134-Chapter 8-10 Octopus Value

You were so hesitant to eat, and you left your mouth open.

Come on, you'd have to be crazy to eat that stuff on your first try.

A few hours after the octopus tasting, I took care of my business, and instead of diving into the lake, I went to work on the sorting process. Jin and the rest of the team have also joined in the work, but since we've roughly sorted them out, the process itself is slow. It seems that Jin returned my words and approached me in the middle of carrying things to the women who were in charge of sorting the small items. I guess he's just trying to take a break. Incidentally, Garratt and Blanca, like Jin, are in the middle of moving things, while Grandpa is using water magic to clean the dirt off his weapons and armor. Slarin and the others are in the middle of their naps.

'First of all, octopuses are basic sea creatures, right? I don't know about Leena, but me and Garratt and Menace were born and raised inland, and on top of that, they're mainly dungeons. You don't have to know the octopus to know it, though.

Jin has a point, but I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that he treated the octopus dish I made like it was poison. When I rammed that into him, he looked away and started whistling, trying to blatantly deceive me. As I looked at Jin with my zit eyes, he couldn't stand it anymore and tried to deflect the topic.

'I'm surprised you found all this, though. There are so many of these things that are decades old.

With that said, the necklaces that Jin picked up were in vogue about thirty years ago, and according to my grandfather, they are rarely seen nowadays. But since most of these were worn by adventurers, there were no jewels on them, and since they were tattered by rust, they would be of little value. Well, there are some that are in good condition, so if they are cleaned up, some of them might be coveted by curious people. Incidentally, I asked the djinn, especially the women, if they would like to be rewarded for their work, but none of them wanted it.

I instructed them to place the items that the djinn didn't want separately for each type of metal. I'll talk to Master Gantz about it when I'm free, and I'll melt it down and turn it into an ingot for use.

'It's time for us to head back upstairs, but Temma will still be here, right?

When most of the sorting was done, it seemed the time had come for Jin and the others to return to the ground. Originally, they were only going to show Grandpa and the others around, so they planned to stay here for a short time.

''There's still more places left to explore, you know.

In fact, we're still more than halfway there, but due to today's injuries and unexpectedly poor visibility, we're not just on time, we're over schedule. We'll have to start rushing to explore tomorrow to get there in time.

(Well, if I push myself a little harder, I could explore more efficiently... but I don't want to...)

If you think about efficiency, you can just use 'exploration'. But there's one problem with doing that. But you will get a terrible headache.

When you try to search for something in the Search, your brain can't keep up with the speed of the search. In addition, when you don't know where something is, you have to look for it in detail, which puts a lot of strain on your brain, and this can turn into pain. It's a symptom that's similar to when you try to play an online game on a computer that doesn't have enough specs to play it, and it stops moving or becomes very slow. Moreover, there are a lot of little creatures in this lake that get trapped in the 'search', which adds to the burden. More than once I've suffered from headaches due to the increased use of the burden.

Hearing all of this makes me feel like it's an unusable ability, but if it's used on a limited basis like it always is (such as for a narrow area of use, a search for something I'm already aware of, or a sketchy search), there's nothing wrong with it.

'Yeah, well, good luck with that.'

The nearest warp zone from this lake is on the upper floor, so the djinn will return to the ground there. They didn't forget to take their reward from me with them. By the way, I hardly know what the four of them chose. It's a very good idea to have a good time with them.

'What about you, Grandpa?'

Me? I'll stay. I need to practice my warding skills and, above all, I'm not busy.

Grandpa seemed to have intended to stay here from the start, and he's retrieved the carriage, too.

I'm staying too.

If you're staying, of course I am.

After all, he said, Blanca and the others were planning to stay behind. They locked up the apartment and left it with Amy.

It's a good thing that we're all away together, because it might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone who's thinking about the wrong thing. It's like sneaking into an empty treasury, since he hasn't left anything in the apartment. And we didn't steal anything, but he's going to be hunted by us as a criminal. Well, I heard that my grandfather has taken some anti-thief measures, so that's if we can get away with it.

After Jin and the others left, we tried to go upstairs to prepare for the camp, but since there are four of us, Grandpa said it would be a good experience to camp near the lake, so we decided to set up camp by the wall, as far from the lake as possible. We also decided on the order of the guards during the rest. The order is three shifts: me (Slarin, Siloumaru and Solomon), Blanca, Grandpa and Amur, in that order. I was planning to take the first or last shift, since both Amur and I have no experience of camping at the water's edge, and I would be assigned to Slarin and the others to increase our numbers, while Amur would be assigned to the more experienced Blanka to make up for the lack of experience. Incidentally, the reason why Blanca asked my grandpa to be his escort was because "if we are all the same guy, the knowledge is likely to be unbalanced".

