We collected a total of 2,563 gold coins, 998 silver, 175 copper, and assorted jewelry. Honestly, less than I expected, but who am I to complain about that kind of money. Valda and I did split it in half, but over 1,250 gold is still a decent haul. Sure, I made half that off selling the refurbished swords, but that was the way it was with a lot of fantasy role-playing games.

  Not that this was a game, but fantasy rpg's were my only reference point for this, so that's what I was using. That, and the world did have some game like elements, like the levels and spells and abilities.

  And in a lot of games, you could make a lot more money off of selling every weapon, armor piece, and item in a dungeon, than you did off the boss payoff at the end.

  The only thing was, in most games, there was a weight limit to what you could carry. But with leveling up to 6 and putting my proficiency in enchantment, bringing it up to master (6), I was finally able to upgrade my bags to true infinity bags, weightlessness included.

  And so, while there was a teleportation circle that appeared to take us back to outside the dungeon, I walked back through the dungeon, picking up anything I could find. Valda and Glogmore took the teleportation circle, but I wasn't about to let all that loot go to waste.

  I had a business to save. Sure, I was above water now, but you never knew when something bad would happen. I liked to be prepared for the worst. After an hour of backtracking, I finally made it to the front of the dungeon and met up with Valda and Glogmore again.

  Along the way, I had picked up hundreds of pounds of weapons and armor, and then whatever materials I could get my hands on, too. The true infinity bag brought out my inner loot goblin.

  I put the stat point I got from the level up into intelligence (10). I was going to increase my charisma again, and I still might, but I wanted to prioritize my intelligence and crafting abilities.

  I did get another ability too. This one was an upgrade to my Test ability called "Advanced Testing." It allowed me to not only test if a thing worked, but what its effect on other things would be. So I could finally see what that mystery potion I had did.

  Turns out it lets you talk to ghosts. Seemed pretty useful. Maybe I could talk to my mom and dad again. Or maybe they had passed on to another world. Who knows.

  We brought Glogmore into town. Everyone freaked out, but we went to the Adventurer's Guild and announced that we had finally defeated the necromancer once and for all.

  They were so overjoyed that they threw a huge party, and I made sure they made an announcement that Glogmore was harmless and he was with us. They also gave us monster pet licenses, which were apparently a thing. He was classified as an emotional support monster, so we could take him on wagons.

  They verified our claim, of course, and gave Valda, Glogmore, and I, special badges that signified we had completed a dungeon, but also that we had completed that dungeon specifically. It was a small bronze pin that looked like a tombstone with a skull in front of it.

  I told them that made it look like we defeated an evil cemetery, but they said tombs and catacombs don't have a universal images that people would recognize.

  To make up for it, they also gave us bronze medals with longer explanations engraved on the back that stated exactly what we did and why we were being honored. That way we could show it off in distant cities and they would be able to understand the significance.

  I asked why bronze and they said that while completing a dungeon was significant, that was one of the lower level ones. The pins and medals for completing other dungeons used more precious materials.

  I asked them what was next. They said that we could destroy the monster tribes that plagued the town with the occasional raid. Though they'd recommend we started with the goblins first. They were the weakest.

  Or we could go wild monster hunting. There was decent money in killing monsters. Towns would pay for body parts as proof. Goblin left ears raked in decent cash. And it only went up the tougher the monsters.

  The ears were a sign of proof you had killed one. The reason it was only left ears is so you couldn't sell the left and right and get double the pay for one kill.

  And some monster parts were actually valuable in themselves. They were used in alchemy and various magic practices. Ritual magic often used monster parts. Dark ritual magic used human parts, but that was the black market. You couldn't just sell that to a town. They'd arrest you for murder.

  There was also a bounty for Barton Traxby's head we could collect on. You could make good money as a bounty hunter, traveling to different towns and cities and taking care of their problems.

  Then there were other tougher dungeons to tackle. The two other nearby dungeons that Valda had mentioned were an elven garden and a dwarven foundry that had both fallen into disarray and were abandoned by their original owners.

  This wasn't entirely uncommon. A lot of different settlements, elven, dwarven, human, and otherwise, would get abandoned for one reason or another, and then get taken over by monsters or magical beasts.

  Labyrinths and true dungeons were more rare, but still there were a lot of them. You just had to keep your eyes and ears open and travel a lot. Speaking of traveling, Valda was serious about us going on a vacation.

  Personally, I wanted to rid the streets of the Barton Traxby problem, but on the night of the dungeon party, when Valda and I were walking home, I spotted some of his men. They were all level 8.

  Weaker than the necromancer, but significantly stronger than our level 6. And he was supposed to have a small army at his command. We would need to get stronger before we took them on.

