Chapter 48 Dungeon clear and normal day of work
“Do we… Do we do anything else after we kill him?” I looked at the goblin king’s corpse as I looted the slain adventurers. It didn’t make sense to leave their equipment and money they had on them. “What do you mean?” Sophia asked. I clarified for her. “Do we get anything for killing him, like is there a chest in the cave with bonus loot, or perhaps the boss will turn into motes of light before changing into a weapon or something?”
Sarah laughed at my question before saying. “I’ve heard of dungeons offering loot, but a forest dungeon like that won’t. It’s the resources in the dungeon and the experience for killing the boss is why we’re here. Copper nodes don’t just respawn naturally, that’s the dungeon doing it… We can loot the goblin king’s core, though, that’s why we’re here after all.”
One of them got to work digging out the core while I counted the money the dead men had on them; shockingly, it wasn’t a lot. The four of them had eleven silver and about an equal amount of copper on them. “Why are they so poor?” Someone outside of my circle had to explain as Sophia looked at me, confused. “What do you mean? That’s a month's worth of funds to keep adventuring. We’ve had points where we had four coppers between the five of us.”
It put into perspective the insane amount of money I brought in. We were playing around with making a golem for the village that would cost dozens of gold, and these seasoned adventurers barely had a single gold between them. The five of them were here before I moved in as well, so this was the slow, tedious process of getting stronger that most adventurers dealt with.
Sophia went on to further explain. “It’s your damn food as well. It’s too tasty, we could get by with jerky before we tasted it, but after having a fruit salad, how the heck could we go back to eating bland meat day in and day out?” Yeah, I guess I didn’t have the full picture. I only saw how poor they were money-wise, I wasn’t counting the sets of armor and weapons they had on them, plus they said Sophia wastes most of their money as well.
I didn’t even know the village had somewhere to gamble, but that wasn’t something I wanted to get involved in. My luck was high, but I’d rather not push it on winning money and leave it available in case things like this happened. Seriously, what are the chances of us showing up the same day a group of adventurers is about to destroy the dungeon, the same exact time they plan on doing it, and they talked loud enough for us to hear their plans without us being seen beforehand?
“Well…It’s a bit disappointing that we don’t get any reward for clearing the dungeon. Since it’s only-.” I was cut off as a rockslide next to the cave entrance happened. The fighting had shaken the loose stones as it revealed the silver vein underneath. Everyone slowly turned to look at me as I could only smile back before chuckling, my luck playing another huge part in our reward as we mined the three bars worth of silver from the mountain.
With that, we could afford to upgrade both Silk and Tems' weapons, and it would not cause too big a dent in our funds.
…
I woke up that day, and it was the first day in the last week when it wasn’t snowing. I checked on my kids, made sure they were still in their crib and hadn’t escaped again, as well as that Tems hadn’t rolled off the second bed in the separate room. Without me to hold onto, Tems moved all over the bed. She wasn’t the only one to sleep in here and watch the children, though.
I walked outside and I knocked some of the icicles off in front of the door. I’d have to wait until everyone else woke up to clear the snow off the roof, and I didn’t want to wake them all up doing so. I grabbed my shovel and large bucket as I walked over to the well and filled the first one up. Walking over to the bird coop, I opened the door and let the chickens, ducks, and geese out to drink some water as I dumped some seed onto the ground.
After that, I made my way over to the barn where I shoveled off a little area in front of the door, just enough for them to eat some grass as I put some fodder down on top of it. Opening the gate, I see that the bull is the first to exit the building; he must have been upset being cooped up, but the difference of having a nice warm barn to sleep in instead of out in the open was slightly less freedom.
I got to work milking my cows and goats, as I couldn’t help but drink some of the warm milk right from the bucket before it cooled down. I wiped my forehead even though I didn’t have any sweat, so used to having it during the summer months that it became a habit I couldn’t shake. I started a small fire as I separated the goats' milk to be made into cheese for later. The cows’ milk will be sold outright when one of my wives wakes up, sets a portion aside for us, feeds our cats and dogs, then she’ll take the excess to sell.
It had been Cherry the past few days, but others have done it before in the past, even Tems. While I waited for the goat's milk to come up to a boil, I walked the tree line and shook all the built-up snow off the fruit trees. I plucked a few of the ripe frost strawberries and made myself a little flavored shake now that the cows' milk had cooled down. Now that I had most of my chores done for the day.
I sat waiting for the milk to boil as I stared into the forest, just enjoying the peaceful quiet that was broken up every few minutes as adventurers made their way into the dungeon. I finally pulled the boiling milk off the fire and dumped in the vinegar, the curds separated almost immediately as I stirred it in before putting it in a cheese cloth and letting it drain out back into a bucket. The whey can be used as a replacement for milk or water, but can also be boiled down to a powder that some people like.
My wives were all up, without much to do with the boss down, most went off to do their own thing in town, as they all had their own lives to live. Sarah helped around town, Silk and Tems took up guard duty when they had free time, and Cherry walked around greeting everyone as she shared some of our preserves we had stored to make the townsfolk happy.
My eye scanned the beehive, but there were still no signs of activity; there wouldn’t be until early spring. We still had a month and a few weeks of winter left. Silk would be giving birth a month or so into spring. Her pregnant belly grew bigger every day as she could do less and less. She had to limit herself because I would have her in bed right now doing nothing if it were up to me.
No signs of my other wives getting pregnant. It was both surprising and not at the same time. While I was having lots of sex, Cherry was half-elf, which made her less fertile, and Sarah liked my taste, so I often finished in her mouth instead. It was much more likely that Tems would get pregnant again over the other two; kobolds were a very fertile race that tended to have multiple children at once. Silk might also pop out more than just one baby, as she was a cat-dog beastkin.
I sighed as I enjoyed the day, until I looked over at all the stumps that were still in the ground. I grabbed my axe as it wasn’t the first time I thought about upgrading it to make it easier to cut the stumps out. My upgrades could wait until our cash flow was active again, until then. I was saving the rest of my money for emergencies.