After asking that question, the Three Generals started to talk with each other, completely excluding Lariel from the talks although he had been called over. But Lariel did not mind. It was their party, and he was just there as an extra. Let them make the decisions.

If I don't like it, I can just ignore it, was his train of thought.

He then proceeded to make his way to the center of the now completely rebuilt cave. He did not know when it happened, but all the damage caused by the fight was gone, and now, only a chest remained, smacked down in the middle of the cave.

Lariel had already noticed it of course but had been waiting for anyone to go there and claim it. He was sure the rest had seen it because when he started to make a move for it, most of the party looked at him, the three leaders included.

The chest was small. Smaller than the ones they had to keep their belongings in the orphanage. It was clearly a wooden one, but it had gold stripes around it, and that alone made it worth something. It was around half a meter in-depth, it was half a meter thick, and had half of that in width, so there were quite a lot of possibilities to what could be inside.

He approached and tried to identify it, expecting nothing but a simple Chest identification. What he got was more interesting, but nonetheless useless in regards to what it held inside.

Identification: Common Reward Chest. Dungeon Item.

Knowing that it was of Common rarety did not please Lariel all that much. There were reports that an Uncommon chest could appear on this boss floor, albeit having a lower chance of doing so. The classification of it being a Dungeon Item also failed to surprise him. Although it made him curious as to why the tree he had identified previously was not classified as a Dungeon Tree.

Problems to another time I guess...

There were no advantages relating to thinking about it now. It made no difference whatsoever to him, so he kind of didn't care.

He stopped right in front of it. It truly was small. He couldn't even fit his armour in there, so he wasn't expecting much in terms of loot. The fact that it was Common also did not contribute to Lariels excitement.

Common was a tag given to the chests that were... well, most common, and it was generally connected with what was worse. It was the equivalent to the Basic prefix on skills. There was a small chance of containing anything Uncommon and even a smaller chance of having anything from higher ranks.

The Uncommon tag was slightly rarer, but it was rather frequent for you to find chests of that rarety. There was a small chance that it contained both Common things and Rare things, but it was still possible.

This was true for every chest rank above it as well, be it Epic, Mythical, Legendary, Forgotten, or Ancient, it always worked the same way. High chance for things of that rank to appear, and an exponentially lower chance for things of lower or higher rank to appear.

Lariel stopped wondering about what you be inside such a small chest and crouched down to open it. There was no key entrance, no mechanism stopping him from opening, no secret trap or anything. Lariel just grabbed the top of the chest and opened it. What was inside... did not surprise him.

He could see a couple of gold and silver coins at the bottom, but besides that, there was only one other thing. A book. A magic book apparently, since it was clearly emanating a small amount of Mana that Lariel could detect with his skill. He then proceeded to grab the book and got up, reading what was written on its cover.

It was a book like any other else, despite the fact it was magical. It had a simple leather cover, with two words written in Golden on it.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Advanced Enchanting... Lariel read. This was actually great for him since he was planning on going for Enchanting, which, unlike Runesmithing, did not need a specific class for it. The only problem with receiving this book was that you could not start Enchanting straight with an Advanced book. You needed to start with the Beginner one, and it was still going to be a while before Lariel could buy it. After all, a book like that cost several platinum coins, which he had none.

He glanced at the contents of the chest again and decided that he would let the party get the coins. He had the storage ring, so it wasn't completely impossible for him to get that amount of money in a couple of days.

He stored the book inside of his ring and stepped away from the chest, therefore allowing the curious party members to approach. They did that and looked wide-eyed at the insides of the chest.

Ivan looked at him with an asking type of look. Lariel nodded at him, which caused the leader to ask two of the party members to collect the money, and telling the rest of them to prepare to move out.

Lariel just stood there, on the sidelines, waiting for the decision of the leaders. He didn't have to wait long, because after telling the rest of the party to prepare to leave, Ivan then quickly discussed a couple of things with Ezekiel and Kan, then proceeding to move towards Lariel.

"We are moving out now. Since you lost your weapon, I advise you to stay next to Kan, serving as mage support," he said after he got closer. "We are heading straight out of the Dungeon, and we want to be as quick as possible since we are all tired."

"Fine by me," was all Lariel said before both moved towards the door that was located in the same area from where they had entered. After you defeated the boss, you needed to go back and then go through the door again to proceed to the next floor. They, of course, did not want to continue to the next floor, so when they exited to the fifth floor, they proceeded towards the door that led to the fourth floor, avoiding the goblin village they had last passed through the last time. Meeting another Warlord was not on their plans.

After a while, they finally found themselves in the known plains and prepared to enter the fourth floor. They were a bit hesitant since they would enter a quadruple village. As such, they decided to rest for a while to max out their stamina. There was no party around, having already passed midnight, and as such, Lariel found it weird when he saw five people moving towards them from the woods. They did not seem tired. It even looked like they had yet to fight since they had entered the Dungeon.

Their clothes were clean, their weapons as well, and their faces showed no signs of stress. As such, Lariel was not surprised when they simply passed through them and into the third floor, sparing them only a glance. He actually managed to hear one of them talk.

"Rock, you go first", was what he had heard from a female woman that was speaking towards a huge man.

They all wore armor, but some had no helmets. Unfortunately though, Lariel couldn't catch the details of their features.

He eyed Ivan, who looked back at him.

"Want to follow them?" Lariel asked. Ivan seemed to be thinking the same thing because he answered rather quickly.

"Why not?"

They all moved after that, entering the third floor ready to fight any enemy that might appear. Instead of the battle they thought was happening there, they found nothing but dead Goblins and no traces of the party that had entered the floor moments before.

Did they kill them all?!

Lariel looked around, amazed by the sheer power the party probably had to be able to massacre this amount of Goblins in nothing but scarce minutes. Despite the shock of finding such a scenario, they moved forwards, wanting to leave the dungeon as soon as possible, and if they now had a party in front of them that could kill all Goblins in their path, they would take advantage of the situation.

As such, they found themselves outside of the dungeon in a record time for all of them. It was a cloudy night, no stars could be seen, only one of the two moons actually appeared in the sky.

They proceed to the orphanage, passing the deserted streets of the city with tired legs and minds. It had been a hard day. A hard second day to be specific. They had all been in this adventuring thing less than three full days, and they had already been close to death more times than they felt proud to admit. Of course, their progress was also faster than the common party, but most didn't begin to train at such young ages and were not that quick to throw their life to hell for a chance to level up faster.

They greeted the orphanage guard, apologizing for arriving at such late hours, and proceeded to change clothes and go to bed, wondering what the next day would bring.

Lariel's thoughts were more directed towards that powerful adventuring party that managed to clear a quadruple Goblin village in less than two minutes.

Will I ever have become powerful enough to do the same? Or will I die in my attempts to do so? was Lariel's last thoughts before he fell asleep.