With that all out of the way and the knight order supposedly formed, it was time to go back to Tom’s bar to grab something to eat and get a mug or two of that ale before finding someplace to sleep. By this time, I imagine the room has been rented out so I was going to settle down somewhere outside. Right as I was about to leave, Jerry started to talk again.

“Alright, first business of the knight order is to apologize for stealing his ale for a few drinks. I’ve already admitted that it was us and to prevent any friction in the new knight order we should all apologize and try to make up for the incident,” said Jerry.

“Wait you told him? I thought we all agreed to keep that under wraps,” said Matt.

“We didn’t really do a good job of hiding that it was us. He would’ve found out eventually. Alright, I’m sorry for doing that captain. I was jealous that you managed to get so far into the dungeon and got a whole keg of ale that you didn’t bother sharing with us. I was also jealous that you managed to fish up two ores in a single morning after two runs in the dungeon. Even now, you lost your arm and got a cool sword while your arm is growing back. I admire your luck and tried to back at you due to those feelings and that was wrong,” said Chris. He had quite a way with words.

“What ale? I have no idea what you people are on about,” said Stephen. I wasn’t sure if he was truly ignorant and it was actually Jerry or if he was just a good actor. He just wasn’t the kind of person I liked.

“No need for a full apology from everyone. I understand why you did it and I forgive you all. Let’s put it all behind us and go grab some drinks. I’m paying,” I said while pulling the leftover ores out of my shirt and setting them on the table.

This was a risk, entrusting them with the rest of the ores. However, I had a feeling that this might actually grow into the knight order I needed. Maybe I was a fool to trust them after two incidents, but a part of me really wanted this to work out. Like they admitted they did it and apologized to me and now all I needed was enough divine items to give to all of them so it becomes in their best interest to support me.

Actually, I just needed to share what I get from the dungeon enough that it became their best interest to support me even without divine items. Until then, I was going to get them drunk and see how they actually felt about the whole ordeal. Nothing like some beer to loosen the tongue.

We all went down to Tom’s bar and had a late lunch or early dinner. There would be food being made almost constantly with the merchants around. Even more so than during the harvest festivals. Plus, with the merchants around, it was easier to get more exotic foods from far away. As such, Tom was grilling up some strange bird that was the size of a pig and on the side, he was cooking what looked like a piece of greenish wood but was actually some sort of vegetable. Whatever it was, it smelled great and tasted okay. I honestly preferred chicken but it was nice to eat something different from usual every so often. Tom raised an eyebrow at me eating with Jerry’s group again but served all of us with no questions asked.

There was plenty of beer passed around and lots of chatting. Mostly about the formation of the knight order. I didn’t really manage to get any deeper level of information from them while they were drunk. Mostly them being shocked that they were a knight order rather than a band of adventurers now. After drinking, they all went back to the headquarter or barn and brought me with them. Apparently, there was another bed in one of the pens that I could use. There were around twelve of these pens that bad converted into makeshift rooms.

In fact, two of them were being rented out to some adventurers from out of town. That explained why Jerry was anxious about hiding their loot, but they left their weapons on display in plain sight. Then again, if those disappeared they’d be easier to track down than the ores. Surprisingly enough, these rooms were quite nice for sleeping and since they could have a total of twelve people sleeping here at one time it did actually work as a pseudo headquarters of barracks that we could build upon and add more onto since it was on the outskirts of town.

The next day, everyone other than me went off to the dungeon while I laid down in bed. The reason being is that my skin had ripped open and exposed my bone. I was in no state to go into the dungeon and used the cloth I normally used to tie my spear to my back as a sling to keep my arm in a better position and not move it. Even if my arm was healing back, there was no guarantee it would grow back properly without proper preparations.

Days passed as my arm visibly grew. The other members weren’t discontent as I did provide a bunch of ores before I went out of commission and I even pulled out the ale and drank it with them, not withholding it from them at all. It was a way of me telling them I didn’t hold it against them and trusted them again. Maybe I really did. A part of me wanted to believe I was being cautious against them and purposely lowering my guard to see their true nature or something of the sort.

