krena getting them teleported to a death stage, they had pulled quite a few weapons and armor pieces from the treasure chests, as well as maxed out Dogora’s, Keel’s, and Volmaar’s levels at 60. This was their most impressive yield yet.
“Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired.” Dogora grinned as he rested the greataxe that had seemed so heavy when they first entered the dungeon easily on his shoulder.
Upon arriving back at their home base, the group joined Helmios and his party for dinner.
“We got a boatload of experience today.”
“That we did. We also got quite a few treasure chests, and thanks to Krena getting that death stage on her first try, we also got you three to max level.”
Krena beamed at the compliment.
“Hee hee, I did pretty good there.”
Heh, in normal mode you can max out your level with 250 million experience points. That’s pretty easy to do in a Rank S dungeon.
“Using a death stage to level up is pretty much unheard of outside of you guys,” the Phantom Thief, Rosetta, chimed in with an incredulous look on her face.
Large numbers of Rank A monsters appeared on Floor 4’s death stages. To make matters worse, because death stages existed on a plane outside of the floor, you were unable to escape until you found the cube-shaped object used for teleportation. This was hardly a safe proposition, even for a party of Helmios’s level.
“By the way, I’m going to need to use you as an excuse again tomorrow, Helmios.”
“Again? I mean, it’s fine, but don’t do anything too weird, all right?”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Allen smiled back at him, but Helmios could only let out a sigh, wondering what Allen meant by that.
＊ ＊ ＊
Allen made his way to the Adventurer’s Guild early the next morning. Upon arriving at his usual counter, a staff member quickly took notice of him and made his way over.
“Well, if it isn’t Master Allen. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”
Considering that the sheer volume of loot Allen intended to trade in would not fit on the counter, the staff member led him and his party to a separate room. Once there, the first order of business was selling off the items they had acquired in the dungeon. Dogora and Krena unloaded the weapons and armor onto the table, then several other staff members joined them in the room.
“I’ll leave these with you. Please just do what you always do.”
“Certainly.”
The staff members would evaluate the items the Gamers dropped off to determine if they should be put up for auction. Allen left it up to the Guild to best maximize profits when selling the items.
“Sorry for making you lug all that stuff here, Dogora, Krena.”
“It’s no big deal. Are you sure you don’t need us to stick around?”
“You’re really okay with us heading off?”
“Yeah, this will probably take a while. I’ll meet you back at the base when I’m done.”
After the two left the room, Allen opened up his grimoire, set it on the floor, and addressed Cecil.
“Could you put all the magic stones into my grimoire?”
“Sure thing.”
Cecil grabbed one of the sacks in the corner of the room and poured its contents into the grimoire. The rest of the Gamers then followed suit, taking turns emptying the rest of the sacks.
These sacks of Rank C, D, and E magic stones cost two thousand gold apiece. Up until recently, Allen had paid one thousand gold per sack, but he doubled the price since he was in a hurry to raise his Summoning to Lvl. 8 now that he knew Freyja’s divine vessel had been stolen. Administrative fees had also tripled, given that there were not nearly enough magic stones to be had inside the city within the Rank S dungeon, which meant that stones needed to be transported by air from the capital of Baukis. Even so, Allen did not mind.
The room in the Rank S dungeon’s Adventurer’s Guild that Allen and his friends had been brought to was quite large, and the staff had even left tea, snacks, fruit, and more for them on the table—which Allen was quick to eat up. He figured the room was probably meant for entertaining nobles and that he had likely been taken here because he spent thousands upon thousands of gold here each month.
“We’ve finished with the magic stones,” Allen called out to the Guild staff member waiting beyond the door.
The staff member looked a bit taken aback to find the massive collection of magic stones now gone but did not say a word. Though incredibly expensive, magic bags similar to Allen’s Storage skill did exist in this world. Magic that could manipulate time and space also existed, so making all the stones disappear was not a completely unnatural phenomenon.
“Next up, Helmios has entrusted me with some more materials that I’d like to leave with you.”
The staff member looked stunned at this. “A-Are you sure? You’ve already given us so much.”
“Yes, I’m sure. This parchment here, if you’d—”
“Oh, uh, the guildmaster said that he would like to take the documents personally this time. Please wait here while I go summon him. I’ll be back shortly!”
With that, the man left the room without even waiting for Allen to respond.
After waiting a short while, a bearded, muscle-bound dwarf—the guildmaster—entered the room with the staff member from earlier.
