CH 26

“Ribbegh!”

Luce’s strike blew away the Golden Rana flipping it upside down, which caused it to impact the floor back first.

The crack deepened on its body, then the emeralds serving as its eyes fell out to the floor.

【You have gained 503 experience points.】

【Your level has increased from 24 to 30.】

【You have gained 6 Skill points.】

An explosive amount of experience points poured in.

It was a delicious pile of xp.

As expected of Mr. Money Toad.

“We-we really did it…. we did it! I became 【Lv：27】 already!”

It seems Luce’s level went up by six levels from 【Lv：21】.

With this single Golden Rana she was able to surpass both of her former party members in terms of levels.

Unable to maintain its form anymore, the Golden Rana started to turn into mana, its body drying out.

I let out my breath and kept watching its progression.

The Golden Rana is a good target, not just because it’s weak for its level and therefore it provides excellent xp, but also because it tends to drop valuable items too.

Since the spawning rate of Golden Rana is quite low, the item drop chance is pretty high in turn.

Even without counting in the effect of Luck, it’s at least 50% by default.

However, that’s still not 100%.

“Gimme…..Golden Rana…..!”

As the Golden Rana’s remains went see-through… there remained a large earth attribute magic stone and a golden short sword.

In the center of the handle, an emblem resembling the Rana’s face could be seen.

“It dropped! A Rana’s Radiant Ornate Sword!”

I took a guts pose without thinking.

――――――――――――――――――――

〈Rana’s Radiant Ornate Sword〉《Recommended Level: 15》

【Attack:＋12】

【Market Value: 17 million gold】

Rana’s radiant short sword. It’s made of high purity Rana Gold.

It’s powerful compared to its Recommended Level, but for someone able to defeat a Golden Rana, it’s a luxury item that’s already mostly useless.

Many adventurers want to wield it due to its eye-catching appearance, and due to it being a proof of killing a Golden Rana, but most fall into greed and end up selling it due to its high value.

――――――――――――――――――――

Rather than how it functions as a weapon, the more important fact is that it’s a lump of metal worth 17 million gold.

“A-amazing! An item worth 1 700 000 gold dropping just like that….! The only highly valuable item like this that dropped for us was the Bloodstained Sword that we were arguing about!”

Luce cheerfully declared after checking the item info.

“Wait wait, you missed one digit.”

“Huh…..?”

“You are missing a zero. It’s 17 million gold.”

Hearing what I said, Luce slooowly turned her back to the Rana’s Radiant Ornate Sword and looked at its item info.

As if she was hit by a dizzy-spell, her legs gave out and she fell over right there.

“Sheh….shehventeen, million…. Even though the reason I left my former party was due to an argument over shares of an item worth 2 million…..”

“H-hey, are you alright?”

“It’s fine, I was just feeling a bit faint there….. Oh, for some reason my legs are still not working properly….”

Since it seemed Luce was unable to move just yet, I grabbed the opportunity to take a break for now.

This is a good lookout position too, so we can easily watch for monsters here.

Luce sat down with her back to the colorful wall and drank from her water flask.

“Have you managed to calm down a bit?”

“Yes, somewhat…. B-but, I still can’t believe it. It doesn’t feel real at all… getting all those items that are worth almost 20 million gold so easily…. Ah, no, it’s perhaps strange for me to say this when it was all thanks to Elma-san’s meticulous plans that we could do this.”

It seems she is still a bit agitated.

She lightly slapped her cheeks and started pulling on them.

“….what are you doing?”

“Well, um, I was thinking that this may be just a dream that I’m seeing from the shock of getting thrown out from the party by Klein-san…. Be-be-because, with 17 million gold, I could buy anything! I could even eat all I want in a somewhat nice restaurant!”

The content of Luce’s dreams of ‘buying anything’ is really plebeian.

“It’s a sum that I couldn’t reach even if I were to keep risking my life in Dungeons for ten years!”

“….I’ll admit that the profits from the Golden Rana are exceptional, but that one is mostly because Klein was treating you unfairly.”

Although adventurers all risk their lives, even just the magic stones are worth quite a sum by themselves.

Especially with Luce’s luck with drop items, although the equipment and preparations needed for monster hunting cost a bit of gold, their party should’ve had quite a bit of margin to work with….

Well, judging by their conversation before, Klein obviously skimmed off the top quite a bit.

“Wha-what should we do…. If we have an expensive item like that with us, then people will try to kill us for it for sure. That’s right, Elma-san! Let’s run away together to an even more remote village! We will simply live in peace there! That much money should last all our lives if we keep to a modest lifestyle! Let’s do that! Yeah!”

…I thought she had already recovered during this short break, but it seems she is still confused.

I still want to explore more today, but will she be fine like that?

“We should set out soon, Luce.”

“Eh? Ah, yes! It’s not like we can stay around in a Dungeon like this, so… are we leaving now?”

“We will try to get one more Golden Rana before the sun goes down. Our objective of getting two overall should be possible at this pace. Our stats have also gone up, so the next time we will have an easier time with it. Even if we get attacked by other monsters in the meantime, there shouldn’t be any that we won’t be able to deal with around here.”

In terms of levels, we should get a lot xp from a 【Lv：40】 Golden Rana while we are still in the first half of our thirties.

I would like to hunt one more from a leveling perspective too.

“Fueh…..? A-another one…..?”

――About three hours later.

“[Dice Thrust]!”

With Luce’s seventh [Dice Thrust] finally a six floated up in the air.

This time our luck was not that great.

Well, I’ll just have to consider this as saving luck for later.

It’s better to use up all the bad luck while nothing much is happening.

The probabilities will smooth out sooner or later.

A lot of Magic World players tended to be superstitious enough that a weird string of luck when nothing much was happening was usually considered a bad omen.

I’m also one of those.

【You have gained 461 experience points.】

【Your level has increased from 30 to 33.】

【You have gained 3 Skill points.】

Excellent, excellent. In this level range, being able to defeat a monster ten levels above us with no risk to us is very nice.

Even more so in this world where the Death Penalty is not just a loss of levels.

Furthermore, from the disappearing remains another golden sword with the face of a Rana on it appeared.

“Nice, Luce! It’s 34 million gold now! Well, if we sell it to a store, then it will be a good bit less, but even so….”

This was a good sign.

The [Smoldering Fang of Madness] I thought to be difficult to obtain is almost within reach now.

Much thanks to the Golden Ranas.

This was a money making strategy that only became possible because of the existence of the Angel’s Toybox and by having Luce with me.

With either of those missing, the efficiency would drop sharply.

There are other Dungeons where Golden Ranas could spawn.

However, without the narrow corridors that barely have any branch-offs in them that the Angel’s Toybox has, it would be impossible to catch up to a Golden Rana and successfully use [Shadow Stomp] on it.

The corridors need to be a certain width, so that someone could get behind the Golden Rana without disturbing it or letting it run away once alerted. That means a width that is not too wide and not too narrow.

The only place that fulfills those conditions is the Angel’s Toybox.

“…..hm? Luce?”

Luce.exe has stopped responding.

She was frozen in position with the Iron Piercer hanging from her hand.

Just as I approached her, Luce started to fall down in place from dizziness.

I hurriedly supported her body.

“S-Sirty, fou miyyon….”

With that Luce’s head dropped and her eyes closed.

“G-get a hold of yourself! Oi!”

There was no response to my words from Luce.

It seems the excitement was simply too much for her.