"You're not hanging out with your grandpa today?" I ask Adam, a little surprised that he's leaving with me.

Adam's spent most of the last two days hanging out with his grandfather doing… I don't really know what, I wasn't hanging out with them. All I really know is that Adam was exhausted when he returned to the inn both of the last two nights and he slept like a log. Most likely, his grandfather was pushing him in some training. I know he had a few comments about Adam being sloppy in the various Dungeons he's run.

How Asher could actually perceive things going on around him and even outside of the pouch he was in while in soul form like that, I'm not sure I want to ask. There's also the question of how he was able to go into Dungeons with Adam despite not being a part of the Party entering it.

"No," Adam answers. "Taking a break from training to allow my body to rest before we enter the Dungeon again tomorrow."

"Ah."

"What are we doing today?"

"You're going with me and you don't even know what I was planning?"

"Yes."

I roll my eyes.

"Shopping."

"Why?"

"To get some new gear," I answer. "The run we start tomorrow may end up going into the hedge maze portion of the Dungeon. I want some better gear for that, as well as additional supplies. I've been assured that only actual combatants will participate this time."

"What does that mean?" Adam asks.

"It means we're not going to have a bunch of observers," I tell him. "Just the people who are there to run the Dungeon."

Convincing them to let it be just my actual Party was rather easy. I found that telling them I'll simply leave and go somewhere I'm not going to have a bunch of over-powered deadweights taking up Party member slots if they insist on coming with me. Charles and Henry have already seen me in action, Fang and Claw already accomplished what they wanted, and Asher said that he wants to catch up with his old friend before heading back west and making sure the job to hunt down his grandson is eliminated.

Supposedly, the mild earthquake that occurred as they were attempting to request that I allow them to observe another run has absolutely nothing to do with them accepting my request that they don't join us for the run. The fact that the earthquake knocked all of them down while leaving me standing also had nothing to do that.

Why the gods are giving clear signs involving me, I'm not really sure. I'm not opposed to it and made sure to thank whichever god or gods that was afterwards.

"Adam," I say as we walk down the street.

"Yes?"

"Something I've read during some of my research here in Caniton," I say. "Is that the gods don't typically interact much with others. There wasn't a record of it for me to look at, but one of the people I spoke with at the library mentioned that that used to not be the case."

"More than a thousand years ago," Adam nods. "The gods used to give out blessings to people, a sort of gift that bestowed powerful Classes of paralleled ability. Those people were their Heroes, and the gods also made themselves known more often. Nothing in the clans was very clear about what happened, but they suddenly stopped one day, revoking all of their blessings and only occasionally giving a sign that they were still watching. That was when people started to arrive from other worlds as well."

"So you don't know what the deal is?" I ask.

"No, sorry," he answers. "Though there's a Dungeon City that used to be a Holy City, a site where many Heroes originated from and settled down in and where the gods often descended. They may have answers. They're a bit to the east of here, past the wilderness. I think it would take two or three weeks to get there from here?"

"Thanks for the info," I say. "Though I'm not really interested in going out of my way to find out that kind of stuff. Right now, I'm still just figuring out what I want to do here."

"But you're running the Dungeon again?"

"I want to try and find the puzzle," I admit. "Just to see what it is and what kind of reward awaits me for completing it. If the Dungeon's too difficult, though, I'll stop. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded continuing on last time, but we didn't have the supplies for it and I wasn't keen on going further with a bunch of people there just to watch us."

"Ah," he says. "So after the Dungeon, what are you going to do?"

"Whatever interests me," I answer. "Might stay here for a bit, might see if there's a small village to settle down in. Heck, I might go to that Holy City just to check out what it's like. I like being in a world of myth and magic, but I'm not entirely certain of what I want."

Adam is quiet for a few minutes.

"So you're not really sure what you want to do?"

"Other than check out the Dungeon and see what the puzzle and the reward are."

"What about when you first arrived?"

"Find something to eat and a place to rest, and a way to pay for it if possible."