“Mighty sorry ’bout that. Didja wait long?”
Though they had only had to wait for a few minutes, Allen was already fast asleep on the sofa. Cecil jammed her elbow into his side.
“Wake up, Allen. They’re here.”
“Mm? Oh, I’m truly sorry about falling asleep like that, especially considering that you’ve made time to meet with us.”
“Nah, it’s no big deal. Anyway, name’s Popokka. I’m the master of this here guild. So, what’d ya bring us today?”
His cutesy name definitely doesn’t match his physique.
Allen once again held out the parchment.
“First off, these are the updates to our information on the Rank S dungeon.”
Popokka unrolled the parchment and let out a gasp of surprise. “Wow, this is impressive.”
On the parchment was a map of each of the dungeon floors, with the locations of the hidden cubes and treasure boxes marked along with a list of what each contained. The list also contained information on the spawn rate for each type of hidden cube, the item drop rate for treasure chests, rates of monsters disguised as treasure chests, and more. Allen compiled this information twice a month and provided it to the Adventurer’s Guild free of charge.
“This one also includes an addendum based on our research concerning how many kaiser sea serpents Crimson will call at once. According to the report, it seems that the limit is a hundred.”
“What?!”
Popokka practically tore the next piece of parchment from Allen’s hand and pored over it. When he finally looked up, he stared at Allen with a look of disbelief on his face, his shoulders trembling.
“So what do you think?”
Crimson, the Floor 4 boss, was able to call forth a number of monsters known as kaiser sea serpents. Since no one had ever been able to actually count them before, it was assumed that Crimson could call forth an infinite number of them. According to the report Allen handed over, however, Crimson stopped summoning these monsters after a hundred were defeated.
More specifically, the report noted that they had conducted the experiment on five different days and even listed how long it took for the kaiser sea serpents to reappear. In other words, that meant that they had slain at least five hundred of them.
“Is all this true?”
“These are the results of Helmios’s survey.”
“Is the Hero really that strong?”
“As a matter of fact, he is. Though when you meet him, he looks just like an ordinary, albeit charming young man.”
Allen simply went along with the flow of the conversation. In reality, it was he and the Gamers who had conducted the survey.
“Well I’ll be. I was already blown away by the stuff you’d given us before, but this is something else entirely. I’ll be sure to have the Guild relay this information to all the other adventurers.”
Be sure to review and verify all the information.
The guildmaster handed the parchment over to the staff member.
“Finally, I have one more thing I’d like to report. It took a bit of time to put it all together, but...”
Allen handed over another roll of parchment with a map drawn on it.
“And what’s this? It’s pretty big, but doesn’t look like a floor map.”
Popokka, unsure of what the map was depicting, showed the parchment to the staff member sitting next to him. However, he had never seen it before either.
“This is a complete map of the death stages, including where you’ll be teleported to inside the death stage and where the operating system can be found.”
“Huh?”
The guildmaster did not quite seem to understand what Allen was talking about.
“Wh-What?! I... I can’t believe it! Sir, this is truly amazing!”
The staff member sitting next to the confused guildmaster jumped to his feet, his hands clasped together.
“I jus’ don’t believe it. Makin’ something like this shouldn’t be possible.”
Popokka looked at Allen with an expression of stunned disbelief.
“That’s not true. According to Helmios’s survey, it appears that each floor has its own unique death stage. The layout is the same for each, though; the only thing that differs is the monsters that appear. You’ll appear at one of the eight random locations marked on the map when you teleport in from a normal floor, and the operating system you’ll need to access in order to escape can be found...” Allen explained the contents to the men in a calm, almost nonchalant tone. Then, he handed over additional materials on the death stages that contained information such as the rank, strength, and other detailed information on the monsters that appeared.
“Hm, and what’s this 1,829 number mean?”
“That’s the number of monsters killed, though apparently even more can keep appearing. According to Helmios, monsters kept on appearing even after slaying over a thousand of them, so it seems like there may be no limit.”
Allen once again casually explained the number. He figured that the most important thing here was to explain that the information was coming from someone who was already trusted rather than to waste time trying to earn their trust in the first place.
There’s nothing better than name-dropping the Hero if you want people to believe you.
Something Helmios had that Allen did not was the trust of the people. After having spent so many years as the Hero, slaying enemies and saving countless people and countries, he was trusted more than even most royals in this world. Within the Empire of Giamut, there were some royal families who would lend their ear to Helmios while not even giving the emperor the time of day.
