The party continued to scout the nearby tunnels, before returning to the Healing Fountain. With the treasure chamber found and cleared, they had no more direct goal to chase. The boss room could be anywhere, so they had no reason to sleep out in the middle of the corridors when they had a safe spot available. The little loss in inefficiency they got in retreading some of the same ground in the morning was willingly sacrificed for good sleep.
Upon their return to the chamber, Apexus put up the Mobile Estate. He pulled open the door. “It is larger,” he informed everyone.
Reysha, who had been preparing to make another batch of Spice, dropped her things and hastened over. Korith was just as excited, squeezing her head between Apexus’ hips and the door frame. “Woooah!” she exclaimed. “T-that’s way larger!”
Aclysia peeked over their man’s shoulder. “It is larger, but it seems twice so because the bed is missing.”
Rather than just stand in the doorway, Apexus chose to enter. The very first thing he noted was the improvement in the quality of the flooring. It was a minor thing. The previous wooden floorboards had been perfectly adequate in their quality. These new ones were a little nicer in texture, setting, and quality of the wood.
The room did feel empty. Their limited possessions had been crammed into the old chamber. This new one was about two metres deeper and two metres wider, and given the quadratic nature of such things that really did make it all that much more spacious. The absence of their enormous bed did the rest.
There was the shelf, still, currently standing in the middle of the room. A small thing, as shelves went, barely taller than Apexus and about a metre wide. Their large, low table with the sitting pillow stood near the middle of the expanded room. To the left, the fireplace stood, surrounded by Aclysia’s cooking equipment, the firewood the estate provided, and a water barrel. The window that let them see the outside weather and time of day showed that it was night. Their sleep schedule was slowly derailing from the outside world.
“Let’s find our bed.” Apexus walked towards the singular door that existed besides the entrance. Unlike the ornate door of light and magic, that one was simple and wooden. Previously a similar door had led to the latrine, but they had to assume that there was more around if their bed had been moved.
They stepped into a spacious chamber – spacious by chamber standards anyway. It was about 12 square metres, enough to be someone’s room in its own right. In the expanded Change Mansion, it served as a crossroads. To the left was another room, 9 square metres in size. It was completely empty, just floorboards and air between its walls. Opposite of that, right from the door they had walked through, was the latrine.
“Huh, ever seen a toilet like this?” Reysha asked and lifted the porcelain lid. After some looking around, she pushed a panel a fair way above the bowl. Water rushed out of a container hidden in the wooden wall, flushing what was not and what could have been down the drain.
“You haven’t?” Korith asked.
“No? Should I?”
“They’re usually in Churches and rich people’s homes… it’s less stinky.”
“And we are rich now!” Reysha boasted and squatted down. Her fingertips trailed over the tiled floor. The spirit that managed this estate had decided to put water-resistant flooring in for this area. Besides the toilet, there was a barrel of water in the room to wash one’s hands after the act.
There was still some more of the new Change Estate to explore. Opposite of the first door, a short corridor led to two more entrances. Of those, the right one led to a large room with a bath. Unnecessarily large, given that it only contained one bathtub and another barrel of water. Interesting for them was that they produced warm water.
Last and absolutely not least, they found the bedroom. Their old bed of hay and blankets had been replaced with one of blankets, pillows and furs on a stone frame. “I preferred the old one…” Korith mumbled, crawling around in the new bed. “This is less… bouncy.”
The rest of the party swiftly followed. Serving as the foundation of it all, the furs were equal parts soft and dense. It was the hide of a bear-wolf-goat-cow-boar, combining the most comfortable aspects of each into one big carpet. A blanket on top made for a unified texture and pillows did the rest. Because of the hard foundation of stone, jumping around on it was indeed less satisfying, but it was all around more comfortable.
The bed took up half the room, a 4 by 4 metres square. A smaller fireplace was a metre off the foot-end of the bed, little logs lying ready next to it. A fourth and final water barrel stood behind the door, providing ready access to anyone who got thirsty during the night.
All around, their living space had suddenly tripled.
irno0A1.jpeg [https://i.imgur.com/irno0A1.jpeg]
“Wonder what brought about the sudden transformation?” Aclysia thought out loud. “I must assume darling has crossed level 25?”
“Pro’ly,” Reysha slurred and started to strip. “What do we do with all of the extra space?”
“We will have to invest in additional furniture. Additional shelves would be a delight,” Aclysia said.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Oh, can I get an armour stand?” Korith asked. “That would make maintenance a tad easier and the plates wouldn’t be just lying about the place.”
“Considering we have a separate room just for storage now, that should be easily arrangeable,” Aclysia stated. “Perhaps a guest bed could be placed in the living room?”
“Oh, can we get a couch?” Korith asked.
“If we find one who makes such furniture.”
“A-and a bathtub to pour coins into?”
“…That feels rather unnecessary.”
“Awww…”
“What is our financial situation?” Apexus asked.
They moved the talk back to the main room so Aclysia could put their gathered funds on the table. It took some counting to get it all in order, courtesy of the amount of small coins they currently had.
458 Copper, 9 Bronze, 5 Iron, 270 Silver, 47 Gold and 5 Platin. Since Bronze and Iron were not used as money locally, they did not count for anything. 458 Copper translated to about 46 Silver, 316 Silver to about 32 Gold, and 79 Gold to almost 8 Platin. “Going with these simplified numbers, we are in possession of 12 to 13 Platin,” Aclysia stated, all of the coins neatly stacked in front of her. As neatly as those coins could be stacked, anyway. Many of them were old, if not ancient, and had a fair share of dents and scratches.
