Chapter 454 - 454 - It's Here, and It's Wearing a Fortune on Its Back!

"Three hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, seven hundred fifty thousand..."

With the formidable learning power of Scholar's Heart, Leon tallied up the total value of the haul at a speed and precision that would make anyone stare. He tapped down the list in his notebook with a quill, and the delight on his face was past hiding now, his grin nearly splitting from ear to ear.

Second-class adventurer equipment started at a few million Valis a piece, and the good stuff ran close to ten million.

If the finished goods cost that much, the materials that went into making them were hardly cheap either.

And all of it had gone straight into Leon's pockets.

"Haha, things are finally looking up for us!"

Leon shook his head, laughing, and his voice turned wistful as he recalled his days scraping by at the bottom.

"Ah, back when I was Lv.1 and Lv.2, what kind of life was that? I wanted to split a single Valis in half to make it stretch. One piece of armor I'd picked up cheap at the flea market, patched and repatched and worn for years. I couldn't even bring myself to buy a decent short sword."

"Every day, walking down Adventurers Street on the way to work and back, staring at the gear in the shop windows that went for hundreds of thousands, millions. All I could do was drool."

"Eighteen years old, and just standing around like a nobody!"

As he said it, he squeezed out two crocodile tears to suit the mood.

"And now look at us... This is the kind of life worth looking forward to!"

Jeanne rolled her eyes at him and waved an arm.

"All right, we get it, you've come up in the world. Now pack up, we're moving out!"

Leon deflated.

"Hee..."

Off to the side, Laurier and the others covered their mouths and giggled.

...

Sand Land labyrinth, Lower Floors, Floor 35.

With Leon, an unconventional Mage carrying a hundred times the normal mana pool, clearing the way with large-scale Blizzard as a minesweeper, the party's progress through Sand Land shot up dramatically.

At the edge of the Blizzard, a massive maw tore up through the yellow sand and lunged at them from below with a thunderous roar.

The ambush didn't throw the party into the slightest confusion. After the beating they'd taken lately, none of them batted an eye anymore.

"Holy shit, that's huge!"

Leon waved a hand and wrapped himself in ice armor, then looked up at the gaping maw coming for them. He'd braced himself for it. Seeing it in person was still something else.

"Sandstorm Giant Crocodile!!!!!!"

Delight flashed in his eyes, and he swung his staff without hesitation.

"You want to swallow the whole party in one go? Big appetite on you!"

A frost-colored magic circle formed at the head of the staff, and bone-deep cold gathered fast.

He charged it for a second, judged the distance, and the instant the thing entered range the circle flared blinding bright.

"Now... freeze!"

"Frost Nova!"

A hum went out, and a shockwave of frost burst open around Leon with a radius of over ten meters.

Ice cracked and locked, and the giant sand crocodile, more than ten meters long, froze in midair. That massive body hit the wall of cold like it had hit a wall of ice, and with its momentum gone it dropped straight into the thick drift of snow with a dull thud.

Behind Leon, the others, still fighting off the rest of the monsters, noticed the famous Rare Species of Sand Land, the Sandstorm Giant Crocodile. Every last one of their eyes lit up.

Persephone swung her sword to drive back the Sand Jackals in front of her, her voice slightly hurried.

"Leon, go easy on it! Don't ruin the hide!"

On the other side, pure white light flared across Rose's shield, and the boom of it carried through the blowing sand.

Shield Bash.

The heavy, violent blow sent the Desert Worm's huge body flying upward, cutting its shriek off mid-note. What little intelligence it had was rattled into a daze, and its body went slack, swaying on the verge of collapse.

"Hyaah!"

Rose bent her knees, stamped down, and launched herself into the air as Steel Knight activated. In her right hand, the counter storm building its terrifying power sheathed the blade in silver light, and then she became nothing but a blur of afterimages in midair.

An instant later, the Desert Worm's upper body, raised more than seven meters, was carved into pieces in a flurry of blade flashes.

Rose's silver high-heeled combat boots touched down lightly, her water-blue braid swinging with the motion. She looked over at Leon with a bright smile.

"Oh my, what luck. We've only just reached Floor 35 and we run into a Sandstorm Giant Crocodile this big... If it drops Sandstorm Giant Crocodile hide, I wonder how many bags the old elf's tailor shop could make out of it?"

Aura's eyes were burning too, though she fought down the excitement and kept her tone as flat as she could manage.

"One this big, if it really drops its hide, a batch of bags made from it would go for an absolute fortune at the auction houses in Orario. Ten million a piece, easily."

He hadn't taken in a single word of the women's chatter. Right now there was only one thought in his head. That Sandstorm Giant Crocodile was his.

"Damn it, these filthy rich bastards!"

He didn't get it.

How could a bag made out of crocodile hide sell for that kind of money?

Every time he thought about those provincial lords and nobles from all over the world, people who'd never seen anything, waving their money around in Orario and losing their minds over luggage made from Sand Land crocodile hide, or Blood Coral from the Water City, things with no practical use whatsoever, his face twitched.

"Ice..."

He raised his staff on instinct, the circle for Ice Lance already turning at the tip. With the critical bonus that came from a frozen target, it would have riddled the beast full of holes. But Persephone's warning came back to him, and his motion stalled. Sheepishly, he let the magic dissipate.

"Tch, what a pain."

Leon drew in a deep breath, eyes locked forward.

Watching the cracks spread wildly across the surface of the crocodile ice sculpture, he gripped the Scholar's Staff, bent his knees slightly, and drew his back taut like a bow.

"Hah!"

A low shout, and he shot forward.

At the exact moment he leapt up in front of the sculpture, the frozen mass of ice exploded with a crack.

The Sandstorm Giant Crocodile burst out of the ice, its furious roar shaking the desert, the blast of air throwing the snow and sand off its body.