“This all’s referrin’ to Floor 4, right?”
“That’s correct. However, as you’ll see on the report, the same test was conducted on Floors 2 and 3 as well, and monsters there also continued to spawn even after a thousand were killed.”
Popokka thought back on his own experiences. Only Rank A monsters appeared on the Floor 4 death stage, which lined up with the information written in this report. Was Helmios really so powerful that he was able to verify all this? Popokka would need to confirm that for himself.
“Hey, didja bring that thing I asked for?”
“Y-Yes, sir. Here it is.”
The staff member handed a roll of parchment over to Popokka, who unrolled it on the table.
“Let’s see here... He worked as a servant to the Granvelle family. There’s a possibility that he killed a murdergalsh at the age of ten, though when the guildmaster attempted to verify it, he was turned away.” As the guildmaster read from the document, Allen was initially taken by surprise but decided to remain silent. “While a student at the Academy, he cleared five Rank A dungeons. Now, this is the first time I’ve heard of such an impressive resume. Whaddya think?”
“Yes,” the staff member responded, “this is the first time we’ve ever seen such a case since the Academy system was introduced. Going further back through history, he’s maybe the third person to claim such achievements.”
The guildmaster nodded in agreement and continued reading.
“Hm? It says here that you took part in a war recently, but not much else.”
“My apologies, sir. I could not get any information from either Ratash or Rohzenheim with regard to that matter, so we don’t know any of the details,” the staff member explained.
“But still, you must’ve been quite busy. That much is certain. And you became a...grand strategist? A grand strategist for Rohzenheim? Jus’ what kind of successes didja attain on the battlefield to be granted such a prestigious role from a major country in your very first war?”
Popokka stopped reading and looked up at Allen.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Jus’ what’s yer goal, kid?”
“Huh?”
“Why’re you doing this? I’m sorry, but I’d like you to explain that to me. I get that this information is important, and I’m thankful for it, but this isn’t somethin’ any normal adventurer would do.”
Under normal circumstances, adventurers did not publicize the information they discovered within a dungeon due to the fact that it was a source of income. Those who took on these dungeons were generally only thinking of their own profits. Anyone who managed to earn a fair amount and leave the dungeon with their life did not discuss how they managed to survive nor even what they saw inside. If they were to share knowledge of where one could camp to earn money before they had earned enough for themselves, their profits would decrease. Therefore, even if they were to share the information with others, it would only be with those whom they relied on to survive—their fellow party members.
The same went for this Rank S dungeon, which claimed the lives of half who dared challenge it within any given year. In fact, it was especially true for this dungeon—adventurers could expect to earn thousands of gold pieces within a short period of time there, thus making the thought of sharing information outside the party inconceivable.
There were, of course, those who dreamed of clearing the dungeon, as well as those who were happy to share their knowledge with those outside their own party. Alas, the former were easily discouraged by the difficulty and typically ran away from threats, barely earning anything in the process, while the latter often died in the dungeon.
Which is exactly why I’m doing this.
The information Allen was providing in Helmios’s name was so valuable, sharing it was downright bizarre.
The last time he dropped off information—where BB, Scarlet, and Crimson roamed along with other details such as teleportation points—it caused a major uproar within the Guild. While many had thought that there was some sort of regularity to both the Rank S floor bosses’ pathing and the teleportation points’ locations, properly studying that hypothesis necessitated risking life and limb, so no one had ever actually done it. There were few parties who managed to escape with such intel, and among those who did, they often decided that it was something they could utilize for their own benefit. Those who thought otherwise were gambling with their lives.
However, Allen had been providing all sorts of information to the Guild over the past two to three months. Furthermore, he could identify where a Rank S floor boss would be at any given time with eighty percent accuracy. Not only did this lead to a notable increase in the survival rate of adventurers entering the dungeon, but it was precisely the kind of information the Guild had been desperately searching for.
Though all of these reports were made in the Hero’s name, in reality, they were all thanks to the black-haired young man sitting before them. There were even rumors circulating among the other adventurers about a boy fitting his description who possessed the strange ability to summon monsters.
The guildmaster figured that there must be something behind this mysterious young man providing information about the Rank S dungeon—albeit claiming it came from Helmios—that the Guild had never been able to get despite making numerous attempts. As such, he decided to take whatever information he could get.
