"You're awake."
Frieren's voice came from beneath him, and Shane opened his eyes in a daze.
Thunk.
Thunk, thunk.
A few sharp knocks instantly cleared the confusion from his eyes.
Frieren was holding him aloft with levitation magic, and his head kept bumping into the stalactites hanging overhead.
"Ow..."
At Shane's groan, Frieren lowered her staff a little and adjusted how high she was floating him.
"Why did you faint just now? What happened?"
Shane touched his still-swollen temple, shaken.
That final look exchanged with the madman had been terrifying. Those scarlet eyes still haunted his mind.
But he had no idea how to explain it. He couldn't exactly say that the other man had used some kind of evil magic experiment to drag him into this world, and that he was a transmigrator, could he?
"I can't really explain it. I was just... inexplicably pulled into an illusion. I saw a bunch of jumbled-up things."
Frieren nodded when she heard that and didn't press him for details.
Many powerful mages did leave all sorts of defensive magic arrays in their old homes or places where they had died, to drive off unwelcome visitors. Illusion magic was one of the more common kinds.
Shane sighed with relief and asked, "Where are we going?"
"After you fainted, that room collapsed. This passage was exposed when it caved in. I think it must be the exit."
"Oh."
"Can you walk on your own now?"
"Ugh, I'm dizzy..."
And so the two of them continued like this, one floating and the other walking.
Shane wasn't pretending to be lazy because he didn't want to walk. He really was dizzy and exhausted, with not a bit of energy to spare.
They hadn't gone far when Frieren suddenly stopped. Thunk—Shane's head bumped into the stone again.
Before he could cry out in pain, his eyes widened in surprise.
Around the bend ahead, pale blue mushrooms covered the passage, glowing softly. Their dreamlike blue light seemed to flow through the cavern like a scene from a fairyland.
Frieren set Shane down and walked over to the mushrooms.
The girl crouched down, silver-white hair falling beside her ear. She gently touched one with her fingertip and picked it, a hint of delight flashing in her eyes.
"These are Ghostlight Mushrooms, a very rare magical ingredient."
Rubbing his head, Shane got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled over.
"Before we entered the dungeon, the innkeeper said there was a kind of glowing mushroom growing here that could be used to make a delicious cocktail. So it was true."
Shane's spirits lifted.
At least this dungeon trip hadn't been for nothing.
He quickly swung his backpack around, ready to harvest as many as he could. But when he looked down, he saw something that made his eyebrows twist.
He wondered if he was seeing things.
He cautiously nudged it with his foot, then asked:
"Hey, Frieren, what are these black, squishy clumps of dirt on the ground? They smell kind of fishy."
"Giant serpent droppings."
"..."
"Ghostlight Mushrooms grow on Venom Extreme Dragon droppings. Giant serpents are a hybrid subspecies, and it seems their droppings work just as well," Frieren explained.
Hearing this, Shane silently withdrew the hand he'd been about to use to pick a mushroom. He also gave the sole of his foot a vigorous rub against a nearby rock.
Keep that filth away from me.
"While traveling in the Central Nations, I once saw a shop selling this ingredient. I think it was... five silver coins per pound."
That much?!
Shane immediately reached out and picked a mushroom without hesitation.
Filth? Don't be ridiculous. This was clearly a noble ingredient that remained untainted by the mud.
After three years of scraping by in this world, Shane knew the cost of living well.
One gold coin could be exchanged for 100 silver coins, and one silver coin for 100 copper coins. A loaf of black bread cost two copper coins, while even the most ordinary inn—the one where he was staying—charged 20 copper coins a night.
There had to be at least three or four pounds of mushrooms here.
He was going to be rich.
At last, he could pay off what he owed for his room and meals.
In an instant, Shane's dizziness and aching legs were forgotten. He threw himself into picking mushrooms with renewed vigor.
Creak—
The town gates slowly opened.
The morning mist hadn't quite lifted. The guards yawned as they made their way to the watch post at a sluggish pace.
Shane's grimy appearance gave the still-sleepy guards quite a scare.
After a few quick questions, the two of them were let through without trouble.
After a day and a night of dungeon adventures, Frieren was already nodding off. Shane practically dragged her back to the inn.
As soon as they stepped inside, the warm-hearted landlady came over, her chest swaying.
"Oh, Goddess be praised! Poor Shane, you must be exhausted."
But before she could get close, she spotted Frieren staggering along behind Shane.
"Wait, who's this?"
The beautiful white-haired elf girl, with her twin tails, was dozing as she leaned against Shane, like a white butterfly resting on a rose.
The landlady stared, dumbfounded.
"Um... she's an adventuring companion I met on the road. Ma'am, could you open another room for me? She needs to rest."
At the word "companion," the landlady's expression visibly fell. For a moment, even her carefully styled hair seemed to droop.
Whoosh—
After getting Frieren settled, Shane finally returned to his own room and plunged headfirst into the covers.
He was exhausted and desperately wanted to sleep for a while, but strangely, his mind was unusually alert, spinning at full speed.
He couldn't fall asleep at all.
He couldn't help recalling what had happened in the dungeon. A few things the hooded figure had said bothered him a lot. It seemed the other man had gone to great lengths to bring him here just to help humanity win the war against the Demon Race.
But hadn't the Demon King already been defeated?
Could the Demon Race revive the Slaughter War in the future, wipe out nine-tenths of humanity again, and start the war all over?
That would be bad.
More importantly, in those failed experiments, the blood and mangled limbs had left him deeply traumatized. He'd been summoned here by a magic array. Could there be side effects? What if the magic failed one day and he ended up as a heap of mangled flesh, too?
Shane shuddered.
"I remember the magical grimoire that madman kept analyzing and consulting was called Notes of Sage Aewich. In the original story, during the trip to the Holy Capital, Heiter asked Frieren to help decipher that book."
"I wonder if the one that got burned and the one Heiter has contain the same information."
The feeling of knowing nothing about his future and constantly worrying about being sacrificed and erased was simply too much to bear.
Shane hated it.
It looked like he needed to go see Heiter.
With that in mind, Shane made plans for what to do next.
"Wait, didn't I forget something else? What happened to my three shiny, legendary-tier traits?"
Before you continue