【Battle won. Please tally your spoils:
300 gold coins, 1 topaz, 6 ancient artworks.】
The system notification flashed past. Loulan paid it no mind, since everything would be deposited into the special inventory supplied by his cheat at the touch of a button. What mattered most now was what came next in reality.
"All right, it's time for my favorite part: looting the chest!"
Aside from the girls, nothing delighted a Darkest Dungeon player more than looting treasure chests!
No one could resist the temptation of opening treasure, especially when scouting revealed a secret room.
Objective? Health? Stress? Provisions?
Get lost. Don't interrupt me while I'm greedily looting this secret room!
Loulan wandered through the room and began exploring, using the light radiating from his body to measure its approximate size.
Centered on Loulan, his self-generated light extended to a radius of roughly five meters. Beyond that range lay complete darkness.
He was like a human torch with an extremely limited range of illumination.
The room appeared to be around fifteen meters in diameter and rectangular, with its width and length varying irregularly between thirteen and seventeen meters. The slanted walls made it resemble an elongated quadrilateral with skewed faces.
Two large doors stood on the room's eastern and western sides, connecting to two dungeon corridors.
To the south lay a huge pile of white bones and ruined relics that looked quite old. Many people had probably died there, and some of the monsters he had slain earlier might even have been born from the heap.
"What's this? A gem?"
While kicking and rummaging through the pile of bones, Loulan suddenly noticed a pure white pebble reflecting a faint glimmer.
He picked it up and rolled it around in his hand. It felt somewhat like jade. Perhaps it was a valuable treasure?
He lacked the expertise to tell, but that didn't stop him from pocketing the tiny stone.
"If I had known, I would have brought a sack. I actually forgot something so important!"
Loulan belatedly realized that he had forgotten to bring a storage bag for treasure from the real world!
He knew his cheat would prepare everything for him, from dungeon provisions to powerful supernatural relics. All he needed to do was make one dungeon expedition, collect his "newbie gift pack," and unlock the subsequent content.
That had caused him to completely overlook certain practical realities.
"I'm such an idiot..."
Loulan's spirits sank. He nearly cried over how stupidly he had handled these two situations.
But... he was only an utterly ordinary young man from the modern world, a student who had developed the fine habit of "asking whenever he didn't understand" at school and possessed no real life experience whatsoever.
At the same time, he had the excellent habit of learning from his mistakes. He rarely made the same one twice.
The next time he entered a dungeon, he would wash every mistake from his first attempt perfectly clean, like laundering clothes, without leaving a single stain!
He would treat this expedition as nothing more than a trial run.
After another bout of scavenging and confirming that he had missed no treasure in the pile of corpses, Loulan finally headed to the dungeon's northern side.
He rubbed his hands together. A treasure chest in the truest sense was waiting for him there!
Yes, one of the treasure chests commonly seen in Western fantasy games and anime.
For a more precise description, it resembled the treasure chests found in the dungeons of 《The Elder Scrolls V》.
The wooden shell was coated in thick dust, and the iron bands had rusted. One glance told him it was positively brimming with the aura of "treasure."
"CLANG!"
The chest was locked, and Loulan couldn't pick locks, so naturally he could only open it by the simplest method.
One slash cut through the old lock at the chest's seam, and sparks flew as the rusted iron scraped apart.
"Click—creak〜"
The instant he opened the chest, before Loulan could plunder its contents, another screen appeared before him.
【You opened a treasure chest. Please tally your spoils:
600 gold coins, 2 rubies, 2 ancient paintings, 3 star crystals.】
Star crystals!
Those two words held Loulan's eyes fast. It was only a small amount, but it proved that dungeon objectives weren't the sole source of this rare cheat currency. Opening treasure chests could grant them too!
It might even be guaranteed to yield 1–? of them.
Loulan had the usage information supplied by his cheat, but it provided only a broad outline. He had to uncover and explore a great deal of hidden information himself, such as this example.
Previously, he had known only that he would gain an additional set of spoils, not what those spoils might contain.
Now he even boldly guessed that the bonus rewards from such treasure had a chance of including relics!
"Why is there so much junk...?"
Once his excitement faded, Loulan began inspecting the real treasure chest. The uppermost layer contained rusted iron equipment that was no different from rubbish.
After rummaging through it and tossing it aside, he finally exposed a few valuable items underneath.
50 ancient coins, three bottles of unidentified potion, and a suspicious ring.
"What kind of quality are these bottles? They've been buried under so much iron for all these years and they're still perfectly intact."
Loulan first pocketed the fifty ancient coins, then picked up the three potions and examined them.
First came the potion bottles themselves. Their shape and size resembled test tubes, but instead of being smooth, they had rather angular sides.
Their contents came in three colors: purple, pale red, and pale green.
Loulan didn't know whether they were corrosive or poisonous, so he didn't dare carry them in his pockets.
Since he couldn't take them, he could only place them back in the chest with regret and reluctance. Perhaps someone who came later would find a use for them?
As for the ring, that went straight into his pocket. He couldn't tell whether it was a supernatural relic or merely an ordinary ring that appeared to be made of silver.
Perhaps he could ask Maven to examine it once he left. If it was a supernatural relic, he could simply sell it to him.
Every trade had its own rules. Loulan didn't become greedy merely because of the contract, and in truth, he couldn't afford to be greedy.
First, he couldn't identify it. Second, he didn't know how to use it. Third, he was a stranger in an unfamiliar land. Rather than find an appraiser after leaving and invite trouble, he might as well do the local noble a favor, establish good relations, and secure a path for his future.
Before he fully matured, Loulan understood the necessity of keeping a low profile and yielding when required.
Besides, he still needed to find a doctor to look at his hand. Could a doctor found by a noble really be the same as one running a clinic in the city?
He had complete faith in how much the nobles of a medieval Western fantasy world valued their lives!
This time, however, Loulan had made yet another common-sense mistake.
Rather than seek a noble's "court physician," wouldn't a doctor accustomed to treating parties entering and leaving the Darkest Dungeon have more experience and offer better assurance?
"Creak〜"
The sound of a door opening rang with startling clarity through the silent dungeon. Loulan had just been about to leave when his body instantly drew his blade and assumed a guarded stance.
He stared at the eastern door, speculating about what strange thing might leap out from behind it.
"Someone there?"
A deep voice sounded, followed by bright firelight. It was a source of illumination completely different from the "Radiant Light" of Loulan's self-generated glow.