But before we could get to the last boss room of the 4th floor the person that had been hatefully staring at me finally couldn't hold it any longer. “Tom why are we trusting this outsider he’s just a farmer and doesn’t know anything. I understand that we would lose a lot of the raiding slots if we hire the adventurers that have come from the portal but you can’t honestly think that he could tank one of those minotaurs.” I had expected an outburst but the absolute venom that was in his voice was a surprise to me and again it was not the guy from before.

There was a silence that was only broken by people shifting their view from me to the person that spoke and to Tom. I looked towards them and saw that Tom was quite displeased about this situation, but he also didn’t have many options on how to respond. Many people would call the person that spoke out a dick and he certainly was one but he also had a good reason.

A similar situation from a long time ago came to mind when I was that dick and I was the one to call someone out. When I did it, I just wanted to protect the team that was going with me into a deadly situation like this one here. The silence was pretty long so the man continued. “How do we even know that he can taunt the minotaur they are not so easily swayed and defending against them requires more than just stats and good equipment.” I could see he wanted to continue but I cut off his rant.

“How about a demonstration then.” That shut him up and I quickly put my helmet back on and strapped my new shield onto my arm. He looked a bit confused and before anything happened Bert tried to diffuse the situation. “There is no need for this we can figure something else out, but I can promise you that Rich can deliver what we need.” Bert’s loud voice carried over everyone, but I could see that a lot of the fighters were nervous about my presence here.

I could understand their feelings I was an unknown and there were only promises that I could deliver but no actual proof of my capabilities. I looked towards the person that confronted me and said using all my relevant abilities including taunt. “Fight me.” My voice was powerful, but it only affected one person. I could see his eyes going a bit cloudy and I knew that it had worked.

I quickly slipped between the curtains and only had time to take three steps back before a sword cut a hole through them exposing me to the now maddened fighter. I was a bit disappointed that it seems that there was still a reason behind those eyes it was just that that reason was focused on killing me. I had already flooded my armour and shield with my ability boosting their defences and I quickly started to defend the flurry of blows some without abilities but a lot of them with abilities.

The curtains were quickly pulled back and now the entire one side of the debriefing room was opened to the training grounds, but I was currently focused on defending. The fighter was good, and I actually had to work to defend myself. But he wasn’t going to be able to get through my shield.

I saw Tom speaking something to the small mage Luana. Soon a spell hit the man that was attacking me. It took only a few moments before his eyes started to clear. I am guessing that they didn’t want him to use up too much energy before the fight.

But before the fight finished I used his moment of confusion when my taunt ability finally broke to attack him. This wasn’t a real attack I wasn’t planning on even hitting him, but I was going to demonstrate how much power I could exert.

I pumped huge amounts of power into the sword so much that it glowed quite brightly. And then just before it hit his head I stopped my strike but I could still see the shock and fright in his eyes. He was just an inch away from my blade but even then the shockwave that came from me stopping the attack pushed him to the ground and made a small wave of dust sweep across the practice arena.

There was another moment of silence, but I dropped my two-handed sword because I didn't have a way to store it and extended my hand to the prone fighter. He hesitated for a moment but soon a smile formed on his face, and he accepted my hand and I pulled him up. I looked towards Tom and nodded, and he smiled and nodded back. “Now that that’s out of the way let’s get back to the business of trying to clear this dungeon.”

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After that statement from Tom everyone got back into their spots and the debriefing continued. Apparently, this three-boss room was the breaking point and if you were able to get past this all that was left to do was manage your resource expenditure and you would most likely be able to clear the dungeon.

Then came another surprise apparently this dungeon would need to be cleared multiple times but when a certain unknown number was reached the dungeon will disappear from this location and will appear someplace else in a few years.

When I learned this, I was kind of itching to read the book I was given but I will not risk bringing it out anywhere near other people. I will need to wait until I get back to my farm. I am also expecting that this book was given to me as a test to see how reliable I can be. It was interesting to hear all the strategies on how to conserve energy and mana. Unfortunately, only a few of them help me a little I had figured most of it out on my own.

Another amazing thing about raid dungeons was that they actually dropped loot at a more reasonable rate. For example, every monster and boss dropped a core and from bosses, you could get material drops from the monster's body and those were usually extremely expensive.

Raid contribution was decided by a bracelet that was given out to everyone that would examine the impact every person made and then give appropriate rewards. Tom did say that almost 40% was allocated to the company after that the 60% was divided between the fighters.

I wondered if this counted towards my rewards or if it was just extra. I guess only time will tell. But time was also quite ruthless, and it was finally time for final preparations. We went to the training grounds and a lot more people started to show up. Some were testing the fighter’s equipment while others brought consumables like potions.

Every person was allocated three healing potions, two energy supply potions, one poison resistance for one of the boss fights and one fire resistance potion for another boss fight. Anyone who used mana also received 4 mana supply potions.

It was an incredible amount of wealth but I did a bit of calculation and all this spent money will be earned back from clearing half of the first floor. The floors after that will be a lot more profitable than the first one.

There was an incredible amount of wealth to be gained from this dungeon and I could now understand why people were coming here through portals. But wealth wasn’t the only reason why people wanted to delve into the dungeon every monster down there was first rank and that meant a lot of experience for levels.

For example, Bert had gotten to first rank from the first raid and so had many others from the company and with this second raid they were hoping for a lot more of them will rank up making the next raids even easier.

This will of course give the company a lot more power which they will need to stay neutral in the power struggles to come. When there was half an hour to go until our time slot, I noticed a lot of druids showed up and a lot more people after that with different kinds of ingredients. In the middle of that group was Bert and then they started some kind of complicated ritual or spell.

It took them 15 minutes to complete it and every raid member glowed greenish-yellow for a moment. I could feel incredible strength flowing into me and when I looked at my stats it showed that every single one of them had been boosted by about 20%.

I could feel that this boost did other things as well and I could see Bert’s personal defender going close to him. Her sole mission during the raid was to make sure that nothing hit him because if it did, we would lose this boost.

Everyone was excited and ready for a fight, and I could feel the familiar rush coming over me. With every passing minute, I got more excited and ready for a fight. There were five minutes to go as we started to move out in the formation, we were going to tackle the first room.

When we made it to the dungeon entrance it was an elaborate design that kind of resembled ancient roman building style with columns. The stairs up led to a portal that was in between two columns glowing ominously.

We waited a few minutes and suddenly dozens of people started to come out of the dungeon portal. I could see happy faces and from the discussions, I could hear that it was the Queen's raid party. It didn't take us long to figure out that they had gotten past the three-boss room, but they had taken too long and were unable to clear the dungeon. But everyone knew that they would be able to do it the next time.

Suddenly Tom's voice was heard by all. “Did you hear this, it means that the first clear will still be ours let's make it happen today.” Straight after that, a war cry came out from everyone including myself. It was so infectious. I could see the portal shift and then a command echoed in my mind. For a moment I was surprised but we all started to move forward following the command.

I quickly figured out that Tom had added me to something similar to what my commander's ability did. There was another surge of power, but it was a lot smaller than the druid one, but I quickly figured out the best part of this ability. It granted us the capability of speaking to each other with our minds. It was limited but will be good enough for a command structure.