Korith compared two of the gold coins against each other. One was a simple disk with an infinity symbol etched into one side, marking it as a coin created by Arist, the god of Pride and Permanence. The other had the profile of an elven face minted into the side, her eyes closed. The symbol had almost faded from all the hands that had touched it.
“HMmmmmmmmmm,” the kobold hummed as she weighed both coins in her hands. “This one feels lighter…” she mumbled and raised up the one with the elven face. “Did the Sleeping Empire mess with the gold content?”
“That is a heavy accusation,” Aclysia stated.
“Why would one mess with the content of gold in a gold coin?” Apexus asked.
“Economic trickery,” the guardian angel explained. “Gold is a rare metal compared to what it can be alloyed to. When a nation gets large enough, they are capable of minting their own currency in addition to what flows from dungeons. Matter of fact, most coins in circulation are minted by nations. By deviating from the Divine Standard, nations can mint more coins with less gold.”
“Why?” Apexus asked.
“’Cause you’d rather have 500 Gold than 300,” Reysha put it simply. “Deviation from the Divine Standard is a big issue though. As I understand it, regular Gold coins can be turned into equipment with the right treatment. Just gotta smelt it down and use the right enchantments. If you do that with alloyed coins, stuff has to be separated and everything and that’s a lot of work.”
“The biggest issue is that there is less gold in my Gold coin!” Korith declared. “Hoard likes gold!”
Aclysia took the coins from Korith and weighed them in her own hands. “In all cases, the coins we use are demanded to follow the Divine Standard. Coins from dungeons are always the same, no matter what god sponsors their creation.”
“Do the gods intervene if a nation mints deviating coins?”
“Maybe they did when the Omniverse was young, but these days there’s enough guilds whose interests align in keeping the coins standardized. Merchants prefer the unified currency for obvious reasons. Adventurers do not care much for economics and would prefer to know their coin is the same across Leaves, even if the purchasing power varies. The Church has enough bureaucracy without sorting out what value each individual tithe has. Crafters, as Reysha mentioned, wish to know that the coins could be turned into workable metal if times necessitate it.” Aclysia put both coins back down with a heavy clack. “Brazen is the fool that messes with the Divine Standard. The consequence is inter-Leaf ostracization and potentially war.”
“Over coins?” Apexus found that a bit odd still. Before anyone could explain it further, he had worked it out. “I believe I understand. Coins are the words of the economical exchange. One cannot have a dialogue if words keep changing their meaning.”
“Exactly!” Korith agreed.
“We would need a scale to figure out if what you said is true,” Aclysia stated. “I doubt the Sleeping Empire would engage in this. They’re too large to get away with it.”
“We need a scale!” the kobold insisted.
“Your intended purpose aside, I do believe that one would be useful,” Aclysia agreed.
They continued to talk for some time, then returned to the Healing Fountain for another bath. Even though they had a private tub now, it was barely big enough for Apexus and certainly could not fit all three of them.
The next morning, they ventured back out into the dungeon. They did the same for the day after that and the day after that, continuing like that for four whole weeks. Occasionally, they came across other parties. It became more frequent as the weeks passed by and they got to just walk for longer and longer stretches. Eventually, the only monsters they came across on any given day were either dead or freshly risen out of the Spawning Pools.
There were many fights in that month, most carefully planned out, some close, some incredibly easy. The fact was that they were exploring and growing stronger. Reysha got herself as much of the Spice as she had storage for.
Then they found the boss room – empty.
The gate was an archway of bones, the two halves of the door made from ribs and leathery membranes. They stood wide open, revealing an arena consisting of three layers of concentric rings. The corpse of the boss had been absorbed back into the dungeon. A gap in the rings revealed a path into the typical post-dungeon shortcut back to the surface. It was one of them that also offered a lounge.
A lounge in which the Atlas Party currently hung out.
“Looks like we got the better of you!” the brown-haired leader of the party greeted them. He and his comrades were nakedly sitting in the bubbling water of the luxurious Healing Fountain. None of them cared that they were fully exposed. “You’re three days too late.”
“Upsetting,” Apexus confessed. “Had I killed the boss, I could have evolved further.”
Flora, the slime druid of the party, smiled lightly. “Not quite as literal in our cases, but we do also need to kill monsters to grow stronger.”
“I hold no resentment. A wolf that watches an eagle catch the hare first should not be looking for scraps,” Apexus stated. “A lack of an additional Growth is a minor inconvenience. We grew stronger here ourselves.”
“We got what we wanted,” Reysha agreed.
“I would argue we got more,” Aclysia gestured at her private support crystal.
“A-any particular reason you’re hanging out here?” Korith asked. The Atlas Party wasn’t flustered, but she was, at least a little. The empty chests along the walls distracted her enough. “Gloating?”
“A bit,” Rahesia admitted readily.
“Mostly we’re relaxing.” Atlas put an arm around his green-skinned girlfriend. “Are you going to stay?”
Apexus looked to his party. Reysha shrugged, Aclysia smiled supportively, Korith was still staring at the empty chests. “We will leave the dungeon now.”
“Alright. We’ll see each other again in the Guild,” Atlas and his party waved as the Inevitable passed them. “Safe travels!”
“Likewise,” Apexus responded.