Report

"Ah yes, you two are the new immortal party, right? I hear you found something big. Please wait a moment while I get the information report stuff ready. Samantha, I need two truth necklaces and a report forum."

"Yes, guild master" the human receptionist responded.

After a bit of waiting, The receptionist had returned. In her hands was a small tray holding the requested items.

Once the two necklaces were distributed Giony quickly made a STATEMENT, "These necklaces react to both when you lie, and if any magic tries to tamper with them, so don't even try. Now I am going to ask a few questions about what you find, and you'll be paid accordingly. Firstly what did you find?"

Smaug nervously gulped and then spoke up. "I found a dungeon, but it's weird-"

"Well, what kind is it? What monsters are in it?"

"I'm not sure, I didn't go outside."

"Well then how do you know it's a dungeon?"

"Well I am an immortal warrior as you know, and the same thing that lets us read and write, tells us when we find or enter a dungeon."

"Oh, how interesting. However, why did you not go inside?"

"Well, two reasons. Firstly I am very weak I am nowhere near strong enough to explore something so dangerous, even if I am immortal I still don't want to die. But there are a couple of other things, firstly this dungeon is called a 'false dungeon' and the core is different from a regular dungeon and is instead the new physical form of a dragon spirit, which also cursed me since I look like it apparently, and it was offended."

"Wait, it's not the great tyrant dragon, right? This is bad, he's been dead for a long time, so I'm sure he's weaker, but even at 0.1% of his original power, he is still disaster class. Do you know the original story of how we killed him?"

"Yes, he was so shocked I had never heard of me he told me the story. From the year-long battle and the massive army which kept getting replenished by conscripting more soldiers."

"Yes, that's the general gist of it but there is more which I can tell you later. We'll need to get you stronger. You said he cursed you right? I imagine it's the curse of a higher power of some sort. So you have to be in the raiding party to kill it, otherwise, the curse will never break. Every time we try to purify it will allow him enough reason to regenerate his rage and come back to bite us in the ass."

"Yes, also one thing, when I discovered it, there was this evil energy that I can't describe. But when I got there after being told the story, he sent out another wave of the stuff and three frenzied mountain eagles came to attack me, I managed to kill two of them, but Rainha came in last second to save me when the last one was about to do the last bit of damage needed to kill me. I would have won if the curse didn't make me lose my breath attack."

"That is serious indeed, well first we need you to get stronger. I'll personally help you hunt monsters until you can handle yourself."

"Thanks, sir."

"I just want one thing in return, you'll lead the raid into this new dungeon. From what you describe, the great tyrant dragon can't create monsters like any other dungeon, it seems like he instead overpowers wild ones and forces them to lose all cognitive abilities and become subservient to him. There are records of false dungeons, but the records are super old and have some inconsistencies you can count the number of false dungeons on one hand. They all seem to have some sort of deficiency compared to regular dungeons. Sometimes it's monsters, traps, treasures, and even the environment becoming one large empty cube. No matter what, they are always weaker, bad, and dangerous able to surge way easier. Their only upside is that their core can manifest a body based on the past life of whatever became the core. In this case, it'd become a small and weak version of the great tyrant dragon."

"Woah? Why are they always deficient?"

"We're not sure there are many theories from going against the will of the world and stuff. But the most prevalent theory is that dungeon cores are incredibly complex bodies something no mortal can comprehend. So if you were to become one, you'll make some sort of mistake in forming your own body, these imperfections then slowly compound until you lose entire basic functions altogether."

"That… makes sense."

"So, if you have no more questions. I must ask about the name of this false dungeon."

"Ah, yes it is called the abyss."

"Perfect, I'll finish this report and there will be a semi-permanent culling quest up tomorrow. We need to keep the dungeon population down as much as possible since it can cause problems during the next surge. Without being restricted to the same rules, a false dungeon can surge almost instantly with no real monster requirement."

"That can't be good, but how will you prove people are killing monsters inside?"

"Truth trinkets should work well enough unless the monsters have a special tell which we can keep secret until the threat is neutralized."

After all that, Giony pulled a sack of coins out of his desk. Reaching in he pulls out a hand full of gold and silver coins. He placed them on the counter and started counting. He made two equal piles of ten gold and three silvers each. After which, put the leftover money back into the bag and put the bag away. 

"Here, ten gold and three silver. That should be enough for the info you two brought me."

