Duke’s corpse silently stared up at me from the cold ground.

Beside it, Rin breathed heavily. Tired from the sudden fight.

I sighed in annoyance, gazing at the corpse of Duke and thinking of the consequences of his death.

Meanwhile, Rin had caught her breath. She turned toward me with crossed her arms, looking particularly irritated.

“I told you to stay out of it.” Rin glared.

Raising my hands in surrender, I protested. “I was trying to help.”

Stared with eyes that practically glowing in fury, Rin angrily retorted. “You can help by not placing yourself in unnecessary danger. He almost killed you.”

“You underestimate me too much.” I said, waving my hands in dismissal.

Even if his sneak attack had been effective, my gloves would’ve activated and blocked his initial attack. I would’ve survived the attack regardless of my ability to dodge. Although I’d temporarily forgotten about that during the heat of battle.

Regardless, his sneak attack was destined to fail the moment he chose me as the target.

“If you hadn’t intervened, his death wouldn’t have been necessary.” Rin shook her head. She sighed, removing the blood from her sword and began cleaning up after the battle.

I asked. “What does that mean for now?”

“What do you mean?” Rin asked with a puzzled expression, as she finished clearing the blood off her sword.

Clarified my question, I moved forward and examined his body. “Is Duke’s death going to cause trouble or interrupt your plans?”

Rin shook her head. “Duke normally stays in the residential zone bullying others. There’s a negligible possibility of his death having a negative impact on the future.”

Huh? Duke normally stayed in the residential zone?

While I hadn’t been paying attention to Duke’s movements and actions since arriving in this universe, I was surprised to hear that information. Far as I remembered, in the novel, Duke usually played a pivotal role in clear the zones. Although Duke was mostly cannon fodder, he was powerful cannon fodder and a good meat shield.

“Good to know.” I gestured toward his body. “By the way, those brown shoes should be the artifact that allowed his short-distance teleportation.”

“Similar to yours?” Rin quickly turned her gaze to the shoes.

“Mmmm…”

Reached down, Rin removed the artifact from the corpse before briefly smelling them. Rin grimaced and tossed them away.

“Not worth keeping.” Rin plainly stated, ignoring the shoes that had been tossed onto the ground.

“Right…” I nodded with a weary smile.

The non-subtle actions of Rin made me realize that she placed a greater care on personal hygiene than I realized. Despite being a useful life-saving artifact, Rin resolutely threw away the shoes of teleportation because they were dirty and smelled badly.

While Rin usually kept herself clean when there were opportunities, she never companied when there was no opportunity to keep ourselves clean. Her lack of complaints meant that I always thought Rin valued the practicality and usefulness of objects over their cleanliness.

It’s possible that Rin is simply looking down the artifact’s teleportation, but artifacts could still be cleaned in a river or traded to others in the residential zone. Directly throwing them away and ignoring them was wasteful and something I’d never seen her do before.

Regardless, it wasn’t a problem.

It was relatively easy to craft a similar object with the ability to teleport short distances. While it would require some materials and I would need to recreate some crafting tools (such as my furnace and anvil), I already had to recreate my crafting tools due to time shenanigans.

“Let’s go.” Rin walking away, leaving everything behind without bothering to check Duke’s corpse further.

I took one last glance at Duke’s corpse before hurrying after her.

The two of returned to our home in the valley, the heritage site.

The basilisk remained trapped inside the pre-crafted barrier. The edible meat left to feed it had disappeared. Only a sleeping basilisk remained.

We didn’t plan on staying for long.

Long enough to handle food for the basilisk. Enough to ensure its survival for the following period.

Then we proceeded onward, continuing to the remaining temples with Rin. We traversed the forest terrain, hunting various creatures along the way.

Rin collected several useful artifacts.

An artifact that could deploy a powerful defensive barrier. A strange pair of wings that allowed short-term flight. Rechargeable electrical grenades that could be reused after a day.

The principles behind the creation of these artifacts were leagues more advanced than most of the artifact sold in the residential zone. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the result of our exploration and touring.

We eventually reached the point that Rin had collected everything she wanted in this place and was ready to leave. We only needed to head toward teleportation beacon and open it up for Rin to leave this zone behind.

On the way back, though, we discovered the campfire of Stanley and Tracy.

They seemed to have set up camp and were preparing to eat.

“Should we say hello?” I inquired, glancing toward Rin for guidance.

Gazing around the surrounding, Rin turned in my direction and apathetically responded. “If you want…”

“Since our groups have met in the wilderness, we might as well.” I shrugged and began walking toward their campsite in the distance.

I heard Stanley speaking as we approached.

Stanley seemed to be telling stories around the campfire. “-and they were trapped by the blizzard without any place to go. As food stores depleted and power began to run low, they all went into hibernation.”

