Chapter 13. Part 3

Aside from the two eye-catching fountains at the left and right of the entrance, another notable point to the inn was definitely it’s scale. The inn, unexpectedly, was a high rise building with twenty floors. It took up a very large amount of space, nearly the size of a football stadium. It was to the point that I wanted to retort and denounce it as no longer an inn, but my complaint would only fall on empty ears.

When we walked in, the walls were all lined with slot machines as far as the eye could see. The center of the room seemingly focused on all sorts of table games that ranged from cards, roulette, craps, bingo, and wheel of fortune. There was even a section for a few peculiar ones like miniature horse racing, cock fighting, and a ring that had a pair of demons boxing while the surrounding demons heatedly placed wagers on their favoured fighters. Of course, I was shocked by the sheer variety of it all, but I didn’t let it show on my face since my niece had a cool and composed expression. She didn’t display the slightest ripple of shock towards the grand sight before her eyes. There was no way I could act like a country bumpkin in front of my niece, so I followed her example and similarity treated it like nothing much.

Kana on the other hand, like the inexperienced new born chick she was, looked about left and right breathing in deeply and gasping at all the strange foreign sights. Since she was teleported here while she was still in high school, she’d probably never stepped into a casino in her short lifetime.

To the right as we entered was the front desk, a transparent magical shield was put up. It doubled as a location to both exchange casino chips and money as well as check in guests.

The guide motioned for us to approach the desk before he took his leave. He said he needed to make a report to his superiors. He likely wanted to make good on his earlier words regarding the painting I’d left behind in the central plaza. I couldn’t find it in myself to stop him when I thought about the random bullshit nonsense I spouted back then.

The inn worker behind the counter greeted us the moment we were within three meters of the desk like a dutiful employee would in my home world, “Welcome to the Progenitor’s Grace Inn, renowned as the number one inn in the city- no that’s not quite right, rather than the city, it would be more accurate to say the dungeon. Were you here to stay the night, or were you here in hopes of getting lucky?”

The worker behind the counter said such suggestive lines while their gaze darted back and and forth between Kana and my niece.

My niece without noticing a thing densely said with a pout, “looking to get lucky obviously.”

With some sort of understanding, or should I call it a misunderstanding, the worker and my niece nodded towards each other with… knowing eyes? I don’t know if it would be knowing eyes when it was clear to me how different their ideas of getting lucky were.

“We’re just here to rent a room!”

Kana, unable to take the worker’s discrete winks and thumbs up immediately tried to correct them, but it seems their misunderstanding only increased.

“I’m sure the three of you will get very lucky tonight.”

“Like I said, it’s not like-“

“Right…”

I cut Kana off by raising my hand in front of her. It seemed too troublesome to clear up the workers' misunderstanding with the way things looked. Outright denying it only made people doubt your words more. I figured it was easier to just drop it, forget about it and move on, otherwise it could go on forever.

“Well, aren’t you the eager customer? Excuse my rudeness, valued patrons of our humble abode. It will be one gold for each person per night. That is, altogether, three gold per night for all of you.”

“That expensive?! The inn on the 50th floor was only one silver per person!”

“What? Is a gold coin considered expensive?”

I looked towards Kana and she nodded with certainty then explained, “on average it’s only thirty bronze coins per person for a night at an inn outside the dungeon.”

Well, since I was rather well off right now, I handed over a platinum coin without making a fuss only to hear shocked exclamations from Kana and my niece.

“How do you have a platinum coin?! Where did you even get that?!”

“Oh? Is it worth that much?” I acted like a rich nouveau unaware of his own great fortune.

“That’s right! Uncle, are you actually really rich?”

Seeing my niece eyeing the platinum coin lustfully, I felt a bit proud of myself for so casually flaunting my wealth.

“Platinum coins are only used for transactions on the level of nations. A silver coin is equivalent to one hundred bronze coins, a gold coin converts to one hundred silver coins, while a platinum coin is worth ten thousand gold coins. We’ve been together the entire time and I’ve never seen you ever get that amount from the monsters we killed through theft.”

“Eh?! Ten thousand gold coins?!”

Even I was completely shocked by my unknown wealth.