  So a vacation it was. I planned to do some monster hunting and training to get ready for Traxby, but Valda, Brent, and Delia just wanted to relax.

  Valda had been joking about the buying a boyfriend thing, but she hadn't been joking about hiring help for the shop. So, in preparation for our vacation, I tracked down Sam. Well, I didn't track him down. I bumped into him at the dungeon party. I asked him if he wanted to run the shop while we were away. He agreed to it, so Valda and I trained him for a week on how to run the shop.

  We told him he'd get to keep 50% of the profits on whatever he sold. That motivated him to make a profit in the first place. Mind you, I wasn't giving him 50% of the revenue. Just the profits. I still needed to cover my expenses.

  I refurbished all the weapons and armor I found in the dungeon and stocked the shop with them. Then I made uncommon and rare health, mana, and stamina potions, so we had some higher grade stock to sell. We already had the common varieties. I got those from a supplier. I also made a batch of dark sight potions for anyone who wanted to do some spelunking.

  With the shop stock upgraded and full, Valda, Brent, Delia, and I rented a wagon to take us to Sunnyvale. It was a wealthy city by a large lake, filled with tall buildings and spires. Their slogan was "the sun always shines on Sunnyvale."

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  And for the most part, it was true. They had rain about 3 times out of the year, which made very little sense for a city near a lake, and even on the days it rained, people said the sun still shined. There was a rumor that someone had performed magic to make this the case, but there was no real evidence. Just theories.

  When we arrived at the inn, I was blown away by the amenities. Artisan soap, artisan towels, artisans would draw a bath for us and clean our backs. Everything was artisanal. Even the help.

  Each room only had two beds, so Valda and Delia shared a room, and Brent and I shared a room. The rooms were massive compared to our house. Each room was about the size of our house. They even had balconies you could stand or sit on.

  Valda had arranged our time at the inn, through mail, which seemed so slow and archaic, but when I lived in a fantasy world with real magic, should I really have been complaining? It also meant that I didn't know how much we were paying for our rooms.

  I asked the front desk person, and I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you. I had to talk to Valda about this.

  "6 gold a night? For two rooms?" I said. "That's outrageous! We'll be broke by the end of next week! This vacation is supposed to last longer than 3 days, Valda!"

  "Calm down," she said. "We have the money. We won't be broke by next week."

  "Sure, we have the money that we got from a dungeon that had been collecting it for hundreds of years!" I said. "You're not supposed to spend that in a month!"

  "Gwen," she said. "I know you're a cheap bastard, but sometimes you have to live a little. The money won't run out, because we'll do another job when we get back. And then another one. And another one. We'll just make more money than most people so we can keep up with our spending habits."

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. "That's terrible financial decision making, but you have a point. We did make that money in less than a week, and there's nothing to say we can't do it again."

  "Exactly!" she said. "I knew you'd understand." She tapped the tip of my nose with her finger.

  "Don't you boop my nose like that!" I said. "Only my spouse get's that privilege, and you and I aren't married."

  "Do you want to be?" she asked.

  "Don't do that," I said. "We…we're friends. If we become more than that, things will get complicated. And in my experience, complicated means hard."

  "I don't agree, but I see I won't be able to convince you," she said. "So let's leave it at that."

  "Okay, good," I said. "Now let's go get something to eat."

  That night I had a hard time sleeping. I was thinking about something I don't like to think about, feelings. Did I have feelings for Valda? Did I want a relationship with her? Would a relationship with her be a good thing?

  Sure, I liked her. She was enjoyable to be around. Did I like her romantically? I wasn't sure. I had a hard time separating friendship enjoyment and romantic enjoyment.

  She was very dependable and strong. She saved my life on multiple occasions. I owed her a lot. But were those good reasons to be in a relationship? I didn't know. Eventually, I fell asleep.

  After having an incredible breakfast in the dining hall of the inn, we went exploring. I had looked through the brochures offered at the front desk and picked out a bunch of cool stuff for us to do and see, but Valda, Brent, and Delia just wanted to go shopping.

  So we went shopping. We looked at all manner of things. We looked at dresses for Delia, toys and games for Brent, and fighter apparel Valda. Her old stuff had gotten pretty roughed up during our dungeon delve and besides, that had only been beginner gear. She needed and deserved an upgrade.

  We ended up picking up a nice white dress for Delia, some dice and board games and a wooden sword for Brent, holsters for Valda's maces and boots with internal knife holsters for her as well. Knives came with the boots.

  She was a fighter at her core, but the woman loved a good knife. What adventurer worth their salt doesn't? A knife is great to have in a pinch if you lose your main weapon.

  I, on the other hand, just wanted to check out the artisan shops. The others had no interest in watching people make clothes or learning how to make soap, so they went off to explore other parts of the city. We agreed we'd meet back at the inn in the early afternoon for lunch.

