Mr. B made a noise that was halfway between a groan and a laugh before jerking his chin toward the corridor that led back into the market.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get you out of here before something else decides you look edible."
I followed, my boots making wet, tired slaps against the stone with every step. It was fair to say that I had been through quite a lot in the last few hours.
'Is this how my life is going to be from now on?'
Naturally, I was a very lazy person already. Images of my bed calling to me rippled through my head. I deserved a nice rest.
With the adrenaline finally bleeding out of my system, I could feel every terrible decision I'd made over the last few hours settling deep into my bones.
The old man seemed to notice this, as he glanced sideways at me as we walked.
For a while we walked in complete silence. Embracing the surrounding black market noise. A few more stalls slipped past before he spoke again.
"So," he said, keeping his tone deliberately casual, "how was it?"
I blinked.
"How was what?"
"The dungeon, of course. You went in and came out looking like a hot mess. Who wouldn't be curious?"
I shrugged with all the confidence of someone lying through her teeth.
"Eghh, not too bad. Nothing that I couldn't handle."
He gave me a slow little kick to the back of my leg.
"Aye what was that for!"
"Not too bad," he repeated, letting the words linger with gentle mockery.
"...Fine. It was a piece of work. Spa vibes... well, if your spa happened to include leeches and slimes that were trying to murder you."
"Still happy that you decided to solo it?" he quipped.
I could see what he was trying to do here, and I would not give him that satisfaction.
"Obviously."
"Obviously," he echoed, sarcasm so thick it could have been spread on toast.
"Well, I guess it's not too bad in the end, if things got too dangerous, you could just find the dungeon exit. Since it's a beginner dungeon."
I stopped walking so suddenly that he nearly walked straight into my back. "A what?"
He paused, turned, and stared at me.
I stared right back.
"…Don't tell me you cleared the whole thing without knowing that there was an exit," he said.
"Well, someone neglected to tell me that," I shot back defensively. "I walked out the only way I could find, which was the exit after beating the boss."
"Kura."
"There was no exit!" I said, louder now, as though shouting could retroactively rewrite reality.
"I didn't see one! I thought you had to complete the dungeon like in an old-school RPG. I thought that was the whole point!"
Mr. B pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh my god."
I folded my arms. "Why are you acting like this is common knowledge? I'm new. This was my first illegal dungeon. There is a learning curve."
"There is not a learning curve for exits," he replied, voice tight with the strain of not yelling.
"Low-rank controlled gates always have a return point."
He looked at me the way someone looks when they realise they've accidentally adopted a particularly chaotic stray.
"Gates like Mireglass are regulated instances," he explained as we started walking again.
"These multi-entrance dungeons are special. Monsters respawn, routes reset, and there's always a return mechanism so people don't get permanently lost. Otherwise, the gate becomes unstable, the ecosystem collapses, and you get a spill."
"A spill?"
"Yes a spill," he confirmed. "Monsters leak out into the real world. People die. The Association kicks down doors. Everyone loses money."
I let that sink in for a second, then pointed a finger at him. "Okay, but in my defence—"
"No," he interrupted instantly. "No defence."
"—I didn't see an exit."
That made him slow.
His eyes narrowed as though he were replaying my words in a darker tone. He glanced at me again, amusement gone. "…You didn't see one," he repeated, much quieter.
"No," I said, my earlier confidence starting to fray at the edges. "I mean, I wasn't exactly sightseeing. I was busy not turning into slime soup."
Mr. B's jaw tightened. He stopped completely this time, turning to face me in the middle of the corridor while people flowed around us.
"Kura," he said carefully, "either you have the worst eyesight I've ever encountered…"
I opened my mouth to argue.
"…or that's genuinely concerning," he finished.
I closed my mouth.
He held my gaze for a long moment, then exhaled and waved the moment away with forced nonchalance, clearly trying not to alarm me. "Alright," he said. "Walk me through it. What did you see? What did you fight?"
I hesitated, then started counting on my fingers. "Elemental slimes," I began. "Blue, green, red—like someone dumped out a kid's entire slime kit."
"Fairly normal."
