"Now I am starting to get a sense of it."
When I told Zigwell about the forest's birth, he thought it over alone and reached a conclusion.
"A sense of what?"
"You wanted the dungeon to grow, young master, but in fact this dungeon had already finished growing. Until now it had…… regressed. That is why recovery was possible in such a short span."
"The dungeon regressing…… But you said before that a dungeon sits in a close relationship with its Demon King."
Then wouldn't Enoch naturally have weakened too?
"He had weakened."
Holy moly.
"The only reason this dungeon held together despite its desolation is that His Majesty was bearing the entire burden himself."
At that explanation I couldn't close my gaping mouth.
"Is he really…… a living creature?"
"The rank His Majesty possesses astonishes even me. No comparable case can be found in any other dungeon."
Normally, when a dungeon walks the road of decline for whatever reason, the Demon King is affected along with it.
A vicious cycle, in other words.
"That phenomenon mostly occurs when a dungeon is half-destroyed by a Void invasion. Which is why restoring one is never an easy matter. We shall have to watch how things progress, of course."
Even so, it was certainly astonishing.
"Cases of regressing this far and then succeeding at recovery are extremely rare, so the information released about them is very limited. As the saying goes, assembly is disassembly in reverse; other dungeons keep how they recovered a strict secret."
True enough.
Given how rare the situation was, it would need watching over a long stretch of time.
But that wasn't the only matter needing attention right now.
"So the key point is this."
"Yes. The most important part is still left."
It had only been mentioned in passing, so it might not have registered properly.
Around the place where the Divine Tree stood five hundred years ago, one very important resource had lain sleeping.
"The magic stone mine. After this affair, we must confirm whether that too was restored."
While I had been handling matters outside.
Zigwell, who had been digging through ledger after ledger to research how the former Demon King ran the dungeon, said:
"It is a treasure pot holding magic stones of upper-middle grade at the very least. If we can mine it, it will lay the foundation for exchange with other dungeons going forward."
A big event that could not possibly be put off.
***
Da-da-dan.
Da-da-dan.
Cha, boom-cha-cha, boom-cha-cha…… da-da-ri-ra-ra-ri-ran♬
Images of gamblers standing there holding hwatu cards flickered through my head.
Yerim, take a look at that hand. Is it a ten?
The sight of the cave spread out before me.
To get to the point, regrettably.
The magic stone mine had not been rebuilt.
Its position on the map was some distance from the forest, after all.
Mine entrance my ass; all I could see was flat plain.
But.
I wasn't the least bit sad about that.
Why?
Around the Divine Tree, which had now grown to the size of a sapling.
That is, the pit where the Divine Tree originally stood five hundred years ago had filled in a great deal, thanks to the twisting of magic power being resolved.
If it had been a sinkhole before, now it had become something more the size of a cave.
And within that cave, something glittered like the countless stars of a night sky.
I plucked one of those stars off, set it on my palm, and turned it over.
Zigwell, who had come this far with me, let out a dry laugh.
"Highest grade…… it is……."
"It's a con."
"Pardon?"
"No, ahem. How did something like this come about? The ledgers said upper-middle grade at best."
"I suspect this too is because of the twisting of magic power. According to the records, this was the place all of the dungeon's magic power passed through in circulation."
A traffic hub for the dungeon's magic power, so to speak.
And such a place had been bound and compressed by divine power for centuries.
So a magic stone mine like this forming was nothing strange at all.
"Zigwell, is this…… expensive?"
"Naturally. The sort you cannot buy because there is never enough of it."
Apparently they were once mere stones, no more than a means of restoring magic power.
But the black mages driven out of the Middle Realm and down into the Demon Realm overturned their value.
"As they are as good as the foundation of magic engineering, magic stones are used in countless places."
"Ha ha, ha ha ha!"
"And…… perhaps because of the earlier upheaval of the terrain, the ground itself is soft. At this level no special mining technique is needed. Bluntly put, one shovel would be enough to dig it out."
Proper mining would of course require skilled technicians.
But starting trade right away posed no problem, by Zigwell's explanation.
"Congratulations."
"Well, it isn't only good for me, is it? Haha! Hahaha!"
"For all that, the corners of your mouth refuse to come down."
"Ahem. The more money you have, the more secure you feel. They say going too far is the same as falling short, but the two exceptions to that are money and good looks."
"Not a wrong statement. From the standpoint of running a dungeon it is certainly a good thing. With this, taking on additional manpower should be acceptable."
"Right? Then first, let's give the vagrants work."
"……Are you certain that is all right?"
Until recently Zigwell had been a vagrant himself.
And even now he didn't live in the mansion; he chose to live in the fortress among the vagrants.
Even so, he warned that taking vagrants in was dangerous.
It wasn't as though I trusted them out of some overflowing love for my fellow man.
"I've got you."
"……."
With Zigwell's "Insight," the vagrants wouldn't be able to pull anything.
"But…… we can't put it into practice right away. The distance is considerable, so they could be attacked by Void parasites."
"Then how would it be to carry off as much as we can from here for now?"
