Gacha Kingdom Building

I wasn't expecting the girls to be so into sweets. Even though Ellie bought a bunch, it didn't last a day.

While sugar is pretty common in everything, even to the point of it being hard to avoid nowadays, they mostly relied on fruits and the like for sweets and desserts since sugar itself was very expensive and in short supply.

It might be worth carrying some gum or something from now on since it might be seen as a sign of status and it might give me some credibility as royalty.

I never thought I'd use candy as a resource to bullshit others, but here we are I guess.

It's interesting to think that maybe we can use our sugary products to establish diplomatic ties with other worlds, but if they ever discover how easily we can mass produce it, the dungeon gates will probably start flooding with people coming to Earth.

It might even make people start contrabanding sugar in exchange for gold or silver.

Licia: "You seem pretty happy. Did something good happen?"

Miwen: "Nah. I was just thinking about sugar smugglers. Speaking of which, do you wanna walk to the dungeon today, or would you prefer to remain inside the kingdom Ellie?"

Since last time she grabbed a lot of attention, I would totally understand if she didn't feel like going today.

This seemed to be unwarranted though as she was pretty excited to go, on the condition that we could make one stop at the market beforehand.

I could only guess what she was going to bring to the dungeon, but it seems like great minds do think alike and she ended up buying more sweets.

It would've been fine had it ended just like that, but someone was waiting for us as soon as we stepped food outside.

It was a group of four men and a woman, upon looking at their status I could confirm they were just a bit higher than ours, the guys were around 27 and 26 while the girl herself was 25.

???: "I saw you guys coming out of the dungeon yesterday. Say, are you adventurers? Do you wanna help to defeat your current floor boss? We can even help you get some levels on higher floors."

The strongest among them, a level 27 was the first to speak. He was exceedingly tall and muscular, which made him look pretty tough.

Before I could answer him, someone else in his party spoke.

???: "Wait Derek, we already got enough-"

Derek: "Shut it."

Talk about being suspicious. Either way, it won't change my answer.

This whole time this Derek guy kept stealing glances at Ellie even though he was talking to me.

It wasn't enough for me to jump to any conclusion though, even more so considering she's an elf and everyone turns their attention to her when they notice it.

Given the "novelty" that is other races on Earth, it also makes sense for people to be interested in her, and asking to form a party is not outrageous or bad by itself.

They are also offering something at the very least but... it's a really bad offer to us since we level up faster by ourselves and while rewarding, having someone help you get to a higher floor is more dangerous than it's worth.

There's also the fact that we aren't in a hurry and their levels aren't that high either.

At most, they would be able to help us out on the current floor, but they aren't like Mia, whose level is so high that even while capped by the floor, her skills still maintain absurdly high levels, allowing her to perform extraordinarily.

Another thing is that they aren't up to par with most of our party in terms of combat experience.

Sure, they aren't weak by Earth's standards, but our party has a bunch of people who dedicated themselves to fighting for most of their lives, some even reaching levels that haven't been attained yet on Earth.

To them, these guys might be more of a liability than anything else.

Of course, I couldn't explain all of that to them, so I just politely refused their offer.

I thought they would react like a normal person and just let the matter go, but...

Derek: "Fine. Then how much for an hour with her?"

...I knew that I shouldn't start trouble but I couldn't let that go unpunished.

Miwen: "Sorry that you only get some if you pay, but she's not on sale."

As soon as I said that, his friends behind him started stirring things up, and instead of getting a word in, he decided to go for a punch in the middle of the street in broad daylight.

He was surprisingly slow and clumsy. I could see it coming from a mile away, so dodging that wasn't hard at all.

It was obvious that people around us were watching, so before they could get their phones out and start filming something I'd rather keep secret, I sent the invitation for almost everyone to come out from the kingdom, except for Mia.

The girls then appeared around me one by one, making everyone on Derek's side also get their guard up.

Miwen: "It's a fight. But don't draw blood."

We don't need to escalate this any further, and for the girls, these guys were just pushovers.

Whenever they'd try something they would only meet the blunt side of a sword lightly tapping them and Anna was capable of overpowering any of them with her Gift so she would always push them to the ground.

