Tom’s bar was filled up with people grabbing a late breakfast and lunch. Amazingly enough, within the hour all of these people would leave and the only ones left would be the late afternoon drinkers. In the past, all this activity was usually the thing that started to wake me up after passing out cold in the bar after a good night of drinking. Then by the time I shook off the grogginess, everyone was gone.

For the first time, I was a part of this lunchtime rush hour with Jerry and friends showing me the way to participate. They pushed through the crowd of people and shouted out an order for four people to Tom while throwing some coins down on the counter. Tom scooped the coins up with practiced ease and continued cooking. He had a rotisserie cooking up a bunch of freshly butchered chickens with a pan on the side frying some onions and peppers. Every so often he would slice off some meat from one of the chickens, and put on a plate with a scoop of the onions and peppers with a slice of bread on the side.

It was a luxurious and filling meal. One that was only possible due to this town's location and the many years of good harvests. The so-called merchant that Jeff mentioned before was actually a large caravan of merchants bringing goods from the South to the capital and vice versa. If not for the fact there was already a city slightly to the north of town that the caravan also passed through, then this town might have seen some major development and become a city. Instead, it was a fairly wealthy pit stop.

It took a few minutes for portions to be placed before us as Tom had to serve the people who got here first. But it was worth the wait as more food than I could eat was placed before me, overwhelming me with the smell. Within a moment, I went from not being hungry to feeling like I was starving. All of the ingredients were scooped up onto the bread and eaten like a sandwich.

Even with my sudden burst of hunger, I was only able to eat half of it before I had to set it down and retire from eating. The other three left not even a scrap of food on their plates. Not sure if it was due to their age that they were able to fit all that, all of their hard work every day making them need more food, or just that they were used to eating three meals a day. My thoughts on it were that all three applied.

Tom picked up my plate and pushed my leftovers into a nearby pot. Tonight’s dinner was whatever people didn’t eat from lunch turned into a stew with maybe an extra ingredient thrown in for a bit of variety. There was no wasting of food in this establishment.

“You’ll have to pay me back for lunch later as our relationship is purely business for now. No free rides until you prove yourself. Same with that spear. It’s covered in blood and looks like you did a number on it. If you don’t want to pay for a new one, clean it up and sharpen it. We have to establish how our relationship is in these next few days so we don’t argue over little things later on,” said Jerry, which was fairly reasonable. I suppose they thought I had no money on hand so they’re paying for my lunch and expecting to be paid back for it.

“I understand,” I said.

Actually, I still have the silver from Jeff but I’d rather hold onto it for now and keep it for emergencies. Every time I didn’t spend it and used other people’s money, I would rack up a bit more debt but it ensured that I could pay it back to Jeff and make even more money from selling the copper to the merchants and possibly the iron too. Speaking of iron, the ores I picked up that day were probably iron as well if not a similar looking ore. Jeff paid for two of my meals after receiving it so I actually had made a bit of a profit that day despite Jerry upping my debt with the meal.

“Let’s now state how much we’ve gotten from the dungeon so far today, starting from left to right,” said Jerry. I was on the far right and would go last it seemed.

“I’ve managed to get a single ore and its reddish brown in color, possibly copper but more likely to be iron,” said Matt. Iron? When I had iron before, it was grayish in color. But now that I think about it, it’s normally red in color. Did Jeff lie to me about what it was?

“Good job. Even if it’s iron, since it’s red in color you know the purity is higher than that impure gray iron with other metals mixed in,” said Jerry, which answered my question.

“I’ve gotten nothing at all. I was doing the wheat grind method but I screwed up and had a troublesome monster so I had to leave the dungeon before I could get any loot,” said Chris. That explains why Matt talked about leaving at even the slightest sign it’d be troublesome. Chris was able to defeat the monster easily enough but struggled when the spawns went down to one per minute. And since he left, the spawns would reset and he’d have to wait like an hour until it went back to being one per minute.

“I would scold you for being so irresponsible, but the same thing happened to me so let’s write it off as bad luck and try again tonight. My ax got a nasty chip in it today so we’ll take an hour break as I get Jeff to fix it. Got anything to add old man?” Jerry asked.

“I got two ores while using the wheat grind method,” I said while pulling out the ores in question.

“I’m full but it seems like I’ll have to eat my words, your lunch is free today and your choice whether to use those for yourself or trade them in to knock down your debt. Since they’re from room one they’re pretty much guaranteed to be impure iron mixed with something like tin or nickel,” said Jerry. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to like the way Jerry does things.

