“In other words, restocking the shop’s inventory is ultimately an investment in strengthening Rei.”
“And what of it? Surely you aren’t suggesting we use the throne room mana we just finished replenishing?”
“I’m merely pointing it out. I will continue pouring mana into the chests going forward, for various reasons — and you understand that’s a worthwhile thing, yes?”
“…I’ll grant you that. But please stop feeding them without thinking.”
“But of course!”
Rare to see Primila outmaneuvered like that — or perhaps maneuvered around is more accurate.
Though Lady Fiona’s point was correct this time, so there’s nothing to be done.
Still, she’s a completely different person from a moment ago. Which one is actually Lady Fiona?
“That said — if commerce can make me stronger, it might be worth selling higher-end goods…”
“Right~ Even if the dungeon gets cleared, if the shop turns a profit, the bottom line still comes out positive?”
I’d been worried about giving the intruders too much of an advantage, but maybe I can afford to be more relaxed about it.
If clearing the dungeon is an acceptable outcome, the beast-kin dungeon could become a passive income operation like the goblin dungeon.
I was turning all of this over in my head when Lady Fiona arrived hauling an enormous load.
What’s all that? She’s got it stuffed into an absurdly large bag — what on earth is in there?
“What do you think! With all of this, the shop will be well-stocked enough to satisfy even you!”
“Oh — this is all the gacha misses, isn’t it.”
“Gacha?”
Pilukaya tilted his head at the word, but it’s not important enough to explain.
So this was Lady Fiona’s accumulated haul.
Lugging it around in an oversized bag like this — maybe this world doesn’t have magic storage items.
“There’s quite a lot here. Equipment, consumables, even household goods?”
“I noticed a pattern. When the chest is large, it’s almost always a miss. The kind of result that compensates with volume — food, daily necessities.”
Right. Low quality relative to the mana invested, so it makes up for it in quantity.
Hence the absurd number of household items and food. Coming in bulk each time.
At this rate, we won’t have to worry about starving — and keeping the shop restocked might not be an issue either.
“…My liege. Not this one. Or this.”
“What?! I’m trying to make use of our resources!”
Primila had immediately flagged several pieces of equipment and what looked like accessories.
Accessories in a game world probably carry enchantments of some kind.
“Selling equipment with poison immunity or major fire resistance would undo everything Rei-sama has built. The dungeon’s traps would become meaningless.”
“Yeah, that would be a problem.”
“Ugh…”
“Antidotes, though — the demand would be huge. The more you sell, the more beast-kin will push into the maze section, right?”
“Exactly!”
Lady Fiona riding the full swing of her emotions.
But Primila’s point and Pilukaya’s point are both sound.
Outright immunity is off the table, but consumables should be fine.
Let them feel confident about the maze because they have antidotes — and then hit them with something that isn’t poison?
The beast-kin have been carrying information back to the surface in numbers.
Which means deliberately invalidating all of it could be entertaining.
Something to try eventually — take a dungeon they’ve been steadily mapping and overhaul it into something unrecognizable.
“Wow, you’ve got a really nasty look on your face right now~”
“I’m just thinking about something interesting.”
“‘Interesting’ for you only.”
Maybe not for the intruders, but it would definitely be entertaining from our side.
◇
“You’ve got antidotes in stock now?”
“Y-yes! Plenty of them!”
“Ten, then.”
In the beginning, no one chose to retreat. That would have been cowardice.
A dungeon built by a half-dead Demon Lord — no warrior should need to flee from something like that.
But after enough beast-kin had tried and failed, and a few had swallowed their pride and turned back, the general attitude began to shift.
This dungeon is on par with something built at a Demon Lord’s peak.
What it used to be was simple — a hunting ground where strong monsters appeared, a place to test yourself.
Now it was something else entirely. More lethal. More cunning.
A hunting ground, yes — except they’d come to realize at some point that they were the ones being hunted.
That couldn’t stand. A dungeon this brazen had to be cleared.
“We’ve got a decent read on the maze by now.”
“Yeah. Ultimately it’s still the easiest route through.”
The oil path was finished. Even races that could ignore bad footing couldn’t push through a corridor that turned into a sea of flame in an instant.
Early on, enough explorers getting burned through had drained the fire and oil to the point where a run was possible.
But this dungeon’s traps had the infuriating property of resetting after a period of time.
Throwing in decoys to trigger the trap before entering didn’t work either — somehow it only activated when they themselves stepped in.
That path was suicide. The only real option was here.
Progress through the monster rooms, reach the three-way split.
One branch led to a dead end with treasure, worth collecting on the way — though with so many people looting it regularly, the quality had dropped. Sometimes the chest hadn’t even reset yet.
Another branch had Gargoyles waiting. Three of them now, somehow.
Hard enough for a group to handle one at a time, but with multiple targets blocking the same path, breaking through had become nearly impossible.
So: the maze.
Wander long enough and the Poison Fog and Basilisks would find you.
Each step eroded concentration, and more than a few had gotten so turned around and exhausted that the poison finished them.
Antidotes had sold out not just in the village but in the surrounding towns.
Not surprising.
Pressing forward while poisoned was suicide, plain and simple.
“Where is she even sourcing antidotes from?”
“Who knows. Maybe she bought up every antidote in the area.”
“The price is actually lower than anywhere else, though.”
“…Fair point. Maybe she found a connection with an apothecary.”
It didn’t particularly matter.
If she had cornered the market and was gouging prices, that would be aggravating. But she wasn’t, so it was irrelevant.
If anything, having supplies available right at the dungeon entrance was convenient.
That rabbit — first time she’d actually been any use to them, the men laughed.
“The map’s coming together, and we’ve got a rough read on the trap positions and where the lizards tend to be. Today we push through.”
They headed in with that confidence.
They still didn’t have perfect knowledge of the maze.
A Basilisk ambush forced them to fall back before they could make real progress.
“Damn… the way they scatter. Gets old fast.”
“Yeah… at least we still have antidotes…”
“Hey… what’s wrong with you…”
Something was off about his companion, and asking the question, he felt his own tongue go sluggish.
That wasn’t all. His body wouldn’t respond.
The antidote was right in front of them — and neither man could lift a hand to use it as the poison spread through them.
…Now that he thought about it, there might have been one yellowish one mixed in with the black lizards.
A Yellow Basilisk. Not a paralyzer — a subspecies that paralyzed its prey rather than killing outright.
The thought surfaced in his fading mind as the darkness closed in.