"That's impressive," Cassidy says as she examines the goods. "I take it you were able to get a new pack last night?"

"Yeah," I answer. "Replaced my gear with stuff that can withstand Category 5-1 Dungeons since I plan on doing those. Space is limited, but it'll let me bring back more materials than just what my [Dimensional Storage] would. This is just what I was able to take back with me with my space and the pack."

"The price on the crystals hasn't changed," she tells me. "Though it looks like there's a little bit more?"

"Just a few more, yeah," I confirm. "I kept some from yesterday's, but not any from today's."

"Have you done your Weekly yet?"

"Not yet," I answer. "Heading to Cole's after this to see about getting a storage item. It seems like my Weekly Dungeon will have plenty of materials in it based on the monster I'm to slay."

"Good luck," she says. "Let me appraise the crystals, then I'll start on your other boxes."

Cassidy begins scanning each crystal and once she finishes, opens up another box and examines what's in it with an eyebrow raised in amusement. After a moment, she snorts.

"Is there something wrong?" I ask.

"No," she smiles at me. "I'm just used to you being a scavenger, and coins are often one of the things looted most by hunters."

They're not the actually-valuable coins, which is why I brought them here. If they were made of gold, platinum, or a metal that's good for weapons, I'd be taking them to a forge to sell instead. They might be Tier 7, but things like nickle and tin won't sell too well at even at higher qualities.

Rather than weapons and gear for hunters, the metal from those coins will probably be used to make things for a more public use, such as wires or vehicles or something.

"There are jewels in there as well," I tell her. "The other box has some potions and scrolls I found in the Dungeon. Not much else was worth too much and I had limited space."

Potions and scrolls from within Dungeons can be resold at a shop like mine, if the shop wants to. I don't sell Dungeon potions and scrolls, though. They can be good for studying as well, and there are plenty of people who will buy consumables from a Dungeon, since they're generally safe if the item information window doesn't mention anything wrong with them.

With the jewels, they're all nonmagical so they're better for jewelry than hunters. There's no reason for me to keep them and jewelers buy from shops like the Skybound Loot, too.

Cassidy examines each coin and jewel, then scans them with her scanner. Once she finishes checking all of those, she begins inspecting the potions and scrolls, scanning them with her scanner, and tapping on the register screen to select finer details the scanner alone can't do.

"Alright," she looks at me. "This was just your Daily Dungeon run, right?"

"It was," I confirm.

"Can we expect you back later today with more?" She asks. "From your Weekly Dungeon?"

"Yes," I answer. "I'm not sure when, though. I'll probably do it after lunch and come either before or after dinner."

"Okay," she says. "The total value of your loot is $264,823.19. Will that be cash, direct deposit, or trade?"

While that might seem like a lot of money to people who don't deal with Awakened or who don't perform hunts or delve into Dungeons, hunters burn through cash quickly. Most of those earnings will be spent purchasing a storage item for me and some extra containers, for example.

"Direct, please," I say. "That will cover a storage item and some extra supplies."

I insert my card into the reader and after we finish the transaction, Cassidy hands me my receipt.

"Have a good day, Evan," she tells me. "Good luck with your work, and don't overwork yourself."

"I won't, don't worry," I smile at her. "I know my limits well. You have a good day."

I drive to the Skylock Forge, a large building with a hammer and anvil symbol on the sign outside, with rings, bracelets, and a sword decorating the wood around them. There's no one in the front area when I enter with the weapons I took from the Dungeon, but it doesn't take long for a woman to come out from the back.

She has crimson eyes and long, dark brown hair that's fixed up in a tight bun. Meredith is Cole's mother, and she's currently dressed in leather overalls with a brown shirt underneath. I wasn't expecting to see her here, she's an Awakened and usually takes the weekends off from working both in Dungeons and at the forge to relax.

Upon seeing me, a smile breaks out on her face.

"Hey, Evan," she says. "Cole says you Awakened?"

"After I closed up shop yesterday," I confirm. "Did a Daily Dungeon yesterday and another today. I'd like a storage item before going into my Weekly Dungeon, as it seems like it might have some good resources in it. Cole mentioned you have a two-cube and a three-cube bracelet available? Ones which will survive a Category 5-1 Dungeon?"

Two-cube and three-cube being the short names for the spaces. A two-cube space is a cube that's two feet on each side, while a three-cube is one that's three feet on each side.

"We do," she says. "It's $126,000 for the two-cube and $212,625 for the three-cube."

"The three-cube, please," I say.