Amur said he was going to team up with me, but since the two experienced guys broke the theory down, he finally nodded his head, but when it was my turn, I was secretly trying to sleep with Shiroumaru as my pillow, so Blanca and Grandpa dragged me to the carriage.

Incidentally, when I was changing places with Blanca, I had a bad feeling about something, so I didn't go into the carriage, but instead slept in the back of the carriage, surrounded by Shiroumaru and his friends. Moreover, I even asked Blanca to wake me up when she and Amur were changing places, and then I slept in the carriage. When I woke up in the morning, I was complaining to Amur that I hadn't slept completely, but Blanca was pissed at me for being you.

That day, except for Amur, we each continued yesterday's activities after breakfast (I'm looking for mithril, Grandpa is practicing warding, and Blanca is sorting). By the way, Slarin and Solomon are taking a walk and Shiroumar is Amur's cuddle pillow.

'Are we going to be more vigilant today than usual?

I dove into a place that would be a continuation of yesterday's, and I nearly doubled the range of my 'search' by taking advantage of yesterday's lessons. Even if I say doubled, it's about 20 meters wide with me at the center, and it's accurate enough to react to creatures larger than three meters that exist within the range, so it's not much of a burden. If it were true, it would be better to make it react to smaller creatures, but it's not good to increase the accuracy too much, so I figured there was little danger of being hit by surprise if it was less than 3 meters based on the strength of yesterday's octopus.

''Well, if a creature of that size is strewn about, it's not like the guild doesn't have a grasp on the quicksilver, though.

So I wandered around the bottom of the lake with caution. I found the occasional crumpled armor, but I didn't see any octopus, and when I got to the shallow end, I stopped the morning's activities and went back to the others.

'Is Amur still asleep?'

Should I wake her up?

He'll wake up naturally when he smells the food. Let him sleep until the last minute.

As Blanca, the guardian, said so, me and Grandpa tried not to make any loud noises. Most importantly, they were awake as soon as I started to prepare the meal, just as Blanca had said.

After finishing the meal, we were each taking a short break when we heard some panicked footsteps coming from upstairs. It's not us who are oblivious to the sound of this many footsteps. We immediately stopped the break, took out our respective weapons and readied them, and prepared for the approaching people...well, we immediately investigated its identity in the 'search', so we knew the danger was low, but we kept it a secret from everyone as it was a matter of contingency.

''I'm from the guild! Please do not attack!

The footsteps were the employees of the Adventurer's Guild in Seigen. There were about five of them, but they were all familiar people, and one of them was the head of the guild.

''I'm sorry for coming so suddenly. I brought information about the Sword of Dawn a while ago and I came to confirm that we have defeated an unidentified demon in this lake, is it true that we have defeated an unidentified demon?

The djinn who went home yesterday came over in the morning and gave him some information about the octopus while he was redeeming money. The guild leader happened to be out of town at the time, so they weren't able to come right away, but the head of the guild found out about it a while ago and came right away. Incidentally, the djinn who are the source of the information seem to have left town on a request before the guild leader returned.

''You mean this guy?''

I took out an octopus with two missing legs and held it out in front of the guild leaders.

''Oh, so that's it.......Actually, this guy could be a new species, so I'm sorry, but I'll have to take a few records. Of course, I'll pay the information and nuisance fees first. Also, if it's possible to sell the body alone. I may have to send it to King's Landing.

With that, the guild leader took out three gold coins from his pocket. Before I took them, I made a few conditions before I accepted them. I was going to help dismantle them as well as purchase the guts that I was going to discard, but the guild leader said it was a crossover, so he immediately agreed to it.

He then proceeded to record and dismantle the octopus with the guild staff.

'Once again, it's a ridiculously large octopus.

It looks like the octopus I know, but its size is an order of magnitude larger. First of all, its head (or more precisely, its body) alone was three and a half meters long, and underneath that its eyeballs were more than 40 centimeters long, its legs were about 10 meters long, and the mouth between its legs was about 60 centimeters long.

It was full of surprises, but the most surprising was its bill, also known as a crow beetle. The staff member who was touching it to take a record of the beak had been carelessly torn open at the moment he touched it. There shouldn't have been much force in it, but the wound was deep enough to reach the bone. I'm sure it's nothing important since I immediately treated it with magic, but its sharpness is no match for a sword made by a skilled craftsman. Moreover, it is thought to be at least as hard as the magical iron (because pieces of magical iron armor that looked like they had been bitten out of their stomachs came out), so if you were bitten by one of these, you would easily bite off a leg or two. I think we were lucky in a way, because octopuses and squids often spread their legs and wrap their prey around their prey.

