After James had left the treasury, the voice that had spoken to him in the dungeon began to speak.
[…where did that item come from? Wasn't that supposed to be put in a place where someone worthy would be able to pick it up? How come it's in the dungeon?]
[Well, the dungeon is a good place to find lots of people. It would make sense that he placed it here, even if he never told anybody.]
Another voice answered. This voice was female. James would have referred to this voice as the announcer woman.
[Haah, well…there's nothing we can do about it now. That item chose its owner. I do wonder how the boy even passed the trial to obtain the item. He's from that dimension, after all.]
[Ever since he was brought into the dungeon, I've had so much more work to do. His stats are broken. When he takes an orb, the dungeon can't actually measure his stats, instead calculating it based off of the amounts of orbs he's consumed.]
[Do the orbs have no effect on him?]
[No, he does grow stronger and stronger. The problem should be in the strength evaluating system. Something about him affects the process. Also, the system can't recognize his skills either, so I put those in manually.]
[Hmm…I'll have to look into this person myself…]
====================
James appeared back in the room he was before. John was waiting for him.
"Hey, how'd it go?"
"Yeah, I got my reward."
"Alright, that's good."
John took James back over to the dungeon shop. None of his senior explorers were there, so James didn't need to stay in the shop for much longer. James really wanted to check the details of his items, but since he knew items were rather rare in the dungeon, he didn't want to draw unnecessary attention. So, he decided to go to the first floor of the dungeon to check out his items.
Once he was in the dungeon, he made sure there were no monsters around, and then pulled out his card and tapped on the beanie.
[?????????????
Mana +100
Magical Efficiency (Low)
Sealed ???????
??????????
???????? ]
"…"
This barely gave him any information at all!
"Mana +100. Hmm, I don't think the dungeon has a way to measure mana, so I don't know if that. Magical efficiency…again, I don't know magic or anything, I don't have a very good way of testing it. The only option would be to test it by summoning things on Earth."
James still hadn't gotten any magic book drops, so the increase in mana was not all that useful to him. However, he wasn't necessarily disappointed in the item. If he learned magic n the future, it would definitely help him. Additionally, there was more to this item than just this.
"Sealed…I guess that means I haven't unlocked all of the functions of the item yet. I don't know how to unlock the other functions, or what they are. I guess I'll just have to find out as I go. Maybe my strength is insufficient. For all I know, it could be a godly artifact, and I��m just too weak. Although I doubt that'll happen."
James put the beanie on his head. He felt the amount of mana in his body increase by a large amount.
"Guuuh…turns out that 100 mana isn't a small amount, at least for the current me."
James felt as if his mana capacity had at least doubled. It was a shame he didn't have any magic. Otherwise, his fighting ability would have doubled! No, that was a bit overblown. It would be more accurate to say that his stamina would have doubled.
He pulled out his card and looked at it. James hadn't noticed it last time with the Hermes Kicks, but the effects of equipment didn't seem to affect the stats. What was shown was the raw power of the explorer. So, his card was almost the same as the last time he looked at it. The one difference was that the note at the bottom saying "reward pending" was gone.
James felt as if the reward was very big, which meant that the dungeon's managers really didn't want mana and magic to spread on the Earth. Although he didn't know the reason behind this, he decided to not use magic in the real world, unless a true emergency happened.
James then took a look at the bottom line of the card again. It was the line that said he had tamed a bear cub.
"Did I really tame him? How do I bring him out then?"
As soon as he thought this, the bear crawled out of his card.
"…"
How did this work? Was the card a storage system of its own?
James gave up thinking about it. He had given up thinking about a lot of things ever since he encountered the dungeon. He took a look at the bear. It was a cute little cub. It had brown fur, and was about as big as a large stuffed animal. It clambered onto James' shoulder and rubbed its face against his.
"It's very weak. It feels weaker than a goblin, and it doesn't have much mana. Hmm, it does seem to be friendly towards me. How did I even tame him, when his mother almost killed me?"
James recalled the contents of Ayla's notes. He had apparently fed the 4th tier magic stone to the bear. Could that be the reason?
"Do you eat magic stones?"
The bear looked at him with large, shining eyes and cooed. Then, it tilted its head.
"Jesus, this little guy is too cute! Well, let's hunt some goblins and see if this guy will eat them."
James found the first goblin, and buried a knife in its head. Then, it took the goblin's magic stone and held it in front of the bear cub. It immediately reached out it little brown paw and brought it to its mouth.
CHOMP!
It took a sizeable chunk and began chewing. It sounded like the bear was crunching down on a hard candy. The bear swallowed a mouthful and grabbed another bite. James' heart felt like it was being healed just by looking at the scene.
By the time the cub had ate the entire magic stone, James noticed that the mana presence from the bear had become just a tiny bit stronger. Unexpectedly, this little guy could level up by eating magic stones! James wondered if this was true for all monsters, or if his bear was special. At any rate, the rate of growth would be rather slow.
The cub licked its chops and looked at James, asking for more. It looked at him with puppy dog eyes and made a cute humming noise.
Gah! How was he supposed to say no! James would have to hunt for more magic stones, to feed this little bastard. He was being coerced.
====================
James had hunted around 15 goblins and fed them all to the bear, which happily gulped everything down. Its appetite seemed to be endless. Then, James put the bear back into the dungeon card and fought the boss monster with his usual grinding method – blinding the goblin and then camping it out with knives.
"This is a tier 2 berserk magic stone. I wonder how it'll go."
James brought the bear back out of his card and fed the stone to it.
The results: it seemed to be more delicious than usual. Additionally, the amount of mana that the cub gained seemed to be more than with the tier one stones.
"Well, at least it makes sense. Eventually, this cub will grow up to be a big bear, eh?"
James imagined having a pet as strong as the demon bear he fought. That would be awesome.