The group's mood had improved quite a bit compared to this morning. Maxwell and Piper especially were quite chipper after getting the weight of the debt off their shoulders. For the first time since I met them, they didn't have the threat of debt slavery hanging over their heads. They were so happy that it even seemed to affect Iris, who was acting a lot more optimistic about her future, even if I was still unsure about bringing her into the dungeon with us.
Now that we weren't immediately busy with something, I took the opportunity to look around the city a bit more. It was a lot less pretty than the last place we were in. The buildings were made from a mix of tan-white bricks and wood, but many of the buildings looked so old that many of the bricks were turning different colors with age. The bricks that had been most exposed to water or were left unpainted started to look rusty orange or ugly grey, the same way that damaged concrete might look. This part of town didn't seem run down exactly, but it had a more... industrial feel to it. That made sense since there were smithies and different workshops crammed into the tight winding streets here. The outskirts of the city where the stable had been hadn't been that much better, but I wouldn't be surprised if it got nicer the closer to the heart of the city and up the hill we got.
I looked down at the cobblestone road beneath my feet. The cobblestone looked more functional than decorative. Most of the flat stones didn't match each other. It looked more like they had just collected any waste stone they had and used it haphazardly. It felt solid though, and there weren't any loose stones as we walked at least. Like the last city, there wasn't much glass in this part of town. The windows were covered with wooden shutters that were left open to let in the air during the day. The whole place didn't smell great either, but since I became a werewolf-thing 'bad smells' don't usually bother me anymore. Smells are just smells, full of information. Except goblins, those things reek.
"Where exactly is the Ironcastle dungeon anyway?" I asked as we kept walking.
Maxwell pointed up at a mountain to the left of the giant castle between the three peaks that made up this part of the mountain chain. The castle was massive and at a glance I could tell the city got its name from the the dull semi-reflective metal on the outside of the outermost walls of the gigantic structure.
"Ironcastle dungeon is in the mountain west of the castle. There are still some functional mines in the two mountains that hug it, but once they found the dungeon, they started exploiting that as a resource instead. The mines are still active since iron is still an important metal, but it's generally more lucrative to become a delver when you're first starting out. The first few levels of the dungeon are relatively easy, so you can go in with just some cheap armor and a weapon. As long as you're not stupid and don't take unnecessary risks, you can make good money," Maxwell explained.
"Why would anyone become a miner then?" I asked.
"Eventually you can make a decent living as a miner. You don't usually start making much profit until you learn to smelt your own ore though. Smiths prefer to deal in ingots rather than ore, so if you don't know how to do that part yourself, you lose a lot of money you would have gained selling the ore to a smelting house. Renting one of the crucibles and doing the work lets you keep a lot of the profits you would have lost. It can also take some time to find smiths that want to work with you. You can sell your ingots to a middleman, but they take a cut there too. It's more lucrative to make a deal with a smith directly. If you can smelt the ore yourself and sell it directly to a smith, you can make a lot of money more safely than delving, but it's a longer path to get there," Maxwell said.
"You sure know a lot about this," Aria commented.
Maxwell shrugged. "When we first came to Ironcastle, I looked into it. By that point I was pretty set on being a hunter, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting tricked into doing a bad job for worse pay. It turns out it's a decently fun job for great pay, assuming you can stomach fighting monsters."
"Did you buy the rings before or after you started delving?" I asked.
"After," Piper answered. "We were looking for some better equipment after we had a few delves under our belt. When we found the rings, we couldn't help but buy them. We hadn't realized at the time that we had gotten pretty lucky early on though, because we soon found it hard to keep up with the payments, which is why we moved to Fallow."
("We got really lucky in the Fallow dungeon,") Luna said to all of us through the rings while squeezing my hand.
I laughed and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and rubbed it as we continued on.
"Where we headed now?" I asked.
"Hunter's association," Maxwell replied. "I want to get one of those umber hounds before a big shot swoops in and claims it over our heads."
"Can someone do that?" Piper asked.
Maxwell nodded. "It doesn't happen very often but sometimes the army or someone important to royalty claims stuff that comes through. Umber hounds are rare enough they might want one."
"Would the Hunter's Association do something like that?" Aria asked.
Maxwell grumbled. "They do stuff like that all the time here. The Hunter's Association tries to operate everywhere they can, which means abiding by the laws of whatever city-state they're in. I happen to know that Ironcastle is one of those places where rare or unique stuff can get swooped up if we're not careful. The only reason I didn't stay to pester the Hunter's Association was because getting the debt off our back was more important to me."
"We can get Iris tested for magic affinity as well while we're there," Piper added.
"I wish I had more magic capacity. I think it would be cool to throw fireballs like Luna! The most I can do is activate some magic items," Aria said with a smile.
I looked over at Iris. "If my blindfold is any indication, I don't think she has all that much mana. Not any more than Aria at least."
("She's young, she could still be growing into her mana pool and we don't know how she'll develop when she becomes empowered. A mage who knows what they're looking for has to test her. Otherwise we're just guessing,") Luna told me.
"Ah, alright then," I replied.
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"Are you really going to pay for all that?" Iris asked hesitantly. "I know it's not that cheap..."
Aria shook her head. "It is for us, kid. To you, a tiger is a fortune. To us, it's a good day's work."
"Does that mean you want to pay for it?" I asked her with a raised eyebrow.
Aria averted her eyes. "You're the loaded one... And it was your idea to bring her."
I laughed. "You seemed to be encouraging everyone else too! But fine, if it's a tiger, I'll pay."
