We ran the dungeon 10 more times. We didn't collect any of the crystals except for the last run. I kept destroying them and my good aura kept going up. I gained another good aura level at 500 good aura.

[Congratulations! Your good aura has reached level 4!]

[Good aura level 4: People can tell you're a good person. Good people are likely to consider your well-being when making choices]

I ended up with 765 good aura but I didn't receive any more level-ups. Carl was gone. When we got to his room, he wasn't there. Him leaving must have triggered something in the dungeon to make him stop respawning.

My bone and healing grimoires leveled up to level 7.

[Congratulations! Your bone mage grimoire has leveled up to level 7! You have gained Basic Skeleton Creation and Bone Shards!]

[Basic Skeleton Creation: Can create a single skeleton fighter. You can arm them with any weapon and they will know how to use it]

[Bone Shards: Can explode any bone construct into bone fragments that pierce nearby targets]

[Congratulations! Your healing grimoire has leveled up to level 7! You have gained Battle Recovery and Efficiency Boost!]

[Battle Recovery: Instant wound closure and combat stimulation]

[Efficiency Boost: Increases the efficiency of your healing spells through mechanisms such as reduced mana cost, faster cast times, and more precise healing effect]

Wow! These were game-changing new abilities. Bone Shards allowed me to damage enemies with my spikes twice. Battle Recovery eliminated one of the biggest concerns in a fight, bleeding.

I could finally summon a bone minion, which I had been waiting for this whole time. And Efficiency Boost just made me better at healing, which was great!

We grabbed the last chest of crystals to sell. My packs were full of the hundreds of cores we had gathered. We didn't use any of them, because we planned to sell them at the marketplace. There was no point in being super strong if you were broke.

I summoned a skeleton. Instead of handing it a weapon, I handed it 8 packs of cores to carry. It was surprisingly strong for something with no muscle. It carried the 8 packs admirably, if slowly.

I carried 8 as well. Abigail carried 4 packs and the crystal chest in a large bubble that she pushed along while it floated in the air. Each run filled two packs with cores.

We went to Bobbin's stall at the marketplace. I place a single full pack of cores on the counter. Bobbin looked inside and his eyes widened. "How did you get so many cores?"

"We ran a dungeon 10 times. That's not it either. You see all the packs we're carrying? All of them are full of cores," I said.

"That's ungodly! How did you not only complete a dungeon by yourselves but complete it 10 times in one day?" He said.

"We're really strong!" Abigail said, flexing her skinny arms.

"I, uh, can see that," Bobbin said.

"She's right, we are just ungodly levels of powerful. I could destroy this entire marketplace with just two spells and they would barely touch my mana pool," I said.

"And if you count this morning, we actually ran the dungeon about 18 times today."

"That is nearly unbelievable. I wouldn't believe it if I couldn't see the results before my eyes. You look nothing like you did yesterday. I almost didn't recognize you. Yesterday you were lean, but today you're a hunk and a half," Bobbin said.

"Not to mention the fact that your hair is nearly 10 inches longer than it was yesterday and you're taller too. How is this possible?"

I activated Soul Inquiry.

'Can you keep a secret?'

'Yes, unless I'm tortured to death.' Bobbin's soul said.

'That's fair.'

"I'm SSS-tier and Allison is SS-tier. We just grow very quickly," I said, but not too loudly. I didn't want anyone to overhear us.

"Oh. Wow. That explains it but it's so surprising to meet people of your caliber. They're so rare. SS-tier is 1 in 1,000 people and SSS-tier is 1 in 5,000," Bobbin said.

"Yeah. I told you we were amazing," Abigail said as she flipped her hair.

"She did tell you," I said.

"That she did," Bobbin laughed and smiled uncomfortably. "Shall we get down to business then?"

"Yes. Let's," I said. "Here's the other half of the cores from 1 dungeon run." I put another pack on the counter. It came out to 2 packs per run. The cores averaged at 6 tiny cores, 16 small cores, 24 medium cores, 10 large cores, and 1 huge core.

"I know exactly how much they're worth, so be careful with how low you go. If you offend me, I'll take my business elsewhere and this is a hell of a lot of business."

