Plans for Ranking Up

Day three of inn construction… or so I claimed, but I declared today a rest day for mana recovery.

Truth be told, I didn't actually need to recover my mana. Thanks to chugging mana potions while spamming [Create Golem] during the Dungeon Battle, I'd gotten to the point where I barely felt any mana consumption when making golems anymore. I felt like I'd been working insanely hard lately, so I just wanted to rest for my mental health, that's all.

Also, it'd be nice if the drill golem struck a hot spring while I was resting.

There's still more stuff to make. Even if I'm using DP to stock up on ingredients for meals, I need to prepare something plausible as a cover story. So I'm thinking of setting up a field. Fortunately, the sugar beet field I had Testor, my prototype golem, work on earlier has been doing well. I'll expand the vegetable garden around there.

Well, if I exchange DP for vegetable seeds, I just need to give the golems instructions about the field. The only thing left for me to do is build a fence around it.

Ichika and Niku cut down quite a lot of trees over the past two days, so they're resting too.

When I instantly dried the felled trees with the life magic [Dry], Ichika's eyes went wide again… Apparently, drying them all at once with [Dry] makes the wood crack and split until it's unusable.

No problem though, since I fused them back together when I turned them into lumber with [Create Golem].

So there I was, lounging around on my futon in the Master Room, when Ichika brought something up.

"… Come to think of it, Goshujin-sama's F-Rank, yeah? No matter how ya look at it, this dungeon's E-Rank at least. If magic swords start appearin', wouldn't it become D-Rank restricted?"

… Blind spot.

Crap. This isn't just about looking uncool for not being able to enter my own dungeon. There's a real possibility I could get locked out and unable to return.

The inn's coming along nicely too, so I need to do something about this.

The quickest solution would be to raise my rank. The requirements to go from F-Rank to E-Rank are completing ten or more F-Rank commissions plus passing a guild examination. A practical combat test.

"Setting aside the exam, the commissions… The only F-Rank quest I know of is goblin subjugation."

"Goblin subjugation's fine, ain't it? I was huntin' boars when I ranked up."

So basically, my job would be to summon goblins and harvest their right ears as proof of subjugation…

… No, I can't do that to ones I summoned myself. Wild goblins would be one thing, but when it comes to summoned goblins, I owe them for Gobsuke saving the Dungeon Core. I can't be that heartless.

"Guess I'll have to look for wild goblins…"

"If ya just want goblin right ears, why not trade DP for 'em?"

"Huh? Rokuko, you mean… that's possible?"

"There are treasures like dragon claws, so why not?"

Now that she mentioned it, there was no reason it couldn't work. I checked the treasure list. But it wasn't there. As expected, goblin ears are hard to call treasure.

I kept searching through other pages without giving up… Found it. In the alchemy materials list.

Goblin's right ear. 6 DP each. Five for 30 DP, which is thirty copper coins. Exactly matches the reward.

"Since I already completed one before, I need… forty-five more, huh. 270 DP."

That's about two days' worth of our current income.

Oh right, Ichika's here now, so our daily income is 160 DP.

Going up by 60 DP per day means she has the strength of about three bandits, by simple calculation. As expected of a former C-Rank adventurer, impressive…!

"By the way, goblin right ears are alchemy materials, but what are they used for…?"

"Oh, that. It's recyclin'. Doesn't hafta be the right ear specifically, but they get scattered on fields as fertilizer. The guild was originally stuck on how to dispose of all the right ears they collected from subjugation quests, so they made a recipe to use 'em up."

If they just tossed the right ears away, adventurers might pick them up and resubmit them, so the guild wanted to make sure they were fully used up. People actually do that kind of thing, huh… wait, I'm basically doing the same thing. Mine are brand new right ears, sure, but I can't honestly say I'm completing the quest properly. The original purpose was to exterminate goblins raiding fields, after all.

Well, whatever. Time matters more than effort here. All the quest form says is to bring goblin right ears. No fraud involved.

"A trivial matter for my demon king Goshujin-sama, yeah?"

"I keep telling you I'm not a demon king."

Now the problem became where I supposedly hunted them.

So I placed goblin spawners in the dungeon. Each goblin spawner can have up to five goblins active at once. When one dies, a replacement spawns as needed, so long as there's mana available.

… I'd like to install golem spawners in the labyrinth area too. 10,000 DP each. Also up to five per spawner. Since monster golems come with magic stones, that's pretty appealing. Thinking of it as an income source for adventurers, they'd make for nice loot.

And so, I placed a total of five goblin spawners on the first floor, and three golem spawners in the labyrinth on floors two and three. As for the fourth and fifth underground floors I'm building now… well, those aren't needed yet. It's still uncertain whether customers would even make it that far.

…20,000 DP remaining. Geez, that's all we have left? Watching my assets shrink isn't good for my mental health. I need to rest more.

"Ichika, do you know the conditions to go from E-Rank to D-Rank?"

"Let's see… a hundred total commissions, plus a guild examination. They test yer one-on-one combat skills. Well, it'd be a cinch for Goshujin-sama and Niku-senpai."

… One-on-one combat… I'm going to need a plan for that.

Fortunately, I have Ichika, a former C-Rank. If I have the cloth golem learn Ichika's movements in detail, it should be a considerable power-up.

"Ichika, you made it to C-Rank solo without skills, right? That means you're pretty strong. Maybe as strong as a knight order captain?"

"Weell, I'd say I'm stronger than plenty of mediocre captains out there… basically, I could hold my own against a minotaur one-on-one."

So you can't become C-Rank without that level of strength… Or to put it another way, if you have skills, you could manage?

There are skills besides magic, after all. Like [Slash], which lets you unleash a powerful cutting attack. Might be worth learning some of those.

"Could you give some pointers? … To Niku."

"What about Goshujin-sama?"

"I'll be watching. It's an important role."

I need to watch carefully through Menu-san's surveillance monitor to record the movements.

Then I have the golems do repetition practice until the movements become natural. That's an important job.

For one-on-one practice partners, I just need to create mannequin-like golems that are even more human-like than standard humanoid golems. No problem there.

"Ah, but well, yer just gonna be enterin' a dungeon, right? Ya don't need to rank up solo. It's way easier to go through party rank instead of solo rank. There's this thing where if ya have a fixed party, everyone in it gets recognized as that rank as long as the whole party's together. If I'm in it, we could be a C-Rank party."

Party rank. So there's a system like a conditional license. Oh, come to think of it, didn't Haku-san mention her party [Dungeon Busters] would be S-Rank if everyone was together? That was yesterday, I think.

It was probably a system designed for mages and support types who aren't good at direct combat, or maybe for aristocrats.

Like if some important person wants to dive into a dungeon but doesn't have the rank, they could be considered a C-Rank party if their guards are included. Something like that.

Apparently the written exam can be taken as a party too, so there's probably also the reverse case of helping muscle-brained warriors get into dungeons.

Either way, looks like ranking up will be easy with Ichika, a former C-Rank, on our side.

"Well, Niku-senpai's already got combat power above C-Rank anyway～… yeah."

Wait, am I the one dragging the team down? … I had a sneaking suspicion, yeah.