"Ugh! Nevermind, It's useless to fight with you. Your just...too damn stubborn!"

"..."

'Thank you.'

"That's not a compliment. Sigh...hmm? Oh yeah, I forgot to ask since we were so caught up with everything... But why did you wanted to go there in the first place? It didn't seem like you accomplished what you wanted to do since we left pretty quickly after we got there."

"..."

'That's... A good question. Hey system, what did you wanted to do there? If we missed it...we can always come back'

[We don't have to go back there no more. Remember the water snake anomaly?]

"..."

'yeah, that and the weird thumping noise.'

[Well my goal was exactly that. I wanted to scan the water snake and tree. Anomalies like those are rare and helps towards my goal, although I would have liked it if we got closer to the tree. I'm fine with how things turned out as I finished it anyways. The strange thumping noise was caused by some beast trapped below the tree by the water snake. We must have disturbed the beast and woke it up.]

"..."

'huh? Gem thought your goal was to-'

[This helps further that goal. Think of it as a small step forward.]

"..."

'Okay gem gets it'

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"..."

'We don't have to go back, gem's goal was the water snake anomaly.'

"Oh? That dangerous thing. Although most anomalies are weak, they shouldn't be underestimated. Anomalies are called anomalies because they have something that breaks the rules of the world."

"..."

'Yeah gem gets it.'

"Yawn..."

"..."

'tired? You've only spent half of the day so far.'

[But half a day was spent in the mornings in a maliciously deceptive dungeon and the other half traveling non-stop. Not everyone is immortal like you.]

"Just a bit exhausted, not physically but more so mentally. Let's find an inn and crash for the night."

'hmm... gem thinks It would be smarter too check on the progress The mercenaries made in the dungeon. We can use the royalty benefits to get a better lodging.'

[Actually, if you made enough from royalties you can take the teleporter to a big city and rest there.]

"..."

'why would we do that?'

[Trust me, it's worth it.]

"..."

'Gem still highly doubts you.'

[Uh... Well it doesn't matter to me. If you pass on it...you pass on it.]

...

"So you're telling me, our royalties decreased from 0.5% to 0.01%?"

"Correct."

"... If you weren't the representative of business in the mercenary outpost... I so would want to stab you."

"Don't be like that, think in the other direction."

"What's there to think about! All you told me was that several parties that left are presumed dead now with only 6 alive in the aftermath. And those six survived because they left early!"

"Yes."

"What's good about that!"

"Difficulty."

"... If you don't start making sense, I might just stab you."

"Ahem, It was clearly stated the royalties would decrease to the inverse proportion of difficulty the dungeon poses. Why do you think we do this? Profit. Dungeons of higher scaling difficulty give less royalties to beneficiaries as the profits made in those dungeons are much higher than low difficulty dungeons with high royalty percentages. In exchange the total amount of 5% royalty is now shared to more people involved in finding and the eventual capture of the dungeon. Even if the dungeon were not to be captured either because the profits posed inside far outweigh the dissolution of a dungeon or has the potential to grow. The royalty profits will always b greater than what you had originally."

"... You still didn't answer my question. Just said facts to draw my attention to thinking it's an answer."

"Ignore the small technicalities, be happy you're making more money."

"...Where's my sword."