The cores were worth 4,460 gold altogether. Each run netted around 446 gold in cores. I knew that because I asked the system before we got here. I wanted to be prepared.

"Of course," Bobbin said with an easy smile, but he was nervous. Our ranks intimidated him. I had made him nervous yesterday, but not like this. "I'll give you 3,345 gold for all of it."

I did the quick math in my head. "That's 75%. I think the sheer volume of cores is worth a higher percentage than that. You'll make a lot more money in total when you sell these, than if you got a better percentage on a smaller amount. I think they're worth 90%."

"I'll give you 85%. 90% is cutting my profit margin too low," he said.

"I can understand that. 85% it is. That's 3,791 gold," I said.

"I think we have a deal," Bobbin said.

"That's a lot of money," Abigail said.

"You're a princess. Haven't you seen a lot more money than that?" I said.

"No. My father never talks about money in front of me. So I have no idea how much we have. I just know the prices of things and we always have enough to get whatever we need," she said.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Well, you're right. It is a lot of money. The mercenaries that now work for me, were probably making about 5 gold a day. It would take them over 2 years of working every day to make that much," I said.

"Something you'll learn though, is that there's never enough money, especially when you want to make a difference in the world. You always need more money to do more good."

"That makes a lot of sense. So then, how long is this money going to last us?" She said.

"I'm not sure. It depends on what we do next," I said.

"I'm looking forward to seeing it," Abigail said.

Bobbin put all our packs behind the counter and emptied them out. He gave us our packs back filled with 3,791 gold.

We had about 15 minutes to make it to the drop-off point. We hustled over there and dropped the chest on the ground. It was an alley in the lower-city, which is above the undercity and has access to the sky. I wasn't sure how we were going to hide without being seen until Abigail made a brilliant suggestion.

"We don't have to hide behind anything. We can hide in plain sight," she said.

"How?" I said.

"The alley is dark and no one looks up. We can fly above them in bubbles," she said.

"That is genius!" I said, kissing her.

"You keep acting surprised that I have a brain. Did you think I was just some dumb blonde?" She said.

"Kind of," I teased.

"Oh shut up you big oaf! Just go be the brawn in this relationship," she said laughing.

"My feelings are so hurt. I'm crushed. Owie," I said with a blank face. "Honestly though, I'm just not used to people being smarter than me. It's a surprise."

"Well, you better get used to it, because I'm not going anywhere," she said, kissing me.

"Good," I said. "Now let's get in these bubbles before someone shows up."

"Right," she said. She enveloped us both in a large bubble. I sat cross-legged and she sat on my lap. We flew up to just below the top of the buildings. Then we waited.

A rickshaw showed up to pick up the crystals. A freaking rickshaw. I had never seen one in real life. Just on TV.

It was a buff dude wearing a red shirt. He didn't read as evil. He carefully but easily picked up the chest of crystals and placed it on the rickshaw. He threw a large white cloth over the chest to obscure what it was. Then he pulled the rickshaw out of the alley and onto the road.

We followed above him in the flying bubble. He kept looking around to make sure he wasn't being followed but he never once looked up.

“Someone else is following the cart,” Abigail said.

I looked back and saw the same thing she did. A small shadow darting from alley to alley, always staying in the dark.

“I see them,” I said.

“What should we do?” Abigail said.

“Nothing,” I said. “They don't read as evil. A non evil person following the cart could be a potential ally. Or they could be a good distraction. Let's see what they do.”

“Yes sir, Jarnathan, sir!” she said.

“Not so loud,” I said.

“Oh, the bubble is soundproof. We can hear outside but they can't hear us,” she said.

“Wow, that's really useful! You're like a swiss army wife!” I said.

“I don't know what that means, but if you keep making jokes about me being your wife, I might make you put a ring on it,” she said.

“I don't know if I'd say yes, but I certainly wouldn't say no,” I said laughing.

“Noted,” she said. She stiffened up. “Look! He's going into a barn.”

I looked. She was right. The buff dude was going into a big red barn. It made sense. A barn would be the best place for storage and frequent comings and goings. It would also explain the frequent cargo. They could always explain it as feed or hay for horses.

The barn doors closed behind the cart. I was coming up with a plan of attack when the small shadow ran out into the open and up to the barn doors.