"Leeches," I went on. "On walls, in water, in places leeches have absolutely no business being. They were basically living tape. I hated them."
Memories of having leeches jump down to greet me, like parents welcoming their child home, entered the back of my mind. It was safe to say that I would have nightmare fuel for the next week straight.
"Well, what can I say? You chose the dungeon."
I continued speaking, ignoring his unnecessary remarks. Sometimes the old man could be a bit of a dick.
"Then the boss was this big leech thing," I said. "What was his name again... Leech King. Or something like that. Honestly, compared to everything else, he was kind of embarrassing."
Mr. B let out a haughty laugh.
"Well, that's a first. Calling the strongest mob within a dungeon embarrassing. I'm sure he'd love the fact that you found his minions more difficult than him."
Mr. B seemed to find my opinion quite fascinating. But looking at things from my point of view, could you blame me?
I had faced a much more troublesome opponent in Slime Prime, and then had proceeded to grind out the dungeon floor in a bid to quell my rage.
By the time I arrived at the boss, he was little more than small fry.
'What would you call this? Overlevelling before facing the boss.'
Mr. B began to relax again, shoulders loosening as the story slid back into familiar, predictable territory.
Then I added, as casually as I could a bombshell statement.
"Oh, and there was a D-rank slime."
His footsteps halted to a stop as soon as he heard that.
'Damn we really need to stop stopping every 5 minutes.'
A mixture of surprise and distress was plastered on the mans face.
"…A what?"
"A D-rank slime," I repeated, blinking with exaggerated innocence. "I remember the horrid thing. It went by the name Slime Prime."
Silence.
"I know. Very regal, right? But let me tell you, that thing is violent. Zero out of ten, would not recommend fighting it."
For a second time, there was complete silence.
Mr. B didn't move at all.
Then he turned slowly toward me, like one of the characters in a ghost movie who knew there was something behind them.
"Kura," he said, voice low, "there should not be a D-class monster inside an F-rank gate."
I shrugged, because I genuinely had no better response. "And yet, there was one. I was just as surprised."
"No, no, no... that's not how it works," he said, sharper now.
"Instances are balanced. The gate's output has hard limits. You can't just—" He cut himself off, jaw working like he was physically holding back profanity out of sheer principle. "Are you sure it was D?"
"The system literally labelled it D-minus."
He stared at me for another long beat, then dragged a hand slowly down his face. "…Okay," he said, the single word far too calm, which somehow made it more alarming than shouting would have been. "Okay. I'm going to ask someone about that."
"Someone?" I echoed.
"A friend," he answered curtly, then glanced away, scanning the corridor ahead like he didn't want me reading his expression too closely.
"Uh-huh, sure."
He didn't speak for several steps.
Then his tone shifted back to forced casualness.
"Those cores," he said. "You planning to do anything with them?"
I patted my pocket. "I was going to stare at them proudly and hope they magically turn into money."
"That's fair," he replied. "You do know that you can't sell them through any Association-verified channel without a hunter licence though? Any official buyer runs your ID, logs the transaction, and you pop up on a database."
He had a point, that was something I most definitely couldn't allow to happen.
"I like my freedom. And my lack of interrogation."
"Exactly," he agreed. "So you've got two options. One, you sell them here yourself. Or you let someone like me move them for you."
"And the catch is…?"
He gave me a sideways look. "I take a cut. Standard rate is ugly. But since you're... you," he said, gesturing vaguely at my entire muddy, chaotic existence, "I'll do seventy-five to you, fifteen to me."
I squinted. "That... doesn't add up."
He didn't even blink. "Ten percent goes to the buyer's fee. You want illegal convenience, you pay the illegal convenience tax."
I stared at him.
Then pointed. "You're a scammer."
"I'm a broker," he corrected smoothly. "There's a difference. Scammers don't explain the fees."
"That's... annoyingly true," I admitted.
Right now, the best bet was to use him as a broker. He seemed like a decent guy, and honestly, haggling with people seemed like too much work anyway.
Just as I was about to agree, he popped up with another solution.
"There is a hidden third option as well."
Intrigued, I asked about it.
"It involves you absorbing the cores."