“Really, when did you get this? I worked myself to the bone and lived the life of a broke college student during my time as a hero, yet you’re telling me you came to this world seven months ago and have been sitting on riches this entire time?! Isn’t my life too unfair?”

“Uhm, Kana, you remember the times where you lured monsters away for me? Whenever you did, I would loot the place and I occasionally stumbled upon a platinum coin here and there. In total I’ve found ten of them.”

The real story was that Yueliang gave it to me as a bit of spending money while on my vacation. She told me to get her some nice clothes and necessities when we reached the 70th floor for her. Basically, it was sending me on an errand to do some shopping for her since she couldn’t leave the hundredth floor herself. She even said I could keep the change. The ten platinum coins I claimed I’d found, that was actually how many she gave me for this trip.

Just how skewed was her sense of money that she could hand these out like it was nothing? Well, she was the final boss in this dungeon, I guess she was bound to be filthy stinking rich with how long she’s lived at the very top of the pyramid. Honestly, I really thought a platinum coin would just be the equivalent of one hundred gold coins or something. How was I supposed to know she was unknowingly acting the part of a sugar mama? By giving me this sum of money instead of to Kana, her actual servant, was she trying to flaunt her wealth in my face to keep me on a leash?

Since it was too embarrassing to tell them I essentially had a sugar mama, I could only shamelessly lie to them and hide the truth like I’d done.

“Y-y-you! Shameless!”

“Eh? Kana?”

“Despicable!”

“Calm-“

“Scoundrel!”

“-down.”

“Greedy wealth hoarding pig!”

“But I didn’t know they were that valuable! How was I supposed to know? I’ve never had the chance to explore this world, so I have no sense of how much the currency here is worth.”

“How about this? Both of you, show me your hands.”

Kana, albeit reluctant, did as instructed while glaring daggers at me, suspicion written all over her face. My niece on the other hand, fully understood my intentions, eagerly stuck out her hand with a smug face as if to say, “hand over my ten years… no, one hundred years worth of allowance old man.”

In a way it was a stick up and I was being robbed, but as it wasn’t my money to start with, I still resolved myself to give them a share of the windfall of wealth I’d been gifted. I still felt like a father internally in turmoil, forced to give out his life savings to his daughters.

“Here you go.”

With a cool face trying to act as suave as possible, I fished out six platinum coins, three in each hand and I placed them into their open palms.

Kana was shocked, while my niece just pouted with a somewhat dissatisfied look like she’d expected more. She even had the nerve to eye Kana’s palm with three platinum coins, obvious desire written all over her face.

I quickly latched onto both her hands knowing this niece of mine was a money grubber who was extremely loose with her money. Whenever I gave her allowance in the past, she’d immediately run off to the store and buy video games to play with her friends.

Hah, that really brought me back to the good old days. It was a short moment in my life where I finally found some sort of peace in my heart after countless years moving about from place to place.

This little girl had some really good friends back then too. What were their names again? Kanji, Otaku, Boku and Mugo? I think it was something along those lines. I never met them in the end, but she always mentioned the four of them and their little adventures together. They’d only been together for four years while in elementary school, but from what I heard from her back then, they got along quite well. I wonder what they’re up to right now back on Earth.

“Sir, How many nights did you intend to stay?”

“For now, make it a month.”

“Understood, that will be ninety gold coins altogether. Your change is 9910 gold coins.”

Hehehe, so what if I extend my stay? It just means I’ll have to let her have a bit more of my blood when I return. Although, that spectre of hers still shows up everyday and steals my blood. Her spectre brings it back to her even when we’re apart which was rather annoying in its own way.

The worker took out a sack with gold coins jingling about from a storage ring and handed it over to me.

“How much is a storage ring?”

“The cheapest we have here are valued at one hundred gold coins, the inter spatial storage size is one cubic meter in size.”

“I’ll take three. One for each of us.”

“Uncle thank you! I’d lost the one I managed to snag two months ago and I’ve been having quite a hard time recently because of it.”

“Then, the remaining amount is 9610 gold coins.”

After taking out the three hundred gold coins from the bag, the inn’s worker handed it over to me. They also handed over a card with magic circles inscribed on it with 20-1 written on it.

“Thank you for your patronage. Please feel free to enjoy the various facilities we offer during your stay.”