Jack's POV

  "Then why haven't they cleared it yet?" I asked him.

  The flames in his hand vanished.

  "Who said they haven't done it?"

  I blinked at that.

  "Do you know who cleared it?" I asked him, with my eyebrows furrowed and mouth slightly open.

  "No," he said. "That's where you come in." He turned and walked again. "Now, come on, we are getting late."

  "Getting late for what?" I asked. "You still haven't told me anything."

  "I know," he said. "The less you know. The better."

  "What exactly am I supposed to do at the Dungeon Council?"

  "I will tell you at the right time," he said.

  What followed was me following him as he killed the three-foot, club wielding, fanged goblins left and right. I opened the pocket watch and felt for the hands on the dial as they ticked by. We had been at this for close to an hour, and he hadn't run out of manna.

  Is everything that I know about being inducted a lie? I asked myself.

  Because Jensen not only had enough mana to keep shooting fireballs without chanting. But he hadn't stopped to recover his stamina. From what I know, there were hard limits to what one can do once they are inducted. And the only way to break through those limits is to push past level fifty. Which wasn't possible in our dungeon.

  From what I had gathered while working at the inn and serving the adventurers.

  The boss on floor eleven of this dungeon was at level fifty. And as no one was allowed to step into the final floor and clear the dungeon, and make us all homeless. My best guess was that the final boss was around level sixty. But then again, the information I had was from adventurers who hadn't dared cross any floors lower than five.

  And if you think killing the same boss multiple times would end up making you over powered to eventually take out the final boss. Then the System had patched that up a long-long time ago and now gave a fraction of the experience for the second and subsequent kills for the floor bosses. The normal mobs still gave you the same experience no matter how many times you kill them though.

  We eventually came face to face with the floor boss of this floor which was four foot goblin with rage ability if what I had heard was right. But Jensen one shot him like a normal mob, and walked past his corpse.

  The worst was the fact that he wasn't collecting their loot. So far, he could have made seventy nine credits with all the killing he had done. Plus, the boss drop could have fetched him another fifty credits. If only I could have collected them. Because when I tried to grab them. Nothing happens. The gold coins just lay there as I had no inventory to store them in. I hadn't realised at that point that I could have used my device to gather them. It was something that hadn't occurred to me in that moment back then.

  Jensen finally stopped walking and stopped in front of the back wall with his hand held up and facing the ceiling. He created a ball of flame above his palm. Then held it steady. The ball of flame grew bigger and bigger until I had to look away, even at the ten feet distance that I was from him. The very next second, a boom reverberated through that place and my being that shook me to my core.

  "Come on," he said, as he walked through the opening he had created in the stone wall.

  But I stood there with my mouth hanging open and my ears ringing while my heart refused to calm down.

  The old man poked his head right through the opening.

  "The stray goblins might attack you if you just keep standing there," he said.

  "Shit…" That was motivation enough for me to snap out of it, and I sprinted towards that opening when Jensen disappeared inside. And what I found on the other side were flowers. Real ones, like the herbal weed that I pick from the farm inside the safe zone, and not the gold coins that can't even be touched.

  "Pick them," he said.

  I stared at the endless sea of those vibrant pink flowers that glowed with a little hum to them. "There are hundreds of them," I said, and the place was so big that my voice didn't even echo back to me.

  "Then I guess you'd better be quick about it," he said, and crossed his arms while I stood next to him. The orb that was moving around him flew up and illuminated the space.

  "No monsters?" I looked at Jensen to my left.

  He just gave me a look.

  "Okay, okay," I said, and started picking them. It took some effort. As I had to yank them. But after a dozen or so times. It got easy all of a sudden. Like I had the strength of two men coursing through my body. I looked at Jensen, who was still standing with his arms crossed right next to the wall he had blasted through. "Did you hit me with a buff?" I asked him.

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  "Yes," he said, nonchalantly. "You know what a buff is?" he asked me.

  "My mom is a healer," I said.

  He raised an eyebrow at that and nodded. I had lied about that too.

  "Hurry up," he said.

  I nodded and got on with it.

  My afternoons were pretty much spent in the field on the western side of the safe zone. I would till the soil manually, along with many other people who had either lost an arm or leg or the will to go inside the dungeon.

  We weren't whipped into silence as such. But we preferred it that way as we were paid based on the amount of grain we deposited with the person put in charge by the Dungeon Council member.

  Once the soil was tiled. Then the sowing would begin, and by the time we were done sowing. The dungeon would produce the first and only harvest of the day. We would then yank those things out and get paid for our work. Half of the people leave when they have made enough to survive the day. But a dozen others and I would keep going until the last strand was picked and we got paid for it.

  Then me and a handful of us that were left. We would go to the large pond next to the field, where we would yank the algae and transport it over our shoulder in a sack to another person who is in charge. It takes maybe two hours at best. And once we are done with that, and get paid for it. All the amount gets transferred by me to my mom.

