Back on the surface, I found myself carrying a barrel of beer and a pile of ores, some in my shirt, others stacked on the barrel. The people lining up to get inside only took a passing glance at me before focusing on going into the dungeon themselves. Apparently, people leaving the dungeon with their arms full wasn’t anything new not even with this barrel in my arms. As for the guards, they just laughed a bit at me struggling to carry everything out of the building without dropping anything. Right as I got outside, someone blocked my way.

“I’ll give you a silver for all those ores,” said the man. He was some sort of merchant or perhaps a representative for one of these streetside stands everywhere.

“Thanks for the offer, I actually have seven of them,” I said while pulling out three more that were in my shirt, I left the bad smelling one there until I figured out its value.

“Seven? I thought you had eight with the bulges in your shirt. No matter, I’ll still offer one silver for all of them,” said the man. Surprisingly he had already accounted for the other ones and the silver was for all of them, not just the four sitting on the barrel.

“I see shops around here selling three for a silver. Surely you can pay two silvers for seven ores,” I said in response. If he was offering one, then there was leeway for more as per the usual with merchants and the rules of haggling.

“And other shops selling five for one. Trust me, one silver is a good deal as most shops will only offer one silver for ten ores which you don’t even have,” said the man and he was right. There wasn’t much room for profit if he pays two silver unless there’s someplace where they could be sold at a higher price than all these stands.

“Fine, I’ll take your deal if you can explain the situation behind all these shops, this ore, and these crappy weapons,” I said. Heck, I’d even pass these ores over for free in exchange for info like that which would be invaluable to our present situation in this city.

“A newcomer to this city? Well, the thing is that this ore is overly abundant here but rare everywhere else. A lot of places like using it as a cheap alternative to silver or zinc for coating their weapons and preventing rust. However, there isn’t much profit in it as its still somewhat cheap in other places, so only individual merchants buy them every so often and they’re less predictable than caravans so stands need to kept open for them almost constantly. When merchants come through, they buy in bulk and buy up pretty much everything in sight, sometimes barely caring about price. Adventurers and knights open their own shops to maximize profit and make it so that it’s actually worth going in the dungeon with the fee,” explained the man.

“And the weapons made completely of this metal?” I asked.

“This metal has a lower melting point than iron so it’s used as cheap practice by the local blacksmiths. Meanwhile, the merchants that pass through don’t really care about the state of the metal and will buy the weapons to melt down later. If you want any more info, you’ll have to pay me,” said the man while taking the ores off my hands and leaving after passing me a silver.

I wasn’t sure who came out of this deal better, but I had made back my fee for going into the dungeon, making the three other things pure profit. Four if I counted the food in the bucket but that had no value beyond me saving on food costs. The barrel of beer could be sold if I was in a desperate money situation while the sword and earring could easily sell for a decent sum. An even better use for it than selling it was drinking it of course.

There was one major issue with moving the barrel to the inn where I could possibly start drinking it. And that was the fact that I had no clue where the inn was and had to wait for Matt to guide me. A ways away from the building I managed to find Jerry chatting with one of the many shops by the roadside about something. I walked up beside him, hoping he’d either know where the inn was or at least a rough idea of when Matt would be back.

He finished talking with the shopkeep and noticed me, “Good timing captain. That dungeon had tons of this ore. They don’t sell for much but I made my money back from the entrance fee. Sold twelve ores for a silver coin but it can’t be helped with how easily these ores drop.”

Twelve for a single silver? Jerry had gotten ripped off horribly. I guess that man I was talking to before was telling the truth and I did get a good price for my ores. That made me feel better about the whole situation. Even the fact that Jerry had been ripped off as he’d still need two or more ores for it to warrant two silvers. I just had to sell this sword somewhere and I’d have enough money to stay an extra night at the inn maybe.

“I managed to make a silver off the ores I got along with this barrel of beer from the rest area and a sword dropped from a normal enemy. The enemies were weak to divine items with healing, walking skeletons,” I said, describing the rough situation.

“So something like the ice shard dungeon? I can’t understand how you can risk your life like that, even with a dungeon well suited for your strengths, you go so far that it’s borderline suicidal,” said Jerry, my knowledge of that time had been shared to him during our meeting with Sanae Patil. He was right that I was reckless but it certainly brought results.

