I repeated the whole money to gem thing till I exhausted half of the shops and Sen. No, I didn’t buy all the gems. I just bought one gem from each store to avoid suspicions. Apparently, Sen was more concerned than shocked.

“We had so much money all along?” She wondered. “And you really love eating gems huh?” She’d say every now and then. She almost sounded like an NPC at times, repeating the same line over and over again.

My health and mana bars were full, I’d leveled up my magic a considerable bit and with magic state, my max MP increased too. But strangely, my stats didn’t increase a second time for the same gem and size.

Level: 16

Strength: 12

Speed: 13

Mana: 28

Stamina: 6

Luck: 1

HP: 61/61

MP: 150/150

Granted, they hadn’t improved as much as I would have liked but at least they improved. If I kept doing this over and over again for days, I could probably increase all my stats depending on the gemstone purity and size.

Even I wasn’t feeling that grindy though, at least not today. “Let’s head to the dungeon,” I said.

One major perk of this body was heat or cold didn’t bother me. That was mostly true for my slime body. However, even in my human form, temperature issues weren’t a thing. Maybe it was because they were in spring or something? No, Sen was sweating buckets as was most people around me, so it was probably summer.

“Now?” Sen sighed. “Shouldn’t we have lunch first?” It was close to the afternoon and although I didn’t feel any hunger, she did.

Well, this is going to be annoying.

I bought her food from a street vendor who was selling grilled fish and after she ate, I let her rest for ten minutes. Then we headed out, or would have if the guards hadn’t stopped us outright.

“No Id, no exit,” the man said. “We can’t have ladies running around and get eaten, I’ll literally lose my job miss!”

Sigh.

If I was a guy, I wouldn’t have to go through this. But they’d stop me on the other side when I was going to come back.

I could just change my body but that seemed to be somewhat inconvenient considering one of these guards could have really good memory and assume I was a monster or something. Well, I am one. Changing my face at will would have been such a damn good ability but… sigh.

So, Sen and I ran to the local guild, got ourselves some IDs (Lowest rank adventurers) and came back to the gates. This time, they grumpily let us out. If something happened to us, it was the guild’s problem now, not theirs. Actually, I’d read the guild rules and if any adventurer died on the job, they weren’t going to be held liable, so technically it wasn’t their problem either.

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I didn’t really care though. Officially we were here to beat the sense out of some goblins and bring back their dicks which were used as medicine. No, I wasn’t making that up. Apparently, eating goblin groins was a thing and were highly prized aphrodisiacs. Their juices were even more prized but I wasn’t depraved enough to sell those. I already had an infinite money glitch anyway.

I dawned on a rather odd idea. My body was that of a slime’s. Of course, I looked human and had functioning organs but what was going to happen if I let’s say, lost something. Would the organ fall off and die? Or would it just reattach?

I cut the tip of my finger. It stung just a little and blood trickled out. Didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would though.

[Damage -4 HP] Well, that’s a lot of damage for a fucking fingertip.

[Bleeding inflicted!]

Well, that wasn’t good. Bleeding made me take 1 HP damage every minute. The fallen part didn’t turn to a slime and it wasn’t reattaching either.

“What the fuck are you even doing?” Sen grumbled.

There wasn’t anyone around, but I still used birdseye view to keep an eye out. I picked up the tip, partially transformed my finger into that of a slime’s and tried reattaching it but didn’t work. So, I absorbed the finger.

I got 3 HP back and the bleeding status ended on its own thanks to my minor healing. So, technically I can easily die in this body.

Didn’t that mean I could have easily died while facing that thin man?

Oh, scary stuff!

“Exploring, so I don’t screw up when it matters,” I said. “Why do monsters don’t invade right away when humans aren’t expecting,” I said.

“They do, and we expect that.”

“If they attack right now, they’ll catch the city unguarded.”

“They just attacked last week. They can’t attack even if they wanted to. They need to first make new ones.”

Dungeons never disappeared. They only appeared. But almost all of them appeared near human civilizations. Perhaps to control human population? Or perhaps they loved fresh food. When a dungeon first appeared, it usually only had 2 or at best three floors. These floors would have typical everyday monster which any normal warrior could defeat. But then given enough time, deeper floors would emerge and in time, stronger monsters which would require strong multiple fighters. But there was a way to control that. Periodically inflict severe damage to the dungeon, forcing it to spend its resources to repopulate its dying floors rather than make new ones.

This was particularly why adventurers existed. They would hunt in the dungeon and keep the dungeon in check. Meanwhile the guild would pay them from the tax they collected of the general people (who just wanted to stay safe), and they’d also take a cut.

But if adventurers were the enemies of dungeons, how come dungeons actively encouraged humans to plunder it? Why was it producing high quality materials and gems and stuff?

Almost like the damn thing’s sentient and has a goal.

It didn’t take long for us to reach the dungeon. It had a way bigger opening than the cave I crawled out off. And there were people here of the rugged variety. Men, women, even children. No, those were probably just hobbits or half lings or whatever. There were definitely teenagers here though. I was one of them, maybe?

“Miss are you looking for a party?” one of the handsome teenagers, (eighteen?) approached me. Red hair, decent build and pretty handsome. He had three girls behind him. All good looking. Dude’s already made a harem and wants a new entry.

“No. But this is my first time here. Got any tips?”

“Hmm… then-” he was about to say something but one of the girls cut in in front of him.

“Don’t go in too deep. It’s not safe for girls down there.”

“Okay, thanks.”

That said, we walked past the crowd. They were apparently selling information to one another and not just information, they were also exchanging materials here. Why? Because if they handed it over to the guild like they were required to, the guild would charge them a convenience fee. Tax evasion innit?