Fia Rush and Island Greendew talked for a few hours, and in the end it proved quite fruitful, from Fia’s perspective. She now knew that her Dungeon was within the Kingdom of Alldredge’s territory, but it was also really close to a point where three borders met. There were some arguments over which kingdom owned the land her dungeon was on, the two kingdoms south of Alldredge, Aldwell and Abeatia, each claiming they owned it. Fia herself had been spending the last two years in Abeatia, slowly heading north from her homeland, which was even further south of Abeatia.
She herself wasn’t as familiar with the kingdom of Alldredge, though from the little she learned in Abeatia, it seemed that the kingdom was a meritocracy who favored higher leveled Awakened for positions of power. Nobles in Alldredge only kept their land if they raised an heir that reached them or surpassed them in level, rather than passing it on through the family regardless of ability. In some ways, it was an unstable system, with titles, land, and houses always changing. In other ways, it was held stable by the very fact that high-level Awakened didn’t just come around and take land through force.
Fia wasn’t much into politics, and with no education to speak of, she couldn’t claim to know the ins-and-outs of it all. She’d have to learn, she suspected, if she were to deal with this country from now on. But the important part was that it meant two things for her; one, while Alldredge’s military might and average Awakened ratio was higher than nearby kingdoms, higher leveled Awakened were more likely to be in positions of power rather than adventuring, and thus it was less likely she’d have any high leveled Awakened invading her dungeon. Secondly, it meant that she’d had a lot of lower-leveled Awakened invading her dungeon trying to level up and climb the social ladder. Stronger people like nobles wouldn’t bother coming to crush her just for culling some of their own children’s future competition.
It was a stark contrast to Abeatia’s own class-based magocracy, where different classes had different social standing regardless of level. A level 100 [Warrior] was lower in social standing than a level 10 [Mage], there. As a [Bandit], Fia would have had trouble in any kingdom, but she especially had it hard traveling through Abeatia, not able to stay at inns or receive help from other travelers.
The more important information was about Alldredge’s Adventurer’s Guild. Guilds were a common thing across most kingdoms and countries in the world, as far as she was aware. They were private entities that anyone could create, for the most part. Multiple Fellowships come together, buy a building, and proclaim themselves a Guild, then recruit even more people. Basically mercenaries. Usually they’d have dumb names like “The Moonlight Ravagers” or something, but the more general ones drew more people and would be successful for hundreds of years, rather than a couple of decades. Adventurer’s Guilds were an example of this, and almost every kingdom had one or two. They might work together with similar guilds from other countries, or they might not, but it was rare for a guild to be powerful enough to have a presence in multiple kingdoms.
Alldredge’s Adventurer’s Guild was one such exception. It was a huge guild that had no competitors in Alldredge, and had at some point in the past absorbed Aldwell’s guild, too. Abeatia’s Dungeoneering Society was a similar guild, and the two guilds were at odds.
The main purpose of Alldredge’s Adventurer’s Guild was to basically act as a mercenary company, doing mostly combat-related jobs for pay. If a village needed a goblin nest destroyed, they’d pitch in and give a contract to the guild, and a fellowship would come to the village to do the job. Secondarily, the Adventurer’s Guild would lay claim on dungeons to use as training grounds to level up their members. Dungeon claiming was very messy and different everywhere in the world, but in Alldredge, the kingdom itself held claim to a few dungeons for various purposes, but also let other guilds lay claim to dungeons if they were strong enough to hold on to the claim. As a result, the Adventurer’s Guild owned most of the dungeons in Alldredge, and they would very likely be interested in hers, too.
Dungeons were a very, very important resource in the world. Sure, some resources could be found out in the natural world, but they were rarer and scarcer, and it was much harder to create a mine than delve a dungeon for ore and ingots that would naturally replenish. Greendew had even gone off on a tangent to tell her that some scholars thought there were resources that would take millions of years to form naturally, and thus could not be mined out from the earth due to the world being less than half a million years old since Creation. The only reason some resources existed at all was due to them being magically created at some point in the past, either by gods or mortals, and then replicated in dungeons.