"Now?"
"Yes. The escort problem can be solved later by hiring mercenaries."
"Oh. Do you have contacts for that?"
"No, I intend to commission it separately through a merchant."
"A merchant……?"
I asked, wondering whether he knew one.
"What do you mean? A merchant comes to this dungeon every month. I saw one myself just two days ago."
"Huh……? Where?"
"In the underground storeroom."
"……?"
"……?"
What was he talking about?
***
Whether to call it obvious.
Or to call myself stupid.
"Then where did you think all that food came from all this time?"
Right.
The ingredients for the meals I'd eaten over sixteen years.
They hadn't sprung out of this desolate land, so of course they had been brought in from somewhere else.
But inertia is a frightening thing, and I had never once thought about where the ingredients came from.
As a newborn I was too busy suffering the magic power rampage.
Once my head had grown a little, I threw myself into growing stronger day by day.
And since Father returned, one incident after another had come in a row.
Naturally I couldn't explain all of that to Zigwell, so I'd have to endure a certain amount of him looking at me as if I were pathetic.
In any case.
After that series of events, I finally got to meet the merchant Zigwell had spoken of.
"A pleasure, Lord Yujin! I am Bell of the Eighth Branch, in charge of foodstuff distribution for the seventy-second dungeon!"
The merchant was none other than a squirrel beastkin.
Despite being small enough to barely reach my knee, the bag on that back was as tall as an adult.
Saying "as tall as an adult" undersells it; considering the volume, it was practically hauling a boulder around.
Was the calm face down to the strength particular to beastkin?
'I'm curious how that much stamina comes out of a body that small.'
Noticing my gaze, the squirrel beastkin smiled brightly and explained.
"This bag is a subspace bag, so it is not as heavy as it looks!"
"Ah."
At least in my knowledge, subspace increases volume but has no function that reduces weight.
Probably an ability particular to squirrel beastkin.
Then something about that distinctive appearance came back to me.
'Ah. I knew I'd seen it somewhere.'
Not from before the regression; a memory from my days playing the game.
'It was…… the Demon Realm Supply Corps, wasn't it?'
The Demon Realm's quartermasters, found only very rarely while playing.
They filled the role of the widely known "golden goblin."
Kill one and you could obtain a great many items.
'So in this era they were operating as Demon Realm traders.'
A fact I hadn't known.
In any case, seeing one carried a whiff of those days, so I was oddly glad.
……Or maybe just because a way to make money had appeared!
"So, what is the reason you summoned me?"
"I want to hire mercenaries for escort work inside the dungeon."
"Ah, hiring mercenaries! Of course that is possible. Is there a particular mercenary company you are looking for?!"
My gaze went naturally to Zigwell, but he shook his head.
He surely knew some, but most would be connections made while he was at his previous dungeon.
Using contacts from an old workplace at a new one carries a certain burden.
"Nobody in particular."
"Then I shall run a separate recruitment…… but there is a point you must keep in mind!"
"What is it?"
"Mercenaries pick and choose their commissions too. And mercenaries have grades of their own; most of them, unless they are desperate, look for commissions that match their grade."
It was put politely, but translated it meant: "with our dungeon's current credit, skilled mercenaries will be hard to get."
"Just in case, may I ask what exactly the escort is for?"
"Escorting workers back and forth along a fixed route, from the starting point to the destination."
"Then it becomes even more of a problem. Unless the fee is substantial, mercenaries with high credit rarely come for that kind of commission."
And hiring low-credit mercenaries risked being attacked by them instead, or having information about the dungeon leak outside.
'Zigwell's Insight could filter them to a degree, but…….'
The human heart being what it is, one look at a highest-grade magic stone might change someone's mind.
"Insight" can't resolve a case like that.
"Solving it after the problem happens would be too late. By then the vagrants would all be dead."
"Indeed. I had not thought that far."
"Zigwell, how did your old dungeon handle situations like this?"
"We called in skilled mercenaries, or cooperated with a dungeon we held an alliance with."
His old dungeon must have had fairly high credit.
Bell, meanwhile, seemed to grasp our dungeon's situation roughly and offered a counter-proposal.
"How about carrying out commissions for other dungeons to raise your credit?!"
"……Other dungeons?"
"That is right! Across the Demon Realm there are plenty of dungeons in need of forces, and many of those connections lead all the way to alliances! In practice, commissions for top-tier mercenaries come about the same way!"
Unlike the Middle Realm, here in the Demon Realm everyone but vagrants has an affiliation.
So the higher-grade mercenaries have correspondingly certain identities.
'Not bad.'
In fact, it felt outright good.
What I lacked most was basic Demon Realm common sense.
However much I learned from books, and however much Zigwell was there, experiencing something directly and not doing so are very different.
And above all, since Enoch wasn't the one giving the orders, I'd have to give Zigwell a great many administrative instructions…….
I couldn't afford to fumble every time for lack of experience.
'Broaden my view of the Demon Realm, and widen our dungeon's standing.'
It certainly seemed it would make for good experience.