As terrible of people as they were, I couldn’t help but come to like them, except Stephen. Something about him just got on my nerves. Ironically, he might be the only decent person in the group. As it was revealed while they were all drunk from the ale that Jerry revealed he had drunk the ale before somewhere.

It got to a point where my arm and hand were fully healed and I was ready to enter the dungeon once again after four days. A week after I had gotten the shield and this quest to create a knight order. My hand was still a little shrunk and my fingers slim, so I kept both the necklace and shield as I entered the dungeon. While I could have brought a new bludgeon with me, I decided to just use the spear and sword.

By this time, the merchants had thankfully left town. Around the time they left, Jerry approached one merchant and managed to sell off most of the ores the group had collected over a month or two at an actually decent price. One of my ores had ended up being silver ore which raised the amount of coin we got by a considerable amount. It didn’t matter too much to me as I had been bored these past few days of doing nothing but hearing from people about things that had happened.

The first room of the dungeon this time around had a purplish hue and the floor was covered in water that just barely reached above my toes. This was very odd, and even stranger was the monster. It was a giant grey fish covered in scales, making it look almost reptilian in nature. However, the water level wasn’t high enough for it so it was flopping around helplessly. I almost felt bad for it as my spear skewered its eyes and put it out of its misery.

As bad as I felt about it, I was sorely tempted to wheat grind here as it would be completely helpless every time it spawned. On later floors, it was easy to expect what would happen. The water level would rise and it’d be able to freely travel around and it’d keep getting deeper and deeper until I’d be forced to fight completely underwater. Then again, I really wanted to try out the fishing method as it was the only method I hadn’t tried out, so I went to the next room.

There, the water level had risen as expected and the fish monster stayed in one place rather than flopping around as it was high enough for it to breathe if monsters needed to breathe. Unlike the first room, this fish was able to react when I came closer. It kicked itself into the air and tried to slam its body into me. I was able to dodge to the side and then stabbed it with my spear.

Except, I wasn’t able to pierce into its body fully as I struck it on its scales instead of the eyes. Armored. Thankfully, its eyes were huge and easy to hit. Sliding the spear across the scales while keeping it pinned down, my spear found its way into its eye and finished it off. And then I went to the next room as the only way I could do fishing is if I went at least three rooms in then went back two.

I would be fishing in a dungeon full of fish, the coincidence was not lost on me. The third floor was the first real challenge in this dungeon as there was enough water for the fish monster to actually swim. Although it was significantly harder to hit, there was a part of its body still above water, making it easy to track. And even better was the fact that its only attack was slamming into me, so I could touch it freely. The way I defeated the fish monster in floor three was by watching its swimming patterns, kicking it and keeping it pinned down under my foot and using my spear to kill it.

Part of me wanted to try using the sword to see if it could cut into the armor-like scales on the fish, but the fact that there was water everywhere made me wary of using a fire sword. For all I knew, water could damage the blade or it would react with the water in some way to my disadvantage like exploding in my face.

After killing that fish, I had the choice between going onwards or heading back to just try out fishing. And I instantly chose to head back. With my luck, if I had gone onwards I’d encounter another elemental beast and get my newly healed arm chopped off again. That day my only goal was to enter the dungeon and try out the fishing method. Nothing more, nothing less.

Passing through the second floor, I saw the fish slowly decomposing from the inside while the scales stayed mostly intact. It was tempting to bring a scale out with me to test if I could, but I could try that with one of the fish in the first room. Back in the first room, I sat down and felt the water soaking my pants slightly but it was better than having to stand the entire time.

Within fifteen minutes, a new fish monster fell from the ceiling almost instantly and started flopping around. There was no long, drawn-out sequence of the fish squirming through the wall, it just fell. Which was nothing to complain about as I got up and skewered its eye. The faster they came in, the easier it was to kill them.

The fishing technique showed its worth as the next one came within ten minutes, then five, and then it was back to only being one minute between each monster. Rather than having to wait hours for things to drop down to one a minute, it only took a little under half an hour. And then the grind started as I walked around killing every fish that fell from above before they could even react, not that they could do anything even if they could react.