They were dressed in all black like a rogue or thief. They were really short. They peeked under the barn door and then began to push their body against it.

They slowly flattened and reshaped their body to fit under the door like a mouse. They disappeared into the barn.

There were roads around the barn and another building. The roads separated the barn and the building from all the other buildings. This made me conclude that the barn might be for storage and the other building might be where they had meetings and discussed business.

“The little one might alert the others and allow the branch leadership to escape. We should do what we came to do before that happens,” I said.

“Ok. How do you want to make our entrance?” Abigail said.

“I wish I could see if there were any innocents in the building, instead of only being able to see the evil ones. I can see a decent number of evil people in there, but I don't want to kill innocents with a full-on assault,” I said.

“What if I shot a giant spike through the roof and down onto an evil person? If I target an evil person, a good person can’t occupy the same space. And the spike can give us a roof entrance.”

“That's really smart! Let's do it!” Abigail said.

“Now you're acting surprised I'm smart.” I smiled and laughed.

“No, I'm just teasing you. I know you're smart baby,” she said, kissing me.

“Good,” I said.

We hovered over the building as I formed a massive spike and shot it at an evil person on the second floor.

It made a huge hole in the roof. I made sure to target someone in a room with only one evil person. That way we were less likely to get attacked upon entrance.

We didn't take any chances though. I covered myself in bone armor and Abigail lowered us through the hole in a protective bubble.

When we touched down, I immediately stepped out of the bubble and locked the door. No one but the person I killed was in the room. They were mostly obscured by the spike. All I could tell is they were a man.

I heard people scrambling up the stairs. Someone tried to turn the knob but the lock stopped them. Then a voice said, “Hey, Kevin, are you ok? What was that noise?”

“Kevin is unavailable right now. Can I take a message?” I said.

“Who are you and what did you do to Kevin?” The voice said.

“Exactly what I’m about to do to you,” I said.

The people on the other side were a densely packed group of evil people. I formed a large spike, shot it through the door into the middle of the group, and used Bone Shards to explode it into hundreds of sharp pieces. The evil people fell to the ground.

I opened the door and looked around. They were all very dead. No evil people were left in the building and I didn’t see any good people either. Abigail followed me down the stairs and we found a large empty room.

We were going to look around, but we heard a massive explosion in the direction of the barn. We ran outside to investigate. The barn was on fire.

The flames were blue. The doors were still closed and locked. I raised a bone platform underneath the doors and shattered them into pieces as they were crushed by the rising platform.

We ran into the barn and saw an awful scene. The short person dressed in black was lying still on the ground. They were surrounded by charred bodies and their body was similarly marked with charring but not as bad as the others.

I could see green skin where parts of their clothes were burned off. Three evil men were standing over her, kicking her repeatedly.

“You fucking bitch!” One said.

“Die scum!” Another said.

“Green cunt!” The third one said.

I summoned 60 small bone spikes and shot them through the bodies of the three evil men. They came out the other side red and bloody. I dispelled them. The men fell to the ground.

Abigail and I ran up to the body of the short person.I pulled their hood down, revealing their appearance. They had green skin and pointy ears. They were a female goblin.

I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know the nature of goblins in this world. In most of the books I read they were supposed to be evil, tribal, murderous, and unsophisticated. But she didn’t read as evil.

I didn’t physically react to the goblin reveal, but Abigail did. Her eyes widened, her eyebrows went up, she gasped, and she put her hand over her mouth.

With all those different reactions, this must have been very unusual. So goblins were probably normally like I had read.

I put my fingers against her neck. She had a pulse. She was still alive. I turned her over to get a better look at her injuries.

She had a charred hole in her side and her right leg was black. I pressed my hand against her stomach and her eyes instantly opened. She opened her mouth and chomped down on one of my arms.

“Fuck! Ow! Stop! I’m trying to help you!” I said.

She looked at me and then Abigail, then back at me. She reluctantly released her teeth from my arm.

“Thank you,” I said.

She gave me a vulnerable look.

I turned my attention back to her injuries. I used Advanced Diagnosis to find out that along with the charred body parts, her ribs were broken in several places from the kicks she received from the men who were now dead on the floor.