I want as much storage space as possible to ensure I can collect as much loot as possible. That will benefit my shop the most, even if it costs a lot of money initially.

"I'll go get that for you," Meredith heads into the back, then returns after a minute with a metal bracelet.

The bracelet was forged of a dark grey metal alloy and is painted with similar-colored runes and markings. Its form is a slightly-rounded band with a small gap in the bottom, the two ends rounded and almost ball-like, but not much bigger than the thickness of the bracelet itself.

[Dimensional Storage Bracelet] Tier: 7 A spatial iron bracelet enchanted to contain a storage space 3' x 3' x 3' in size.

"I take it you're wanting to trade those in as well?" Meredith indicates the weapons.

"Yeah," I answer. "Since they're Tier 7, I figured you'd be interested here."

"We are," she says. "Materials that can withstand that level of energy in a Dungeon aren't common. Even as scrap, you can sell them to us for a decent amount."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

After Meredith does her appraises on the looted weapons, how much I need to pay for the bracelet drops by around $25,000.

"Thanks," I say as I slip the bracelet on around my right wrist. "Could you let Cole know I said 'hi'?"

"Sure thing," she answers. "He got caught up working on something or he'd have been out here to meet you. Have a good day, Evan!"

"You as well, Meredith," I say.

I leave and drive to the Hunter's Mall to pick up a few more items, including additional jars, buckets, and some cleaning cloths. Once I've purchased everything I need, I return home and pull on my now-empty pack, then access my Weekly Dungeon Quest.

The location is a damp forest where a light fog fills the air. Almost immediately, I can see reagents for alchemy. A tree has fallen nearby and mushrooms with blue caps and pale blue stems grow off of it. No monsters are immediately within view, though I cautiously walk around to check that the area is clear and find a large mushroom "growing" behind a tree.

It's up to about my knees in height and has a cap about two feet in diameter. The deep, rich blue of the cap is similar to that of the smaller ones which grew on the fallen tree and a novice adventurer might think it's just a giant version of those.

As an experienced scavenger, I've seen the remains of the spellcap lords a bit too much to fall for that. As an alchemist, I know that manacap mushrooms only grow to about two inches at the tallest, their caps around the same diameter as their height at the most. They also don't have small oddities on the sides of their stems.

The spellcap lord opens its eyes the moment I begin casting [Magic Missile], a pair of silver spots on its stem. Both of the oddities I noticed pull away from the stem, revealing themselves to be arms with hands.

[Magic Missile]s of the spellcap lord's own form in front of its hands, cast just a tad bit faster than my own. Or they would be, if my spell didn't begin casting three-quarters of a second earlier. It slams into the spellcap lord's cap and the monster finds itself pushed back as it loses hold of its casts, the forming [Magic Missile]s fading. Green blood begins to ooze out of the damaged spot.

The monster shakes itself for a moment, its green fluids splashing around as it does. It then holds its hands up and begins casting again, only for another [Magic Missile] to slam into the same spot as the first. My second attack doesn't push it back as far as the first one did, but it dishes out enough damage to kill the beast.

I pull out some rope and tie the remains of the spellcap lord up, hanging it upside-down from a tree branch with a bucket underneath it. Most of the beast is worthless, but its essence crystal and its blood-like fluid both have value. The essence crystal because it's an essence crystal, and the fluid because it can be used to make a potion which temporarily boost a person's magical power. It can also be used in making ink for magic scrolls.

That shouldn't take too long to drain so while that happens, I walk over to the fallen tree and examine the mushrooms.

[Manacap Mushroom] Tier: 7 A mushroom with a heavy amount of mana stored within its cap. Stored Mana: 3,318

Something I learned when I was twelve is that eating them by themselves is one hell of a trip. For people who don't have mana on their own, it's an even bigger trip. That wasn't something I learned by eating one, but from another scavenger trying to haze me.

I think he forgot the part where he's not supposed to eat them when trying to convince others to.

Though I'm curious… are there additional "hidden" benefits to being a Rank 5, even before we Awaken? I did eat one out of curiosity after the other scavenger showed me and I just felt a rush of energy in my body for a few moments before the mana was expelled from my system.

After collecting all of the manacap mushrooms on the log, I return to the hanging spellcap lord and check the flow. It's stopped leaking out, so I put a lid on the bucket and place it back into my storage bracelet. I then pull the mushroom monster down from the tree and untie it and remove its essence crystal. With a blue cleaning cloth in hand, I start wiping the crystal clean of the monster's fluids. Water forms where the cloth comes into contact with the juices, making it easier to wipe it clean.

