The next morning I was up and out of the city early. I wanted to finish my tasks quickly, as my dungeon buddies should be arriving in the city any day now. It’d been nearly three weeks since they’d left, and I wanted to be in town when they got there. It’s why I’d wanted to finish the gathering the day before. I could have just left the trio in my house and taken care of it before hauling them back with me, but I didn’t want to be responsible for their deaths, mostly the woman’s, if something had broken into my house and killed them while I was away.

Sure the place was heavily fortified, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t possible. Heck, the place wasn’t airtight, so it was possible for small creatures, like bugs to get in. Weak ones wouldn’t since I did have a pest control ward built into the house’s system, but there were some out there there could ignore it and still cause some nasty injuries or deaths, especially if they’re poisonous.

The house’s ward and power system was nice, but could only do so much without a powerful and constant source of power, like a ley-line. Without one it was mostly limited to pest control and keeping the environment inside pleasant, such as air conditioning, powering lights, as well as powering the kitchen and bathroom tools.

So yeah, had to waste yesterday doing that, but now I’m back at it! I was going to finish this stupid gathering request and collect all the stone I’d need to build a fortress if I wanted to!

---

Six hours later…

“AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHERE THE HELL ARE THESE STUPID F***ING PLANTS?!”

Yes, I’d spent the last six hours looking for the things, and found exactly none. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. And it was frustrating the hell out of me.

It had been a while since I’d had just an annoying quest. Usually with my various skills it wasn’t too difficult to canvas large tracts of land and locate something, especially if I was flying invisibly so I didn’t have to deal with the ups and downs of the land or monsters interrupting me. But this herb seemed to be one that made my usual methods useless, as they were transparent and difficult to see when one was on top of them, let alone flying around a ways off the ground.

To up the difficulty, they were also invisible to mana sight, which is what I’d usually turn to as most life, be it flora or fauna, would be visible to it, though it was sometimes difficult to detect some plant’s mana emissions.

This plant? Nothing. It was a plant that was a mana null species. Meaning it did not naturally interact with the stuff at all. Which is precisely why it was useful. Mixed properly with a few other things it could become an indicator of what kind of mana something is giving off. Like in determining if something possesses dark mana, indicating it might be cursed. This isn’t definitive, since some dark enchantments are beneficial, but if you are checking hundreds of packages to make sure a cursed object hasn’t been slipped in, a quick test to separate the possible cursed items from the rest makes things so much easier.

Or during dungeon diving.

You never put your hand directly on something from a dungeon chest or drop without checking whether or not the thing might be cursed. Dungeons might exist to cleanse miasma, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to kill those who step foot in them. Dungeons are at least semi-sentient, as they are supposed to try and draw people in to kill the monsters and turn the miasma that makes them up back into mana. However, that doesn’t mean they are good or on humanity’s side. Some of the more intelligent ones would rather people not enter their dungeons and just wait for the monsters to be at full power and leave the dungeon themselves, and will thus try to kill anyone that enters.

Long story short. Don’t trust items found in a dungeon without checking them one way or another to make sure they’re not cursed.

That being said, most people are not like me with the ability to appraise stuff, so potions made from this stupid fucking difficult to find herb are an essential go to in most dungeons. It doesn’t even take much, just a drop per item, so a bottle might last for months if not years. Which is fortunate, given the rarity and difficulty of locating the most essential ingredient.

The first three I’d found had been in a cluster, so I’d been hoping that it wouldn’t take me too long to find the last two I needed for the request, but nope!

This difficulty is how normal adventurers have to deal with most gathering quests, but that didn’t comfort me. I have all sorts of skills and abilities in my arsenal, but this quest seems to deal more with luck than anything else.

GRRR!!!

BOOM!

Growling, I vent my frustration on the cliff I was walking next to by punching it. Afterwards, I quickly backed away. With my strength, a full powered punch was like dynamite, so it caused the cliff to crumble, and while it wouldn’t be difficult to escape, I didn’t want to get buried in the avalanche I’d just triggered.

Feeling a bit better, I looked around and saw the dust from the small disaster I’d just created settle in midair…

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F-ING KIDDING ME!!!!!!!! THAT’S ALL I HAD TO DO TO FIND THE STUPID FREAKING THINGS?!?!?!

The dust had revealed that there were dozens of the herb I was hunting all around me. And the path I was taking seemed to be a trail between large clumps of them. But of course none were close enough that I was able to tell they were there.

Closing my eyes, I slowly breathed in and out, not wanting to lose my temper again and take it out on the innocent plants I needed to carefully extract from the ground so as not to render them unusable.

When I finally calmed down enough, I got started. I didn’t gather it all, though I was sorely tempted to do so for angering me so gravely, instead taking one from each clump so they’d be able to propagate easily.

By the time I was done, I had around twenty of them, there was that much around here. I was about to open a portal to my bunker by the city when a cloud blew away, allowing a beam of sunlight to strike the cliff I’d taken my temper out on, and in doing so glinted off of something shiny.

Attention drawn, I made my way over there, avoiding the nearly invisible herbs here and there in my path. Inspecting the earth that had been revealed by the avalanche, my sour mood quickly dissolved as I burst into laughter so intense it left me breathless.

Behind the cliff face had hidden a vein of mithril. A metal known to be extremely resistant to mana.

Taking a breath, I opened my magical senses fully, something I rarely did for good reasons, and checked the soil composition of the area, and found that there was a decent amount of mithril dust in it. Chances were that this plant required mithril dust in order to grow, which is part of the reason it didn’t produce mana naturally like nearly every other living being on this planet.

Shrugging, I pushed the philosophy of the plant’s origins and cultivation to the side and turned my full attention back to the vein of mithril before me. While not the rarest of metals, it was still quite uncommon, and therefore very expensive.

It was highly resistant to mana, but for those with the power to force it to properly made some of the best gear, as once the enchantment was set it held it very well. The mana that wouldn’t normally interact with the metal would be drawn into the enchantment, fueling it. When offensive spells hit a mithril item, most of the effects would be deflected, while some would stream into the enchantment and further increase its effectiveness. This was perfect for armor, as any spell it tanked would give a portion of its energy to fortifying and protecting the wearer.

It’s for reasons like this that the armor we’d found in the dungeon would be popular and bring in a large amount of gold for us. While it didn’t have any defensive enchantments, it’d still have the natural magical protection of mithril, while also keeping it’s wearer comfortable.

When faced with a large amount of the raw mineral, there was no way I wasn’t going to extract the stuff and take it with me. Not everything though.

While I had a grudge against the plants, I wasn’t going to completely destroy their surroundings just to get a bit more mithril.

I extracted the largest part of the vein, not even bothering to separate out the mithril from the rest. I wanted this done quickly and efficiently, and I could always use more rock. While I’d collected an enormous amount of the stuff during my seemingly futile hunt, more was better, and getting it now would allow me to process it at my leisure, rather than have to come back if I found my stockpile lacking.

Concluding my mining, I estimated I’d collected around a couple tons worth of ore, which would become a lot less once it was processed into ingots for crafting.

Smiling, I opened a portal back to the city and headed through. With this much material, I’d be able to finish off my home, even raising it up to ten floors I had planned if I wanted to. Sure I’d need to use my creation skill to transmute the rock into iron, but I had more than enough to do so without leaving the city again.

Looking forward to a few relaxing months, I stepped through and headed home.