The next day

After an eventful night, Grant took the time to enter the line early in the morning to sign the forms indicating his familiar.

"Yeah, yesterday I forgot to sign the applications in regard to having a familiar. Sorry about that."

"No it's fine. What kind of familiar do you have?"

"You didn't hear? That's surprising. I have a honeybear. The name is Ursa Honey, as filled into the form."

The worker's eyes lit up upon hearing that statement. "Oh, so you're the one who was handing out honey beer on an escort. The merchant caravan you were with brought in a new load on honeybeer, and there were whispers of a honeybear. May I ask where it is currently?"

Grant grinned. "Right here" he tapped his back pocket.

"You know spatial magic?"

"Oh, y'know, only what's necessary."

The guild worker nodded. "If you don't mind, would you have him come out then?"

With a simple nod, Honey Ursa popped out, and as he did so, a fresh smell entered the tavern, with many turning his direction.

The honey bear was holding a fresh batch of honey corn muffins, looking around curiously, before moving to the guild lady, offering her a muffin.

Although she was surprised by the pop out bear, she quickly settled, and laughed as she took a muffin.

"Wow! This is scrumptious. Thank you!" she said happily to the honey bear, smiling as she munched on the muffin.

The bear nodded, satisfied, before promptly devouring the other four muffins on his own.

Grant heard some grumbles for sure, but chose to ignore those. Honey would probably start giving stuff away for free if he let him. Not good to set such a precedent for such a young bear.

After filling out the form, Grant handed the worker the application before leaving, with Honey Ursa in tow.

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Grant had come to the town for one reason, and that was fun. The divine Earth technique essentially made it so he would live to 600, so a few decades spent out in the corner of nowhere was just fine for him.

Of course, there was some stuff that he wanted to get done while he was out here. Much like the rest of the world, everything had a secret, no matter how obscure or far out the place is. And this place had enough secrets to keep him entertained for a while.

In fact, today he was setting out to do one of those things.

Leaving the outpost, Grant waved at latter guard from the day before, as well as a new guard since the former guard had left his station. Wonder how long it'd take for them to find him.

The latter guard gave him a weird look, mixed feelings on his face but didn't stop Grant nonetheless. Hopefully his wife was feeling better.

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Grant hadn't brought much food with him, but not much was needed in the first place. Cultivators don't need to eat for days at a time, and unless Grant was planning to spend a whole month out, he didn't need food.

Taking a calm walk through the woods, Grant didn't meet anything particularly strong, just as one would expect of a outpost for new adventurers. The goblins, wolves, an orc or two. Not what Grant was looking for, but hey, free money was free money.

Eventually, Grant came to the head of a cave, a rather innocent looking cave, but Grant knew better.

He had found a dungeon.

There are multiple ways to define a dungeon, and thus there are multiple kinds of dungeons. The bottom of a castle, a living organism, a prison to lock greater beings away, a place for a relic to test for an appropriate new user.

This little cave was actually the final one.

Now, Grant already had his fair share of relics, with his favorite self-acting sword being one. The sword of Frey, like many relics, had cultural and folk lore relevance.

But a little treasure hunting is always a good bit of fun.

Wandering into the dungeon, Grant was immediately met with a poisonous gas to the face.

it wasn't apparent of course, being a colorless, odorless, and even being a seemingly irrelevant gas, The less experienced would ignore it and move on. Grant had seen something similar, two centuries ago, from a rare plant that had seemingly gone extinct. Of course, clearly the same may not apply to this world.

"A tricky one huh? I look forward to seeing what relic this is." Grant licked his lips in relish. This dungeon seemed like it intended on being a subtle kind.

Grant returned the favor, merely walking through the gas, while seemingly being unaffected all the while. He was allowing the mask to remain impermeable, while generating air directly inside his lungs through magic.

To the outside view, it looked like he merely waltzed through the corridor, only stopping to pick up the flower in question, and storing them in his domain for later use.

The seemingly natural cavern changed, slowly shifting from debris and rock to carved stone, with a rather ancient looking texture. Perhaps middle ages? Hard to tell in a world with different history.

Arriving at the end of the corridor, humming a happy tune, Grant looked at the acid filled swamp before him.

"I take that back" corrected Grant, looking at the bubbling little surprise. "From subtle to extravagant. I wonder what this relic could be? Perhaps a costume of sorts." Those were usually the extravagant sorts. They loved their acting. Knives usually just wanted to stab someone. An overcoat? Perhaps an alchemist uniform?

Taking a stick out to poke the acid, he chuckled.

Whoosh

Foosh

With a simple twist of his hand, the branch managed to just barely dodge the poison dipped arrows that had flown seemingly out of the dark.

"Arrows hmm?"

Looking at the miniature swamp, Richard scanned for anything alive, besides the plants. No monsters.

While there were no monsters, Grant saw blocks, worn by either age or acid, seemingly strewn throughout the acid swamp. Each block a few meters away from the other.

"Parkour it is then. Y'know, you have rather high standards?" Grant called out to the darkness. "How do you expect someone to cross this huh? You probably killed all your potential users." Grant addressed this to the relic of course, who likely set this up to challenge a proper master, but Grant could not help but smirk at the thought. This relic was out in the middle of nowhere, and clearly was not in the right place for s class adventurers to consider this zone a worthwhile hunting ground.

Grant walked through the swap, jumping effortlessly through the acid swamp, arrows whizzing, and even dropping boulders encroached upon his personal space and yet he seemingly walked through it all.

Grant's first sect was one that specialized in foot techniques after all. And although the techniques had been flawed, especially amongst the higher tiers of cultivation, that had not stopped him from sharpening and improving his own footwork.

What was particularly fun was how hard the relic had tried, making this swamp, as he found multiple herbs littered through the swamp. Perhaps traps, meant to tempt the foolish? A helpless desire the spread the herbs in own work. A reward even, for the hard working, should they fail to complete the dungeon.

Of course, Grant took all of it.

Grant was greedy. If he could, he would take everything he could get.