Chapter 7: Chapter 7: The harvest

With his new uniform and the soul staff strapped to his back, Leander felt like a true adventurer. Sure, the most glamorous thing they were going to do today was going down the sewers, but it was going to be an adventure, all the same.

They ate their dinners in silence, both making peace that they were quite broke and that this must be the last meal they were going to have in an inn if the sewers didn't have treasure in them, and then headed out.

They got to the same sewer grate that Leander had originally entered through, and took out mana markers to mark for any traps that needed to be dismantled. Or studied.

People, read army suppliers, liked to learn from dungeons. Because dungeons had access to the world system, they could pull new schemas out of thin air. Some even invented their own mutations and weapons.

Leander walked behind Morris, who was acting as the tank of the party for this trip. When they neared the pressure plate, Leander stopped.

"We have to jump over a pressure plate here," Morris positioned the flashlight so that he could see any signs of such a mechanism on the ground.

He saw a slight bump, and jumped over it. Leander jumped with a bit more effort, but he managed it, too. He wrote on the wall:

Pressure plate, unknown gas.

And they continued on. When they reached the wall from where he had taken the sapphire, Morris unsheathed his axe. 

"Adventurer's handbook, page 190, rule 4: Where there was treasure, there is more hidden," before Leander could stop him, Morris bashed the wall with his axe.

Sizzling was the only warning given before green liquid gushed out of the wall. Fortunately, it had been enough for Leander to put up a barrier, one of the few embedded spells in a soul staff, around the both of them.

"Morris, what was that for?" Snapped Leander. The acid began to eat away at the stone below the barrier, and Leander began moving to an area of the ground that was not being eaten away.

"Sorry, I expected a rat's nest filled with gems," Leander huffed as Morris rubbed the back of his head. The soul staff dimmed somewhat. It now had only four more spells, before it ran out of mana.

Sure, Leander could channel his own mana through it, for healing spells and for all the spells he did know, but the mana in the soul staff was by far more potent than his own.

They passed by the pedestal and, this time, Leander stopped Morris from bashing the walls. They continued on, the stench of the sewer becoming overwhelming around them.

Morris pulled up his scarf around his nose and Leander put on a mask. Neither knew what stunk so bad down there, and they had both gotten used to the normal sewer stench during their trek down, but it must be dead, surely.

They rounded a corner and found a gathering of slimes. They had green miasma coming off them. But their eyes were like nothing either of them had ever seen.

For, neither Leander nor Morris had ever seen slimes with gems in their eyes.

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"That was where the dungeon got the sapphire from," the thought that the hamsters could have had an epic battle with one of the slimes unnerved Leander.

"Ok, what is the game plan?" Morris turned to look at Leander, but he also kept an eye on the mindless slimes.

"Well, normally, I'd say to push them in the water. But, then the gems will get washed down the canal," Leander tapped his index finger on his pants. "Maybe, if I cool this place, they will freeze up, and then you can bash them until they are dead?"

Morris smiled and turned towards the slimes.

"Ready when you are," Leander activated the embedded freezing spell from the staff and watched as the slimes were rooted to the ground by sheets of ice.

"Now," like a raging bull in a glass shop, Morris began bashing the slimes one by one. When he was done, there were many gems on the ground covered in filth.

"Ok, that was great," Morris raised his hand and Leander met it for a high five.  Then, Leander wrote on the wall:

Slime farming site. They grow gems for eyes.

They collected the gems quickly, but some slimes regenerated before they were done. They weren't done securing the sewer, so, Leander didn't dare use another freezing spell. What followed was Leander's first real battle.

He used the staff to smash at the slimes. Aiming for the heads. But, the slimes started to regenerate faster and faster, and the two ran out of the clearing and into a side tunnel.

"I don't envy whoever will be farming those," Morris was winded, and so was Leander.

"We will find another sewer grate to get out of. It is too dangerous to try to go back that way," Leander pointed at the entrance of the tunnel, where a slime waited for them. Looking at them with narrowed eyes.

"Do you think they remember their destruction?" Morris chimed in, after waving at the slime, which turned around and bounced to its brethren.

"Slimes are mindless. All tests point to that," Leander was wondering if Morris might not be onto something. But, honestly, slimes have been so researched that the adventurer's handbook must have the right of it.

"Anyway, I think we collected enough to pay for both your staff and my axe," Morris patted his coin pouch, now filled to the brim with gems. Leander's was the same.

"But we have to finish the job. I can still feel like I am in a dungeon's grounds," Morris nodded, and they continued. Had they looked back, they would have seen the same slime staring at them and then jumping in the water.

But they were too far ahead to notice anything or to hear the multiple splashes of the other slimes entering the waste waters.

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