Do Business at Times Like This

Crackle, crackle.

Barkal lit Darsan’s body on fire for cremation. In his eyes, there was a longing for his big bro, now becoming ashes.

Unlike the ‘cremation’ we usually imagine, Barkal did not collect the bone powder once it had turned to dust.

“Barkal, is that enough?”

He only nodded, as if content with returning his brother to nature.

“I’m sorry for moving forward without a word, brothers.”

Once Barkal rejoined us, the first thing he did was apologize to us.

A dangerous dungeon.

It seemed he recognized just how risky it was to rush off alone in such a place.

“It’s all right. Brother Barkal, I also received help from you,”

Serena said, not intending to make a fuss about it.

“Barkal.”

I was different.

“This time, it was really dangerous. If—just by chance—luck hadn’t been with us, someone could have been put in danger.”

This was a point that had to be made clear.

It’s not like something like this hadn’t happened in the past, but I wanted to set things straight now while I could.

“Sorry, brother.”

That’s enough, Barkal. Let’s do better in the future.

“Rat, I apologize to you as well.”

Barkal also apologized to Miriam.

She had been the most displeased with Barkal’s tendency to rush off alone, but—

“If Brother Barkal’s fine, that’s all that matters!”

Turns out, Barkal must still scare her a bit. She cracked a small smile and made a playful joke.

* * *

After the funeral, we headed deeper into the dungeon.

In the end, since we had come here, we had to see it through, right? So we pressed on, aiming to find the dungeon’s master.

“Ah, aaaaaah!”

As we moved further inside, screams echoed out from deeper in the dungeon.

“It sounds like another adventurer’s scream!”

At Serena’s words, I looked ahead. Could it be that someone had run into the ‘dungeon master’?

“There, there’s too many!”

“Fall back! No, just retreat!”

“Is that even possible?!”

Just as I expected, we entered a plaza where adventurers were engaged in combat.

Their opponents were the same snakes we had encountered earlier.

“Aaaaaah!”

As we got closer, one of the adventurers was bitten by a snake.

He quickly raised his sword and struck the snake down.

But despite his quick response, the adventurer’s body began to stiffen.

“Uhh, ugh…!”

Before long, the adventurer had completely turned to stone. At the same time, the statues around began to surround the other adventurers.

Fortunately, the surrounded adventurer party didn’t suffer any harm.

We had arrived just in time, and the unbreakable statues could be removed with the ‘Shard of Vespers’.

“Lucky for you.”

I told the adventurer party that had been in danger.

If we hadn’t come when we did, they would have been wiped out—so yes, lucky was the right word.

“Y-you guys!”

As we tried to move past them, the adventurer party grabbed us.

“What is it?”

“D-do you have any Petrification Antidote Potions left?!”

What a funny guy.

I gave the adventurer a look.

“I do have some left.”

“T-then can you lend us one?! One of our members turned to stone, and we’ve used up all our potions.”

“We need them for ourselves.”

None of my companions had been petrified yet, so we hadn’t used any of our antidote potions. But it’s not guaranteed that things would always work out that way.

If you have spares, you save them. That’s common sense. What this adventurer was asking was completely unreasonable.

“I’ll pay you twice what we paid for it!”

Twice!?

For a moment, I was tempted. My pupils probably even dilated.

“Hmph, hmm!”

But as Serena cleared her throat beside me, I came to my senses.

Right.

In this dungeon, petrification Antidote Potions were like a lifeline.

We had suffered great loss buying a ‘flag’, but in the end, your life comes first.

And thanks to Liberas’s blessing, Serena wouldn’t even be much affected by ‘Petrification’. Considering someone like her was concerned, I needed to get a grip.

“Dmihtan.”

At that moment, someone tugged at my sleeve.

I turned to see Miriam.

“Double is not a bad selling price, right?”

What was she saying? Did she really want to make money with our lives on the line?

No matter how obsessed with money I was, I wasn’t…

“Tada.”

Sneakily.

Miriam pulled up her clothes, revealing a bunch of vials, obviously potion bottles, dangling inside.

And the color of those potions…

“Petrification Antidote Potion?”

“Things that were left in the wagon—I brought them along.”

Miriam’s voice was brimming with confidence as if this was a moment of pride.

I looked at her long and hard.

That’s stealing, crazy woman.

“Even though it’s technically stolen, it helped us, right? Let’s not sweat the small stuff.”

She offered me another Petrification Antidote Potion, whispering slyly with a mischievous smile.

