Ahri sat at her workbench filled with various glassware filled with unknown liquids that gave off many different smells and odors, some boiled without a heat source and others froze the objects holding them and a small area of the table they were on.

She sighed as the last of the material she was working on went up in smoke, with a quick spell the smells vanished along with the table as it slid behind a false wall, the wall closed with a thud which momentarily caused her to pause her incantation.

Once her spell was finished she was surrounded by multicolored lights before her appearance changed back into the middle-aged woman she appeared to be when she first met Lucifer, after changing into her apprentice robes she began chanting once again and once this spell was completed she vanished completely, several moments later the door creaked open the closed itself.

Ahri walked through the dungeons the first floor and exited the dungeon without anyone noticing her and only had to make a few quick sidesteps to avoid jumpy adventurers.

She walked past the barricades that surrounded the entrance and saw the new city that was starting grow from the once barren area of only a few months ago, platoons of earth mages spent massive amounts of effort to flatten the area where the city now stood, the dungeon entrance is situated part of the mountain that has a gentler incline, but this meant that even with the considerable effort of the earth mages the ground was still sloped upwards the closer you came to the mountain peak.

However, this allowed the waterways to be installed much easier as the mages did not have to use any enchantments to force the water to go away from the city, this would mean that the slums area that is present in every city would not have sewage issues like most major cities because of poor maintenance of the complex enchantments that require skilled mages to repair.

Just outside the gates of the barricades dozens of merchants set up stalls to buy the goods adventurers obtained from the dungeon and sell things adventurers would need inside the dungeon, Ahri watched these merchants with their bored expressions and gave a nod of satisfaction to herself.

The adventurer guild was supposed to take care of buying and selling the dungeon's loot that adventurers obtained, the fact that the merchants that would set up temporary stalls outside of dungeons were having poor business meant that the adventurers guild was doing its job properly.

Normally the adventurers guild takes a small cut from anything they buy from adventurers by buying the items slightly cheaper than they are worth, however, the adventurers are willing to be paid slightly less for the security the guild provides, the guild does not ask where someone obtained loot because most adventurers would like to keep any profitable information to themselves and the amount of people that suddenly go missing after trading something valuable with other unaffiliated buisnesses is far higher than the adventurers guild, also the guild is almost always fair when making trades for items, so uneducated adventurers or ones that simply don't have the experience required to properly judge the worth of an item can still sell their items with confidence because adventurer guilds that break the trust they have with the adventurers tend to end up very quickly replaced with less than friendly means by the adventurer guilds enforcement teams.

The guild itself is rather well known to have fanatics that work for the inner sections of the guild that put most religious zealots to shame with the extremes they will go to for something they believe in, most of the population have no idea what it is they believe in except "they believe that humanity must band together with the other intelligent races to defeat the magical beasts and take back their lands", which most people have no idea what that means but are thankful they have people making sure they are safe from magical beasts.

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It is these fanatics that keep the large corporations from trying to edge into the adventurer's guilds business, there are several instances of businesses backed by high nobles being crushed completely by small groups of adventurers, something which the country's leaders seem bizarrely fine with even when the nobles bloodlines completely vanished over the course of several days, since then no one is willing to try to compete with the adventurers guild except small independent store owners who would not be able to gather the attention of the guilds even if they tried.

While thinking of random things Ahri strolled around the city and took in the sights, most of the plots of land were still empty especially the shopping district which only had a dozen or so buildings for adventurers to buy armors and potions.

She walked into the alchemy shop after disabling her invisibility spell, once inside she saw glass cases full of rare ingredients and could feel the mana passively coming from the old man behind the desk that was strangely pure when it was coming from a human, Ahri tilted her head slightly and then wrote into the air with magic "why is such an accomplished alchemist in this small city",

The old man stroked his beard and casually replied "I like to move around", which seemed like a plausible answer considering most accomplished alchemist were slightly off in the head, however, this sounded wrong to Ahri so she wrote the list of ingredients she wanted and made sure to use the apothecary's names for the plants rather than the slang adventurers used.

His eyes widened for a moment before replying "I see your a fellow alchemist, I will get you the ingredients you require" then he spotted Ahri's expression and continued "if you really want to know why I am here then if you can answer my question I will tell you...", "... the question is red and blue and black all over"

Ahri was beginning to doubt her earlier assumption that this old man did not have a few screws loose, the answer that immediately came to mind was the Soutlg flower which was a rather rare ingredient that most alchemist would not know of, however she decided to give a different answer, she wrote in the air using magic and made sure to mirror the writing so the other person could read it,"an idiot who ate Soulscratcher leaf instead of mugwort to cure Silver fanged spider venom"

The old man looked at the writing for a moment then burst out laughing, "that was not the answer I was looking for but technically it is right and its the best answer I've ever received too." after he finished laughing he continued while clutching his sides "ok so you wanted an answer, fine I'll give you one but keep it a secret to other alchemists, it's not often you find something so valuable, perhaps once in a lifetime even when you are as old as I am" he gave a cough and looked around to make sure no one else was around then said "this dungeon is strange, I've been around for a long time and seen everything there is to see but I've never seen anything like this, there are species of plant inside that dungeon that does not exist anywhere else ahem, so you can see why an "accomplished alchemist" like myself can be found in this small city."

Ahri was surprised for a moment then asked: "have you made any new discoveries to the world of alchemy?"

He shook his head then replied "no that is not where my research is directed at right now", he saw her about to raise her hand to write again and answered her question she was about to write "I am trying to find a way to cultivate the new varieties of plants outside the dungeon" then sighed and continued "so far I have been unsuccessful, it seems that the plants require the specific environment of the dungeon to take root or grow, I am now trying to emulate the environment of the dungeon but it's quite difficult as dungeon studies is not my fortay. hmm considering your clothing you must be from the University, perhaps we can make a trade of sorts, I can give you several recipes I have gathered from my travels and you can give me some books on the subject of dungeons from people who are better suited for that field"

Ahri looked towards the man for a moment then replied: "I will ask my master" then left after taking and paying for her ingredients.

The old man smiled and asked under his breath "which one" as she closed the door behind her.