Yui watched with some bewilderment as the group of foreigners gathered around the dungeon area. Their leader was obviously rather surprised about something, though Yui had no idea what gave him such a conflicted look.

Giving him a confident and encouraging smile as she always did whenever she wasn't sure what else to say surely couldn't be a bad idea right? After all she wanted to make a good impression on their new customers.

'Who is that guy anyways? Rin mentioned something about some Asho Empire?'

Shrugging, Yui focused on the people over at the dungeon display case again and tried to give others the impression that she had a good idea of what was going on. They did not really trust all of it yet and currently listened to other customers explaining what they might encounter.

While everyone else focused on what was happening in the room, Yui's eyes turned a bit unfocused, as she wanted to watch what would happen inside the dungeon.

-

When the first person disappeared right in front of them, commander Kita was rather impressed. Not really all that surprised, as he heard quite a few explanations by now of what would happen, but still, hearing about someone getting transported with some spatial power and seeing them disappear right in front of them was rather different.

It did not take all that long for the person to return to the room, pretty much where he had disappeared before. The elite soldier had a frown on his face, before reporting to his commander.

"I am sorry commander, but I failed you. I could not even solve the first question correctly."

Behind them at the counter, Yui had a hard time not giggling, as the soldier did not even manage to get past the first stage of her trick questions.

"Well, what was so hard about it? What did you encounter?"

"I was moved … transported to some room sir. It had stone walls and a door on one side with a question." he started to explain. "I felt really odd too, like something weighted heavily on me, but I'm not sure what this was all about. I couldn't properly use my strength."

"The question read 'If you have a bowl with six apples and you take away four, how many do you have?' and then I answered 'two', but … well I was wrong."

The commander sighed, while some of the soldiers didn't even figure out what was wrong about the answer.

"You morons, if you take four apples away, you obviously have four apples!" their captain explained to them, while commander Kita decided to head in himself.

Kita Ihito shortly afterwards disappeared from the shop room. Similar to the other people going through the dungeon, he would first be confronted with a simple question. This stage of the dungeon was very straightforward and similar in design.

Taking a moment to get his bearings, after getting transported to a totally different place, he walked over to the door to read the question, curious what he would find this time.

Ken's father has five sons. Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty, … What is the name of the fifth son?

"Well if the sons are named ten, twenty and so on it should be … wait."

He read through the question again, now that he knew that there might be some way to trick him.

"The answer is Ken." He rolled his eyes, not really expecting this place to outright tell him the answer in such a blatant way.

The door opened and there was a small room with a little chest, as well as another door at the other end.

Commander Kita opened the chest and found a paper bag inside. He carefully opened it to see some thin slices of something inside. It smelled a bit spicy and seemed to be some type of food.

Putting the small bag away, as he did not want to risk eating something in the middle of a strange place. He went through the other door to continue with the challenge.

The next room seemed to have taken the riddles a step further. There was not simply a question here, but it actually gave people something to do.

Kita Ihito found two containers, one that could hold 3kg and one that could hold 5kg. Next to these two containers was a larger box filled with rice, likely 10 or even more kg of it.

'Measure 1kg of rice with the tools provided.' The room challenged him.

No longer a trick question, this seemed a bit easier for the commander than even the first question. After giving it some thought, he picked up the container for the 3kg, filled it and then dumped its contents into the container with the 5kg.

Once this was done, he filled the 3kg container once more, and then moved over its contents into the 5kg container until it was completely full.

With 2/3rds of it moved over to the 5kg container, the remaining part should be exactly 1kg.

Yet another door opened for him and he found yet another box with some sort of reward. This time it didn't seem to be food. Rather it was some magical tool with rotating pieces. In a way it looked like a clock, just much smaller and not related to the sun.

"A portable way to measure time? How does it do that?"

Other than the food, this seemed to be a lot more interesting.

The next room had an open door at the other side, but there was no real path leading there other than a lot of pillars one would be able to jump on and a big dark chasm. He couldn't even see how deep this ravine separating one side from the other might be.

On the wall at the other end was a round disk that slowly filled up as well as some symbols and numbers. Once the disc completed a full circle and filled up completely all the symbols seemed to change.

Each symbol had a color and a number, but Kita Ihito could not easily figure out what they were supposed to tell him until he found that the pillars one could use to step on and jump to the other side were similarly colored.

"I have to pass the number of colored pillars on my way to the other side that the symbols on the wall tell me to?"