I guess that since most people only come here for the third floor they must've thought they are pretty bigshots thanks to their levels but... they are incredibly bad.

Even while holding back we were humiliating them every step of the way, which only led to anger building up and mistakes becoming more common on their side.

The fifth floor had encounters that felt harder than this, so I can't help but think it's a miracle that they've managed to get past it.

It didn't take long for them to realize that they were outmatched though, and now that people were starting to get their phones out, they finally stopped and went their own way.

Derek: "You better not enter the dungeon kid. It can be a pretty dangerous place."

Licia: "You should quit this job if it's so scary for you."

Claire: "Some people are simply not cut out for it."

These types seem to think Ellie is an easy target since she's shy and looks pretty innocent so not bringing the girls along was a mistake, especially Beatrice who is incredibly good at keeping creeps away.

Not that I can do anything about it now. It just sucks that Ellie had to go through something so shitty again. Though in a way it goes to show that idiots exist everywhere independent of their race or background.

Beatrice: "...Do you want to go to the dungeon either way?"

Miwen: "... Let's wait a bit. Anywhere you wanna go for a while?"

Beatrice: "Actually..."

And so we ended up going on a little detour to a place I hadn't ever gone before, a bookstore.

It wasn't very big, but it had books ranging from every topic, as well as a few comics which I admit was what interested me the most.

I thought Beatrice would be disappointed since there weren't any spellbooks, but she managed to find a few on magic theory and possible explanations for it.

Since the girls were also interested in a few other books I decided to let them shop a bit. It was a shame that Mia wasn't with us though, but I bought her some battle manga and an exercise manual.

We ended up buying quite a few books and it ended up being somewhat expensive, but it was a small price to pay since the girls were happy and it helped us forget about what happened earlier.

Before heading back to the dungeon we unloaded everything inside Beatrice's room in the kingdom so that we could sort it all out later.

I also had to make sure to tell the Merchant not to run away with any books.

Though an hour late, we headed to the dungeon as always. There was no way I was going to get intimidated by the threats from those guys, If anything, inside the dungeon the overwhelming difference between us would only get amplified and they would only get more humiliated.

Once inside I checked around for any presence or watchful eye, and once it was clear that there was no one close, I summoned Mia to our side.

The level cap for this floor is 25, which means that we could still face monsters up to 4 levels higher than us. Taking into consideration that the deeper we go, the more common superiors or nobles become, venturing too deep constitutes a risk higher than it has ever been.

On the bright side, even while using weapons she's not comfortable with, Mia can make quick work of any monster we've encountered so far on this floor.

Due to that and well... a bit of overconfidence on our part, we ended up going so deep that only monsters at the level cap could be found.

We also managed to find a settlement and sneak a peek though, so at the very least if we had to run, we had somewhere to.

Still, going deeper in any path would be a bit too much, so we've decided to go back to the settlement we found to rest before heading out.

While not very crowded, it had a few dozen people around of various races, which was pretty interesting to see.

There were also a few small stores selling goods such as potions. It's not something I rely on too much since the effects aren't really that strong unless you pay an absurd price, but I was curious to see if it was the same case for those sold by otherworlders.

I didn't have the currency from their world, but they were more than happy to accept some drops in exchange, even monster cores.

I guess they can also exchange those for money in their world.

Since Ellie was with us, I decided to buy two potions for effects that aren't life-threatening and that she could help me test out.

Trying something like poison would be pretty dumb, but paralysis was an effect that would pass either way and even speed down wasn't going to mean much since we weren't planning to move for a while.

Ellie started applying these effects as weakly as possible, and as the potions were showing results immediately she started amping up the power.

At full power, it took a potion 30 seconds to completely wipe the corresponding effect from Ellie's Gift.

Given that under the effect of her power, I couldn't even move, so much so that Claire and Anna started picking on me, I thought it was a pretty good result.

We ended up wasting half a bottle of each to test it out, but at least I could confirm that buying potions from otherworlders is better than paying for them on Earth.

As soon as we were done with our rest, we decided to head back home, but to our surprise, we met face-to-face with the same group that we had encountered before.

Not only that, this time, there were a few more people with them...

What's worse is that they are familiar faces...