  The artisan shops were designed to allow customers to view the processes under which the products were made. Like how blacksmith shops often let you watch the forging process.

  I spent my morning watching various craftsmen and craftswomen make various things. With at least a journeyman level proficiency in all crafts, I was able to chat with the artisans about their work. I still had a lot to learn though.

  Every one of them was at least a master level proficiency in their crafts. Some of them were higher. I assumed, but didn't know, that there were higher proficiencies. This confirmed it.

  I saw Innovators (7), Grandmasters (8), Virtuosos (9) and Luminaries (10). Nothing above a 10 proficiency, but I was sure they existed. They were just that rare.

  One of the virtuosos was a soap maker. She tried to explain her processes to me, but as I was just a journeyman, it went way over my head. She could tell that I was studied in the process, which she found exciting, but sadly I couldn't quite resonate on her level.

  One day though I might, I said. I know you're not supposed to tell people your secrets in these sorts of fantasy situations, especially random strangers, but classes were a known quantity. Everyone talked about their classes. Hers, unsurprisingly, was soap maker.

  It wasn't like I was telling her I had a system. Which I would never tell anyone. My class was rare, but it wasn't unheard of. The adventurer guild counter lady from Skimbal knew what it was. So I told the soap maker my class.

  Her eyebrows went up. "Wow. I've never met anyone who took that class. You're either very brave or very ambitious. Most people prefer to specialize in one craft rather than spread their skills so thin."

  "How about both?" I said. "I can be both brave and ambitious. That is a good point you bring up, but with expertise in many disciplines, I can learn ways to combine them into new things."

  "Hmm," she said. "I never thought of that. I guess my whole life has been so consumed with learning how to improve my soap making that I never considered it could be combined with other things."

  "I don't know many ways to combine soap with other things," I said, "but I do know one." I put my hand into one of my crafting materials bags and pulled out a thin copper wire.

  It had been over a week since Valda and I completed the dungeon, and I gained access to true infinity bags. With my newfound wealth, I went back to the adventurer's guild and dropped 20 gold on buying massive amounts of crafting supplies. I had over a thousand pounds of crafting supplies on my person in various bags, but since they were all true infinity bags, I didn't feel a thing.

  "See this?" I said. I displayed the copper wire. "You know how you can make soap bubbles with your hands by getting them soapy, making a circle, and blowing through them?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "Well," I said, "I can invent an easier way that is less messy and fun for children."

  I pulled out a pair of rudimentary pliers and began shaping and twisting the copper wire until it resembled what I knew from my old world to be a bubble wand. They hadn't been invented yet in this world.

  It had a handle and a circle on the end. Basic bubble wand stuff. Nothing complicated. Then I pulled out a medium-sized vial and undid the cork.

  "May I borrow some of that soapy water you have there?"

  She had a tin bucket with soapy water from where she was demonstrating the effectiveness of her soap on clothes.

  She looked at it. "Uh, sure." She gestured for me to proceed.

  I filled the vial half way with soapy water, dipped the wand into the solution, brought the wand up near my lips, and blew a bubble. Then I did it several more times until multiple bubbles were floating around us.

  She looked at this in wonder and surprise. "How? How did you do that? Did you just invent that?"

  "No," I said. "I've had that design in my head for years. I just never actually made one until now."

  "That's wonderful! Can I have that?"

  I handed her the wand and the vial of soapy water. I put the cork on the vial before handing it to her.

  "You can have that design, by the way," I said. "I have no need to sell it myself. You should take it as your own. It'll make children happy and get you more business."

  Her eyes widened at the realization she could make a killing off this invention, and she likely would. "Thank you! I don't know how to thank you for this."

  "You just did," I said. I laughed. "Although, personally, I'd improve the design before selling it. Making it out of steel would be a lot sturdier and prevent it from warping. Copper is very flimsy."

  "If I have time, I'll work out a deal with a blacksmith and get you a prototype. Then you can patent it, and it'll be yours forever."

  Then I frowned when I realized I could just make it myself.

  "Actually, hold on."

  I pulled out a bar of steel and activated my Manufacture ability. The steel reshaped into a bubble wand, and there was a chunk left over that didn't fit into the design. I handed it to her.

  "There's your prototype," I said. "Don't lose it. Get that to a patent office as soon as you can and then get a blacksmith to reproduce it for you. Here."

  Using some more steel, I made a couple dozen prototypes for her. "This is so you can start selling now, but make sure you get a blacksmith, because those will sell out before you know it."

  "Wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she said. "I guess there really is something to that maker class of yours."

  "Indeed, there is," I said.

  I thanked her for her time and left. I had many more things to see in this place.