Pausing, Stanley stopping his storytelling and instead looking in our direction. Tracy picked up her daggers.

“Uhhh… Hello.” Stanley awkwardly greeted us.

…or more accurately he greeted Rin, I hadn’t spoken yet so he was unlikely to have noticed me.

Instead of waiting for Rin to say something rude, I spoke to greet him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hello.” Rin awkwardly greeted them as well, before moving behind me to avoid speaking with them further.

“Who are you?” Tracy coldly asked.

I was confident this time that I hadn’t done something to caused her aversion toward myself, but Tracy retained the same coldness toward me. I didn’t really understand her aversion toward me when this was the first time meeting.

“I’m Tobias… This is Rin.” I gestured behind me.

“Stanley-” Stanley replied with a nod. “Nice to meet you.”

“… Tracy.” She reluctantly said her name, putting away her weapons upon noticing that none of us had ours in hand.

“We noticed your campfire and I wanted to come over.” I explained before apologizing. “Sorry for interrupting your… story.”

“No-no- It’s perfectly fine. We haven’t seen other people in awhile.” Stanley waved his hand, trying to stop me from apologizing further.

“I surprised to see people out here… This place is awhile away from the village.” I said with a tone of inquiry.

“We’ve just been wandering around randomly.” Stanley explained, before taking out several ores from his bag. Two of the ores were large chucks of mithril and the third was adamantite.

“Huh? Do you mind if I…?” I saw the ores that he’d taken out of his bag. I slightly reached toward the ore with interest.

“Go ahead.” Stanley handed over the various ores.

I squeezed the various ores to examine their contents.

The mithril ores indented slightly upon receiving pressure indicating they were extremely pure and high quality. Meanwhile, the adamantite could withstand my full strength despite clenching my hands together similarly indicating high purity.

Stanley’s luck is absurd.

It’s normally too difficult to find crafting materials of this quality without a guild supplying them.

“Mithril and adamantite… and their both of extremely high purity and value. Mithril is especially useful in creating jewelry type artifacts and adamantite can make strong weapons.” I explained to Stanley the value of the ores.

“If you want them, take them… It’s impossible to forge them into anything in this place anyway.” Stanley waved his hands dismissively.

Tracy frowned.

I considered refusing the offer.

While I didn’t want to upset Tracy or Stanley with rudeness, the high quality ore in my hand was extremely tempting.

“That…” I bit my lip, gazing at the ore in my hand.

Turning back toward Rin to get her opinion, but she seemed to be ignoring our conversation and simply looking elsewhere. Eventually, I decided to accept it and just give him artifacts of relatively equivalent value.

“Fine, but I won’t take it your materials for nothing.” I said, reaching into my bag.

Searching through my bag for any valuable artifacts I was willing to give away, I eventually settled on the ring of night vision and ring of spatial teleportation.

“Here…” I tossed over the spatial teleportation ring. “That is a ring that can teleport a fist-sized object within ten-meters to your hand… Approximately once per day.”

Examined the ring before equipping it, Stanley tested it out on a small stone nearby. “Huh… Neat.”

Waiting patiently for Stanley to finish, I proceeded to toss over the ring of night vision. Sadly, I didn’t have anything else to give him. The metal ores given were worth at least another artifacts of similar value to the spatial teleportation ring.

Stanley almost dropped the of night vision ring when I tossed it to him, but barely managed to catch it.

“…And that ring will allow you to see in the dark.” I helpfully explained upon tossing over the artifact. “Wearing it for long periods will result in a headache.”

“It’s really unnecessary to give both. I only need the ring of teleportation.” Stanley quickly said upon testing the ring, trying to hand the ring of night vision back to me.

“Keep them… If I still had my shop, I would’ve given you more.” I refused with a weary sigh.

Stanley asked with curiously, “Shop? Are you a shopkeeper?”

“Well… Technically, I’m a novice blacksmith and artificer. Selling the artifact was only for the materials to practice making new artifacts.” I said, turning over the mithril ores in my hand. “With the right tools and supplementary materials, these babies could make a dozen similar artifacts.”

Stanley took the two rings in his hand and put them away in his bag. “Then… I’ll accept them.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot make you a custom artifact. The smelting of these metals and crafted them into related artifacts is too difficult without forge and related tools.” I shook my head in disappointment.

“No-no… These are quite enough.” Stanley quickly tried to dismiss my idea. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to get anything.”

“Do we mind if we join you for dinner?” I asked with a gesture for Rin to sit down.

“That’s fine. We have plenty of meat.” Stanley said, gesturing toward the ground.

Thus, we stayed for a meal.

The groups chatting about various topics. The topic varied from jokes to the necessities of surviving in this poisonous forest to the necessary steps for forging artifacts. Rin and Tracy remained mostly silent, occasionally speaking when they had something to add to the conversation.