“Let’s split the profits fifty-fifty. Technically, these belonged to you in the first place. What do you say?”

“Sixty-forty.”

Miriam frowned at my counter-offer.

“I’m the one who brought them!”

“They’re my things.”

With nothing left to say, miriam handed me the potions.

“I’ll sell Petrification Antidote Potions. You said you’d pay double what we bought them for, right?”

“Y-yes! But we don’t have any gold coins right now. If you give us the potion now, we’ll pay you later with a promissory note…”

I handed over the potion and received a promissory note from the adventurer.

The amount written was 6 gold coins per vial.

Even after giving Miriam 2 coins, I’d make 4 coins profit—a good deal.

“Thank you…”

The adventurer applied the Petrification Antidote Potion to his stone-turned companion. Watching, I became lost in thought.

“This is it.”

I’d found a way to recover the money I’d paid Temitus.

* * *

Once I realized I could earn gold coins, my eyes blazed with dreams of ‘recouping the original investment’.

Of course, finding the dungeon’s master was important.

Getting rewarded by the kingdom was important.

But in the end, wasn’t this all about making money?

Because of that, I started searching for other adventurer parties.

Shutting the dungeon was adventurers’ number one priority, but my motivation was also burning to save other companions.

“I-I’ll buy it!”

Whether it was lucky or unlucky, there were plenty of adventurers looking for Petrification Antidote Potions.

Every adventurer party we found fighting was dealing with members afflicted by petrification, and most of them bought the antidote potion from us.

“You already have potions, but you still want to buy more?”

Some had potions already. I asked them.

“We need extra just in case.”

A reasonable decision. It’s impossible to perfectly estimate how many consumables you’ll need.

And so, every time a scream rang through the dungeon, we went there to help adventurers.

“Thank you, thank you so much!”

We made money.

“A-are you guys all right?”

“It’s more important to help our fellow adventurers.”

“To think there was a party like yours…!”

We built our reputation among the adventurers.

Truly, two birds with one stone.

As we made our rounds throughout the dungeon, miriam’s stash of Petrification Antidote Potions gradually dwindled.

“Excluding what we need for ourselves, this is the last one.”

Clink.

She showed us one last bottle.

Right.

I nodded in response.

My coat was stuffed full of promissory notes from the adventurers.

After the commission ended, those would become golden coins in my hand. Just thinking about it made me feel affection for the notes in my pocket.

“Brother, weren’t we supposed to be looking for the dungeon master?”

I was smiling, unable to hide my satisfaction, when Barkal asked beside me.

“We have to,”

I replied.

Of course we do.

To cash in these promissory notes, the adventurer parties who gave them need to still be alive.

So, we need to kill the dungeon master as quickly as possible, close the dungeon, and head back.

“But first, one more thing.”

Let’s sell off that very last bottle.

“Aaaagh!”

As I was thinking that, more screams erupted somewhere in the dungeon.

Money!

That thought sent me hurrying toward the source of the cry.

“Money! I mean, gold coins… wait, no!!!”

I was getting too excited—calm down.

“Where is the adventurer in danger?”

The place where the screams came from looked awfully similar to the passage Barkal had chased down earlier.

A strange hallway shrouded in darkness.

“H-here!”

A voice called out from deeper inside, and I started heading straight for it.

* 〈Mortis is in danger. Warning.〉

Just then, a message popped up.

It hadn’t spoken to me in a while, and now it was warning of danger? What was it trying to say?

Meanwhile, Barkal, Serena, and Miriam had caught up behind me.

“Weren’t you looking for an injured adventurer?”

The first to speak was Miriam, who’d been selling potions alongside me.

That’s right. The scream had definitely sounded like an adventurer petrified by a snake.

I’d heard it enough times to have a feeling. This one was definitely Petrification.

“Wait a second.”

I was about to enter the corridor in search of the voice, but Serena blocked my path.

“There’s something strange about the energy around here.”

Strange energy?

I was about to ask her what she meant, but indeed, just as she said, something was off in this place.

No, to be exact, this was probably the only ‘normal’ spot.

The thick ‘Abyssal Energy’ clinging to the passage was absent in this place.

Shhhhhhhk──!

While I was searching to find out why, I heard a chilling sound above my head.

A huge snake slithering across the ground.

“It’s above.”

I looked upward as I spoke.

There, a monster with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a massive snake was flicking its tongue, watching us from above.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep