Well, its been a week since my battle with the Gnoll king, and for the most part im recovered. All of my serious injuries are healed and I've managed to get my mana pool back into an acceptable condition. Im obviously still sore and covered in bruises.... not even I can heal that quickly. But enough about that, it should be fairly obvious that I didn't just spend this week wallowing in self pity. Instead I managed to get my hands on a pretty tasty lead... one that will rake in so much money that I wont know what to do with it. I found out from a contact of mine that theres a new dungeon thats been discovered in the demon lands, and a Z-rank dungeon at that. Which means that theres basically no one that can touch it. An F-rank party wouldn't last the week in there, even A lone Z-ranker wouldn't be able to complete it, however luckily for me I've been able to formulate a plan that could get me to the end of that dungeon and line my pockets with enough gold to never have to work a day in my life again.... or the next 20 lives after that.
Now I know you obviously have some questions so I will explain them. First of all, the best way to describe a dungeon would be these massive ancient holy underground cities from the Age of the gods. They are basically the fortresses that where ruled by the gods before they all murdered the shit out of each other and threw the world into abject fucking chaos. If Im being honest with you the world was already chaotic before they did that since these un-imaginably powerful beings where running around battling each other causing cataclysms and the like. But lets get back on topic. The artifacts and treasures that can be found within these dungeons are fucking good. Like created by gods and angels and demons and shit type good. The artifacts that can be found have been known to be worth more than entire kingdoms and hold enough power to... well kill gods. So if I could get my hands on some of these Id be a happy boy indeed. However theres a catch... The first thing is that it's in the demon lands which is about 2 months journey away, or 3 weeks If you travel by ship. Which followed up by the fact that demons and humans are not on the friendliest of terms makes for some interesting problems, There's no war or anything at the moment but a lot of racism on both sides. Demons of a general rule of thumb are superior to humans, Their stronger, smarter, longer lived... And this makes humans jealous and fearful of demons. On the other hand humans have much higher numbers and better technology than demons, which ends up with demons being fearful of humans. Hence the hate and racism. The second problem is that I'm talking about a fucking Z-rank dungeon... There is not a single chance in hell that in could beat that thing as I currently am... But that just means getting stronger, Which is easy.
So back to my plan, the gist of it is get Katia to agree first of all, Without her im not doing shit. The second is that as much as I hate doing this, I need to form a party, But I already have a few ideas for that. The 3rd is to achieve enlightenment, firmly pushing me into the the z-rank (well actually above it since I basically sit at some weird state of being half way between an F-ranker and a z-ranker). But lets take baby steps... first I need to get Katia on board.
I've been waiting at my favorite table in Claudia's bar for a good half an hour now. Since im lazy I payed some low rank hunter girl to find Katia and tell her to come and find me here, so hopefully she wont be to much longer. Im actually quite excited about my little plan.
Katia finally strolled in and came and sat down at my table... I've only seen her a few times since the last mission so it's actually quite refreshing to see her. "so Vaughn what is it? I was kind of busy you know... and anyway shouldn't you be resting up or something."
"yeah yeah whatever..... first of take a look at this!" I happily exclaim like a kid on Christmas whilst passing her my new flask.
As she takes it she examines it and seems to Know what I've bought. "so you got a unlimited flask? these things are fucking expensive you know? how much did it cost you?"
"1 platinum.... But guess what. Its enchanted to be filled with the dwarven stuff!" At this point i cant hold in my smile and Katia just looks disappointed.
"Im not even going to touch on spending a whole platinum on alcohol.... so what was your actual reason for getting me to come here?"
"Ah well.... Have you heard about the new dungeon in the demon lands?"
I continued to fill her in on the situation which took a lot of time and whisky but I had peaked her interest especially after a brief rundown of my plan.
"So you want to reach enlightenment do you? you know that like 1 in a million or so can do it. I know were both a lot more powerful than your average hunter. But I wouldn't say that where at Z-rank yet" She looked at me with a raised eye brow.
"Come on Katia you know that both me you and everyone else like us would not have that hard of a time reaching enlightenment, especially if we know how to do it."
"Yes we have the potential for it.... But you forget that the actual process is a highly guarded secret that few are privy to."
"Well I just so happen to be one of those few" The look of surprise on her face makes me burst out into a large grin.
"Your shitting me!!"
"Ill tell you about it later... Probably shouldn't spill the beans around listening ears".
With a little bit of conversation and a bit of plan refining I managed to get her to agree to my conditions. And with that were moving on to step 2.