Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

Volume 4 - Ch 1.02

Thankfully, my Fire Storm manager to hit both of the Slow Rabbits properly, leaving only one of them left, and that one ended up heading towards Roxanne, since she was much closer to it than I was, and as expected, she was able to easily avoid any of its attempts at attacking her. Using both her Scimitar and her Wooden Shield, Roxanne pushed the Slow rabbit back away from her and more towards me, giving me more than enough space to fire another spell, Fireball this time, which hit it square in its exposed back, burning it in an explosion of flames.

Now that all three of the Slow Rabbits were finally dead, their corpses disappeared in a puff of green smoke, leaving behind their Rabbit Furs as Drop Items. . . no, wait just a goddamn second. . . . . hey, there are only two Rabbit Furs, even though we defeated all three of them and Rabbit Fur was supposed to be their common drop with almost one hundred percent drop chance? What the fu . . . . . . . . huh? No, hold up! Wait a minute! I think I see something. . . . . . yeah, my eyes were not playing tricks on me. Instead of a third piece of the Rabbit Fur, a small stone, or perhaps a Magic Crystal way lying some distance away from the place where the last Slow rabbit has fallen onto the ground. Upon closer examination, it looked like a small, shining pebble, similar to Magic Crystal, but at the same time somewhat different from it. What is this Drop Item, exactly? I have never seen something like that before.

Wow, you did it, master! You managed to find a Skill Crystal!

Before I could use Identify on this thing, Roxanne jumped in and offered me an explanation. Oh, so this is a Skill Crystal, huh? Then it is no wonder that I did not know what that it, since this is my first time acquiring it. Now that Roxanne finished her abrupt explanation, let us have a little look-see at this thing with my Identify, shall we?

Skill Crystal: Rabbit

Yup, Identify basically confirmed Roxannes words. This thing in my hand is most definitely a Skill Crystal. It is roughly of the same size as the Magic Crystal, so I would not be surprised if the people who do not possess Identify were mistaking one for the other. From what I have heard before, Skill Crystals are items that are used to grant various Skills to both weapons and equipment, as long as they have free Skill Slots in them. Or at least that is how it should be if I remember correctly.

So this is a Skill Crystal, huh? I have to say, it is a little hard to believe that something like that dropped from such a simple monster.

Yes, I agree. This is also my first time seeing a Skill Crystal in person.

First time seeing one in person? Then how did you know that this was a Skill Crystal, and not just another Magic Crystal?

Because I have heard a lot about them from various stories.

Heard about them from the stories? Is that literally all it takes to gain knowledge about things in this world, or is there something else that I am not noticing here? Well, now that I take a closer look at it from up close, I guess it kinda shines a little bit differently than a Magic Crystal and its color is different from the standard ones of the Magic Crystals (Black, Red, Purple, Blue , Green, Yellow and White) but is that really enough to tell the difference without seeing both of them at least once in your life so that you could compare them?

Is that so?

I felt like that was the best possible answer in this situation.

Thanks to masters amazing abilities we are able to defeat a lot of monsters in quick succession, so I thought that we are bound to happen upon one eventually, but the fact that we were able to obtain one so quickly makes me positively thrilled.

I guess that hunting for and obtaining Skill Crystals might just be the main reason why some Adventurers and Explorers enter the Labyrinths in the first place, huh? That is definitely something I am able to understand, because those things are bound to be a very rare drop that should sell for a very high price. How can I be so sure of that? Well, because ever since I have come to this world, all I was doing was essentially nothing but monster hunting, and after all this time, this is the very first Skill Crystal that I have managed to obtain.

That being said, even though we might be able to obtain a substantial amount of Nars if we sold that Skill Crystal, I do not think I am going to do that. Now that I have gotten my hands on one, I would definitely like to give it a try and see how it works on the equipment with the empty Skill slots.

Whenever I use Identify on a weapon or a piece of equipment, I sometimes see that it has an empty Skill Slot, but I wonder if the procedure of infusing them with Skill Crystals is really as simple as combining the two together in the same way that I fused two Magic crystals before?

According to all the information that Roxanne has shared with me before, more often than not, an attempt to fuse a Skill Crystal to a weapon or equipment usually ends in failure. Because of that, I think it would be safe to assume that weapons and equipment that have been successfully infused with them can be safely classified as rarein terms of rarity while the ones that come with empty Skill Slots on them have to be at least uncommon. However actually fusing the Skill Crystals with weapons and equipment is not that simple as it seems, because apparently you need someone with the Master Smith Job in order for the fusion to be successful. And as if that was not hard enough, only the members of the Dwarf race can become Master Smiths.

So, all things considered, I guess you could say that in this particular matter the odds are stacked pretty heavily against us with so many hurdles to surpass. I mean seriously, where will we even find a Dwarf with a Master Smith Job who would be willing to help us?

Ah! Eh. . . . EEEEEHHHH???!!!!

What is it, Roxanne?! What happened?!

I-It is about the color of Masters Magic Crystal! I. . . I do not know how I should explain it, but. . . but it changed its color! It was still green only a little while ago, but now it is already yellow!

Now that we have been done with our morning portion of the hunting on the seventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth and we returned home, Roxanne was making quite a fuss about the color of my Magic Crystal when she checked out on it during the post-Labyrinth equipment inspection. When I looked at it myself, I saw that it has indeed changed its color from green to yellow, becoming a Yellow Magic Crystal instead of a Green Magic Crystal.

Man, this might be the chance I was waiting for! According to my intel, Yellow Magic Crystals should sell for over a one hundred thousand Nars, and with so much money to our names, we should have the bare minimum of the funds required for me to buy myself a new slave, under the assumption that a Dwarven slave with a Master Smith Job is going to cost roughly the same amount of money that I paid for my ownership of Roxanne. In that case, I think we should pay a visit to the Slave Merchant in Vale as soon as possible.

Roxanne, I would like to go to vale with you this afternoon.

While we were eating breakfast, I decided to share my plans with Roxanne. If we are to visit Alan-san in his Slave Shop, then naturally I would prefer if Roxanne accompanied me during such an outing.

A visit to Vale, you say? Is this something that I can help you with, master?

I-I. . . . . . .. .. . . . I guess you could say that. You see, the thing is . . . . . . . . . I would like to visit Alan-san in his Slave Shop.

The Slave Shop? So it is about master buying a new slave so we could expand our Party like we discussed before?