I dry the essence crystal off, then place it into my bracelet before putting the clothes and twine away and continuing through the forest. A few minutes after that, I come across a bush with yellow berries shaped like lightning bolts hanging from it, another knee-high mushroom lurking nearby. Rather than a blue cap, this one has a yellow cap.

Sparks begin to form on the stuncap lord's cap after it realizes I'm casting a [Magic Missile], the creature peeling its arms away from its sides to hold them out toward me as glowing yellow motes begin to form in front of it. The monster is knocked backwards from the impact of my spell before it can propel its stunning spores toward me, preventing me from needing to worry about their effects. As it recovers from the more physical stun I gave it, I slam another [Magic Missile] into it.

The yellowish-green blood-like fluids of the stuncap lord holds different properties from those of the spellcap lord so I set it up to drain over a separate bucket while I harvest the berries.

[Shockbolt Berry] Tier: 8 A berry containing electrical power, shocking whatever takes a bite of it.

A Tier 1 shockbolt berry holds a lot of punch when bitten, and can even cause a mild shock on contact with skin for the first few minutes after being picked. One of the things I made sure to have in my pack was a pair of gloves good for handling such items, and I slip them on before plucking berries from the bush and placing them into a jar.

Were this not a Dungeon, I would be concerned over harvesting too much. Dungeons are magical pocket dimensions created by an unknown force, however, and aren't real ecosystems. Ones which do reappear have minor changes from the previous time they were run but what's harvested from them doesn't affect that.

In other words, it's okay for me to pick the bush clean of all of the ripe shockbolt berries.

I continue through the Dungeon after, collecting what loot I can, whether it be from the occasional giant mushrooms or the various plants I find throughout. By the time I locate the boss, I've nearly filled up my backpack, my storage bracelet, and my [Dimensional Storage] with essence crystals, berries, mushrooms, herbs, and buckets of spring water.

The stuncap king is much larger than the others, reaching up to my chest in height with a cap three feet in width. It's pretending to be just another oversized mushroom in a clearing with a few fallen trees with mushrooms growing on them, mushrooms growing on the trees around and in the ground of the clearing,some rocks with water bubbling out of them and into a small pond at their base, and bushes with berries on them.

I still have room for stuff in my storage but taking out the stuncap king without destroying at least some of the stuff here might be difficult. That makes it a question of what I'm okay with not being able to harvest here, if I don't want to draw the fight out for too long.

Do I really need to be concerned about that, though? This afternoon's haul is the largest I've ever had before and what I don't sell can be useful for my shop in a big way. I know how to effectively alter the potency of my brews – the reason I get consistent results with the traditional brewing method – so I can use the stuff of a very high quality from here to make much weaker potions.

It's just cheaper to buy the stuff that's Tier 1 in quality, which is why I usually stick to that if I can't scavenge the necessary reagents from a Dungeon.

I decide it's not worth it and begin casting [Fireball]. My haul is more than enough to last me some time.

The moment the stuncap king notices my casting, it stops pretending to be an oversized mushroom and opens its eyes while pulling its arms away from its sides. Spores begin to float out of its cap to fill the space around it, a dozen spots on its cap glowing faintly as they emit the spores. [Fireball] takes ten seconds to cast but the monster is a decent distance away from me and the monster's spores take time to drift around.

That's a deterrence against physical attacks more than an attack itself. The stuncap king conjures missiles of electric magic once its spore defense is up, but my [Fireball] finishes before it can start that. I lob it forward as I near the edge of its defensive range, then jump back a few times. Spores burn up as the [Fireball] passes through them, then it impacts the monster and explodes in a swirl of flames.

Weekly Quest Completed! +1,500 EXP You can leave the Weekly Dungeon at any time within the next 2 hours. If you have not left by then, you will be ejected by the System.

I watch as the flames fade away, though they don't do so fully and part of the clearing remains burning. Some of the stuff was untouched by my spell, but I really don't need more from this than I already have so I exit.

Upon arriving back in my workshop, I pull off my pack and set it down, then check the time. The Weekly Dungeon took me around four and a half hours to complete, so I have time to sell my loot and pick up some more containers before dinner. Or I can do an early dinner, then make the transactions.

If I sell what loot I'm not keeping and make the purchases first, I can drop all of this off here, then head to a club and get dinner while seeing if there are any good-looking guys who are looking for something tonight.

A plan for the evening decided on, I start emptying my pack, bracelet, and [Dimensional Storage].