Chapter 87: Chapter 87: The trade off

They walked down dark corridors, having to double back every time they hit a dead end. Finally, they reached a well-lit chamber with a wounded ogre in the middle.

They pulled out their weapons and were just about to charge, when the ogre looked at them with fear in his eyes.

"Don't kill me. I came in here for my child," the adventurers stopped in their tracks.

"How did you fight your way in?" Jean asked. The lions and Norrix had been starving, but there was no way they had let the ogre pass them without a fight.

"I have an invisibility ring. It is yours, if you get my son and I out of here," the ogre showed them a ring. A thin silver band with a single pearl encrusted in it.

"Are you from a tribe?" Leander asked. He needed to know if this was not a trick.

"No. I don't believe that we, ogres, have to live in the wild and attack people. So, I got kicked out of my tribe. Together with my baby. Please, Arog is just one year old. And the dungeon core keeps him in the core room to make a mini-boss out of him," the eyes of the adventurers soften.

"We will get your son out of there," Valerie promised. She couldn't even begin to imagine how hard life must be for the father and son. She turned to Leander. "Perhaps we can offer them a protection deal? There are a couple of other free farms in the guild's possession. Or, did you give or sell them away?"

"Never sell land. That is what my mother always told me," Leander spoke. His mother had plenty of acres that she did not work, but gave to people in exchange for rent money. That way, the land ended up being worked, and it remained in the family.

"Smart woman," Alklair commented. "So, there is nothing stopping you from taking in the ogres?"

"There has to be a more elegant solution than giving protection deals that result in handing out farmland," Leander murmured. Why couldn't the people with the protection deal live in Huergaz itself? "Maybe we can give them a trade, if they don't have one. Set them up in the city, perhaps?"

"What are you going to do with the farms?" Morris asked. Surely, Alklair had bought more than a few.

"I will make them turn in a profit. Grow rare potion's ingredients on them. Blue Bell for our farm, and maybe mandrake for some of the others," Leander spoke, sure of his decision.

"So, you won't create treasure with your new powers?" Dorian asked. Why had Leander risked losing Armaros if he was going to not use the hourglass? Had he gotten a change of heart?

"I will, but in secret. The problem with dungeon made treasure is, that, it has to be melted to lose the connection to the dungeon. That lowers its value. But, the potion's ingredients won't be faced with such a problem," Alklair looked at Leander with a bit more approval, after that. The blonde healer was thinking in the long term.

As a citizen of Alcandino, Leander could be protected from having to go to the labs to be experimented upon. The Bill of Rights every citizen was entitled to saw to that. If the king still demanded that Leander was the subject of research, there would be an uprising. Because, if one day a guild master went to the labs against his will, then the next could be anyone.

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"How are you going to explain to Armaros that you are still going to use the hourglass?" Lilia asked. Armaros had been upset, and rightly so. If human corpses had been used in such a manner, they would all be up in arms. The dungeon core was taking it all well, considering the only thing he did was leave.

"I will face the music once we save Arog and get out of here. Dorian, I think the door over there is the last one. With the core room behind it," Leander pointed at a big, golden, door.

Morris whistled.

"We will need to get that out, somehow," Valerie glared at him.

"Take everything not nailed down. That is written in the adventurer's handbook. This door is nailed down, Morris," Morris snickered and went to his spot in the formation.

"Well, so are the garnets, but we are still taking them from the statue," he argued back and Valerie sighed.

"How are there any historical sights left in the world with adventurers who think like you is beyond me," Alklair murmured, slightly disapproving.

"We will get the door," Leander spoke, not wanting to leave such a treasure behind for the next party that came by. "And we will melt it down. I think it will be enough to pay the guild's taxes for this month. And I will need to find some way to pay some of its debts at a later point."

"We have debts?" Florifel exclaimed, eyes turned to Alklair.

"Ones dating back to the guild master before me," Alklair sighed. "He was a gambler and a war hound. Give him ale, women and fighting, and he would be happy. He was SSS ranked, so, we all had to wait for him to die to appoint a new guild master."

"Five hundred years were not enough to pay a single man's debts?" Alberta sounded astonished. Surely, the guild could have filed for bankruptcy? 

"To have money, the behavior is more important than what you earn. While I could have tightened the belts of everyone and paid back the debts during my time as a guild master, I choose to pay them little by little and gain new properties for the guild. Have none of you ever wondered why the inns charge less for adventurers? They are property of the guild," at that, all the platoon members turned to Leander, who nodded. Confirming Alklair's words.

"And yet, we are broke?" Morris asked and then chuckled. "Not for long, thought. Leander, you better make the guild rich again, or I will lower your kissing quota to just three per day!"

Leander chuckled.

"Have mercy, Morris. Anything but that cruel fate," they all burst out laughing. Leander had plans and nothing, not even some old berserker who lived five hundred years ago, was going to get in the way of them.

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