CH 190

Episode 190 – Beneficial Information

After that, over the span of two hours, Tobias-san continued to provide me with information about the Dungeon. As he said earlier, ‘I will tell you everything I know’, and he was true to his word. He held nothing back, giving me information that was more useful and less commonly leaked than the time we talked in the cafe.

Information about a special adventurer party matchmaker and some useful tidbits about the Adventurer’s Guild could be considered as information not known to the general public. Intel about the monsters and Bosses up to the current highest layer, layer 60, which wasn’t shown on the monitors, as well as the data on gatherable items on each floor. Also, the contact information for [Eclipse], the party that was on the deepest layer that adventurers had reached in the Dungeon of Landaust, who had provided Tobias with the information up to the 60th layer.

All of the information he had given me was useful, no doubt, but… the information I found most useful was about the plants that could be collected up to the 60th layer. Tobias gave me the names of the plants that could be collected, which consisted of basically only the names known to the general public. However, I felt something was off about the plants that could be collected on layer 22.

There were two things that made me feel something was out of place: the existence of a plant called the ‘Demondew Herb’ that could be gathered on the 22nd and the fact that All-Herb and Resistance Grass were found on the same floor.

According to Tobias, Demondew Herb was something that was apparently regarded as a superior version of Magical Grass. I was wondering if it could be the Demonstar Herb that the grandma in Elf’s Tears had mentioned, but apparently it couldn’t be used to make Top-grade Potions, so it was probably a different kind of plant. Well, Tobias said he had never heard of a Top-grade Potion before, so the truth was entirely unclear to me.

On another note, what also stuck out to me was that All-Herb and Resistance Grass were found on the same floor. This phenomenon, however, is something that would normally be impossible. Resistance Grass was a plant that was just as valuable as All-Herb in the Healer’s Guild. However, it was a plant that could only be found in areas with extremely low temperatures, which made it extremely difficult to gather within the kingdom. I had been to Mount Cornello many times to gather plants, but I hadn’t ever been able to find any Resistance Grass.

The opposite was true for All-Herb, which could only be found in relatively warm areas. In light of this, it was a nearly unthinkable phenomenon for these two types of plants to exist on the same floor.

Well, it could simply be a mixture of cold areas and hot areas on the same layer, but, as far as I could see from the projections on the Dungeon monitors, there didn’t seem to be any major visible differences compared to other layers…

Another thing that stuck out to me was the fact that Demondew Herb was only found on the 22nd layer, so I figured that there must be something up with the plants on this layer. If my conjecture was correct, there was a good chance that there were many other unknown plants on the 22nd layer.

I had never done any full-blown Dungeon clearing yet, so the 22nd layer was still a long way off for me… But considering that I had to catch up the [Azure Alliance], I was convinced that this was key information for me.

“Thank you so much for all the information you’ve given me, Tobias-san.” (Lewin)

“It’s all good, don’t worry about it. I’m going to be interviewing you too after all. If you ever want to know anything, don’t hesitate to ask. And if I get my hands on any useful information, I’ll be sure to pass it on to you, Lewin.” (Tobias)

“Thank you! Then I won’t hesitate to come and ask in the future!” (Lewin)

When I said this, Tobias smiled at me. Though it had been very much a chance encounter, I was glad that I got to know Tobias.

“Ah, right. You can have this. It’s my notebook that contains detailed information on the characteristics of the monsters that appear on each layer until the 30th layer.” (Tobias)

“Eh… This notebook must be very important to you though…” (Lewin)

Thus, after thanking Tobias for the information and the notebook, I left the Laudungeon Company. I truly hadn’t expected them to be so good to me. I barged in with only a shallow inkling of a plan and was sure that I would be turned away… But I could really only thank Tobias for today.

Alright! Now then, from here on… I think I’ll start by gathering party members, as Tobias said.

The requirements that I had were too particular, so it probably wasn’t going to be easy to gather party members. But if I made good use of the information I got from Tobias, I had a feeling that I would get by.

First, let’s go meet the party introduction specialist.

Tobias told me that in this abandoned bar district, the owner of a tavern called Araku Village was doing party introductions. According to what I had heard, the adventurers who used this service were not ordinary adventurers but were apparently adventurers who were expelled from the Adventurer’s Guild and had special circumstances. Tobias introduced me to this, saying that although many of them might have character or behavior problems, they were very flexible in forming a party.

After what had happened with [White Feiler], I didn’t really want to form a party with adventurers with behavior problems… But maybe, just maybe, there were a few somewhat ordinary adventurers who had been kicked out for some other reason. Even if it didn’t work out, I still had options, so I was feeling pretty relaxed about the situation.

While thinking about this and that, I arrived at Araku Village, which was located a short distance from the Laudungeon Company, and immediately went down the stairs to enter the establishment.