Epilogue

Day 169

Haku came over. The Guild receptionist was stunned since she had only contacted her yesterday. Yeah, Haku was just waiting for this to happen.

“I’ve come to rescue Dragon Suzuki, the Hero.”

Or so she said, but that was of course a front. She wouldn’t actually rescue him. She would bring back a [Doppelganger (500,000 DP)] that looked exactly like him. Suzuki was, as expected, labeled a criminal and this Doppelganger would be taking his punishment for him. Haku had brought with her several carriages for the sake of this performance, including one with a dramatic cage. Waaait... But isn’t the road from here to Tsia a tiny mountain road? Oh, you used magic to expand the roads? Holy crap.

“So, what happened to the real Suzuki?”

“He’s not dead.”

“Oh, you captured him alive, then? I’m impressed.” Thanks to the Doppelganger that Haku prepared, everyone thought that Suzuki had already been rescued from the dungeon. The real Suzuki, however, was still inside the wall. And there he would stay forever.

“I also rescued the slaves that he brought with him.”

“Oh my. You didn’t kill them? I suppose you might intend to make a human farm with them, alongside Suzuki.”

“...The only farm I need right now is Suzuki. Would you mind taking the slaves back to where they come from? Or at least, to wherever they want to go now.”

“My my, Keima. Is that perhaps a quest you’re giving me? A-Rank adventurers are quite expensive, you know.”

“Would a free Cream Soda cover it?”

“Easily.” The deal was made with Haku smiling in amusement. Since Cream Sodas were worth one gold each (a price recommended by Haku herself), a single one of them was only a little cheaper than the average payment an A-Rank adventurer could expect for such a quest.

“I’ll bring it to you later, sister!”

“I am looking forward to that, my sweet little Rokuko.”

And so, Haku agreed to take the surviving slaves and return them to their home villages and whatnot.

Day 170

“See you later. I’m counting on you.”

“Certainly. Count on me all you wish. I am an A-Rank adventurer, after all.”

There were no convict slaves among the surviving slaves, so they were all freed from service. All it would take was some simple paperwork and they could have their collars removed in Tsia City. Not to mention, every single one of them jumped at Haku’s offer to take them home after she mentioned having already been paid to do so.

And so, Haku left the inn with Doppelganger Suzuki and the original Suzuki’s former slaves. By the way, several adventurers that had been staying in our inn went with them willingly as bodyguards. Suzuki had made a lot of enemies the one night he stayed over.

...But about those former slaves. Should they really be going on a trip with Suzuki, fake or not? Maybe they don’t mind since he’s just sitting in the cell with his arms around his knees, murmuring quietly to himself every now and again. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s pretty scary, even knowing it’s just an act.

Haku finally left with Gozou and a surprisingly large number of adventurers seeing her off. Once that was done, Gozou stealthily called out to me.

“Hey. Yer the one that paid Lady Haku’s fee, ain’t ya?”

“Huh? Yeah. I gave her a Cream Soda for her efforts. Pretty cheap.”

“Cheap?! Those cost a gold each...”

“From our perspective, they’re only worth as much as they actually cost to make. Between you and me, we’re definitely way overcharging for them.”

“Seriously? Yer not helping yerself here, man.”

After all, a single Cream Soda only costs 8 DP. A Goblin costs twenty DP, y’know? Though according to Haku, the only way in this world to get Cream Soda is to buy it for DP in my dungeon, so it is relatively valuable.

Gozou scratched his head awkwardly and kept talking.

“Aaah, hey, err... I owe a lot to ye for all ye did today, Keima.”

“Huh? Don’t sweat it, I didn’t do all that much. I just gave a room to the slaves and a Cream Soda to Haku.”

“...Right. That’s what we’re passin’ this off as.”

By the way, our dungeon’s difficultly rank would remain unchanged despite Suzuki the Hero failing to return from within and ending up incapacitated. The Guild thought that Suzuki had just lost his mind within the dungeon, and Haku had stated upon “rescuing” him that the dungeon was the same always. No changes necessary. Not to mention that all of his slaves, excluding Coriane, had abandoned him and somehow ended up within the inn. Wait. Doesn’t that make it extremely, painfully obvious that there’s some subterfuge going on here?

Ultimately, everyone agreed with Haku’s proposed theory that Coriane had separated Suzuki from the others, then betrayed him in such dramatic fashion that he became traumatized towards slaves and his mind shut down. I got the feeling that Coriane wouldn’t be too happy to hear that, given that she had died to protect him, but eh.

“Y’know, truth is... A few of us adventurers had relatives among those slaves. I... No, we were planning on surprising Suzuki and knocking him out to rescue his slaves. Maybe even kill him and stash the body in the darkness of the dungeon, iffin luck were on our side. But... It weren’t. We went into the dungeon that day with as many as we could, and not even a single one of us managed to find him.” Wait, what? That was a thing? Now that he mentions it, I do kinda remember the adventurers sticking together more than usual, as if they were searching for something.

