Child of Destiny

...

After a few more moments of waiting, the other top elites of the Hand of Midas Trading Firm finally arrived.

"You are late!" said Tinker sharply while glaring at the hooded player walking towards him.

Hearing that, that player seemed to smirk at Tinker before refuting. "You are talking as if you don't know why I am this late. If you didn't leave those pillars behind, then I will be the one to arrive here first."

Black Hammer removed the hood of his cloak when he arrived in front of Tinker. "Young Miss said to seal off the entire place while we are waiting for her arrival."

Tinker looked at Black Hammer mockingly before replying. "Do you think I don't know that? I already sent the others to scout the surroundings to look for the perfect location to set those pillars."

Black Hammer ignored the look that he was getting from the Chief Engineer of the Firm before signaling to the players behind him. "Did you hear that? Coordinate with the engineering department and set up isolation pillars!"

"Understood, Chief!" said the players behind Black Hammer in unison before scattering in every direction. And not long after, they joined the people under Tinker's department and quickly started to do their jobs.

They took out a group of strange black metals from their respective inventories before assembling them and building a black pillar that was stuck deeply on the ground.

In the meantime, the engineers working with them were busy installing strange apparatuses beside those pillars before connecting them one after another.

Tinker and Black Hammer observed the work of their subordinates working near them before turning their attention back to each other.

"Let's go, Young Master Siegfried is already doing the initial investigation inside the dungeon," said Tinker while leading Black Hammer.

Black Hammer didn't say anything this time and just quietly walked behind Tinker. He observed their surroundings while moving ahead and quickly discovered the corridor that they were taking did not have ordinary walls.

"Magic Mithril coated with liquified Mana Crystals? This is interesting! This place is really made to be an unbreakable hideout," said Black Hammer after checking the walls for the corridor.

For someone like him, who was an experienced blacksmith within the game, identifying the materials of the walls of the corridor was pretty easy.

"This is a labyrinth-type dungeon with a lot of traps installed everywhere. Sneaking inside with a small group is pretty easy, but clearing the dungeon with a large group is pretty troublesome," said Tinker without even turning his head.

"And the type of monsters inside?" asked Black Hammer out of curiosity.

"Tch!" Tinker clicked his tongue when he heard that before replying with a bitter tone. "That is the most problematic part. We are not dealing with monsters this time."

"The guards within this place were NPC guards with at least a Knight Rank. Moreover, we are getting Sin Points every time we kill each one of them," he added heavily.

"Tsk! That is indeed a little problem. With the scale of this Open Dungeon, we will not have enough pardon cards to clear out the 'Red Tags' that we are going to get," commented Black Hammer noddingly.

"No wonder the Young Miss summoned the experts stationed in the other kingdoms. That way, we don't need to care about the Sin Points," he added after assessing their current situation.

Then Tinker quickly continued with an even heavier tone. "But that is not the most problematic part that we discovered."

The corner of Black Hammer's mouth suddenly twitched when he heard that tone. He was pretty familiar with Tinker. After all, they were already working with each other since the founding of the Hand of Midas Trading Firm. And from what he could remember, it was pretty uncommon for this guy to say that they were facing a 'problematic matter'.

Given that Tinker was admitting that this dungeon was something 'problematic', Black Hammer could already tell that the situation was pretty serious.

Tinker sighed for a moment before saying. "The dungeon has a pretty strange nature. Aside from the traps installed everywhere, there are some places in this dungeon where the guards can get some buff."

"The Spawn Rate of the guards is pretty low which is pretty much a good thing. But to balance it out, those guards are gaining a considerable increase in their stats every time we kill a certain number of guards."

Black Hammer's face immediately turned weird when he heard those words and couldn't help but to give a comment. "I don't think we can call it 'balancing'."

Tinker nodded his head in agreement before continuing. "We are still not done calculating the exact increase of their strengths because we can't get the exact number of guards that we need to kill before the boost happens. But based on our vague estimate, it seems like they are at least a quarter stronger than their previous stats."

