We arrived at the house of Laje Turin, the employer who had hired people to capture me and Licia Ethe. It was an impressive and luxurious residence.
I walked straight up to the front gate, greeted the guard, and got right to the point.
"Hello. I'm looking for Laje Turin. Is he here?"
The moment I finished speaking, the guard suddenly pointed his spear at me and angrily scolded me.
"Who are you?! How dare you call the Third Young Master's name directly!"
Ah. I had forgotten to use respectful language. I had been too focused on figuring out what he looked like. I'd better ask again properly.
"May I ask if Young Master Raj Turin is here? If he is, please inform him that a black-haired merchant's guard from Aimebisalon has come to see him."
"You sure changed your attitude quickly. The Third Young Master is at home. I'll pass on the message."
"Thank you."
The guard actually had a decent attitude. After I repeated myself properly, he lowered his spear and didn't dwell on my earlier rudeness. Then he went inside to deliver the message.
After a while, the guard returned, looking annoyed.
"The Third Young Master went out. Come back tomorrow."
So he went out, huh? If he was somewhere in town, I might be able to find him. After all, if he wanted to capture me, he should show hostility toward me when we met.
But the guard seemed irritated. Had he been scolded? Or maybe he didn't like Laje Turin very much. After all, he had confidently said Raj Turin was home, only to find out he wasn't. That must've made him look foolish.
"What a pity. Alright, I'll come back tomorrow."
I didn't really expect to find Laje Turin on the streets anyway. It was already five o'clock, and for him to show hostility toward me, he'd first have to recognize me.
Besides, we might as well spend the night outside the city. Our dirty clothes had piled up quite a lot.
I turned to Jacob and the others and said,
"We're staying in the travel house tonight."
When we passed through the city gate, we didn't see any members of the organization anymore. The boss really worked fast. That was the power of money.
Later, we settled down in a forest somewhere. As soon as we entered the house, I asked the four of them to hand over their dirty clothes. I sorted them and threw them into the washing machine.
Once the washing machine started running, I went to cook dinner.
While I was cutting vegetables, Grace, who was sitting at the dining table, suddenly called out to me, making me pause.
"Mr. Karen, how much is your sword worth?"
Why ask about my beloved sword all of a sudden? Did she want it? I wasn't selling it. My sword was the strongest.
So I replied,
"A number that even a country couldn't afford."
After saying that, I continued cutting vegetables.
Honestly, I thought saying "a country" was already too cheap, but I couldn't exaggerate too much either, or I'd sound unbearably narcissistic.
Grace looked at me with disbelief.
"That's exaggerated. Stop lying."
"Why would I lie to you? My sword was custom-made. It's forged from monster materials, extremely sharp, and embedded with magic cores. It will never break."
The only beings capable of damaging my sword were long-lived creatures. But I also had the enhancement magic "Durability." Five years of its power could easily extend to over ten thousand years, so that simply wasn't possible.
But Grace didn't believe me and tried to argue back.
"Even with magic cores embedded, it can't possibly forever. How old could those magic cores be? If one exceeds ten years, it's already considered a national treasure."
"Hahaha, then my sword could be called a world treasure."
If ten years already counted as a national treasure, then this travel house would qualify as a world treasure. I had used nearly thirty magic cores that were over five hundred years old.
"I told you to stop lying! How old are those magic cores?!"
Grace still refused to believe me and demanded an answer with growing agitation. I responded calmly.
"2018 years."
"It's 2019 this year! It's almost February already!"
"Will you just believe me already?! Are my words really that unbelievable?!"
Grace annoyed me so much that I slammed the knife onto the cutting board with a loud bang.
I said two-zero-one-eight, not two thousand and eighteen, but did I look like I was joking? Did she think I didn't know it was already 2019?!
The sudden noise startled all four of them. They looked at me nervously.
Then Grace asked timidly,
"...R-really?"
"So troublesome. Here, take these three and test them."
I pulled out an year-measuring device and three magic cores. Each known to be over a thousand years old from my storage hole and placed them on the table. I let Grace test them herself until she believed it.
Then I went back to cutting vegetables.
Inside my head, I kept complaining to myself. My expression must've looked pretty sour.
What was wrong with Grace today? Her intelligence seemed offline, and she was unusually irritable. Was it that time of the month? If that was the case, then it couldn't be helped. I should just forgive her.