“Guess y’could say luck actually was on our side, though. An S-Rank adventurer woulda killed a few of us for sure, and we’d be doomed the second he held one of his slaves hostage. Plus... Thanks to a certain someone, Suzuki ended up gettin’ taken down anyway. Dunno who that someone is, though.” Uhhhh, you know that the official explanation is that Coriane did it, right? I almost said that, but read the mood and kept it in my head.

“I was gonna invite ye to come with us, Keima, but I figured yer place was with Ichika and the owner.”

“Really? I didn’t notice at all.”

“Ye, really.” Gozou nodded to himself abut something.

“Hey. Just sayin’. I dunno who took Suzuki down, but if ye ever get the chance, would ye mind thankin’ him for me?”

“...I don’t know who did it either, and I don’t think I’ll know it’s them if I do meet them, but sure.”

“Thank ye, Keima.”

“No problem.”

Gozou, having said what he wanted to say, walked away. Welp... Gozou definitely thinks I’m some super skilled subordinate of Haku’s now. My reputation’s getting so far ahead of how strong I actually am. Guess this is just my life now.

Day 171

Rokuko came to my room the day after Haku left.

“Keima. I think it’s about time for you to give me it.”

“Give you what?”

“Didn’t I tell you I wanted a symbol of our partnership? You promised to make me a ring.” Oh yeah... That was a thing that happened. I never told her when I’d make the ring, though.

“You didn’t forget about it, right?”

“Uh, of course not. I remembered. I was just thinking about what kind of design I should roll with. While sleeping.”

“Really? Then go ahead and make it. I’d like one made of orichalcum, I think. Do you mind me saying that?”

“Sure. I’ll try finishing it by tonight. Uhhhh, I’d feel pretty awkward making it while you watch, so... I’ll call you when it’s finished.”

“Okay! I can’t wait!” Rokuko left my room.

Alright. This sucks. Guess I’ll think about the design while I make it. I’ll start off with a simple ring and then decorate it from there.

First, I bought [Orichalcum (10cm of 1mm diameter wire: 10,000 DP)]. Holy crap, it’s so expensive! But I’ve gotta buy it. This is what Rokuko wants, and I wanna see what it’s like too.

Orichalcum was colored like a mix of gold and silver. It radiated a rainbow-like light, making it feel exactly like a fantasy world metal. A mere ten centimeters of it in wire form alone was ridiculously expensive, and it wouldn’t bend no matter how hard I tried. I even experimented with a pair of pliers, but it showed no signs whatsoever of bending. The heck is this? Is this stuff really metal?

Ultimately, I used {Create Golem} to work with it... but it took a lot of time and mana just to morph the wire into a ring. It’s been a long friggin’ time since {Create Golem} was enough to tire me out, holy crap. I even said a proper chant and it still sucked a crapload of mana out of me. It got easier to mold than iron once it was filled with mana, but I have no idea how anyone could make a whole sword or something out of this stuff.

I looked the orichalcum ring over. Man... It cost me ten gold coins’ worth of DP to make this. Talk about excessive. That makes this ring worth ten million yen already, y’know? Maybe I should have ignored what she wanted and just made it out of gold or silver.

Next, I bought a [Synthetic Ruby (Unprocessed Boule: 30 DP)]. It was way cheaper than the orichalcum. Not to mention that the resulting oval-shaped crystal was about as big as a finger. But, uh... The heck is “boule” anyway?

I had thought about just morphing some natural gems into a crystal, but the synthetic ruby was cheaper and looked better. Plus, synthetic crystals had fewer impurities in them, so you could argue that they were in some ways superior to natural crystals. Though the argument between natural and synthetic kind of falls apart when buying both with DP. A gem merchant would probably want to cut off my head, but really, it was all the same in the end after I used {Create Golem} to mess around with them.

...Oh, now this is easy to work with. Barely takes any mana. Maybe ’cause it’s a gem, synthetic or not? In any case, I completely enveloped the orichalcum ring with the ruby. A ruby coating for an orichalcum ring... There’s a ton of this ruby left over. Maybe I should make a hair ornament out of it too?

Either way, I completed the ruby ring with an orichalcum core. It was a double ring with ruby on the outside and orichalcum on the inside. It’d probably look like candy if you cut it down the middle. The orichalcum shined through the clear, crimson coating. The overall design was simple, but I thought it would suit Rokuko perfectly. And it probably looks like I put a lot of work into making it, too. Good thing I told Rokuko to leave my room. Though, to be fair, the orichalcum wasn’t so easy to work with. Maybe I’ll ask Kantara how smiths usually forge stuff with it. He’s a dwarf blacksmith, after all. He probably knows. Probably.