"You overpaid me."

"What are you talking about?"

"When you paid me back," Adam says. "For the stuff I bought you. I didn't spend a gold on it, I spent-"

"Yeah, but a gold was fewer coins," I say. "And I'm surprised it took you this long to say something. Would you rather I gave you a bunch of change?"

"You're not getting it back."

I snort. My repayment to him consisted of a single gold coin that came out of the payment for the whisperwater gill scales, which I slipped into his coin pouch the first night we were sleeping together. Well, it was technically the morning after, but the sun wasn't up yet and he was still asleep.

"What are you buying today?" Adam decides to switch topics.

"First," I say. "Some collection bags for our archers. By my assessment, we should be fine with just the six of us going in, though we might add a healer on the way as well. Packs to carry the loot in are essential. You, Caleb, and I fight close-range and move around a lot, so us wearing one would be bad and none of us have a dimensional storage or a spatial storage object. The archers move around less when fighting, so we can give them the packs. They should still be smaller and lightweight."

According to my research, the typical Party only goes as far as they can handle, then runs it over and over and over again. Even after they can start to handle the next Zone, most Parties don't move on as they're comfortable with their earnings. This Dungeon lacks much in the way of loot in the first Zone and only two or three lightweight packs are all that's needed.

Should we decide to go into the second Zone, then we can discard what excess we've gathered to make room for new loot items. Those packs will also contain our supplies, which may require going into the second Zone to earn back the cost on. I don't want to run the Dungeon too many times, but I still want a profit off of it on top of whatever that puzzle reward just for me is. Since I'm paying for everything, that means that we should, at the very least, get loot that can pay a decent amount.

"We'll also buy some basic supplies," I tell Adam. "Since we may head into the second Zone. Some simple camping gear, like a cooking set. You and Caleb can make fire and Elise can make water, so we're good on that front even in the first Zone."

"Don't forget healing items," Adam says. "Even if we take a healer in, it's good to have those. Mana isn't as limitless as people think due to taking time to recover."

"We'll also be taking in some [Mana Recovery Potion]s," I tell him. "I don't plan on leaving until we can – at the very least – pay off the cost of the ones used in the run. Something I noticed a few days ago was that our archers were lacking in the Mana department. Even Caleb wasn't able to use his magic martial arts to the fullest extent of his abilities."

"Yeah," Adam nods. "Mana can be a pretty limiting factor. The battle at the end of the first Zone was a little bit more difficult than it could have been because we didn't have enough Mana. Shouldn't we leave buying the potions to Caleb and the archers?"

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"There's no telling if they can afford them as they are," I say. "I know you can even with you not liking wearing packs making it harder for you to earn some coin, but how much money Caleb has is a mystery and Katie and her harem don't have much funds. We can deduct the costs of the used potions out of the earnings before we split the pay."

I'm not sure why Caleb goes around in just pants and boots as he was evasive about that when I asked. The reason Adam doesn't became revealed to me after I found out that he sold the pack I'd bought him within a day of us arriving here.

Apparently, demihuman dragons don't like things rubbing the part where their scales and flesh meet. They're fine with it if it's something like being held during sex, but they're not fine with it when it's a constant rubbing of something like leather or a fabric strap. That section of their skin is apparently quite sensitive. If they could get away with it, they would probably just go completely naked to avoid it. Since they can't, they put up with the agitation that pants cause.

"Don't forget to buy food, too," Adam says. "We'll need it even if we only run the first Zone. Goblin meat is disgusting and you can't eat stone."

His expression as he mentions goblin meat's taste suggests he's given it a try.

"I won't," I assure him. "Come on, the shop for the packs is right here."

We enter a Dungeon Supply Store and I begin browsing the goods within. It takes me about twenty minutes of looking through the options of packs that are sold here to find ones I like, and my guess is that the shop only sells them, that they source them from several craftsmen. There are just way too many pack options for that.

"Can I get three of this one?" I ask the employee helping us once I find a pack that seems good for the archers to wear. "Is that possible?"

