Million Valis Chicken Dinner

At 5:30 a.m., Isaac and Jakk had finished their preparations for another day of dungeon diving. They were fully geared and had gotten enough supplies from the kitchen. Just to make sure, Isaac had taken twice as much with him, for Kalin and Mina. While Kalin would most likely bring his own supplies, Mina definitely wouldn't. She didn't have any money to do so, after all.

Speaking of the devil, Isaac decided that now, while he was already leading the way to the inn Mina was staying at, it was the best time to bring up his new subordinate to his roommate, as they were bound to meet within minutes. Without going too much into the details, he described Mina's circumstances and that he had decided to teach her from scratch. As yet another person shouldn't be too much of a hassle, Isaac didn't think Jakk would have any problem with it.

As expected, while Jakk wasn't exactly excited about it, he didn't complain. In fact, upon hearing vaguely about her backstory, he seemed to be slightly sympathetic.

This harmonious state of things suddenly changed, however, when the two of them arrived in front of the inn.

"Good morning, milord!"

After having washed up, although she still wore her old clothes, Mina's beauty was showcased a lot more than yesterday. Coupled with her standing at attention like a soldier and the words she just spoke, Jakk couldn't help but have weird thoughts.

It wasn't lust sparked by the girl's beauty. No, he already had a person he was interested in. If every good looking girl was able to turn his head, he wouldn't know what to do in the Loki Familia, where a lot of stunning beauties were gathered. Instead, he couldn't help but assume that Isaac had told Mina to behave in the way she just did. His misunderstanding began with this wrong base assumption.

'So he is into that kind of thing, huh?'

With thoughts like these, Jakk wordlessly sized up his chosen teacher again. He felt like he was looking at a brand new man. A man who openly chased after his own embarrassing fetishes. A man Jakk truly could respect. If Jakk had been born in Isaac's old world, he would have called him a 'man of culture'.

[ Jakk Maytin considers you a friend.

Quest 'Make seven friends.' completed. 700 AP rewarded. ]

When Isaac suddenly got this notification, he felt quite confused. He didn't know what had transpired to make the bunny boy see him in such a different light. He did have a few disturbing suspicions, however. To make sure whether or not those were correct, he turned his head to glance at Jakk.

As soon as he saw the peaceful and understanding look his roommate gave him, Isaac almost started to sweat nervously. Even though he really didn't want to be, he had been correct. While Isaac had already thought about how other people would judge Mina's interactions with him, he hadn't put too much thought into it. He should have known that Jakk, who was unable to even have a normal conversation with the girl he liked, would interpret the current happenings in such a way. Being the weirdo that he was, he would be very supportive of his own delusional conclusions.

Still, Isaac didn't plan to clear up this misunderstanding. It was pointless to do so anyway. People usually had their own views and opinions of others. No matter what one did, to change their picture in someone else's mind wasn't easily achieved. It just wasn't worth the effort. Also, he got some more AP without any effort, that was something to celebrate.

After introducing Mina to his roommate, the three made their way towards Babel. The reason Isaac had told Mina and Kalin to meet him at the same time was to test his new and potential subordinates… or at least, that was what Isaac told himself. Sure, part of it was to test whether the human youth's determination to be taught was strong enough to endure a little bit of waiting. And he had also expected the dog girl to get ready before the promised time, just to be safe.

But the reason he had to repurpose such a simple action as meeting up with his allies, was that he hadn't really paid attention to what time he had agreed to meet with Kalin yesterday. In his thoughts, he had already been planning how to gather new minions, therefore, he had just nodded and agreed to whatever time Jakk and Kalin had decided on. When he finally remembered this tiny detail before falling asleep yesterday, Isaac felt very unhappy with himself. He had made yet another slight blunder that day… it really hadn't been a day to be proud of.

The determination to not overlook anything, no matter how minor, made him pay even more attention today. This let him discover a little problem with Mina following him, Jakk and Kalin into the dungeon the way she was. She simply didn't look the part. If they just brought a normal farmer girl in there, they would be suspected of all manner or shady things.

