Chapter 41

Five demolition charges, the sort used to blow up chunks of mountains or to reduce entire buildings to rubble, all blew up at the same time inside the stone king’s weakened body.

Michael was a short distance away, having been the one to sentence the golem to death. The shower of splinters and chips of stone propelled by the blast, some of them razor-sharp pieces of obsidian, cut his face and clothes.

He healed the damage with a grin. He stood immobile for a moment, watching the Glyph appear from where the golem’s body was being turned into mana by the dungeon so it could be recycled, basking in the sensation of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Enjoying the moment of glory.

He had won. Another clever battle, a struggle, and overcoming seemingly impossible odds. For a moment he wondered how he might have done it without outside tools like the explosives.

Then the whimpers became too much, and he rushed to where Drullkrin was lying in a puddle of his own blood, and healed him. It took a while to put the monster back to shape, and it was different than healing a human being. An interesting experience which had surely pushed the skill closer to upgrading.

Michael finally walked up to the pillar of light and the mesh of strange magic he could not even begin to decipher, the glyph. Beside it there was a small pile of coins, a couple of silver and some copper change, and a skill upgrade stone. By now, Michael could recognize upgrade stones at a glance, they were different from normal skill stones. This one was uncommon-tier, and quite powerful at that. He didn’t even need to touch it to know what it was, the elemental energies he saw quite enough to paint a picture.

But first he touched the glyph.

Challenge update!

You have acquired the glyph of Might, proof that you are indeed the strongest warrior. Without the other glyphs joined to form the Unity, this glyph has lost most of its power, but it retains some lingering magic. You may use it once to leave the dungeon, then once again to return to the second floor.

 

Then he turned his attention to the blinking notifications he had dismissed during the battle.

 

Skill Level up!

[Mana Manipulation] reaches level 5. You gain the ability to force skills to act outside of their scope, bending them to your will. You have reached a bottleneck, to advance further you will need a special insight into the nature of the skill.

 

He was quite happy with the upgrade. He had pushed the skill hard during the fight, following a hunch he got back when he first appeared on this floor today and had to kill the treasonous orcs.

And despite all this, it’s still a common-ranked skill.

The bottleneck was a hassle, but not entirely unexpected either. This was the first skill to reach level 5, exposing a new feature of his power system. He hoped the requirements to keep upgrading the skill weren’t too tough to get, and that the notion of insight wasn’t too strict, otherwise he might soon start to stagnate.

Which was precisely what the dungeon used to entice him to delve deeper, wasn’t it?

 

Skill Level up!

[Marksman] reaches level 2. You can now feel a faint connection to any projectile you shoot, as long as it’s still traveling.

 

Odd but potentially powerful, he thought. He would need to experiment, like with most of his skills.

And now, the upgrade stone.

 

Skill Level up!

[Distortion Field] reaches level 5. It is now stronger and quicker, and can be further reinforced with additional mana for amplified effects. You have reached a bottleneck, to advance further you will need a special insight into the nature of the skill.

 

The rest of the loot was coins. Strangely enough, at the bottom of the stack there was a single US dollar bill. Picking it up, Michael thought he could hear a snickering voice reverberating through the valley and the mountain.

“For your lost equipment, hahahah!”

“Fucking dungeon goblin,” Michael cursed.

“What is it, my lord?” Drullkrin perked up.

“Nothing. Didn’t you hear the voice?”

The actual goblin looked confused. “No, my lord. But I must congratulate you. Truly, a great battle and a majestic show of might.”

On their way back, the two tried to use Michael’s newfound authority to turn the stone golems to his cause. Most of them were not interested, not even registering their presence and words unless attacked, wholly focused on their task of breaking stone and extracting minerals.

Michael decided to follow them, since they were not hostile, and found a veritable stash of materials in a hidden cave teeming with golems. Now that Michael had the Glyph, the stone constructs ignored him, even letting him take valuables from the stash.

He left with a bursting backpack, empty of all contents save for bars of gold and platinum, gemstones and ores. Too bad they were too heavy to carry in large amounts. Even with magic helping him, the backpack was on its last legs, and it just wouldn’t do to spill all these valuables along the Appalachian Trail. Luckily Bob was waiting for him outside, and he could help carry all this weight.

The duo finally emerged from the stone biome, trailed by a couple stone golems they managed to convince to join their cause that had been tasked to carry the heavy backpack.

Finally, I can take my vacation. Drullkrin had informed Michael that he would need a few days to consolidate his power again after the failed coup, to make sure all monsters understood just who was in charge.

Michael’s presence, his new allies and Glyph of Might helped to restore order quickly. The best thing was that Michael simply needed to be there, he didn’t need to actually do anything to lend credibility to Drullkrin’s words. His actions had spoken loud enough, after all.

But alas, after a few days of rest without touching any magic—he needed to unwind, and getting stuck practicing was a good way to waste his hard-earned rest—things began to change. It seemed that the dungeon was speeding things along.

