Chapter 132

We worked out a plan while fishing. And it’s not hard work but pretty relaxing as we keep pulling them in by the handful because of the lake’s natural bountiful enchantment.

That has me curious too. I wish I had time to study how and what this enchant on the lake and its creeks really is and how it got there originally. But we’re a subjugation group, not a research group.

We’re also cheating a bit too though, but its state sponsored so it’s legal. Normally they wouldn’t let you just scoop them out using bed sheets, pillow cases and the like but that’s what we do while the fish are flushed into our clutches.

But being so long in the dungeon has me hungry for feeding. I gorged on stored breast milk from Asakura in two canteens that went from full to empty fast.

I shake them both when there’s nothing left. It’s surprising that there isn’t much left. I need the feeding constantly from either breast milk or sex but breast milk doesn’t take much of the sting off unless I drink vast quantities of it.

Rather than fishing poles, we have a big net. There isn’t any bastard fishing police in this world so we don’t have to only use fishing poles. Gyle has his net since he’d thought to bring one. Cassius also has a net he brought and we all spreading them across the creek and trying to force capture the fish here by not letting anything get through the point of the creek that we’ve blocked off. The other part of the creek that we can’t cover with the nets we try to manage keeping closed as best we could with some big rocks and scrap wood.

So the blocked off area of the creek diverts the fish over into the net area, with the net being loose enough to let all the water to keep flowing but not so big that the fish can get loose.

All this...in a dungeon with a lake inside it! You could literally put a whole dwarven town around the lake also, because of the size of the ‘Ever Dungeon’, which we are in.

Dungeon adventuring is so cool!

“Nice. It’s working!” Gyle said chuckling.

Cassius’ men are a lot friendlier with us now that they know we aren’t part of the ‘team of killers’. I guess most of them were just scared to death earlier and didn’t realize they’d been a bit aggressive with us. They know how dangerous the dungeons are.

“Do we dare rest here though? Or should we go back tonight?” Cassius’ lieutenant asked with him, Cassius, me and Gyle together.

“We have to go back tonight, because the dungeon will change at midnight. That could mean days of being lost in here,” Cassius said.

“Come to think of it, what time did we enter again? And how much time do we have left?” I asked to check.

“We have plenty of time. We entered right after it had barely changed to give us the optimum chance to win and get back safely,” Gyle said.

“So we have a lot of time still, as long as we don’t run into monsters. Don’t forget that intelligent monsters can sometimes barricade tunnels down here or block them off with large numbers and manpower,” the lieutenant finished for him.

This is our second meeting after several hours of non-stop fish netting.

Its kind of peaceful and relaxing here actually. If there weren’t monsters here, I’d totally go for making a cabin and living here awhile.

Turns out we’re lucky that Cassius has an inventory magic enchant somewhat similar to my demon box enchant, except without the dark side to it. I don’t reveal mine however and instead we use Gyle’s inventory enchant, which only has a few slots. Their versions are completely different than mine and much smaller in scope and efficiency, but I don’t dare reveal mine to them. While mine has over thirty slots, Gyle’s only has five, two of which he’s using for weapons and the other three have bags in them, which we plan to use for the fish.

It’s not worth the greed to spill my secrets when I need camouflage to blend in as a normal human.

Gyle is a bit friendlier now too it seems now that he knows he doesn’t have to worry about Moose stabbing him in the back.

Cassius’ inventory enchant box when he opened is full of stuff. He sort of looks embarrassed but allows us to see it. He has like twelve inventory slots. He and his lieutenant managed to free up some of his space by transferring all his junk that was using eight slots to consolidate it all into a bag that is put into two slots.

So now he has ten open free slots.

His men use their backpacks to fill them full of fish and stuff them in the slots…and these aren’t small school backpacks either, but huge mountain climbing backpacks. Little by little we’re filling them up.

“So do we want to have all our stuff in common?” his lieutenant asked.

There’s a silence.

Both sides are wondering if we trust each other enough for that yet.

“How does that work?” Gyle asked.

“We’re still forced to be in the team loot enchant for Jimmy and Moose aren’t we? Even if we’re not with them, when we leave the enchant the dwarves put on our team will force us to share loot with them,” I said.

“That’s a big concern. I don’t want half our shit going to those bastards,” Gyle said nearly boiling with anger.

“I’m not sure what to do about that either. We want both of you to stay with us though,” Cassius’ lieutenant said. He prides himself on being the team leader’s assistant. So when we’d asked earlier his nickname was, ‘lieutenant’. It’s kind of silly but we don’t want to hurt his feelings.

“That’s easy, we just do an economic magic contract,” Cassius said.

“Eh?!” Gyle and I are both in shock at the same time.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Gyle is silent. I suspect he knows something but he’s surprised that humans know of it. I didn’t want to look stupid, since I should have known that already.

“It’s simple,” Cassius said. “Basically, economic magic deals with using enchants to properly balance money promises and do something like auto loots and auto payouts on rewards. They aren’t very powerful and don’t do damage but they are useful as insurance for adventurer teams in dungeons. If team A in a dungeon meets team B and wishes to cooperate then they do a magic contract to ensure that whatever promise is kept for the day is followed at the end when they do loot division at the end of the time period specified. Some farmers use them with merchants now to avoid being cheated too.”

“So what happens if someone tries to cheat in one?” I asked.

They all look at me funny. Uh, oh… I gave them the wrong idea. I couldn’t help being curious how it worked though, I didn’t have bad intentions.

So hurriedly I state more clearly, “of course I’d not do such a thing but I’m curious how it works. It has to have something to hold up the other end right?”