“How much of my debt would they wipe?” I asked, after all, he said himself that we need to establish our relationship.

“The amount of iron in those ores would be enough to buy a used bludgeon from Jeff’s store if you had three of them or a spear if you had five of them. Add on one ore as interest and it adds up to nine ores for that. So it’d knock off almost a quarter of your debt when it comes to your loaned weapons alone,” said Jerry. It was a straightforward way of stating it that was easier to understand than talking in coin. Plus I could double check those prices next time I bumped into Jeff easily enough.

That sounded good enough and I’d rather not carry these around in my shirt for too long, they were rough and rubbed against my skin wrong. I passed the ores over to Jerry and made a mental note about the fact that I owed him seven more of these ores, or less if I could get something of higher quality. I bet Matt was doing fishing in order to get that ore based on what Jerry said. Then again, I managed to get copper ore in the first room of the dungeon after my hangover.

Maybe I shouldn’t take everything they say as fact but rather what’s considered to be normal. There are obvious exceptions to what they’ve said so far. It was up to me to distinguish between what they say and what actually happens. For now, I had an hour or so long break and had to figure out what to do. The most appealing action was to take a nap after such a nice meal but it was important to clean my spear before the blood dried and set in.

The four of us dispersed to do our own thing, promising to continue going down the dungeon within the hour. Chris walked towards the dungeon to get a head start on us since he screwed up earlier while Matt walked up to a nearby tree and took a nap. As much as I’d like to emulate Matt, I walked down to the river and started scrubbing the gore off the spear with my hands.

I made sure to avoid cutting myself on the edges and most of the blood came off within a few dips and a bit of elbow grease. Once I was done, I made sure to dry the spearhead with my shirt to keep it from rusting. I didn’t have anything to sharpen the spear at the moment but there should have been some sharpening stones at Jeff’s place I could buy later. At the moment, it was better to keep using it as is and focus on a more thorough cleaning and sharpening at the end of the day, after I was done with the dungeon for the day.

There was nothing else to really do, so I took a bath and washed my clothes since I was already at the river, then took a short nap to help digest my meal. So far, the day had been quite good. To think that only three or four days ago, I had been getting drunk out of my mind every day and not really doing anything besides the occasional work to help pay off my debts. By the end of this month, perhaps I’d have no debts at all and an even better life than now.

It was time to get back to work so I could achieve that lofty goal. I walked back to the dungeon to find Matt just entering the dungeon. Maybe he had finished his nap just now or maybe he had already challenged the dungeon a few times and was searching for the right opponent. Either way, I followed his example and walked into the dungeon.

This time the dungeon was surprisingly dark with black walls and barely any light. The little light that came from the torch above seemed dimmed by its surroundings. Just this fact alone tempted me to leave the dungeon as it was ominous. What stopped me from doing so was the fact that the monster was clearly visible and very slow. It looked like a cross between a turtle and an insect.

On its back was a hard, spiked shell with only small gaps between each segment. Coming out of the shell was a set of legs slowly dragging its body forward and a long head. Its neck and head were as long as the shell on its back and constantly snapped its mouth at me. The thing was aggressive but painfully slow. Then again, this is probably what Matt meant by armored. There was no doubt that attacking its shell was a bad idea while its head and legs were a weak point.

I approached this strange creature and tried stabbing it with my spear as it came into range, but its head disappeared. In an instant, their head and legs were sucked back into its shell and my spear hit empty air. And then, for all its aggressiveness, it didn’t do a damn thing. It refused to come back out of its shell until I backed off. Then went back in as soon as I approached with my spear.

It was smart enough to recognize that it was at the disadvantage and hid within its armor. However, why would it walk towards me in the first place if only to hide away? Logic-wise, it made no sense. Then again, talking about logic in the dungeon was illogical in the first place. The smart thing to do was to take Matt’s advice and leave since it was armored, but I had my doubts about what he said and I was curious about this thing.

I walked around to the back of the shell where I could get close without its head being able to reach me if it suddenly decided to come out to attack. This thing was about the size of the jumping lizards from before so it wasn’t too big. With a few bashes of my bludgeon, I confirmed that its shell was heavy armor as it did not even flinch from these attacks. Trying to push the blade of my spear between the cracks in its armor did nothing either. There definitely was flesh and I poked it a few times but it was too thick to do real damage between the plates of armor.

