"Anything I've kept stashed away as a secret weapon isn't going to be simple." Leon flashed Rose a knowing smile, his voice dropping with undisguised pride. "Sure, it looks ordinary enough, and aside from tasting incredible, you'd never tell it apart from regular cooking. But its real trick is that it temporarily boosts the eater's Basic Abilities. Roughly five percent."
Rose blinked, clear eyes clouding with confusion. She considered her words carefully before asking, "Our Basic Abilities... went up? Then why didn't it feel any different during the fight?"
Leon met that earnest, guileless gaze and found himself at a loss for words. He conceded the point.
But thinking it over, it made sense. His entire Familia was in a phase of explosive growth. Forget a high-intensity expedition riddled with unexpected encounters like this one - even on routine explorations, every Falna update brought a dramatic leap in their stats. Against that kind of rocket-speed progression, a marginal buff from cooking was the sort of thing you'd overlook without a second thought.
"Uh..." He cleared his throat, scrambling to recover. "The point is, it did boost your stats!"
Then his expression shifted, a sly grin spreading across his face. "Five percent. Not a lot, not nothing. For people like us who are leveling up fast, sure, the benefit's limited. But think about it from a different angle. What about the Adventurers stuck at their ceiling? The ones who've hit a wall and can't push past their limits no matter what they do?"
His eyes lit up like he could already see the gold coins. "I can picture it now. The second we let even a hint of this leak to the right people, every whale who's been stuck at their cap for years will be lining up to throw money at us."
His companions, who knew him well by now, stared in open surprise. Jeanne spoke up first. "Leon, you... you're not planning to sell this cooking openly for profit, are you?"
"Sell it openly?" Leon shook his head with a look that said you sweet summer child. "Half right. We sell, obviously, but we do it smart."
He raised a finger, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "Go public? Too much attention. Cooking that temporarily boosts Basic Abilities is rare stuff in Orario, and that kind of noise draws the wrong eyes. Besides, I'm one person. I can only make so much."
A sharp gleam crossed his gaze. "So we sell exclusively to a select few high-value clients with deep pockets and real need."
"Such as?" Rose asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
"Such as..." Leon drew the word out, as if he could already see mountains of gold on the horizon. "We pitch this as an introduction to the Loki Familia. Their top three shouldn't turn down something that directly boosts combat performance, right?"
"And once we establish a pipeline with the Loki Familia and lock in a long-term deal..." His voice thrummed with barely contained excitement. "We don't just get a steady revenue stream. More importantly, we earn the Loki Familia's goodwill. That's the kind of shield and free pass no amount of gold can buy!"
Everyone stared at him in silence.
He was practically glowing, hands gesturing like a man who'd already closed the deal, and his teammates had collectively run out of words. The ink isn't even dry on this fantasy and he's already counting the profits in our faces.
All they could say was that Leon's hunger for gold had reached a level bordering on religious fervor. Jeanne and Rose sometimes worried the obsession would manifest as an actual Skill tied to money.
Probably one with a nasty side effect.
...
A flash of silver, clean and bright, and it was over.
Rose flicked her wrist to shed the grime from her short sword and slid it back into its sheath.
"How many is that?" Leon had his head down, scribbling in his notebook as if the monsters roaming the corridor around them didn't exist.
Aura stood beside him, clutching her staff with both hands, her small face tense as she watched the three fighters ahead wrapping up their latest engagement.
"Seventeen."
"Huh. Floor 12 living up to its reputation. The spawn rate really has picked up." He pinched his chin and glanced around the walls and ceiling, lost in thought for a moment.
Laurier waved him over. "Leon, come do your thing!"
"On my way."
When it came to collecting loot, Leon's enthusiasm never wavered. The satisfaction of dropping Magic Stones and materials into his pack gave him the same joy a squirrel got from hoarding acorns - even in another world, some pleasures were universal.
...
The Dungeon's environment, outside of certain unique floors, had a way of blurring together into monotonous sameness.
Leon's party had now reached the end of Floor 12's main route and stood before the massive stairway connecting the Upper Floors to the Middle Floors.
He popped open his brass pocket watch with a click and checked the time. "It's getting late. Let's call it here for today."
"Huh? It's that late already?!" Laurier's eyes went wide, disbelief plain in her voice. "It feels like we just got here!"
Leon looked at her and remembered his own early days. He turned to address both her and Aura, who wore a similar look of confusion, and explained patiently, "That's an illusion the Dungeon environment creates. We've actually been exploring at high intensity for a full twelve hours. The reason you don't feel tired is that the novelty and adrenaline of your first expedition are tricking your senses."
He paused, his tone shifting to the certainty of experience. "Your body is far more exhausted than you realize."
Jeanne had already picked a spot to make camp and caught the tail end of his explanation. Her expression turned serious as she swept her gaze over the two newcomers. "Fatigue is one of the Dungeon's deadliest traps. Adventurers keep their nerves wound tight down here, and in that kind of high-pressure environment, if your body and mind don't get proper rest, you slip up somewhere. You get careless. And the consequences..." She let the silence finish the sentence.
Laurier and Aura both stiffened, then nodded firmly.
Everyone who'd spent time in these depths knew the truth of it. The Dungeon harbored nothing but malice for the Adventurers who descended from the surface. The moment it caught a weakness - fatigue, carelessness, a lapse in focus - it became the most ruthless predator imaginable, striking without mercy and pressing the attack until it buried you in the dark for good.
Countless Adventurers had fallen to mistakes that seemed small at the time.
That was a rule written in blood, and it didn't bend.
...
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Jeanne, Rose, and Laurier were working at the Dungeon walls with spare weapons.
Aura returned with a bundle of dead wood and paused at the sight.
Leon, already at work with a kitchen knife prepping ingredients, knew what the quiet girl was about to ask. He answered without looking up, hands moving in practiced rhythm. "They're exploiting one of the Dungeon's basic properties. If you deliberately damage the terrain, the Dungeon prioritizes repairing it, and during that repair window, it won't spawn monsters. Think of it as the Dungeon's own version of warding off evil spirits."
Aura's face lit with understanding, and she nodded, filing the knowledge away.
"Is this enough wood?"
"Plenty. We've got the lanterns for light. This is just to get a cooking fire going."
Everyone in the party had a role. Leon handled the cooking while the others assembled the temporary camp. With Adventurer-level strength and speed, the work was done in minutes.
The campfire crackled and popped, its light dancing across their faces as they sat in a loose circle, each holding a wooden bowl, savoring a warm meal in comfortable silence. A hot dinner in the depths of the Dungeon carried a kind of happiness you simply couldn't replicate on the surface.
"Laurier, Aura, you two are off night watch duty. Your only job tonight is to rest." Leon set down his bowl and looked at each of them in turn. "Watch order is Rose, then Jeanne, then me. That's final."
...
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