Volume 3 - Ch 4.12
I dont know why, but it seems like there are a lot fewer people here this morning, or at least thats how it seams to me.
Youre right, master. With only this many people around here, I think it will be safe for you to use your magic without getting worried about anybody seeing you and finding out about it.
Thats great to hear, but I wonder if it will be the same during the evening. Because if so, then we might be having a problem.
It would seem that the number of people present in the Labyrinth really is decreasing the further up we are climbing, but what I want to know is whether or not this floor will be just as empty in the evening as it is right now, because if there wont be anyone else here by the time there will be time for me to draw the water for the bath, I might just teleport here instead of Veils Labyrinth and save a bunch of MP that way. But that would be possible only if the place will be just as deserted as it is now, which I honestly highly doubt, since it is a well-known fact that the Labyrinths are much more crowded in the evening than during the early mornings. On the other hand, if there would only be a few people in here, then maybe I could do some MP recovering with just Durandal as long as we would make sure that there will be no other people near us? Anyway, whatever ends up happening, I just hope that there will soon come the day where I will be able to find myself some nice, quiet MP recovering ground that I could use inconspicuously without having to constantly be afraid about getting found out.
There will definitely be more people here in the evening, but I am afraid that I do not have any good estimates as to how many more of them will there be exactly though.
Thats fine for now. For the time being, can you take us to the nearest place where the monsters are? We have to get a good look at what we can expect to find here before proceeding further, after all.
Yes, of course. This way, please!
We proceeded forward with Roxannes guidance until we happened across the first monster encounter of the seventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth. As it turns out, it was
Geh you again?
As it turned out, the monster native to the seventh floor is actually a Slow Rabbit Lv.7, the very same one that I was fighting in the forest behind the first village, the village of Somara. I have to say, the sight of something so familiar has made me more than a little nostalgic.
Oh? Have you fought against Slow Rabbits before, master?
I did, in the forest outside of the village about three hours of cart-riding away from Veil. However, the ones I fought there were low-levelled and weak, so I never expected them to end up as the enemies in the Labyrinths.
They might have started appearing in the Labyrinths because one of the newly-discovered ones was located deep in the forest, and if the stories about it are true, it supposedly had Slow Rabbits as the monsters that inhabited its first floor.
A newly-discovered Labyrinth, you say? And here I thought that the one in Veil was supposed to be the newest. I wonder if they start popping up like mushrooms after the rain now?
They might not appear as frequently, but its true that a lot of them have not been discovered yet. And this new forest Labyrinth is supposed to be a pretty young one, since it has yet to reach fifty floors in size.
So the Labyrinths that have yet to have had more than fifty of their floors explored are considered young ones, huh? That piece of info might come in handy in the future, but for the time being lets return to the task at hand: exploring the seventh floor and talking about Slow Rabbits.
Even though it was supposed to be a Lv.7 monster, it was just as easy to fight as the ones I fought back in that forest. It is slow, it does not have any weapons in its mouth whatsoever, and the only means of attack it has is the ramming attack that is so laughably easy to avoid that it is not even funny to look at. So yeah, even though it is of a higher level than the ones that I remember, the Slow Rabbit from Quratars Labyrinth is still an easy-to-manage enemy.
The monster continued to jump towards me with an obvious intention of attacking me, but instead of feeling even slightly intimidated by it, all I feel is my conscience telling me that I am definitely going to have a moral hangover when I will kill this guy. Ugh, look here, buddy. I know that you are cute, and that cute-looking movements of yours make me feel like an asshole for what I am about to do to you, but you have to understand that I have no choice in the matter at all here. I am an Adventurer (well, actually an Explorer/Hero/Warrior you get the gist), and you are a monster, and that means that in order for me to keep on advancing forward, you have to go down. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it is going to hurt me, but know that at the very least I do not feel happy doing this.
And so I burned the Slow Rabbit with five shots of Fireball to its face. Even though the Labyrinths are each like their own separate entities, they all seem to be following one common rule: as long as the floor is the same, then all the different kinds of monsters residing in them are going to have the same amount of HP. That is why even though the Slow Rabbits near Somara village were complete scrubs that I could kill with nothing but a Copper Sword, the ones here on the seventh floor of the Labyrinth have as much health as Escape Goats and Cheap Sheep, hence the five shots of magic needed to dispatch them. The Slow Rabbit turned into smoke and died, leaving an item behind it. It was Rabbit Fur, another item that I was all to familiar with.
Rabbit Fur? I remember selling it to the merchant in the village that I visited when I first came to this country, but the price for it was not all that high. You think that its going to be the same if we try to sell it to the Adventurers Guild?
Yes, unfortunately. I do not think that any Guild would buy it for a decent price, but I heard that you can earn more money off of it if you take it to the clothing stores around the Imperial City.
Roxanne picked up the Rabbits Fur and handed it over to me.
Is that so?
Yes, thats right, or at least that is how the story went the last time Ive heard it.
Hmm, I think I understand why that might be the case, but still, its kinda weird to me that people would find such a common item in such a high demand.
Since Slow Rabbits are the enemies who generally appear on the lower floors of the Labyrinth and their fur is a pretty common item with a rather high chance of being dropped by them whenever they die, many people would probably get an overaboundance of that item as long as they would have taken enough time to grind it from the Slow Rabbits for a bit. That is also why the Adventurers Guild has more of that item than they know what to do with it, and hence they do not want to pay all that much for it whenever someone is bringing them more of it, but what makes it so apparently special that the clothing stores would be willing to pay for it more than others?
So, would you be so kind and enlightened me why would clothing stores be paying better money for the Rabbit Furs than the Guilds?
[As you wish, master. While it is true that the Adventurers Guild, or any other Guild for that matter, does not have much of a need for Rabbit Fur because those who dabble in the Labyrinth exploring business have no use of such a material, the same cannot be said about the people who live in the cities, especially the young aristocratic women. To them, a coat made of Rabbits Fur is an excellent article of clothing to wear because it is great for keeping you warm, especially during the winter season.