Lina was much better. When that time came for her, she simply became very lazy, not irritable. Everyone's body was different. Lina didn't seem to feel much pain. Thanks to that, my life over the past few years had been pretty peaceful.
"Mr. Karen, this year-measuring device must be broken. Why would it display a four-digit number? It has to be broken. Haha..."
I glanced at the device.
It showed 1637 years.
Even though Grace verbally denied it, her eyes were already trembling, and her entire expression looked panicked. I decided she was simply talking to herself and avoiding reality, so I ignored her.
Jacob and Ethefelis both stared in shock.
Alice, who didn't really understand the significance, casually swapped in another magic core out of boredom and then looked at me.
"Mr. Karen, every stone looks the same. Why are the numbers different?"
"Magic cores exist in monsters and animals that live in the dungeon. That number represents their age."
"Huh?! They lived that long? Are those monster cores?"
"They're from animals."
"Animals can live that long?"
"Normally they can't. But the dungeon was created by the Goddess of Fate. Animals living there for thousands of years isn't strange."
Honestly, I didn't know why they could live that long either. But explaining it using the Goddess of Fate was basically the same as giving up on thinking about it.
(Everything in the dungeon is a miracle.)
I said that in my mind without much emotion. Alice, who worshipped the Goddess of Fate, immediately accepted the explanation.
"I see."
Then Jacob asked another question.
"But Karen, why can they live for thousands of years? Don't adventurers hunt them down?"
"Those animals all live below level 81. Only Rainbow-Rank adventurers can reach that far."
From the past until now, only seventeen people had ever become Rainbow-Rank adventurers, including Lina and me. Currently, besides us, there were two others—one in Fenkulidra, and the other missing.
But that wasn't the point.
Even becoming a Rainbow-Rank adventurer didn't mean you could easily pass the Red-Rank levels. Most people only reached Red-Rank around forty years old, and Rainbow-Rank around fifty.
By then, half their life was already gone, and they were entering the age where their bodies couldn't keep up with their ambitions. If they drank frequently, it became even worse. That was why Rainbow-Rank adventurers were so rare.
"I see. Since adventurers rarely reach that deep, those animals can live that long. So Karen, how many do you have?"
"I haven't counted. Probably over five hundred."
"Over five hundred!? ...Well, that makes sense. There can't be only a few animals on one level. Five hundred sounds normal."
Jacob was shocked at first, but after thinking about it carefully, it didn't seem that unbelievable. After all, the dungeon contained countless animals and plants.
In reality, I had over ten thousand, but I didn't want to scare them. Each species alone had more than fifty individuals.
At that moment, Grace—who had been escaping reality—finally returned.
"Mr. Karen... where did you use them?"
"My house and this travel house."
The moment I said that, Grace retreated back into denial. She lifted her head, her eyes unfocused, staring at the ceiling while laughing foolishly.
"Haha... haha... So I've been living inside world treasures all this time. I probably won't be able to sleep tonight..."
Grace looked even more shocked now than when she learned about ancient magic or the truth about the first Brave. Did she have some deeply rooted belief about magic cores? Why was she so hung up on this?
Were magic cores extremely precious to her? Meanwhile, I casually brought out cores far older than she could imagine—and in huge quantities.
But I obtained them through my own strength. How I used them was my business.
So I decided to continue cooking. Otherwise, Ethefelis might start glaring at me.
Later during dinner, Grace remained absent-minded. She even put an empty spoon into her mouth without scooping any food.
I couldn't stand it anymore.
"Grace, are thousand-year magic cores really shocking enough to make you freeze like that?"
"...Yes. For a knight, owning a sword embedded with a magic core that's even a few years old is a dream. Yet you casually possess stones that are thousands of years old."
Grace answered slowly, her voice completely flat.
What kind of dream was that? Magic cores seemed to hold far more meaning than I thought.
And honestly, I felt wronged. Magic stones didn't fall from the sky—I earned them through my own strength.
Seeing how badly Grace wanted one, I asked,
"Then should I give you one?"
"No! I finally took the step of killing living beings. I want to rely on my own strength to obtain a magic stone myself."
Grace rejected my offer without hesitation.
Good. She had determination.
I didn't say anything more. My original goal was simply to make her focus on eating again.
"Then do your best. And hurry up and eat."
"Yes."