A solution was easy to find. He just had to buy his subordinate a large backpack, so she would seem like a random supporter. At the same time, after packing it with some food, blankets and other miscellaneous items, the backpack was relatively heavy. It could be used for simple stamina training. Thankfully, a fitting backpack only cost 1000 valis, something he could easily afford.

Now, why would Isaac want to bring an untrained farmer girl into the dungeon in the first place? Wouldn't she be entirely useless? Well, yes. Still, she had to start to get used to the dungeon, monsters and dangerous places as soon as possible. As Isaac's subordinate, she was bound to accompany him to all manner of places - most of them the polar opposite of peaceful. So by bringing her into the dungeon and letting her observe his fights and the lessons he would give the more experienced fighters, Jakk and Kalin, she would slowly build up a little bit of knowledge. She would also get used to how to behave in the dungeon and what to look out for, vital skills for any adventurer.

Because of the time spent shopping for a good backpack, the group of three finally entered Kalin's line of sight around 6:03 a.m. - thankfully, the human youth didn't have a way to accurately measure the current time, so he didn't feel like anything was wrong. Isaac still felt kind of guilty for the three minutes of wait, though, but decided to just let it go. It was wiser to do better from today onwards than to dwell on past, minor mistakes.

Compared to the weird atmosphere when he had introduced Mina to Jakk, Kalin's reaction wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Kalin simply said he hoped for them to get along well before shaking hands with her. It was kind of anticlimactic. Not that Isaac was complaining about that.

To give his subordinate a means of protection, just in case, and also a weapon for the future and her training, Isaac led the group to the sixth floor of Babel. At the simple weapon store he had bought his own sword, Mina quickly found a relatively cheap sword of average length that felt fitting to her. Of course, while it was 'cheap', it still cost 20.000 valis. A hefty sum.

While the chienthrope girl strapped the sheath to her waist carefully, as if she was handling the most precious of treasures, Isaac observed her overall outfit. It was definitely necessary to get her some armour as well, although that would almost dry up his funds.

So, with a heavy heart, he led the way to his armour store of choice. Thankfully, it was quite easy to find fitting protective measures. As Mina would be in the role of a supporter for now, was weak and needed to be light on her feet, anything too heavy was out of the question and simply overly cautious. Instead, Isaac told her to choose a gambeson top, some padded trousers and sturdy shoes. After a few minutes, Mina left the fitting room wearing a blue top, simple, dark blue trousers and brown leather boots. It really wasn't anything extraordinary, but it was still a lot more impressive looking than the rough dress she had worn before.

Yet another 21.000 valis went down the drain.

On the way to the first floor of the dungeon, Isaac couldn't help but think about a certain exceedingly rare monster whose drop item could entirely solve his money problems. As people had an awfully low chance of running into it, however, he decided to not bank on it. It was more rational to just slowly and steadily earn more valis, than to gamble on a ridiculously lucky break.

As soon as the group got far away from other adventurers, Isaac had Kalin protect Mina, while Jakk would take care of both of them. It might be a little overly vigilant to get into such a formation on the first floor, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. On the way towards the second floor, Isaac behaved the same way as he did with Jakk yesterday. Every fight, he explained all of his actions while the group was watching from safety. If anyone had any questions, he was ready to answer them as well.

Still, as Mina had no foundation or experience, she couldn't fully take advantage of these lessons. Therefore, he told her basic survival tips in between his fights, just as planned. There were many things in the dungeon she had to be wary of, after all. Simply the fact that monsters could spawn everywhere, at any time, was a dangerous variable one had to keep in mind. Later on, after they left the dungeon, he would start to train her in wielding her newly-bought weapon. Although Isaac wouldn't formally be considered a master of the sword in this world, as he didn't have the corresponding development ability in his Status, he was able to even more accurately determine the most efficient ways to wield a sword - for every individual person.

Just like the day before, it didn't take Isaac long to get close to the second floor. Unlike back then, however, shortly before the group was about to descend, both Jakk and Isaac momentarily noticed the presence of a monster. At the same time, the monster noticed them as well and hurried off extremely quickly, making it quite hard to track.