One thing that could possibly fit was the dagger from before. I pulled it out and slid it between the plates and finally got deep enough to cut into the bugger and draw blood. Then suddenly, its head flopped out of the shell. I didn’t miss the opportunity to grab my bludgeon and slam it down on the creature. Within a second, the creature’s brains were bashed and all it took was shocking it a bit by cutting it while it was in its shell still.

For Matt, this dungeon would be quite difficult to deal with. But for me and this new method, it was the perfect place. Even if I faced two of these things, they were so slow that I could isolate and take them out one by one. Wheat grinding was possible but unreasonable, fishing could work quite well, and with the ability to take on two at once, I finally had the chance to reach the rest area. Which was now the plan, get to the rest area and then try fishing on the way back or if getting to the rest area fails.

In the next room, I waved my spear around the head of the beast to make it hide then walked around to its back. With the swipe of my knife, its back was cut and its head was thrown into the open where I could finish it off. It did not take more than a minute. This was too easy. Such was the nature of the dungeon, sometimes it was hard and other times it was easy. The armor and menacing look to the place almost threw me off and made me leave but I stayed and profited from that decision.

When I went through the motions in the third room, something weird happened. The turtle insect thingy came back out after being scared once and turned around to face me. In the process, it almost earned a new breathing hole from my spear before it went back into its shield and stayed there. That wasn’t the weird thing as I wasn’t putting much effort into scaring it with my shield. The weird part was that the portal that took me to the next room appeared before I was done.

I was about to club it over the head with my bludgeon when I saw the portal appear and stop. A few seconds later, I realized the beast was already dead. How was it already dead? Was its flesh between its shell a weak point that caused instant death or was it the dagger itself. After all, it was a dark enchanted dagger so cutting into the beast once might be killing it through its dark magic. Magic could be the weak point of these armored enemies.

The only way to know for sure was to test it out in the next few rooms to see if it instantly kills them. In the first two rooms, my back was to the portal leading to the next rooms so I may or may not have bashed in their brains in vain. Not totally in vain as it made me feel better.

Within five minutes, I was at the portal that lead to room seven, preparing myself to face two of these enemies at once. In the three rooms since then, I had instantly killed all of the monsters with the dagger. If not for the fact that the dagger was so short, I would be seriously considering using it as my main weapon. Who knew how effective its dark element would be against normal monsters?

Every room I had passed seemed to be darker than the last as well. Which meant that it’d probably just get darker and darker until there was no visibility at all. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use this dagger to get myself to super high floors against these weak enemies. All I could do was hope that it was enough to beat multiple turtle things and reach the rest area before rooms got too dark to properly fight.

Room seven was just as I expected it to be. A slightly darker and larger room than six with two turtles instead of one. Both immediately began charging me and I decided the best strategy was to just try and deal with one while they were spread apart then deal with the other at my leisure. The one on my right happened to be a bit closer to me so I set my sights on it.

The usual spear feint got it into its shield and before the other turtle had even gotten close, I had dispatched its friend. Time to finish off the second as I waved my spear around its face. But it simply ignored my spear and kept charging. Which forced me to back off a bit, lest it got too close and had the chance to attack me. Then I tried a full-on spear thrust to intimidate it more or stab it if it refused to hide.

The damn thing moved its head to the side and my spear missed. My second thrust was aimed at the base of my neck that couldn’t move too much. It had the choice to get hit or retreat and it chose to get hit. Blood sprayed onto the ground as my spear dug deep into its neck and it finally tried to go back into its shell, which the spear in its neck prevented. It struggled fruitlessly to hide away and pull out the spear and then flopped to the side weakly.

To put it out of its suffering I came closer with the bludgeon. Right as I started lowering myself down to bash it over the head, it suddenly reached its head out and tried to bite me in my face. A wild animal’s last hurray before death. Fortunately for me, it didn’t reach and when it flopped back down on the ground I finished it off before it could do anything else.

Like that, floor seven was cleared in relative ease. Hopefully, the turtle only reacted that way because it saw me kill its friend and that wasn’t its usual behavior. If the turtles became more aggressive and less likely to hide with every room, then a part of my advantage was lost. However, if it was only learning from seeing my actions, then I could simply scare both turtles into their shells right next to each other and kill both and once with a bit of herding.