  Suffice to say that by this point everyone is gone. So I would go in search of herbal weeds which could be found on the walls of the tunnel that connects the safe zone to the dungeon proper. But the good kind of weed. They grow at the bottom of the pond. So I dive right back in and pick them when no one is watching. But it's hard to harvest them as sometimes folk just stay and start drinking by the pond.

  So it wasn't hard for me to pull those flowers along with their stem for that old man. It took me a solid twenty minutes, but with Jensen buffing me up twice. I got it all gathered as fast as I humanly could. In total, there were one hundred and twenty-three flowers. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the neatly folded sack, and with a jerk opened it up.

  "What are you doing?" he asked me, with an eyebrow raised.

  "We have to sell them at the market, don’t we?" I said, blinking at him.

  "Good god."

  "Which one?"

  He gave me another exasperated look.

  "I will buy them from you," he said to me. "If I had touched them without any transaction. Then they would have been stored inside my inventory," he said.

  "Oh," my eyebrows raised at that.

  "Scan them with your medieval device. Punch in the price, and I will make the transaction," he said.

  I nodded and did just that. A black screen appeared on my transparent device, and a one sided flash scanned those flowers for me on the other side. The item was identified by the System, and it asked me to confirm the number of items. It was actually one twenty five flowers, not one twenty three. I clicked yes, and then the System asked me to set the price. I looked at Jensen for that.

  "The wand is like five thousand credits," he said, as if it were chump change for him. "To upgrade your father's merchant class from bronze to silver it's another..." He did some mental math. "Ten thousand and…" He huffed. "Adding in the labor you put in." He eyed the soil behind me. "Let's just say twenty thousand credits?" he arched an eyebrow, asking me if I was okay with that number.

  I stared at him dumfounded.

  "Twenty five thousand credits," he upped his bid. "Your father would need some dough to buy things," he said. "He has a good eye for things. But I saw him struggling with funds when I followed him today…"

  I blinked with a lump forming in my throat.

  "Thirty thousand credits," he said. "And that's my final offer…"

  "You are not kidding me, right?" I asked in a hoarse voice. "You will really lend me thirty thousand credits?"I asked, staring at him.

  "I'm paying you thirty thousand credits," he corrected me.

  To say that I was at a loss for words would be an understatement. I just clutched onto that device and found it hard to breathe for a moment. Because if he really did pay me that much. Then it won't just buy my sister the wand covering the interest. It would also unlock my father's next level. Plus, if we did things right. We could get my mom some equipment as well. Healers were after all the first ones to get targeted in a fight.

  Truth be told, in that moment, I was willing to die for Jensen. If that's what he wanted me to do. Hell, I would go down to that thirteen floor as a meat shield if that's what it took to repay him.

  "Fine," said Jensen, snatching the device from my shaky hands and punching in the number. "Thirty five thousand credits it is," he said, with an eye roll. "Your mom can get some equipment too," he added, as if he had just read my mind.

  The moment he scanned his palm and paid the amount for those flowers that grew on the floor two of the dungeon. I had no clue what came over me. There was this pain in my chest. The kind you get when a weight you didn't know you were carrying just disappears off your back.

  The relief that flooded through me was so intense that I fell to his feet, holding his boots, and started thanking him. I wasn't crying though. That's what I told myself as snot ran down my nose and tears streamed down as I kept thanking him.

  "Thank you…" I kept saying even after he stepped back, but I was still on the floor with my knees and elbows covered in muck. "Thank you so much…" I said to him.

  The freedom that I was seeking my entire life. In that instance. I felt it again, faintly, for the first time in a really long time. It was as if I could take a moment and just breathe.

  "Don't you have to transfer the money to them?" he asked me, and that got me to stop myself from burying my face in the ground and crying some more.

  Wiping the tears off my face with the back of my hand. I looked up at him, and he was offering me the device. But from the look in his eyes, as the orb flew around him. I could tell. I could tell he hadn't expected those credits to mean so much to me.

  I got on my feet, wiped my hands onto my clothes, and took that device from his hand with a thank you. Then transferred the money to my mother who was on another floor, and as this device belong to my father as it once did to his great grandfather. I just went ahead and unlocked the class for him from right here.

  I had no account of my own. I had used this to earn credits by selling things on his behalf while he did the same on the other side of the safe zone in a different market. But with him being inducted. He could do the transactions with the shake of the hands unlike me who needed this device.

  My only hope in that moment was to see their faces as the credits hit their accounts. We were still far from being able to afford a place to stay together. But my parents could go back to having two meals a day. And maybe just maybe I was now ready to get inducted as well.

  But then my eyes drifted back to Jensen, and the look on his face told me that now he was ready to tell me what exactly he wanted me to do.

  "What do I have to do?" I asked.

  *****