Chapter 11 - Do Rocks Dream of Stone Sheep?

Thomas kept telling himself in his head that it's fine and that he could just earn more points later on. He'd only have to kill another dozen Balders to get the points back. Once he escapes he could just make his way to the capital and learn how to fight at the school there using this money. Thinking more positively about the future, Thomas moved to start collecting all of the treasure in the room. Unlike when the AI was taking the measurements, Thomas would actually need to be in close proximity to gather the treasure. Thankfully the AI could collect it after he was within a foot of the treasure so he'd only need to run through the room.

After about 10 minutes of running around the room he was kinda tired and started walking slowly but along the way he realized something very important. The really valuable goods were all kept at the top of the pile. Things like stone furniture, iron weapons and armor, copper and silver coins, and wooden chests filled with clothes seemed to be the bulk of the items. There were also the stone statues next to the pillars that were being stored away. The amount of gold he got was still enough to last him a lifetime but it looked like it was a lot more than that. What seemed to be thousands of tons of gold turned out to be hundreds of tons of gold so it's only natural that there'd be some level of disappointment.

Finished with collecting everything, Thomas sat down so that he could view his spoils. The system made it very convenient and would even tell him how much space was currently in use. 158.9 out of 196.5 cubic meters were currently filled. The number seemed wrong no matter how Thomas looked at it--distracting him from looking to see what was in his pocket dimension. Even if you account for the gaps between the items and any empty spaces in the trunks and under the furniture there should have been more stuff than this. {Why is there much less space used than you said there'd be?}

<Master has not yet collected everything in the room>

Looking around, Thomas couldn't figure out what the AI was talking about.

<There's still a statue and a pedestal that have yet to be collected>

Perhaps this sort of answer was to be expected. This is the third time that Thomas has been burned by the AI and he was beginning to suspect that he was actually an idiot. Thomas figured that he had already paid for the space to be able to transport it so he might as well bring the statue along. It looked like it could still be worth some money and even if he couldn't sell it he could just toss it away if he needed extra room. Hell, maybe he could even use it as a weapon to crush an enemy if he really needed to use it in an emergency. The thing looked like it weighed at least 50 tons so it should be able to do a lot of damage.

After collecting the pedestal, walking down the opposite set of stairs, and collecting the statue; Thomas found that he was now using 182.5 cubic meters inside his pocket dimension. That means that the statue and pedestal alone accounted for 23.6 cubic meters and it left him with 14 cubic meters to work with which was quite a lot of space. The ring was giving off such a large presence even though it only had 4.5 cubic meters of space so Thomas could only imagine how much magic power a device would need to be supplied in order to store 14 cubic meters of space.

Done with this treasure room, Thomas decided to try finding an exit that wasn't above his head. The end of the path that was in the center of the mountains of gold that were once in the room seemed to be a good place to start. The wall seemed to be flat but in the movies they always had secret entrances behind seemingly flat walls. Nobody would hide this amount of treasure without hiding the entrance, after all. There's no way that the hole in the ceiling was the only way to get in here since the ring he found couldn't even fit the giant statue in it.

It took Thomas at least two hours to carefully search every inch of the wall that he could reach on the lower platform and yet he still couldn't find anything. Even the system's AI couldn't figure out where the exit could be so Thomas decided to take a small break. There was still the upper-platform to search but he was mentally tired and felt a bit thirsty. Although Thomas now had a way to store food and water it came a bit too late and there was no way he could stock up now.

Laying down under the hole that he jumped down from, Thomas didn't really find it comfortable. The floor was rock. The walls were rock. The pillar was rock. Even the piece of rubble he was using as a pillow was rock. Right now the only thing around him was rock except that hole in the ceiling and Thomas was starting to feel that the ceiling above in the room that the hole was in might just be some sort of rock. While thinking about the different times that rocks have gotten in the way in his two lives, Thomas started to drift off to sleep. That is, of course, until a small rock fell from the ceiling above and smacked him on his forehead as if to tell him to stop blaming rocks for his problems.

"Ow! That hurt, you shitty rock!" Now up and rubbing his forehead, Thomas looked at the culprit that caused him to become wide awake. Lining up, pulling his foot back, and then kicking at the rock with the side of his foot--causing him to make a small sound showing his pain due to him being barefoot--the rock went flying towards where the statue used to be at a high speed. If someone else were here they'd definitely comment on how nice of a kick that was but unfortunately the only audience was an AI that wouldn't even tell him important things without his command. With a loud thwack sound it hit against the wall--and then there were more sounds--unpleasant sounds.

The room started vibrating as the rock wall that was behind the statue began to collapse. Thomas unconsciously backed away from it even though it didn't seem like the large bricks would be landing onto the platform that he was standing on. The vibrations causing Thomas to trip and fall on his butt as dust was flying everywhere. After the dust settled, Thomas made his way to the other edge of the platform while rubbing his butt to make sure nothing was broken; below there were a large number of bricks piled up. On the other side of the pile of bricks was a hole in the wall that Thomas couldn't see into that well from his current angle. To Thomas this hole symbolized hope; hope that he could be from this rocky prison.

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Outside the hole, before Thomas had found an exit, things were much less peaceful. The bandits wished that they could be bothered by small things like stones hitting them on the head; especially the unlucky ones that got hit in the head with arrows. There were just too many enemies and the bandits weren't prepared for an attack so many of the bandits had died before they could retreat to their camp. The village didn't have any walls they could hide behind except the ones belonging to the destroyed homes but the camp had a small wooden barrier built around it that would offer the bandits at least a small amount of protection.

Susan had to abandon the girl called Gren that he sent into the hole to search for the treasure but there was no time to bring her up. It was doubtful that the enemy could get into the hole so she should be fine on her own for at least another day. Right now Susan had to care more about his life since if he died the treasure would fall into someone else's hands anyways.

"What kind of threat are we dealing with here?" Susan asked one of his subordinates about the attackers on their way to the camp since it was too abrupt. Judging by the amount of arrows in each volley it definitely couldn't be that group of soldiers unless they had backup.

"Sir, those pointy-eared savages are attacking again. This time it seems to be a larger group than the one we faced before." The subordinate that answered clearly had a grudge against the group that was currently attacking them. Few humans that lived in the pioneering villages would tolerate their presence since they'd attack anybody that invaded their land. The average citizen of the country they were in couldn't even see them as people even though many of them were capable of speaking the common tongue.

"Them again, huh? They're really going to be a pain unless we completely wipe them out this time." With the camp in sight, the bandits around Susan breathed a sigh of relief but Susan knew that this was just the beginning. There's no way that those bastards would leave their cover while they still have an advantage. "Prepare the cannon." If those bastards won't leave their cover then he'll just have to flush them out.