This DID however leave me in a slightly awkward position. I still needed to get all this metal up to the surface but despite the amount of space in my bags it was laughable compared to the amount I'd need. The high wall around the city was about a mile tall and as I mentioned encircled the ENTIRE fucking city. To put it bluntly I'd need to have a literal mountain of metal to cover the whole thing. My bags have the room for manor sized chunks of metal but not even I could create a bag with an entire mountains sized space within it.-
Maybe if I reached level eight or so but definitely not now. In theory I could just make a bunch of bags to handle this process but that just wouldn't work in this case either.
'I suppose I could just make some large spatial portals between this floor and the surface to make things easy but then I'd definitely need to share afterwards. That doesn't even begin to cover the ramifications that such a thing might have long term.' I thought with a frown.
In the end i chose to go halfway and create a massive set of chests that worked like the vanishing cabinets from Harry Potter but with a few carefully chosen rules attached. You stuffed the first chest with nonliving metallic objects and then shut it. Then you open it's twin and all the stuff in the first box is now in this one even if they are in very different locations. I specifically made the transport of people, monsters or most drops impossible since fuck sharing. A good thing I did too since once I explained why I was making a really rushed run up to the surface and then back to the others they wanted to use the boxes for exactly the reason I didn't want.-
Like I totally got it, the very idea of being able to directly skip to the targeted floor or at least near it would make the progress of delving as deep as possible much easier but I simply didn't care. They could work for it just like always, an idea they weren't happy about. I lied about it though and said that this sort of restriction was the only way I could get the things to work. -
They grumbled about it and all but demanded a similar set of chests for their expeditions but that was it. Actually rushing up to the surface took me only a full days time since I could fly without having to walk or run due to the people with me. While I did that with the massive pure mithril chest securely in my bag those I left behind were mining the metal to stuff into it's twin, at a cut of course since adventurers don't work for free. An annoying cut given the Loki familia got twenty five percent of all the metal they mined and stuffed into the box.-
They weren't alone either as Ottar secured five percent for the Freya familia and Shakti secured three percent for the Ganesha familia. This basically meant that for all the metal being sent topside almost exactly a third of it was getting split between those familias rather than used on the wall. The deal was very specifically worded however so this wasn't a permanent problem. They all only got a cut of what they themselves mined which meant once it was only me having access to the floor again they get none of the exported metal.-
Once I was topside I drew a lot of attention when I shot across the sky to the manor and dropped off the box while having Hestia contact Loki, Freya, Ganesha and Ouranos to let them work on stacking the metal up safely next to the wall for when we officially return. After that I rushed back down the dungeon and groaned when I finally reached the metallic floor. I was flat out exhausted after two solid days of back and forth highest possible speed travel and no rest at all. -
I didn't even bother talking to the others and encased myself mostly in metal before getting a well deserved bit of shut eye. When I finally woke up about ten hours later I put the others mining speed to shame as I pressed my hands against the floor and fully activated my technique. For the softer metals like mithril and a few others it was like a tide of shining liquid moving in as my technique liquified it and dragged it to the chest before solidifying it again as neat ingots that dropped right in. I'd then close the chest send the go ahead through the coin and wait for confirmation the contents were gone before opening it up again and repeating this process.-
At one point I flat out created a lawn chair to relax in while my technique was working through it since the chair was touching the ground.
"Now you are just showing off." Gareth pointed out.
"A little but if I don't need to be standing for this what's it matter?" I said casually.
"And what about us? How are we supposed to mine any of the metal if you are already moving it all?" Finn asked with an annoyed expression.
"Oh so you figured out that little detail. You really should pay closer attention to the wording of deals. The devils in the details after all." I said with a smirk.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Bete asked confused.
"It means we got outfoxed. The terms of the deal were that we got a percentage of all the metal we mined in exchange for moving and guarding the metal topside. Catch here is if we aren't mining any metal we get no metal but still have to protect and move the stuff. There was no clause that said we'd stop if we weren't mining it, only that we'd get a percentage of the stuff we did in exchange." Gareth explained with a sigh.
"Got it in one. The best part is I'm not actually stopping you from mining any metal, just mining it faster than you. You could totally just focus on mining the stuff further away and you'd still get your percentage." I said with a even wider grin.