"Oh, can I turn one of these golds into some silver? I owe someone some but not quite a full gold. Hehe"

Giony looking slightly annoyed pulled out his wallet from his shirt pocket rather than pulling the coin sack.

"No problem, neither of us our losing anything, it's just that you've been here for what? A week and already owe someone money? Plus breaking down coins is inconvenient."

With a quick coin transaction, Smaug and Rainha glanced at each other. Sighing, Smaug pulled out the last two gold and 8 silver that he owed and handed the money he owed over to Rainha. 

"Thank you for your business good sir, but I don't like how long it took you to pay me back, so in the future, you'll have an unfavorable interest rate."

"You shark, what will you do if I never borrow from you again or pay you back too fast to get hit with interest?" 

"Yeah yeah, you got all that money now. So what are you going to do with it?"

"Probably upgrade my gear, I doubt I can find anything crazy like a good skill or magic item for what I have, but a basic Iron spear is worth five silvers, so I can probably get something better. Maybe a crude steal weapon or maybe something with a basic enchantment or engraving depending on how weapon refinement works here. 

"Yeah, same but I don't use weapons so I just hope there is a magic staff or spell I can use without getting a useless piece of wood. You can make a weapon with nothing but regular metal, but a good staff needs probably rare materials. Who knows how much more expensive they are compared to regular weapons." 

After some searching, Smaug managed to upgrade his weapon and got a pretty good spear for only one gold. 

[Steal spear (+1) (rank 2) (common)

+50 physical damage

Refinement rank: 1

Sharp: +2% chance to pierce/cut through material of a lower rank than the blade of this weapon.]

To compare, Smaug's old spear was relatively bad being the bare minimum for his level of strength.

[Iron spear (rank 1) (common)

+10 physical damage

Refinement rank: 0]

Smaug had asked about refinement ranks and how it is done, and the blacksmith he bought his spear from told him that refinement is when a blacksmith reworks a blade to cram in a bit more magic into the hot metal, usually requiring a blacksmith of a higher skill level of each level. And their max refinement level was actually how crafters gauged how good they were. An item that uses rank one materials could have up to three refinement levels, before reaching the limit to its quality, with this number increasing at every level. A rank two item like Smaug's spear could have up to 5, his spear came with its first refinement level when it was crafted, but further refinement would cost more, and risk breaking the weapon every time he did so. With the amount of money he had, it would be cheaper and safer to just buy this spear rather than try to improve his iron one which would be obsolete if he were to spend the same amount on improving it, while improving the steal one further was a risk he didn't want to take.

meanwhile, Rainha had found a basic staff. 

[Starters magic staff (rank 1) (common)

+10 magic damage

Refinement rank: 0]

"You got lucky, this staff has no real affinities so it is a balanced upgrade, but it was still the price of your weapon. Its only upside is that I already have a tone of magic damage and less physical attack. But I could find a good spell for a similar price, [stone bullet] fires three small stones for 95% of my magic attack stat, and then my staff adds another 10 to that."

"Sweet, oh by the way, do you know what your staff is made of?"

"No idea, all I know is that the crystal on the end is from an F-rank monster and the wood is from an inherently magical tree that conducts mana well. The only thing is that the tree is rare and incredibly hard to cut down when alive, so it is very expensive to obtain."

"Ahh, well worse comes to worse, we learn how to craft and get the resources ourselves, and crafting in this game sounds fun anyway, the refinement system seems like it will be a lot of fun to master. I wonder what the highest material rank is, and what their maximum refinement count is, what would such a weapon look like? Is there even a rank for refinements at that level? Or is the only thing holding us back just skill and no one can work such materials at such a high level."

"Yeah, sounds fun. Maybe we could gain an early monopoly on crafting items for other players. You have dragon parts and I have easy access to crytalized mana in my fairies. While I'm not asking you to kill your monsters, say an adventurer drops a corpse you can use those parts and some other generated materials to make high-grade items and I can supply the crystalized mana to bring out the full power of the various elements stored in those dragon parts." 

"That sounds like a great plan, maybe we can work together to craft the ultimate alloy that conjoins dragon parts and metal to make the ultimate material something that can take down just about anything with one strike and is so reliable refinement is a walk-in the park for the first few."

With a plan for their future, Smaug and Rainha prepared to get stronger.