A small smile spread upon Isaac's face when this happened. The very unlikely situation he had decided to not bank on had occurred. This was exactly the monster he was looking for. It almost seemed too good to be true. Still, there was no use looking a gift horse in the mouth too closely.

"Wait here for me for a while. I'll be back shortly. I'm just going to hunt this monster."

Without giving any more explanations, Isaac hurried off after his prey. Out of the three people left behind, only Jakk was a little worried about whether Isaac would succeed. He had taken note of that thing's unbelievable speed and was sure he couldn't catch up to it even if he tried. As for Isaac, there just wasn't a chance at all. Still, Isaac wouldn't have gone after it if he didn't have a way to dispatch it.

Even if his teacher failed, he would just come back unharmed. Comforting himself with thoughts like these, Jakk vigilantly guarded the two weaker members of the team.

It only took Isaac a few seconds to get outside of Jakk's range of perception. Once he did, he immediately blurred his existence. There was simply no other way to catch up to his current prey, he could only rely on this particular ability of his.

What he had just encountered was an incredibly rare spawn on the first floor of the dungeon: the Jack Bird. It was quite similar in looks to a rooster with fluffy, yellow-green feathers. It was even about the same size. Still, its abilities didn't match those of a normal rooster at all. Its speed was even faster than a Level 3 adventurer, a speed almost impossible to catch up to for most of the people that would ever encounter one. It wasn't aggressive and had practically no offensive power at all. Whenever it sensed an enemy or foreign presence, it would desperately run away until it reached safety.

Even more shocking than its speed, however, was just how rare it was. Not even one in a million monsters that spawned on the dungeon's first floor would be a Jack Bird. People wouldn't have even cared about this oddity, however, if it wasn't for the glorified rooster's valuable drop item: a golden egg. Of course, it wasn't just simply made from gold. Sadly, Isaac had no more information on its peculiarities or why exactly it was worth a lot more than 1.000.000 valis. Isaac had only read about the Jack Bird in a short side story released at the same time as the second DanMachi volume. It wasn't even mentioned anywhere else.

The best feature of the Jack Bird was that its drop item was guaranteed to remain after its death. With other monsters, an adventurer had to gamble - but a Jack Bird was a certain ticket to riches.

After a few minutes of leisurely pursuit, Isaac finally got to see the Jack Bird he was chasing. It was even smaller than a regular rooster, seeming as if it had only just recently grown up from a chick into an adult. Its fluffy feathers made the bird look incredibly cute. Had someone else who cared about such things chased after it, it wouldn't have to face a gruesome end. Isaac, however, didn't care about it being adorable at all. The small bird had already stopped running away as it hadn't noticed anyone chase after it for a long time, so now it just relaxedly strutted around, none the wiser to the reaper lurking next to it.

Isaac smiled widely when thinking about how this little fellow would single-handedly make him a millionaire in a few moments. Happily whistling, he swiftly brought his sword down upon the unsuspecting avian creature.

"I should have lost them by now…"

An immature, boyish voice suddenly broke the deadly silence, forcing Isaac's blade to an abrupt halt just centimeters above the rooster's head. If Isaac hadn't paid full attention to the bird when he was about to kill it, he probably would have thought that someone else had been the origin of this voice. But that wasn't what happened. He was sure that it was the damn bird that spoke a moment ago.

Sadly, Isaac wasn't a mindless killing machine. He would only kill those he branded his enemies. Before, even though the Jack Bird was a monster that solely ran away, he could still categorize it as a mindless minion of the dungeon, an enemy. Now that it had displayed the ability to have a conversation, however, Isaac couldn't just kill it before making sure whether it should be classified as friend, bystander or foe.

It felt like a resounding slap to the face. One moment, Isaac had felt like all of his immediate worries had been taken care of in the most convenient way imaginable. The next, his optimistic hopes were extinguished. An apt way to describe what he was feeling was the phrase 'he was about to cough up blood', that Isaac had frequently encountered in literary works in the past.