In the investigation that followed, the magic stone was found in the octopus' head, and since it was officially recognized as a demon, they are going to send a report to the royal capital. The department in charge of demons in the capital will examine it, and once it's certified as a new species, they'll notify the other Adventurer's Guild branches. Incidentally, the price of the body part (including the eye area) is 500,000g, and if it's recognized as a new species, the guild will pay an additional 500,000g and the department in the capital will pay a 500,000g bounty.

''I'd rather have the mithril than the bounty...''

Hmm? What, it's better to pay in kind? I'll make a run at it.　

The head of the guild who picked up on my mutterings said something gratifying. And he also agreed to pay the Seigen Guild with mithril. Honestly speaking, I would have liked to have sold the rest of the mithril stored in the guild as well, but I was told that it was impossible due to the contract with the blacksmith and other matters. However, the guild in the King's Capital will ask the guild if they have any leftover mithril. The upper limit is set at 100 kilograms, and if you want it, you'll have to order more.

Normally, an individual can't treat a guild like a store, but in my case, I was also working as an 'oration', and I was told that I would be given preferential treatment in my own way for hunting ground dragons and the like.

After some time, the guild leaders returned to the guild and we resumed our activities. From the time we resumed until the deadline for our planned stay, there were no particular happenings, and we were able to finish exploring the lake safely.

In the end, we were able to get nearly 250 kg of mithril from the lake alone, which was more than we expected. After all, we were able to find a place that looked like an octopus' bed, and that was a big deal.

It is said that the octopus had been taking its prey to its own bunk to eat it, but there were weapons and armor made of mithril that it hadn't been able to chew up lying near its bunk. One hundred and fifty kilograms of mithril was found in that location alone. This would bring his mithril total to over five hundred kilograms in a little while, so he was almost halfway to his goal. If we're willing to compromise, we can start working on it tomorrow.

However, it's too good to compromise when you've come this far. Finding Mithril at this pace will be difficult, but I don't have any plans to leave Seigen at the moment, so I'll just take my time collecting them.

As I was talking about this with my grandfather and his friends as I left, for some reason there was a crowd of people near the entrance to the apartment. Curiously, I made my way through the crowd to the apartment and found several men and women who were tied up and being fished upside down, a few golems guarding the men and women upside down, and Seigen's guards.

To be honest, I have a bad feeling about this. But I can't avoid getting close to them. When we were puzzled like that, Aimee, Arie and the others who noticed us came over and told us about the current situation.

After lunch today, those men and women who were being fished upside down tried to break into my room and work a burglary, but were caught by the golem that my grandfather had set up and fished upside down. From there, the commotion grew and the guards came running in, but the golems tried to attack the guards as they approached. Perhaps they decided that they were friends who were trying to help the burglar. They are now in a standoff at a distance, it seems.

It's about to get dark at this time of day, so it must have been five to six hours since those burglars were upside down fishing. The burglars' lives are in danger at this time of day, but Aimee confirmed that they were in good spirits enough to swear until an hour ago, so they'll be fine. By the way, Grandpa had ordered the golems not to harm Aimee (and Arie-san and the others), so there was no danger even if they approached him. However, if Aimee did something like helping a burglar (such as loosening a rope), the golem would gently stop her. It's a good thing that the burglar tried to put them down on the ground at first, but since the burglar was abusive to Amy, both Amy and Arie-san and the others made sure that they only did the bare minimum to check.

It's a good thing that they're in such good spirits despite their condition... they're going to come back to retaliate eventually if you let them go.

Even if it was a burglary, people weren't caught red-handed, so it was likely that they would come out with a fine or light punishment. Moreover, the people in question didn't seem to be remorseful by any means. Well, even if they came to retaliate against the golems for their complete defeat, it's unlikely that they would be able to harm us, but if Aimee and the others were targeted, they wouldn't necessarily be able to defend themselves completely.

So, we decided to give them a little scare. Fortunately, he's experienced in dealing with Jin and the others, so he has some knowledge of the situation. It's also important to know that there are two people who seem to be good at this kind of thing, and since I can use recovery magic and have a good selection of medicines, I shouldn't die so easily.

I had a light meeting with my grandfather and the others and spoke to the guards who were staring at the golems. At first, the guards were reluctant to accept my proposal to torture them, but we still secure the burglar, and when I showed them the royal family crests given by the king, the crests of the duke of Sangha and the marquis of Samoens, they willingly pretended to be ignorant.

I promised him that I would be sure to take the burglars to the guard's choke point after the matter was over, and he would ask the guards to leave.

Now there were no more interruptions. Now it's time to have some fun.