"Probably more like two bears," Maxwell said.
"I hope she has healing affinity. That way I can pawn off my job on her," Piper joked.
We eventually reached a large building that reminded me of a lodge house or like the main building of a ski resort. Whatever the case, it was a lot fancier looking than the small building we visited in Fallow. That struck me as odd because I thought that Fallow had been a town built around the dungeon. Shouldn't the hunter's association be an even bigger deal there?
Luna noticed my look of surprise. ("Ironcastle has been around for a really long time, so this building has grown as the association's needs have grown. Fallow only really registers teams and taxes things coming through the dungeon. The Ironcastle branch does that and a whole lot more.")
("Still, it's quite the difference. What other kinds of things does this place do?") I asked.
("Fallow is in the middle of nowhere. Ironcastle is more important both diplomatically and for trade reasons. Since the Hunter's Association is such a widespread network of empowered people, it's treated as neutral ground for negotiation and business. There will also always be a need for hunters to go, well, hunt things. Either for materials and components or because whatever kind of monster is being invasive somewhere. This place also services a lot more escort missions like the one we just finished, so they need room for logistics and assignments. There's probably even more that I'm forgetting.")
We stepped into the large building and the first thing I noticed was that the place was lit by crystals similar to the ones I had seen in the Fallow dungeon. They were quite bright to the magic sight of my blindfold, and based on how everyone else was acting, it seemed they gave off plenty of actual light as well. We followed Maxwell to the desk and the receptionist directed us to wait in line off to one side of the main hall. It felt a bit like a government office building.
"Is it going to be a long wait?" I asked.
Maxwell shrugged. "There doesn't seem to be that many people in front of us."
We spent maybe fifteen minutes in line before getting to go up to a desk where a pretty feline beastkin woman greeted us. "Hello! What can I help you with?"
"We want to get this girl tested for magic affinity, register her to our group as a support, fill out a report for the mission we just returned from, and make a claim on one of the monsters we hunted along the way. Here's the letter from the mission," Maxwell said while handing over the letter that Korr'tak had given him earlier today.
"I'm so glad Maxwell does all this boring stuff for us," Piper stage whispered to us.
Aria snickered and Maxwell turned and glared at his sister for a second before the woman returned with a notebook. "Alright, recount the story from the top and I'll take notes."
"Wait, we're going to stand here and tell her the whole story?" I asked Maxwell.
The woman cleared her throat. "Not everyone can read and write." She turned to Maxwell. "Does she need to be registered as well?"
"No, we already registered her. She's just never been here for this part before," Maxwell smoothly replied. He turned to me. "I'm gonna need your help telling the story since you did two of the detours on your own."
After a long thirty minutes the two of us finished telling the entire story of what happened again. The only thing that Maxwell glossed over was the business with the lightning rod on the way back. Seems he didn't find that part necessary to comment on, other than the fact that there was a thunderstorm with no damages or casualties. The woman seemed much more pleasant when she heard I took out the three umber hounds with the help of the other team, as well as an entire goblin cave on my own. Maxwell also gave her the names of the two women we rescued, Juliana and Phoebe. From the way they were talking, the two of them and the other team on our mission would give their own statements independently of ours. I was just glad to be done with this part. Telling stories is a lot less fun when it's to a bureaucrat rather than an excited girl.
The woman nodded. "It looks like all of this is good. I've made a note of your claim on one of the three umber hounds for materials. I'll check with the other group when they give their report and I might be able to get it released to you by tomorrow."
Maxwell's face fell a little. "So I will have to wait for that?"
"I'm afraid so. We always check over the corpses of monsters that are out of their normal areas to make sure there are no oddities," she replied.
"Has there been a lot of that lately? Oddities? Some weird stuff was happening in the Fallow dungeon... or so I've heard," I asked.
She shook her head. "I've heard some of the reports coming out of Fallow, nothing as significant or as frequent as what's happening there. I just got a message today that they closed the dungeon to independent delvers for the time being. Supposedly, there are monsters appearing on floors that don't belong and other strange things like that. Other than your report just now, I haven't heard any other strange stories outside of Fallow yet. But umber hounds and goblins along the road to Fallow is pretty worrisome."
The receptionist scribbled something in the corner of the page before closing the notebook and setting it aside. "Alright, with all of that out of the way, please head to room two-thirty-six, down that hallway and up the stairs. One of our mage trainers will be in shortly to examine your support member for any magic affinities she may have. Anything else you need to ask me before you head over there?"
Maxwell shook his head. "Nope, I think that's everything for now. I'll be back tomorrow to see if my claim was honored, I suppose."
She nodded. "Thank you for visiting the Hunter's Association."
Hello! Chapter 100! It's felt like a long time coming for this story. Word count is also around 230k! It doesn't even feel that long ago that I started this story but a lot has happened already. Book 2 so far has had a pretty different feel to book 1, it's nice to do something a bit different with these characters. More dungeon stuff is coming up on the horizon though! Thanks to everyone that's read this far! I've been really happy with the reception this novel has gotten. I can't help but feel giddy every time I see my story inch up in rank! I've been getting back into drawing again lately so I'll hopefully have some cover art up for the story eventually! I know people have been asking for it, but it's been hard to justify the expense of commissioning someone when I could do something for it myself. (Especially with how hard taxes hit me this year.) I know I thank everyone for reading every chapter in the author notes, but I really do mean it! And of course, an additional big thank you to everyone who's able to support me through Patreon. It really does make a huge difference to me! I hope everyone reading this continues to enjoy!
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