"Let me check the back," she says, then heads to back. After a minutes, she returns. "We do have three of those in the back. Would you like to inspect them now or wait until you finish your shopping?"

"Once I finish, thanks," I tell her, and she nods.

There's not much else to buy here, but I make sure to purchase not just the packs but also a set of cooking supplies and dishes to eat with, checking to ensure they fit in the packs just fine.

Bringing something to drink into a Dungeon can be a hassle for various reasons despite being essential in many Dungeons due to their size and the uncertainty of if you'll run into a clean water source or not. Purified water isn't out of reach, but meal ale is cheaper. Both take up a lot of space.

Despite all of the Summoned coming to this world, it seems that knowledge of how to purify water without magic isn't known yet. By divine intervention, or has it just been that no one from a world that knew about how to purify water without magical means has been summoned here?

They have magic crystals that can purify water. The one I'm looking at right now is Item Quality 1 and is a blue crystal with a green tint to it, roughly an inch in size, though not quite cubical or spherical, more like a mix between the two. It started off as just a water magic crystal, but then someone cut it down a bit to create several faces, upon which they etched in runes that were then filled with some sort of crystal substance. I'm not sure what a normal water magic crystal can do, but this one was enchanted specifically to purify water and that bumped its price up a lot.

Three silver for this and it can only purify two gallons of water.

"Not worth it," Adam mutters when he hears the price for the crystal. "Just run the Dungeon with a few skins of ale or purified water, using as little as necessary. We can at least clear the first Zone with that. Water in Dungeons is usually pretty clean."

"But not always," I say. "It depends on where we end up in the second Zone. And with six of us going in, we'll need more than a few skins of water to make it to the end if we want to stay in top form. And that crystal wouldn't be of use to us in the first Zone, even if it was worth the price tag."

"We do have water magic stones as well," the employee informs us. "If you break off a portion of them, water will pour forth. We have them in a variety of sizes and qualities, allowing for anywhere from a small amount to a large amount of water."

"How do those work?" I ask. "Is it break once and it's done?"

"No," she answers. "You can break it multiple times, but loses effectiveness each time. It's recommended to break off a small portion of the stone each time. That portion will give up the water it can conjure while the rest of the stone doesn't."

"But if you break it in half," I say. "One of the two pieces will give up all of the water?" She nods. "And that would just waste it unless you need all of it. Let me see them?"

I check out the stones, but they're much too expensive. It looks like we'll need to devote some space in the packs for carrying clean water. Though I suppose that's not really too much of an issue considering our Party make-up right now. Part of the water issue was already solved before we began this shopping trip.

"Why aren't you concerned about this?" Adam asks. "We don't have much space since three of us won't have packs, so we can't carry in too much ale. There's no guarantee we'll get fresh water in the second Zone, either. Some of the water is contaminated, so you have purify it all."

"Elise agreed to conjure water for us as needed."

Magic actually creates the stuff for the spells rather than simply summoning a temporary manifestation. Actual element-summoning magicians are fairly rare, which means that Katie and her harem are actually a pretty talented group. Most element-based magicians simply manipulate what's already there to cast their spells. Pull up dirt and stone from the ground, pull water from the air, shift the air itself – things like that. Ones that need something more consumable, such as fire, are even rarer due to how hard it can be to carry enough fire around with them to be of use.

That's just another reason the old Party for the archers was a group of idiots. They literally left behind long-ranged magical support from people who could literally conjure the four elements. That gives them an extreme range of versatility in terms of use.

"Magically-conjured water has a lack of taste that bothers me and she needs her Mana for fighting."

"Not if we're in a safe zone," I tell him. "And I'm going to meet her at one of the town's archery ranges after lunch so she can teach me how to conjure and manipulate water, too. I won't be anywhere near powerful enough with magic to make it of use in combat, but I can at least help create water for us."

Adam mutters something under his breath about the lack of taste still being too problematic.