After killing about fifteen of the monsters, an ore dropped and fell into the water. I picked it up and slid it into my shirt and it made my shirt soaking wet. This was extremely inconvenient, keeping things within my shirt. Every time I moved or fell down, they chafed and cut into me. My desire for some sort of bag or rucksack grew like the wet spot on my shirt.

Around fifty kills in, I was forced to switch my weapon. My spear got stuck in the head of one of the fish monsters and another fish dropped before I could pull it out. Either the dark dagger or the fire sword were my options. Or I could just ignore the fish as it couldn’t do anything in this amount of water and continue to pull the spear out. Then again, these monsters could do strange things when there was more than one of them.

As I didn’t want to get onto my knees every time I killed one of the fish, I pulled out the fire sword despite all the water. There were none of the problems I expected to happen. In fact, the sword worked better than expected as it could kill the fish with ease. If I struck its scales, the sword would cut through them and kill the fish by cooking it from the inside. If I stabbed into its eyes, everything within its head would melt into a soup that not only the sword couldn’t get stuck in, but it also didn’t stick to the blade.

It resulted in far cleaner kills than the spear. Just to make sure, I even dipped in the water and it did nothing other than extinguishing the flame at that part of the blade until it was brought out of the water and reignited. Even then, it cut through the fish’s scales without much trouble. The blade was sharp without the influence of the flames.

For almost an hour I constantly killed monsters, barely keeping track of how many I had killed. It wasn’t until a second ore dropped that I considered what to do next. Kill more monsters for an hour or so until the next loot came out or leave to grab a drink and some food. My stomach growled in response so I ignored the fish that fell from the ceiling and went out the exit. There, I found Chris and Stephen sitting down in the grass nearby, taking a break from work and chatting idly.

They waved at me but made no attempts to start a conversation so I started walking towards town. As I was leaving the area, I heard them whispering to each other but didn’t understand what they were saying. It didn’t matter anyway. A private conversation or two was to be expected and it’d be rude to barge in uninvited. They could have been talking anything from the new knight order to girls.

Back at Tom’s bar, I found an unusual situation. There was a group of heavily armed strangers despite the fact that the merchants had already left. Which meant these men could be anything from travelers to adventurers. If they were merchants, they would’ve followed the caravan as it had the benefit of being well guarded and hard for bandits to raid, saving on traveling costs when it came to protection.

There were a total of nine of them and they all wore similar looking armor. When I went up to the bar and ordered some food and a beer, I noticed something that shocked me. The symbol of a divine on various items they held. These were no mere adventurers. These were full on knights, all of them following the same divine and heavily armed, there was no doubt about it.

The one sitting next to me noticed my staring and looked back at me, glancing at my shield and necklace. He smiled at me but I didn’t feel like it was a friendly smile. It felt inherently hostile, which made no sense as it was a smile. I felt like if we weren’t in a town, he would have cut me down where I stood and even rested his right hand on the pommel of the sword on his waist.

“Nice to see a fellow believer of a divine in town, especially one that happens to be good at collecting,” said the knight, pointing out the fact that I wore not one, but two divine items.

“What brings a prestigious knight such as you to such a small town as this?” I asked.

“Just looking around. Our knight order, the order of Mans Tontrua, ends up traveling throughout the lands quite a bit. Without a permanent home as of yet,” said the knight. For some reason, that unnerved me.

If a knight order decided to move here and stick around, it would interfere with my plans and might even force me to go to another town to complete the task. Especially with a knight order like this who obviously disliked me or my goddess.

Between my knight order made from scratch with only two divine items and this fully decked out knight order, who would people rather join? Then again, who knew if they would even accept people to join them. However, if they stuck around people would avoid joining my knight order simply to keep their options open to join this one. For all I knew, Jerry and the other would jump ship at the sight of this knight order.

After all, I had kept a hold on all the divine items and never gave one away. So, they could always leave and the knight order was in name only. Everything was falling apart at the seams.