Chapter 509: Joining the Famous Adventurers

Inside the special room at the Adventurers’ Guild in the Royal Capital,

the kingdom’s foremost adventurers, appearing again after more than half a year, finally finished settling the treasures and items they had obtained in the dungeon and received an enormous amount of money.

The A-plus Five Dragon Virtues, the A-rank Light Tiger, the A-rank Blue Tortoise, and the B-plus Heavenly Flying Horse each confirmed the amount they had received with the guild staff, then piled leather bags of money on the table to pay Tauro the agreed thirty percent.

“Would it be better to mix in some platinum coins? That way it won’t be so bulky,” the female leader of Blue Tortoise suggested thoughtfully.

“I have [Magic Storage] too, so it’s fine,” Tauro replied, making the entire pile of money on the table disappear in an instant.

“You have [Magic Storage] as an ability, not just a magic item!? That makes me want you on our team even more. How about bringing your whole team over to Light Tiger?”

“Hey! He only just turned you down!” the female leader of Blue Tortoise shot back.

The leader of Heavenly Flying Horse nodded in agreement.

They were comrades-in-arms who had entrusted their lives to one another while fighting in the dungeon for half a year.

Their banter was relaxed and friendly.

“Even so, you people from Black-Gold Wings only recently reached B-minus rank, right? Before you became an honorary viscount, you were D-plus. Yet your equipment is already first-rate, isn’t it? I can’t even appraise it… You lot seem to have plenty of secrets,”

said Kars, leader of Five Dragon Virtues. He had apparently already checked not only Tauro’s equipment, but also Aeris’s, Ragune’s, Ankh’s, and Zion’s.

“Your equipment is amazing too. Once adventurers reach your level, do they usually obtain their gear from unusual sources?”

Tauro asked. Since he could hardly say that he had made most of his party’s equipment himself, he redirected the conversation toward a question he genuinely wanted answered.

It was something ordinary adventurers would naturally want to know as a reference.

And because these were some of the finest adventurers in the kingdom, their answer was especially valuable.

“I think everyone gets their equipment differently, but most of what we in Five Dragon Virtues are wearing now came from items we found in the dungeon on this expedition. Before that, we bought equipment at kingdom-sponsored auctions and black-market auctions, or visited famous blacksmiths and negotiated directly for custom work. Our lives depend on our gear, so we never spared the money,” Kars explained while glancing over his companions’ equipment.

“Same for us. We spent a fortune on equipment before entering the dungeon. When we found even better gear in the deeper floors, we were so happy that we forgot to even think about its monetary value. Look at this armor—it has several abilities on it,” the leader of Light Tiger boasted, proudly showing off armor obtained in the dungeon.

When Tauro appraised it with [True Eye], it did indeed have [Poison Resistance (Weak)] and [Paralysis Resistance (Weak)].

But compared with the equipment used by Tauro and his companions, it was honestly rather unimpressive.

Then again, almost all the materials and magic stones used in Tauro’s party’s equipment were rare drops from monsters found below the 200th floor of the dragonfolk village dungeon, the Dungeon of Beginnings.

Tauro had lavishly turned those materials into equipment with [Creation Magic] and the ancient magic-circle technology whose techniques had been lost to the present age. Of course the results were extraordinary.

It was then that Tauro first realized that even the equipment of adventurers said to be among the strongest in the kingdom couldn’t compare with that of his own companions.

“…That’s amazing.”

That single sentence was all Tauro could manage as a reaction.

“Right? …Though your reaction is pretty weak. Well, never mind. Dungeons are treasure troves. If someone like you, who can move freely between dungeon floors, joined us, we could conquer them far more efficiently. That’s why I want you and your whole team to join us.” The leader of Light Tiger moved straight from boasting about his armor to another recruitment attempt.

“Persistent men aren’t popular, you know? Anyway, Lord Tauro, you’ll send us back to the dungeon’s 100th floor a week from now, correct?” the female leader of Blue Tortoise asked, apparently having given up on recruiting him.

“Yes. Please rest and recover until then. We’re going back to the dungeon for a while to make sure [Spatial Transfer] is working properly for the dungeon-conquest members, so let’s meet there in a week.”

Tauro answered, nodded to Aeris and the others, and left the guild’s special room.

Five Dragon Virtues and the other elite adventurers left with them.

The guild lobby was packed so tightly that it looked as though every adventurer in the Royal Capital had been summoned there. They hadn’t come to see Tauro’s party, but Five Dragon Virtues and the other famous top-class teams.

Cheers erupted as the elite adventurers emerged from the special room.

“Whoa! They’re the real thing!”

“Kars, can I get your autograph?”

“Everyone from Blue Tortoise, look over here!”

For ordinary adventurers, those top-ranked teams were objects of admiration and goals to aspire to.

With four such teams in one place, there was no way the crowd could stay calm.

Black-Gold Wings looked almost comically out of place among them, but Five Dragon Virtues and the other famous teams drew so much attention that Tauro’s party was practically treated as part of the background.

In no time at all, the crowd pushed Tauro and his companions out of the guild.

“They’re incredibly popular… I’m surprised,” Tauro said, once again realizing just how famous Kars and the others were.

They were approachable, never arrogant, and easy to feel close to when speaking with them, but this reminded Tauro that they truly were among the kingdom’s finest adventurers.

“Yes. But we aren’t adventuring to become famous. They really do feel like people from another world,” Aeris replied, understanding how Tauro felt.

“Exactly. We adventure because it’s fun to travel with these companions. We can leave the popularity to them,” Ankh said.

“Ankh is right. We all came together because adventuring with Tauro is fun. Let’s go adventuring again tomorrow,” Ragune said.

“I’m here because I want to adventure with you too, Tauro-sama!” Zion added.

“Yeah. Becoming an honorary viscount so suddenly left me feeling a little ungrounded, especially standing beside people that amazing. Let’s get our feet back on the ground and go adventuring again!”

Tauro and the others raised their voices together. “Yeah!”