"Magically-conjured water," I say. "Is almost the same thing as ultrapure, just with a slight touch of magic to it. Ultrapure water is just that – lacking in any impurities. What you're normally tasting with purified water or spring water or whatever that you drink is actually the impurities in it."

"It reads as 'clean water' in the System."

"Well, yeah," I say. "But there's a difference between clean water, pure water, and ultrapure water. And we wouldn't need the water purification stuff without them, I was only looking for them just to see about giving a proper Dungeon experience a try. I think that's all, ma'am, we're ready to pay for our things."

"This way, please," the employee helping us leads us over to a counter.

"What did you mean by that?" Adam asks as he follows. "Jamie, why do you say we wouldn't need water purification stuff? I looked into this Dungeon's second Zone. Not all of the water in there is clean!"

"I know how to clean water without using magic as long as the water isn't contaminated by magic."

"All contaminated water is contaminated by magic," Adam says. "There's some sort of miasma. A strange and mysterious one that shows up and infects water but which doesn't get mentioned in the System as anything other than 'contaminated'."

Hm…

I pay for our things, then head back to the inn we're staying at. Sitting on the table in here are a few jars of local water. Though they aren't murky, they're not safe for consumption. Drinking them would prove that quite easily. They're leftovers from something I was doing yesterday and I know Adam was curious about them.

"What does the description for that say to you?" I ask.

"That?" Adam looks at the jars. "It says [Jar of Contaminated Water]. [Quality: 1]. [This water is contaminated by a mysterious force and must be purified before it can be consumed or used on a product which will have food or drink used on it.] [Quantity: 30oz]. Why?"

"You know you could have just shared the System message with me, right?"

"Oh. Right."

"Let me show you what the System says when I read the description."

I access the information on the jar and send the notification to him.

[Jar of Contaminated Water] Quality: 1 This water has been contaminated with bacteria, viruses, and toxins as a result of waste leeching into it and must be purified before use. Quantity: 30oz

"Your message is different," Adam mutters. "It says that it was contaminated with… something, but it's blanked out before the 'and toxins', and then everything after is blanked out."

Experiment: success.

"The world at large doesn't know it yet," I tell him. "It's not just some random bit of information but an actual progression point in society. Because of that, the System is probably wording it in a way to indicate that there's something mysterious about the contamination in an effort to get people to try and look into it. But your society is so focused on magical advancement that they've fallen behind on scientific advancements. Magic can fix the issue, sure, but it's not the cause of it."

"Like using a waterwheel to power a millstone rather than simply shifting it using [Earth Manipulation]."

"Exactly," I say. "You have a magical solution to a mundane problem. However, that solution is fairly expensive because of how limited it's availability is."

"So… what's the solution to this?"

"Any number of things," I shrug. "One of the reasons why ales, beers, and so on that need water in their production are safe to drink even though they use contaminated water… and this is going to blow your mind, Adam… is because they boil the water first."

"…what?"

"Yup," I grin at him. "Boiling water can actually get rid of this 'miasma' that you think is in the water. Well, it actually kills it off, but that's another matter entirely. If the water we come across in the Dungeon is contaminated, and it has particles in it as well, then we can do something else to help get rid of those particles."

Adam stares at me for several long moments.

"It's that simple?"

"Yes," I answer. "But only necessary if the System doesn't call it clean water, which is why the water we collected from streams and springs on our way here was safe."

"So your world knows the causes of this miasma?"

"It's… complicated," I say. "Anyway, we've dropped off the bigger stuff. I want to get some more shopping done."

"Didn't you buy everything you need?" Adam asks.

"No," I answer. "I only bought the packs and basic gear. I didn't buy the potions and salves yet. Also, I want to get some new clothes and weapons."

"Didn't you buy new clothes in Ratton?"

"I want something… well, never mind that," I say. "Let's just go do more shopping."

"Can I teach you how to make and play with fire before you learn water from the archers?"

Adam's expression makes it clear he's a little jealous, though I'm not sure why.

"Sure," I tell him. "But shopping comes first."