Anyway, guess I just need to make a box for it now. Handing this to her is gonna be preeetty embarrassing. But I know that when it comes to things like rings, you either give them right away or get stuck with them forever. So, I’m gonna swallow this embarrassment and give it to her ASAP. I can’t let myself think “Oh, this isn’t worth calling her over here. I’ll get it to her eventually,” or something. I’ve decided to give it to her, so I’m going to make it happen.

And so, to prevent any chance of me not giving it to her, I sent a message asking her to come to my room so I could give her what we were talking about.

“Keima! I’m here!” It took her three seconds. That was fast. If she were Niku, her tail would probably be wagging like crazy right now.

“So, Rokuko. Here it is.” I took out the box with the ring in it and handed it to Rokuko.

“A box...? Ah! Can I open it?!”

“Yep.” Rokuko rapidly took out the ring the moment I said that.

“Oooh... Did you make this ring out of gems? This red is super pretty. Something really shiny is inside it too. Okay, I’ll go ahead and...” Rokuko started to put the ring on, but stopped midway.

...Then, she began glancing at me. What? You want me to put it on you or something? I don’t remember agreeing to anything like that. I’m already plenty embarrassed here.

“...Keima. I heard from Wataru that partners usually put the rings on their partner after giving it to them. S-So, um, would you?” She’s actually gonna ask me to do it...? Crap, I don’t have a choice now. Let’s do this thing.

I took the ring from Rokuko, clasped her left hand, and steadied my aim. A glance at her face revealed that she was fixated on the ring, nervous. Certain that Haku would kill me if she saw all this, I slid the ring onto Rokuko’s finger. It was... loose. No helping that. I made it without measuring her first, after all.

But this was within my calculations. I had {Create Golem}, so this kind of thing was no problem at all. In fact, I had intentionally made the ring loose so I could fit it properly later. Better loose than completely unable to fit.

Rokuko fiddled with the loose ring, spinning it around her finger.

“Mnn, it’s kind of loose... Oh, I know!”

“Huh?” Right before I could try resizing it with {Create Golem}, Rokuko transformed into loli mode... her DP-saving form.

“Okay, that fixed it.” Surprisingly enough, the red ring now fit her white left ring finger perfectly.

“Hold up. You got smaller. I could understand the ring getting even more loose, but not this. Why’s it a perfect fit?”

“I’m not totally sure, but my clothes and stuff change to fit me when I transform, don’t they?” Right, right. Rokuko is a magical and mysterious Dungeon Core. No point asking about these kinds of things. It’s magic, she ain’t gotta explain shit. And I’m not gonna think about it too hard. If I get too uptight about the law of conservation of mass, everything might break.

“Heave ho.” Loli Rokuko transformed back into teen Rokuko. The ring remained a perfect fit on her. Magic is mysterious and all-powerful. The end!

“Ehehe, it’s so pretty. This is made from gems, right? It’s red and clear, so pretty.” Rokuko looked at the ring on her finger with blissful eyes.

“Yep. I’m pretty proud of it.” She must have liked it a lot, judging by how she was twisting her hand around to look at the ring from every possible angle. And I’m finally calming down myself. Sheesh, this wasn’t my style at all.

“There’s something shiny inside the gemstone. What is it?”

“That’s orichalcum.”

“This is orichalcum?! Really?! Isn’t orichalcum like, super duper rare? I heard it’s crazy expensive.”

“Hey, it’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Gotta follow up on a lady’s request. By the way, a ring’s worth of the stuff cost 10,000 DP.”

“Wooow... This ring cost ten Keimas... or one Phenny...” Hey. You’re not wrong, but seriously. I don’t wanna be a unit of measurement. It feels weird.

“Eheheh.” Rokuko stroked the ring tenderly.

“Well, I’m just glad you like it.”

“Uh-huh! Thank you, Keima! You’re the best!” Rokuko hugged me. I’m just glad she likes it. The moment after I thought that, I felt something soft briefly press against my cheek. Rokuko’s face was right up close to mine. We looked into each other’s eyes, so close our noses almost touched. Rokuko began to blush. She probably had just gone with the flow without really thinking about what she was doing.

Soon, she ran away talking about how she needed to show the ring to Niku. Now alone in the room, I touched my cheek as the prior sensation lingered, reflecting on what had just occurred.

“I heard that partners usually put the rings on their partner after giving it to them. S-So, um, would you?”

“Eheheh.”

“Keima! You’re the best!”

...I hate to admit it, but Rokuko was pretty cute just now. Wait, no. I know what this is. I’m just feeling good about her liking my gift! There’s nothing more to it than that! I got into my futon while making excuses to myself.

Between you and me... That night, I kept thinking back to Rokuko’s smile so much it took me longer than usual to fall asleep.