"Hey, did you hear me?" Kane knocked on Rui's head who was deeply absorbed in thought. "Let's go already."
"Ah, right, my bad," Rui nodded, breaking out of his stupor.
He felt a lot more refreshed after having decisively figured out what he wanted to do, and it reflected in his demeanor.
The two of them quickly took the esoteric deposits from the nineteenth floor before heading back out of the dungeon, making sure to carefully use Void Step to make sure no one ever detected them before heading back to their little discreet inn just outside the Adventurer Ring road.
While the two of them, especially Rui, would have loved to crash into bed and take a good long rest in their rooms, they still had some work to do.
They immediately set out to a remote location in the Shionel Confederation that they had already scouted long beforehand. This would serve as the location of the drop point of the esoteric ore deposits for Guildmaster Bradt.
They quickly buried the portion of the esoteric ore deposits in the ground, before covering it up meticulously to ensure that it was level with the land around it. Rui even used his hot air pipe to dry out the darker sand to erase any indications of it being dug up recently.
The two of them immediately headed out to another location to make a second delivery, one of the rowdier and chaotic districts outside of the Adventurer Ring town, making their way to a single inconspicuous building.
KNOCK KNOCK… KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK… KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK…
The door promptly opened as the two shuffled in.
"Ah, Squire Falken," A man arrived, greeting them. "I see you've come for another delivery."
"Indeed," Rui replied simply.
"Please come right this way," The man led them deeper inside the building before they arrived at a large storage container. "In there will do just fine."
Rui nodded, walking in before he released the huge amount of ore deposits that he had left, and walked away.
"We have confirmed and received the delivery," The man nodded.
Rui and Kane did not stick around for much longer and immediately activated Void Step and left.
The longer they stuck around the esoteric ore deposits without the technique active, the greater the risk they were putting themselves in. It wasn't long before they finally reached their rooms.
"Oh man," Kane groaned. "I'm crashing. Don't disturb me for half a day."
"Get some rest," Rui chuckled before quickly changing and lying down on his bed.
He was quite tired too, but he was far too excited about recent developments to be able to go to sleep. He could finally think about it extensively in peace.
('I can't believe I found twelve more floors,')
It was surreal to him. For a brief moment, he even doubted his memories, wondering whether he had even conjured it up inside his own head and it was never real to begin with. After all, such a thing did not happen usually.
Or ever, for that matter. It took the adventurers in the world nine months to discover and clear the first twelve floors. These things took an immense amount of time, after all. Discovering even one floor was something that was extremely rare for anybody.
Rui had just gone on to discover twelve, which was probably record-breaking anywhere.
('The biggest issue is that Kane and I are unable to monopolize the dungeons effectively, this time,') He sighed.
He couldn't monitor all twelve floors that he discovered, that was beyond impractical, it was downright impossible. His range limited him with the ability to monitor a single floor, and nothing else. He most certainly did not possess the ability to cover all twelve dungeon floors simultaneously.
Such a feat was something he would only be able to do when he was a Senior, or perhaps a Master. He did not think that this feat was within the realm of possibility as a Martial Squire. Even when his Martial body and Martial Art did eventually become stronger as he reached the peak of the Squire Realm, he would be unable to accomplish such a feat.
The only other option to even attempt trying to monitor and restrict the dungeon to other floors would be to manually check up on all of them frequently.
Which was just an absurd proposition. It took a ton of time to travel across all of them given the great distance between each of them, and he was incapable of it.
Besides, even if he was somehow able to monitor all of them in a practical fashion, what was he going to do when Chairman Deacon's teams ran into it? Many of them were simply far too many to kill, making it impractical and highly dangerous, and risky. Considering that these Martial Squires would love to run into him, it was not worth it
This was the reason he had chosen to avoid other Martial Squires entirely, it was not worth engaging with all of them.
If Chairman Deacon did run into one of the twelve dungeons that Rui had discovered, then he would simply have to accept it and move on.
Regardless, he did not think it would happen too soon, so it didn't matter either way. The ants still consumed their time, after all. Although he was quite certain that the other adventurers and Martial Artists would destroy every single ant without a doubt, it bought him at least a little bit of time for sure.
('With that out of the way, there is the other matter to consider,') Rui mused.
The Root floor, as Rui had dubbed it, contained more esoteric ore yield than any other floor in the dungeon, although they were unrefined.
It was basically the final boss floor of the entire dungeon. And the monster occupying the floor was the very dungeon itself, consuming, refining, and then distributing the refined ore outputs into other parts of the dungeon where there was space to store them; namely the floors.
It was the final boss of the Shionel Dungeon, in a way.