For quite a while, he just stared at the Jack Bird with an unresigned look on his face, trying to convince himself to murder it in cold blood. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to go against his principles just for the sake of convenience. So with a heavy sigh, he finally put away his sword. Of course, there weren't only downsides to what happened. Isaac had to admit that he was quite intrigued by this unusual monster. At the time of his departure, not too many DanMachi volumes had been released, so he wasn't sure whether or not seemingly mutated monsters like these were a part of the original work.

Very swiftly, he picked up the rooster from the ground and held both of its wings down to prevent it from trying to fly away. When being held in this position, the rooster also wasn't able to easily reach his hands with its beak. Still, even if it tried pecking him, he wore gloves… and the strength of the Jack Bird was, as previously mentioned, just like a normal rooster's. There was simply no way for Isaac to be injured.

A terrified caw escaped the young rooster's beak as it turned its head to look at the one who had captured it. As Isaac had already stopped blurring his existence at this point, because it was pointless to do so now that he had already captured his prey, the small beady eyes were able to size him up without a problem.

Seeing how its captor didn't look too imposing and had a nice, amicable smile on his face, the rooster got a little cocky. To its inexperienced eyes, Isaac seemed like a pushover.

"Let go of me! Let me down right this instant!!"

In response to the arrogant orders of the rooster, Isaac just showed an even more amicable smile, giving off the feeling of a generous and magnanimous saint. This gave his following words an even more disturbing effect of dissonance.

"Tell me everything I want to know. Otherwise, I'll have fried chicken for dinner today."

Before today, Isaac had never expected a rooster to be able to grow paler. Well, this one did. Its face grew as pale as a ghost upon hearing this threat. It nodded its head vigorously, desperately trying to save its life.

Even though Isaac hadn't had high hopes on learning much, he was still very disappointed by the result of his impromptu voluntary Q&A session. Besides the fact that it had been born here on the first floor of the dungeon a few days ago and been capable of speech ever since its birth, the young Jack Bird only knew that it wanted to reach the surface, to leave the dungeon. As to why this was the case, it had no idea. It had no clue about what it was, why it was able to speak or anything of importance whatsoever. Its mentality was barely more developed than a child's.

Still, although he hadn't learned anything of importance, this encounter wasn't entirely worthless to Isaac. He had confirmed the existence of monsters capable of speech, which weren't necessarily his enemies. So to gain a few more benefits, he decided to give the bird an ultimatum.

"I will take you to the surface and won't kill you. In exchange, you have to follow my every order. Deal?"

There were quite a few reasons as to why Isaac thought it would be a good idea to subdue this weird bird. On the one hand, he could study it a little more and possibly experiment on it after it had sworn its loyalty. On the other hand, he wanted to find a way to get the Jack Bird's drop item somehow without killing it. This was admittedly the main reason. Just like every other monster's drop item, the golden egg was already somewhere within the body of the rooster. After its death, it would be left behind.

It was important to note that, although the Jack Bird looked like a rooster and would therefore, according to Isaac's old world's logic, not be able to produce eggs, it still did so in the world of DanMachi. Even though it sounded like it was a male. Still, another world's logic really didn't help Isaac here. So if he could somehow make this weird creature produce lots and lots of golden eggs and harvest them, he would have an endless valis generator. Forget the small riches he could gain from slaying a single one of its species - he could even become the richest man in the world!

Well, these were honestly just outlandish hopes and theories. While Isaac was relatively sure he could at least get the first golden egg somehow without killing the bird, he had no way to know whether it would produce another one after the initial egg was removed. It could just be a golden egg-shaped part of the monster, for all Isaac knew. Maybe it wasn't even an egg and only the visual similarities caused it to be known by this name. No matter what, clearing this up would have to wait. Even though the chance of creating an endless valis generator was extremely low, it was certainly worth a try.

Having a chance to survive dangling right in front of it, the naive bird didn't even think about the consequences before agreeing to the deal hurriedly. For some reason, it didn't doubt the words the man restraining it spoke. To it, the man's words just automatically sounded like the truth. Whether that was caused by its still naive mind or the intrinsic aura Isaac gave off at the moment, that was hard to determine. Most likely, it was a mixture of both.