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It was vitally important for many different industries that resources from dungeons be distributed, and thus Alldredge’s Adventurer’s Guild would delve dungeons, level up from combat, and gather loot, then sell the materials to the kingdom, other guilds such as various [Merchant] guilds, or even directly to stores, lumber mills, blacksmiths, whatever. It depends on the materials found in the dungeon, obviously.
If Fia’s dungeon were to produce a lot of spidersilk, for example, it would be harvested and sold off to merchants, clothiers, tailors, seamstresses, and the like. If her dungeon started producing enough, it could even cause a shift in the fashion of the kingdom. Curtains, clothing, bedding, wagon covers, tents, and more, all made of spidersilk. It could also anger other industries, such as agricultural industries producing cotton and wool. She found the idea intriguing, and wondered if angry [Farmers] and [Druids] would attempt to destroy her core at some time in the future. Not to mention the fact that once she started producing more powerful monsters, the chitin exoskeletons from higher level spiders, and venom too, could be used for different things.
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As the information-gathering part of the deal wore down, a shift in topic became necessary.
“So, you said you’d use me as an ‘errand boy.’ Nomenclature aside, what exactly do you need?”
“I can’t go to towns and cities, for obvious reason.” Fia said. “There are many things I’d like to have, but I think right now my most vitally pressing need is lighting. I have no source of it, and I cannot see perfectly in the dark. The deeper depths of my dungeon, areas you haven’t seen yet, are pitch black to even me.”
Greendew nodded and shifted uncomfortably. The both of them had been sitting on the stone floor of the cave’s entrance room, talking for hours. Greendew seemed interested in the deal enough to go on at length and prove he was willing to uphold his side of the bargain, at least for the information side of things. If he had been short and attempted to rush things, Fia would have been worried he was just trying to get out as fast as possible. Maybe he’d actually make a good business partner.
“And you said you’d pay me? You have the gold?”
“I am not wealthy yet, but it should be enough.” Fia actually had a decent enough amount to buy things. She had three coin purses originally, but she did talk Island into going back to their camp and getting the four other coin purses from the fallen adventurers and giving them to her, with the promise he’d get them back. He obviously knew she’d be duplicating them somehow, though she chose not to share the exact mechanism. She did not want to just duplicate coin pouches for him every day.
With it all counted, Fia ended up with 104 gold coins, 313 silver coins, and 629 copper coins, which was not a terrible sum at all. The original three coin purses she had were the most full, leading her to assume they had belonged to [Merchants] or something that got ambushed by the previous arachne inhabitants of the cave.
The deal she ended up working out with Greendew was that he’d take the full sum of coins in her possession back to a nearby town, from there he’d buy her some supplies, and bring them back. Then, she’d give him the same amount to keep for himself as payment. It would be a few days before he made it back with all the gear, but that’s fine with her.
“Is this really necessary?” The elf, Island Greendew, asked, giving Fia an incredulous look.
“It is. I don’t think I can just give it to you. They won’t bite. Well, they will, but it won’t be venomous.”
Greendew turned to look back towards the six coin purses on the ground, each with a [Web Weaver] on top. Fia wasn’t exactly sure about the hidden mechanics of the [Loot Room], but the line “taken out of the dungeon by intruders” led her to believe the items had to be taken out of the dungeon by something considered an enemy. If she allied with Greendew too much, he might not be considered an intruder. To be fair, he hasn’t left the dungeon since he first entered, so the last message about him entering had called him an intruder. But she was going to be safe about it and give him a token struggle in the form of combat.
“Look, they can’t really hurt you. They aren’t even Awakened.”
Greendew sighed and eventually gathered up the courage to go take the coin purses away from her spiders. It almost caused her a small amount of sadistic joy to see how uncomfortable he was with her second weakest summon, but it also made her a little sad when he killed them and she got the kill notifications. On the bright side, she wouldn’t have to resummon them individually herself. [Monster Core] meant that they would respawn at her dungeon core.
With that taken care of, the elf finally left her dungeon. He had held his end of the bargain so far, and she had held hers. He hadn’t been harmed, he had been released from the dungeon, and she planned on having future dealings with him.
Now, time to see what the [Clockwork Spider Thief] can do.