Reports of raids from the north were becoming ever more frequent, patrols of icemen and yetis spotted well beyond their borders and into the territories Michael controlled.

It was time for Michael to leave before the dungeon goblin forced another battle onto him.

He used the Glyph’s one-time function and appeared back on the surface. A grin appeared on his face when he saw that none of the materials pilfered from the dungeon had vanished. He had been worried about them disappearing, not knowing whether they were real matter of just a mana construct.

I guess this answers that particular question.

It also meant that he could probably use the dungeon as a waste disposal facility, like he had jokingly suggested to Travis.

Bob’s eyes grew wide when Michael explained why his backpack was suddenly twice as heavy as it had been before he entered the cave, but the driver-slash-bodyguard took most of the revelations in stride. He got an abridged version, of course, but even though it made little sense he did not ask for details. He simply grabbed what he could, and the two trekked back to the car.

Michael took note of where the dungeon’s mana influence ended as he walked, happy to see that the expansion was slowing down. Is it a low tide, or will it keep slowing as the range increases?

He hoped it was the latter, but was pretty sure it was the former. The amount of mana being expelled by the dungeon was clearly less than usual to his mana sense, which would explain why the expansion was slowing.

***

“What’s all this?” Old Dave’s eyes practically bulged out of their sockets when he peered inside Michael’s backpack.

They were in the private garage of the temporary office Dave had rented as a base of operations, not too far away from the pawn shop and the clinic. Bob was sweating after being tasked to show Dave most of the goods, but he was in a good mood, with a wide grin on his face.

“Dungeon loot,” even though Bob didn’t know the details, Michael had Dave’s word he was trustworthy, and thus spoke freely. “And there’s a lot more where this came from.”

“This is…” Old Dave sputtered as his brain spun to gear, “oh man, Mustang is going to have a field day with this. I need,” he scratched his head as the gears spun in his brain, “damn, I need to call some contacts. Hell, all of my contacts. We can place this shit. We can totally place all this. How much more of this is there in the dungeon?”

Michael grinned as he saw just how enthusiastic the old man was about this, explaining the stone golems and what they were doing.

“Damn.” Dave whistled. “Healing is nice to get some quick cash, but this is a steady supply. Might be less than if you healed people left and right, but you can just pop in and take what you want?”

“Perhaps once I beat the floor,” Michael said.

“That’s good. But,” Old Dave deflated, “we have to be careful. I might give Mustang some of this, like a tiny percentage of this shit, but the rest? We can’t flood the market, we can’t have people trace this back to us, we can’t…” he trailed off, staring into space for a while. “Our secretary might need a raise after this, Mike. Travis’ too, there’s no way we are doing this without at least consulting with his secretary. Although… he might want to get his hands on this himself, uhmm.”

Seeing Michael’s face, he brightened up. “Let us old men worry about this, alright? You worked hard, and did your part. You don’t need to worry about any of these bothersome and boring things. That’s what I’m here for, no?”

“Alright,” Michael said, “but before that: do you have a bag? A quite sturdy one if possible.”

“No,” Dave said, a bit surprised, “what do you need it for?”

“I need to sort the magical and non-magical materials. Bob, do you have one?”

“Magical?” Dave perked up.

“No, sir.” The burly bodyguard said, “but I recall seeing a store ten minutes down the road. Perhaps I could go buy you one?”

Michael grinned. “Dave, give Bob ten bucks to buy the bag. He can keep the change.”

“Thanks, sir,” the driver said and left after unloading everything in the garage.

Michael began sorting the materials. Several ores and gemstones shone in his magic sight with either mana, elemental energies or even Qi. There were other lights too, and Michael simply removed from the pile everything that wasn’t 100% mundane material, to be sure.

“I want these,” he pointed at the smaller pile of magical materials, “stored somewhere safe for now. Then I’ll figure out how to test them and perhaps even give them to our scientists. Any updates on that front?”

“Look at you,” Dave beamed, “being all bossy and demanding. That’s good. You should be like this more often.”

Michael went beet red at that. It seemed that his time spent commanding his forces in the dungeon had changed how he handled things a little bit.

“Not much for now,” Old Dave sighed, “it’s a long process, and I don’t want this stuff to leave our sight. Ever.”

“Right,” Michael hummed. “I guess even if we had scientists, we’d have to wait until we have some sort of temporary lab set up. Containers will work fine, at least until winter comes. Progress on the land?” he asked, once again slipping into his ‘king of the forest’ voice.

“There’s only one last thing to clear and then we are done. A surveyor will be sent by the EPA to check the place.”

“Do we have to worry?” Michael asked.

“We would, in theory. But we paid what needed to be paid. The surveyor will get there, pretend to scan the land and greenlight everything. No worries. He will never set foot inside the forest proper, nor will he get close to the dungeon.”