“Yeah, just like that. There was even a convergence but this time the other person waited for me and was friendly. I’ll tell you the rest over a mug of this beer back at the inn. Do you know where it is or do we have to wait on Matt?” I asked.

“I do know. Matt got a bad monster type to fight against and after leaving, the guards told him he had to go back to the end of the queue and pay another silver to go back in. He couldn’t afford it so he waited for me to come out and told me the rough location before going on ahead to check up on Stephen while I stayed to sell the ores,” said Jerry as he started to help me carry the barrel and guided me towards the inn.

Conveniently enough, it wasn’t that far away from the dungeon. At least, it wasn’t far from the market with all the flags and ores so it’d be easy to find my way back to the dungeon. It was in a residential area on the side of the markets and we didn’t need to go through the inn’s main building to reach our room. Unlike Tom’s bar, the inn was only one floor that stretched deep into a cramped alleyway that only fit maybe two or three people walking side by side. Along the alley was a series of doors leading into rooms for the inn we were using and what I assumed was another inn on the other side.

It was a tight fit with the barrel in our arms and there were a few people entering and leaving rooms, swearing at us as we went by since we were taking up a bunch of space. Insulting us just because they had less space to walk by us seemed a bit excessive especially with how tight the streets were. Surely they were used to it by now. Perhaps that was why they swore at us; they were too used to walking through tight walkways so when a walkway normally a bit more open was tight as well it’d annoy them on top of the annoyance of having to walk through places like that every day.

The room Matt had rented was around two-thirds of the way into the alley. I set the barrel off to the side then tried opening the room, only to find it lodged shut. Jerry knocked on the door and shouted that it was him. After a few moments and the sound of metal rubbing against each other, the door was opened, revealing an extremely tight and thin room. There was literally only a bed and a small amount of empty space at the base of the bed. We moved the barrel inside and set it to the side of the door and then Jerry took off his shoes and set them on the ground.

If I wanted to sleep on the ground in here, I would have to either sleep in a seated position or have everyone’s shoes as a pillow as my legs rested on the barrel. The room was very dim with only a small candle. As for the bed, it was covered in various stains including a white stain that I hoped was from the candle dripping down. There were no windows and the room felt almost airtight with a thick door with two locks on it to prevent theft. It was suffocating, cramped, dirty, expensive, and dark. This was not an ideal place to stay and I would jump on an opportunity to rent somewhere else if only we could afford it.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and chatted with the others for a bit about the dungeon before I went out to get some mugs for the beer. We didn’t need to find anywhere to eat because of the bucket of food I brought back and shared with the others. In the end, we ended up eating all the food and poured the barrel into the bucket, making it easier to pour into the mugs and spilling less. We still spilled some beer on the bed but it wasn’t going to stain it anymore and it improved the smell in the room.

After few mugs of beer, the room and this situation didn’t feel so bad. We would just have to be lucky with our dungeons so we don’t have to leave and then grind up a bunch of ores. Stephen and Matt mentioned at some point while eating that they had seen adventurers and knights carrying around massive bags of ores and that was something we could do as well. With how frequent the ores dropped, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could gather forty in one run then sell them all for four to five silvers.

If I was going to do that, it’d be in my best interest to buy a better set of clothes, preferably one with pockets to carry even more. I ended up passing the sword that dropped from the dungeon to Matt rather than selling it since he needed a weapon and his hatchet would break in one use. As for the earring, I soaked the sharp part of in the beer for a few seconds then pierced my earlobe. My shaggy hair would hide it from plain sight and I might as well wear it until I found someone to sell or trade it to.

The others saw this and drunkenly laughed at this antic, thinking it was some knick knack I picked up in the market that I believed was actually valuable. If that was what they wanted to believe, I wasn’t going to stop them. Even with Matt proving himself to be somewhat trustworthy and the others being fellow believers of Sanae Patil, the fewer people who knew the better. A best-case scenario is that it would help me despite the fact that it’s only supposed to be useful for magic users, like amplifying my fire sword or something like that. I should have checked back when I was still in the dungeon but was reluctant to put the earring in until I had a few drinks in me.