Cassius nods. “I too am a curious person. Basically the enchant uses a system of ensuring the promise is kept by using part of the energy of the spell to automatically put an offenders name in the criminal and to be arrested lists with name, description, and a picture at the closest city’s city guard office with a bounty. So a lot of people are very reluctant to mess with economic contracts that are for trade purposes. But the work around is if the person isn’t alive then the enchant won’t hold up entirely the way it should, so cheating just changes forms.”

“And what if they do multiple offenses?” Gyle asked with a smirk on his face.

“Then the bounty gets substantially higher with a multiplying factor. Because the contract rewards are fed through magic it doesn’t cost the city guard anything to supply the funds for the bounties paid on such things, though even I don’t know how that works. You’d have to ask the Gods or spirits guarding this world,” Cassius shrugged.

“This sounds cool. I wish I’d known about those sooner,” I said scratching my head.

Cassius gives me a funny look. “You didn’t know about those? Those are first year at the magic schools.”

I looked embarrassed. “I was taught at home.”

“I didn’t know you could do self taught with magic,” Gyle said scratching his head.

Wish Gyle hadn’t said that. His getting curious just made me look suspicious just now.

“Uh, don’t worry about that too much,” I countered.

Uh oh…hope he doesn’t scrutinize that too much.

“Oh I see,” Cassius said. Crap, now Cassius is interested in me.

Idiot dwarf…that could cause me troubles later.

“So how do we do this then? I really don’t want Jimmy and Moose from profiting from us. But if we are carrying our own loot when we leave of course they will get a share,” Gyle restated.

“So we set the economic contract to have us hold your stuff for you. We agree it will be the same equal shares among all of us but that we will be the executor of taking care of selling and give you equal reward with no surcharges or bullshit. Moose and Jimmy can’t steal anything from you if you don’t have anything when you leave. The economic contract will also override our exiting team of what I came with before you all joined us so that it doesn’t have your share go to them instead. I can even write in sharing monster cores through the contract. Prosperity and equality for all wins,” Cassius said.

“Wow, he’s good. I like it,” Gyle said, looking happier.

“You can put sharing monster cores in there too? That’s a shock,” I said.

“Of course. People stand in line to adventure with Cassius because he’s always fair. He never runs out of people to do things with because he never cheats anyone. And thugs like Jimmy and his gang always have trouble because they can’t understand what being trustworthy is. It just comes down to the fact that prosperity is constant and easy when you don’t steal and fight each other,” the lieutenant said.

“That doesn’t mean people won’t try to cheat and steal though,” Cassius said nervously.

“I’ve been his lieutenant now for like ten years now. We never have trustworthy problems,” the lieutenant said.

Cassius nodded at him happily.

“Ah that makes sense. But it sounds too good to be true, and I wonder if there’s going to be a snag that pops up somewhere just to screw it up,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” Gyle asked.

Cassius is also curious what I’ll say.

“Because life sometimes often happens... that way,” I said.

“Too bad it’s not ore instead of fish,” Gyle said.

“Well that’s your snag then. But they are fairly nice fish. They look healthy and have some good poundage to them,” Cassius observed.

I also noticed his men would volunteer to take his turns on the net, to let him rest.

We’re also wading in the creek. This one is slow moving, and the rocks aren’t sharp. So it feels good to relax with our feet in it while we take turns holding the nets up. We also only need four people for the nets too, so that lets the other eight divide up duty into resting and standing guard.

Cassius and his men are impressed when I used the ‘summon equipment box’ spell to put up a couple of tents here, complete with sleeping bags. He also especially liked the box of disposable alcohol wipes, but they already had their own canteens.

His men liked the tents and sleeping bags.

I did toss a new canteen to Gyle, but Cassius and his lieutenant don’t need one.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem. Although I don’t know how long till it expires. I haven’t tested this spell much yet. But it should be good to have a few extra pieces of equipment for emergencies,” I said.

“Hey, let me see those,” Cassius is pointing at the alcohol wipe disposable packets in my summoned box.

“Sure,” I tossed him one.

It turns out Cassius is a clean freak. To him such a cool thing are worth gold.

I smell money now.

I made an extra 3 silver pieces selling him three packets each. The shiny package also is amusing to him but I had full disclosure to him that I wasn’t sure how long they’d stay in existence before the magic faded. He doesn’t mind because he has a spatial inventory box system also that freezes the timer on their duration. The lieutenant buys one for 1 silver piece too as a safeguard for his field medic kit.

It’s not easy but while we are fishing and resting I want to help Cassius with his mana core. But if I do it will reveal the healing skill that I’d been forbidden to share anything about.

While the fishing trip was relaxing, there were a few incidents however.

Two hours after burning the kobold village down an expeditionary scouting force came near us. We finished off the group of ten kobolds without any serious injuries but they were tougher than the others.

About ten minutes later the main force came through.

It must be the main army from the kobold down. The cavern tunnel that led into this one had been widened a bit to speed up troop movements, so we were alarmed when the lieutenant whistled signaling attack eminent.

But two fireball attacks from Cassius smashed into the small army. Of the two hundred or so kobolds that had been filling up the east side of the cavern to the opposite of us, about forty percent of those were killed by the two blasts.

The rest were driven off by smoke inhalation and fear.

Fire mages can be pretty intimidating.

He didn’t need to kill all two hundred kobolds. Instead he only made them think he could.

...

 

 

Author notes;

Hi readers!

I wanted to just give you a heads up, I am super behind on things. I wasn't feeling good this week. And I'm way behind on mail etc. Sorry about that.

But I do love to get notes from readers. Please don't think I don't like getting them if I haven't answered some of them yet. You guys are wonderful! And this site is much friendlier than others I've used.

I still will probably be behind for a bit but I do like hearing from y'all.

Thanks!