Chapter 8 - Moving

Chapter 8 – Moving

Hello, it’s Anri.

This is a bit sudden but… I was driven out of the inn.

Strictly speaking, my five days at the inn were up, and when I asked to extend it I was refused.

I hadn’t noticed it myself, but the innkeeper obasan was terribly afraid, so we probably accidentally had eye contact at some point.

And though I did think that this would happen before long, being driven out this early was beyond expectations.

And the fact that I wasn’t forcefully driven out, but that they entreatied me “I’m begging you, please leave” pierced my heart, so I’m pretty depressed.

Perhaps I should be looking for a replacement inn, but the shock was just so great that I can’t find the motivation for it.

And in a way, it might be perfect timing.

Since I haven’t solved the problem of balancing my income and expenses, you could say that this is a good chance for me to think about really doing something about it.

It’s just that if I don’t think about it like that, I won’t be able to go on, though.

While taking a breather in the central plaza café that I ordered a black tea in last time, I thought about my plan for now.

There are two general paths that I’m considering.

The first is that I’ll guarantee some other income source, and the second is doing something about the “shelter” issue that takes up most of my expenses.

I considered the former when I signed up to the Adventurers Guild too, but because it was too hard I ended up giving up.

In both personality and skill abilities I’m devastatingly unsuited for the hospitalities industry, and it’s not as if I have the know how either so jobs in production are impossible.

There’s basically no path for me to take in trying to earn money except for adventuring.

Alchemy using my divine enchantment──buying cheap things and selling them after enchanting them with divine protection──is something I considered as well, but because there’s a high chance that the weapons and clothing I enchant turn into cursed items, to begin with I wouldn’t be able to sell it, and even if I could sell them, it’d be an extremely eyecatching thing to do and would probably bring me trouble.

As for the latter, finding a place to live is difficult too, and since I only have 5 gold with me I don’t have enough to buy a house, and because renting a house and staying at an inn both have the risk of being driven out, I wouldn’t be able to settle down.

In the first place, living in an environment with other people means that I’d always have to be careful so that I absolutely wouldn’t meet eyes with anyone, so to begin with it was impossible.

Ideally it’d be “a place with nobody around”, “not rented, but owned by me” and also “has a fairly decent living environment”.

Since I’m stating my desires, it’d be best if it comes with “a way to make money” as well.

“As if such a convenient place…”

could exist, was what I wanted to say, but the truth is that if I don’t care about what methods I use, there actually is such a place, which is why I’m so troubled.

Do I take principles, or do I take profits…? That balance has probably already tipped in my heart.

You can’t deal with an urgent problem without sacrificing something in return.

Mn? A samurai pretends he has eaten well when he has no food, you say?

I’m not a samurai, so there’s no problem.

Gathering my thoughts, I headed to a store to stock up on food.

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Three hours later, with a large amount of food stuffed into my item box, I came to the dungeon from the other day.

I’ve twisted my ideals and chosen the path of profits, in order to live in the dungeon.

“a place with nobody around” …From the town, it takes two hours to get here on foot, and there are no oddballs that have taken up residency here

“not rented, but owned by me” …I am the dungeon master after all

“has a fairly decent living environment” …It’s not that great now, but I can expand it and remodel it as I please

comes with “a way to make money” as well …There’ll probably be plenty of easy targets with money from now on

The demerits are ‘obstructions to my peace’ and ‘the pain to my conscience’ but the former can be fixed by strengthening the dungeon, and as for the latter, even in the worst case scenario, I’m going to compromise and make it a rule in my heart not to let anybody die.

Having made up my mind like this, I entered the dungeon.

I could grasp this vague and delicate feeling of “it feels like I can do this for some reason” with my ability as the dungeon master.

For example, since the dungeon is the area ruled by the dungeon master, as long as it’s within the dungeon I can move where I’d like, and although this is limited to when I’m inside the dungeon, I can see and hear all the places inside the dungeon.

I used teleportation to move to the room with the dungeon core.

In a small room of about 6 tatami, a blue crystal of about 50 centimetres was floating in the air.

This was probably the dungeon core.

I touched the dungeon core with my hand as I muttered.

“Dungeon Master.”

Name: Holy Land of the Evil God

Attribute: Darkness, Death, Pestilence

Floors: 3

Mana: 1532

My own status was the same, but the dungeon status couldn’t get any more sinister.

I’ll pretend that I didn’t see the name and attributes, and look at the other entries.

Having three floors means that it probably took over the beginners dungeon as is.

A lot of the fundamental structure has been changed, but I guess the separation into floors hasn’t changed.

It seems that the mana value is the amount of mana that’s been accumulated by the dungeon, and it seems that using this I can expand or maintain the dungeon.

There are two ways to accumulate mana in the dungeon core; either when the dungeon master personally fills it with mana, or when invaders die in the dungeon and their mana is sucked away.

The dungeon core serves as a piggy bank too, and if the dungeon master puts in mana every day, they can utilise mana above their capacity.

For example, an average dungeon master’s mana value is 10 to 20 thousand, and since it costs 1 million to add a floor, at that rate they’d eternally be unable to add floors to the dungeon, but if they store it in the dungeon core then regardless of their capacity, if they store 10,000 each day, a simple calculation will tell you that it’ll take them 100 days per dungeon floor.

But actually putting all your mana into it would probably be bad, and you’ll probably need to use mana for other things as well so it wouldn’t go so simply, and you’d need a longer amount of time to add a floor.

Having learned all this information from the dungeon core, I smiled bitterly.

As expected, it seems that a mana value of 3 million is abnormal.

Just having a nights sleep will restore most of my mana, so each day I can add three floors, meaning that in 100 days I can add 300 floors.

No, I mean, even if I add that many floors it’s just going to get impossible to manage, so it’s not like I’m going to do it though.

Mm~mm, I want to stop saying ‘mana value of ___’ and give it some kind of unit. Maybe points?

Anyway, I poured 3 million mana points into the dungeon core, and used 2 million from that to add two layers.

It seems that the floor with the dungeon core automatically stays the furthest down, and right now it’s become the 5th floor, with a new 3rd and 4th floor above it.

I made the 3rd and 4th floor orthodox and typical labyrinths, but I used the remaining 1 million points to remodel the 5th floor into a base.

I divided it into a few rooms and created a bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, storeroom, and an office with the dungeon core in it.

While I was at it I used mana to create a pseudo-sun and established a day/night cycle.

There was an off feeling about having the light come from directly indoors rather than from outside a window, but I’ll probably get used to it before long.

What’s left is to use one of the larger rooms to create an indoor vegetable garden… it’ll probably be a while before any harvests though.

Because I was remodelling as I liked, the 1 million points were used up in a blink, but for now I’ve made it look like the bare minimum for a residential section.

At the end, I instructed all inhabitants to intercept intruders, but I made sure to give a strict order not to kill them and only knock them out.

With normal monsters there’d probably be dissatisfaction and a chance that they’d ignore the orders and go with their instincts, but the inhabitants of this dungeon are all non-living monsters with no sense of self, so they’ll probably obey my orders absolutely.

Because I used a huge amount of mana, I’m feeling sleepy, but somehow overcoming it with willpower, I headed to the bathroom.

It’s the first chance in a while for me to get in a bath, so I can’t fall asleep until I’m satisfied with the bath.

I was really thoroughly soaked in the first bath I’d had in days, and while still in the water, I fell asleep.