If he still had his full cultivation strength with his superior reflexes all of this would be a lot easier, but now trying to find a way to jump to the other side and then actually doing the jumping before the disc completed a turn and changed all the symbols seemed really hard.

Kita Ihito did his best anyways and quickly found a way through the maze of pillars to jump on. He was too late to make it through completely though and all the symbols changed before he arrived at the other side.

His face turned pale, when the pillar he was just standing on plummeted into the chasm along with him, before he found himself back in the shop room completely out of breath.

"Commander, are you alright?" his subordinates did not know what happened, but if even their commander looked this pale, something strange must have occurred.

"I ... I am fine. Did you find out more about the other places?"

"We explored all the places, except for the ones with the spirit beasts, as it would likely take us too long for a quick check. All of the locations really offer what everyone says they would, various materials in big quantities without any dangers around. Our people came back early though and did not use up the full time they were given."

"Are the materials real? Any tricks or illusions that might make them look like spirit materials even though they are not?"

"They all seem to be the real thing, I couldn't notice anyone having dabbled with them, or any illusions to make them appear as something they are not."

"Any idea what this is?" he held up the bag of food he got from the dungeon.

"Uh, some sort of food perhaps?"

"Never seen any of it.", "Sorry sir, I have no idea."

"I know what this is." One of the other customers of the shop suddenly exclaimed.

"An apprentice of mine has received this type of food before. Miss Yui called it potato chips. It seems to be made out of a root vegetable called potato sliced into thin pieces, fried and it has added some spices to it. Though, your bag seems to have a different flavoring."

"Chili, it's called chili." Yet another customer added his own information into the mix. "Your apprentice got a bag flavored with pepper, Grandmaster Koda."

"Are there so many different flavors?" one of the soldiers asked.

"Yes, there are several, I've heard of people having found bags with potato chips that were flavored with salt and vinegar, sour cream, barbecue, garlic and a weird green spice no one had heard of before. Miss Yui said it’s a secret and didn't want to tell us. They tasted rather strange."

"I didn't expect this place to have such strange types of food."

"Master Ryoma told us that while the Pavilion did not have any plans to produce any of this food in larger quantities themselves, they will be looking for partners working together with the Earthly Treasure Pavilion to create and distribute these types of food in the future."

"Partners? Who might that be?"

Now that the topic had been brought up, more people were suddenly interested in the strange new type of food.

"I heard some rumors that there is some deal going on with one of the larger merchant groups in Kamiecu Kingdom."

"What? That crazy place that treats foreigners like enemies? They have three large merchant groups, right? Which one is it that will get this big deal?"

"How am I supposed to know. I just heard that it's one of these groups, not which one."

While the people discussed the strange food and various merchant groups, Kita Ihito picked up one of the potato chips and gave it a try.

"It's really crispy and also rather spicy, but tastes good." he informed his group after a while. "It's no surprise that various merchants might be interested in this product. Not exactly what we have come here for, but still interesting."

-

In the corner of the shop, a person listened to the ongoing conversation before quickly making his way to an inn in the middle of the city.

He barely entered on of the rooms, with an older man sitting in front of various reports when he reported what he had seen right away.

"Master Trega, Master Trega! I have gone to this Pavilion, it seems like one of our competitors plans some kind of partnership with this faction here."

"A partnership? What exactly is this about?"

"It seems like they have a deal ongoing about some type of new food."

"Why do I hear about this for the first time now? What are our spies in those other businesses even doing?!"

"Master, what should we do now? If we don't act, the balance between the groups will be all gone and with such a strong backing it won't take long before there will only be one merchant group left! Should we inform the royal family to cancel this deal?"

"No, of course not. How would the royal family intervene here? Do you think our royal family is only made up of fools? Do you think they would risk angering a force that calls itself an Empire, just because of some merchant group?"

"I did not consider this master. I have misspoken."

"No, the royal family does not value any of the merchant groups enough to interfere. In the end, no matter how many groups there are, no matter who is stronger, the taxes will all be collected just the same."

"What should we do then master?"

"It's really simple, if we cannot prevent others from getting a slice of this pie, we simply have to make sure to also get one!"

"You mean, we start a partnership with this Pavilion as well? What of the agreements with the other groups though? We are not supposed to work together with outside forces?"

"Don't be silly. You still have much to learn. If someone else already plans to break this agreement, what point is there in sticking to it?"

"Let me write a letter, you will bring it to the owner of this Pavilion place and I will meet with them in order to find some agreement as soon as possible."

"Yes master. I will wait for your letter to be ready and then bring it over right away."