Arthus followed Ahri back through the secret passage and into the warp chamber, he asked her what this was about, but she refused to speak about it until they arrived, once inside he marveled at how nonchalantly she dumped expensive mana crystals into the formation, even he as the countries King would have to think twice before using the teleportation array.

As she was chanting the activation spell, he briefly thought that it wasn’t such a good idea to allow himself to be teleported by someone not completely loyal to him, however, he had asked several questions to verify her identity and if Merlin was against him he was screwed anyway, so he decided to push any doubts aside and simply move forward.

Light flashed for what seemed like less than an instant and he felt slightly disorientated for a moment, teleportation never agreed with him and after feeling like this for the umpteenth time in his life, he didn’t particularity agree with teleportation either.

They both stepped out of the protected hallway and Ahri explained, “you are going to have to be disguised for obvious reasons” before she cast a spell on Arthus, his face quickly changed and his clothing became something an adventurer would wear.

As they passed a new confused receptionist Arthus said “we should take a look around the city before we get to business”

“we have more imp--”

Arthus interrupted “I insist, I’ve wanted to inspect the budding new city for a while now, but my advisers are like a wife who always has a task for her husband to do, no matter how many he completes”

Ahri sighed “fine, but I'll only show you around for a short time”

For the next hour Ahri showed the King around one of his own cities incognito.

“this is the adventurer guild, as you can see its right next to the dungeon entrance for convenience, also all the nearby buildings cater to either supplies for adventurers like potions, ropes, torches and other such things, or they are used in processing goods from the dungeon”.

Ahri pointed towards a shop with meat visibly hanging and explained “for example, that’s a butcher for processing the animal meat that comes from the dungeon creatures. They also work together with the leather-workers and blacksmiths occasionally when something with suitable materials is brought in that an adventurer cant strip on site”

They briefly passed the noble district and Ahri continued “This is obviously the noble district, there is nothing really of note here except reckless spending and silly competitions”

Arthus commented “there are quite a few painted houses which is interesting, blue and purple are absurdly expensive colors to paint your manor”

Ahri replied “see pointless competitions between idiots, besides recently it was discovered that there is a creature in the dungeon that spits poison at its enemies, but this poison is quite colorful which is what the nobles are painting their houses with”

“most people would be rather careful about calling nobles idiots”

Ahri retorted “they are idiots, you don’t know how much trouble they caused when they were creating their man-made lakes and rivers for their gardens. The water was polluted for weeks while the work went on and when they were filling them the water flow was interrupted several times, but they didn’t care because the only people to suffer were from the poor districts below.

Then there is the problem with land allocation, instead of taking the ground up above where its steeper, they complained that the roads were too steep to walk up, ignoring the fact that none of them have ever walked more than 100 meters without a carriage to pick them up, so they settled just above the dungeon entrance.

Now the people who actually brave the dungeon have to walk all the way past the shopping and tradesman district to get to work, initially the city designer had that land designated as cheap hotels for adventurers, but now there is no space for them, oh and the nobles even have the nerve to complain about the adventurer guild being to close to their homes”

Arthur had a cramped smile as he said “most of the nobles here are from the younger generation, their family patriarchs sent them here to gain experience so they really don’t know any better”

By this time the duo had reached the next section and Ahri continued, “This is the shopping district, anything you want you can get here, and if it's not here you can pay someone to order it for you. The basic layout is smaller and more expensive shops higher up and heavier and larger items in the lower shops, this is so for example blacksmiths can use the connections from the tradesman district to get their heavy wares into a storefront easier”

“why wouldn’t the blacksmiths just sell their wares from their shops”

Ahri said “it's scary what you don’t know when your pushing papers all day”

“don’t remind me”

Ahri then explained “a blacksmiths workshop is always hot from the forges and its not a good place for business, mainly because you can't hear anything over the sound of hammers, another reason is because most of the gear they create here is high-end equipment so its too expensive to rely on the blacksmith or his apprentices to protect”

“then who is protecting it and why are they making so many expensive pieces, I doubt the local adventurers are buying such things so who are they selling them to”

Ahri contemplated for a moment before replying “I’m not an expert on the city, but I think the one in charge of public order is a man named Wolfram if I remember correctly, he has spent considerable time and resources squashing any potential crime racket from emerging, something about trying to create a truly crime free city from the start before undesirables sink their roots in.

as for the high quality armor, you don’t have to worry, the city lord has forbidden any trade to the duchies, so far it seems like the nobles are buying everything up to prepare their personal armies in case the Duchies attacks,

more importantly the reason such high grade equipment is possible is because the dungeon has plenty of ore crystals growing, and most of them are high purity which is rare”

Arthur looked at Ahri closely and said, “you seem to be mentioning the dungeon quite often”

Ahri simply smiled mysteriously and continued further down the road. “the main road we are on is made of hardened earth using magic, the city planner designed the road himself much to the earth magicians annoyance, its much wider and thicker than normal so it will last a long time and won’t become overcrowded when the city fills up”

Once they arrived at the tradesman district Ahri explained “this is the tradesman district, this is where most of the cities products are made, there are carpenters working on mana enhanced wood over there, blacksmiths creating armor and weapons from ore that came from the dungeon, further along there are apothecaries making potions from the ingredients that came from the dungeon, from washing clothes to gem-cutting can all be found here, most of which have some relation to the dungeon. And with that the tour is over”

Arthus asked “aren’t we going to see the battlements”

Ahri sighed “do you think they will allow some random stranger to walk along the walls and inspect the cities defenses”

…

Ahri continued “well if your really interested then the wall is being reinforced with dungeon stone, there is no better material for a wall, it naturally resists magic and physical attacks too”

“and I can guess where it came from”

“the dungeon,” said Ahri with a smile.

“where are we going next”

Ahri replied “the dungeon” with an even deeper smile.