"But in exchange with that, the drop rate of rare materials is pretty high. They are also dropping some materials in Black Mithril Rank from time to time. And on top of that, the Experience Points that they are giving are not that bad either."

"Oh~!" Black Hammer couldn't help but smile when he heard that information. "So this dungeon is pretty much a 'high risk, high reward' sort of thing."

Tinker nodded at his remark once again before his tone became even heavier. "And that is where the main problem arises."

"Eh!? That is not the main problem yet?" reacted Black Hammer as he was taken aback.

Tinker smirked a little when he heard those words but didn't ridicule this time. After all, just like how Black Hammer knew him, he also knew the latter pretty well.

This guy was a blacksmith that mostly worked based on his instincts. It didn't mean he was not thinking when he was forging a weapon and equipment. He already knew what was the perfect material he needed after learning the basic features that his customer wanted.

On the other hand, engineering was a little different. Tinker needed to consider a lot of things first before creating a design and while following the blueprint. And he adapted this nature in almost everything. And this was the reason why he immediately got a rough estimate of how difficult this Open Dungeon was going to be after hearing some basic information from Arthur.

"Do you know what the difficulty of this dungeon is?" asked Tinker all of a sudden.

Black Hammer knitted his eyebrows for hearing such an obvious question. But he still answered it regardless. "Obviously, it is in Nightmare Difficulty at the very least."

"Currently," pointed out Tinker, emphasizing the current state of the dungeon.

Black Hammer was confused at first but he immediately realized what Tinker was trying to say after a couple of moments. "Don't tell me-...."

Tinker nodded his head and confirmed what Black Hammer was currently thinking. "As we kill more guards, the other guards within the deeper parts of the dungeon are slowly getting stronger."

"Their Ranks are not getting affected which is pretty good news, but their stats are slowly getting higher and higher. And if we don't clear the dungeon with a single run, then the other guards are to respawn, making it complicated for us."

"And after some time, the difficulty of this dungeon is going to be at least 'Hell Rank'. It may even reach 'Abyss Difficulty' if some conditions are met."

"You should know that the difficulty of every dungeon is greatly affected by its Boss," he added, emphasizing his point.

Then Black Hammer suddenly realized another thing and quickly asked. "Then what about the Boss of the dungeon? Is it also getting stronger as more guards get killed?"

Seeing that his colleague was starting to understand their current situation, Tinker suddenly smiled bitterly before replying. "Unfortunately, it is just like what we are expecting."

"Sir Simba already scouted ahead. And from what he can see, it seems like the gate where the Boss is located is absorbing the 'souls' of the guards that have been killed."

Black Hammer immediately turned stiff when he heard that. He then fell silent for a moment before suggesting. "Then it is better if we kill the boss first before clearing the entire dungeon."

Tinker nodded his head as it was also what he was thinking earlier. But that was until they discovered something else. "But it is not that simple."

"That is the original plan, but we immediately put it on hold and decided to wait for the Young Miss to arrive before deciding what to do," he said with a bitter smile.

On the other hand, Black Hammer quickly frowned his eyebrows before asking. "Why is that? You should know how Young Miss deals with this kind of matter. She is the type that will choose efficiency over anything else."

Tinker couldn't help but smirk at those words before quickly replying. "That is exactly why we chose to put the plan on hold."

He then stopped and turned to Black Hammer before explaining. "While we are investigating the rate of growth of the guards inside, we also discovered that the drop rates of the materials increase significantly."

"The system has always been fair. Since we are practically increasing the difficulty of the dungeon by killing more guards, the rewards that we are going to get are also slowly getting better."

Black Hammer suddenly froze in place when he realized what Tinker was trying to say.

Seeing that Black Hammer seemed to finally understand their current situation, Tinker helplessly shook his head before confirming what his colleague was thinking. "So now, we are stuck at choosing between two choices."

"Whether we are going to kill the Dungeon Boss first to clear the dungeon as fast as we can or-…"

"We are going to kill all of the guards inside the dungeon and slowly fatten the Dungeon Boss to get the highest reward possible."

....