The moment the rooster agreed to the deal, which totally wasn't a disguised slave contract at all, a new system notification appeared in Isaac's field of view.

[ A Jack Bird has sworn his loyalty to you.

Quest 'Have two subordinates.' completed. 200 AP rewarded. ]

While this notification did confuse Isaac for a moment, he quickly figured out what had happened. Originally, he had expected the system to register the rooster as a pet and for him to unlock some kind of pet-related system feature. But as the bird could be considered as part of the sentient races of this world, it wasn't treated as a pet. Instead, in the system's eyes, it wasn't different from Mina, his other subordinate, at all. This fell right in line with Isaac's own way of thinking.

To be honest, he wasn't entirely happy about this occurrence. This was simply because one of his subordinates… was now a glorified rooster. It was just… lame. Still, Isaac being the way he was, there was no way he would fret over this for too long. In less than a second, he found some resolve. He would include this adorable creature in his future strengthening-related plans. To not let other people look down on him for having a rooster as a minion, he would make it the strongest rooster of all damn time!

Without being distracted by these thoughts of grandeur any longer, Isaac took a look at the Jack Bird's Status for more insight on his avian money printing machine.

[ Name: None ]

[ Familia: None ]

[ Affiliation: Isaac Blackshaw's Subordinate ]

[ Race: Jack Bird ]

[ Level: 1 ]

[ Age: 7 days ]

[ Loyalty: 60/100 ]

[ Stats ]

[ Strength: I-2 ]

[ Endurance: H-152 ]

[ Dexterity: I-5 ]

[ Agility: SSS-1483 ]

[ Magic: I-0 ]

[ Magic ]

[ None ]

[ Skills ]

[ Atalantan Accelerate ]

[ Development Abilities ]

[ None ]

As expected, the rooster's loyalty was a little lower than Mina's when she had sworn herself to his service. This was most likely due to Isaac being both the threat of death and hope of life in this case, contrary to just being the latter for Mina. The agility stat of the Jack Bird was what truly looked incredible. Still, even though it was this unbelievably high, the rooster wouldn't be able to escape from a Level 3 adventurer with only that. The reason for its seemingly impossible speed for its level lay in its sole skill.

[ Atalantan Accelerate: Triples the user's speed in exchange for tripling the user's stamina consumption. ]

If an adventurer was ever able to get ahold of such a skill, they would instantly soar to stardom. Thankfully, it wasn't very likely for that to happen, so such threats could be mostly ignored for now. Still, such a useful skill gave Isaac a positive outlook on his rooster-rearing plans. As to why the damn bird had a skill named after the famed huntress Atalanta, he couldn't say.

There was one other thing that caught his eye when inspecting the rooster's status. It didn't have a name. Referring to it as 'bird' or 'rooster' wasn't something Isaac wanted to do in the future. Because of that, he decided to name the fluffy bird.

"From now on, your name shall be Averin."

Isaac didn't plan to give Averin a well thought-out name, so he just took the word 'avian' and butchered it until it sounded barely acceptable.

[ Averin's loyalty has increased by 15. ]

In response to the irresponsible whims of his new master, the young bird cawed happily. An inexplicable happiness overcame him as an invisible force made Averin's fragile soul instinctively subservient to what this world could perceive of Isaac's.

'So naming a previously nameless soul will activate the laws of this world in such a way. Quite curious…'

A process like this, which slightly involved miniscule parts of his own soul, couldn't escape Isaac's eyes at all. He could have easily resisted this bond of servitude his subordinate was put under. More than that: It was easy for Isaac to break it anytime he wanted to. But as it was currently beneficial to him, why destroy it? It even enabled him to very shortly glance at the fundamental laws governing this world, which were normally hidden. If his own soul hadn't been involved, he would have to actually put quite a bit of effort into sensing them under normal circumstances.

Happily smiling about this good fortune, Isaac walked back towards his group of students. This would admittedly make for quite the handsome picture… if it weren't for the fluffy rooster sitting on his shoulder.