"Are we leaving now?!" Gunner asked with excitement.
Darius chuckled. "That's right. Let's get a move on before that Caesar fellow descends to berate us for wasting time."
Gunner scoffed coldly and stood behind Darius, like the perfect bodyguard that he was. Darius himself simply used one of his newly acquired Journeyman spatial spells, Group Teleportation.
[Group Teleportation - Level 1 Spell
Grade: Intermediate
Cost: 10 MP
Description: Control the flow of space around you to transport yourself and a maximum of 5 other targets from one location to another instantly. The maximum distance is 100 meters.]
As could be seen, this spell was much better than Blink, which had only allowed him to teleport 100 meters at level 10. This likely meant that the base distance for the actual Group Teleportation spell had been 20 meters, but the elitist Transmutation ability had bumped it to 100.
If Darius upgraded it further, who knew how far it could go!
The duo disappeared from the Divine Glade as they entered the Plains of the Green. They were still in the midst of the very forest that Darius had spent that first day in, displaying how inept he had been at outside survival as a former merchant.
Instead of continuing the Group Teleportation to their destination, Darius only did it once. After all, he and Gunner had spent the majority of their time in the Divine Glade, so even if they could reach their destination in minutes, they still preferred to have a walk and see the world after 5 years.
The duo walked calmly through the forest, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the ambient sounds of wildlife all around them. Gunner moreso than Darius due to how close the Earth element was to the nature one.
In fact, they were part of one family under Gaia, which was the Earth, Nature, and Life elements. Darius just liked the aesthetic, but wasn't too pulled into it. Right now, he was staring at a map in his hands.
Soon a prompt came before him.
[Detected a map. Add to World Map and mark the target location?]
"Please do." Darius confirmed with a smile.
Of course, he wouldn't say no. In fact, he had done this many times over the past five years. This was due to an idea he had gotten all the way back when he had visited the Polivar Treasure House.
Back then, he had appraised some items for the Oliver Frenq fellow and one of them was a key to a chest that held a map to a dungeon on the northeast.
In conjunction with Transmutation rule #4, it beautifully meant that he could transmute anything that exists in Faust, so he had successfully tried to make treasure maps.
He had made many over the years for variable costs. Some were on Fallon, some on Unyris, and the other continents. Even on Fallon, although there were very few that were near Darius' location, most of them being located towards the south which was more abundant with resources.
However, Darius was less interested in such treasures currently and more interested in a single target, that map leading to an undiscovered dungeon!
Why did this take priority over treasures that could possibly be on the same tier as the Bowl of Nuwa? Well, it was because Darius had technically defected from the Andrato Kingdom, though one could argue that he had never truly been a part of it.
As such, he had two choices! Either join another kingdom or empire then use his Charisma as well as his power to gain social resources, or create his own territory!
Bluntly speaking, there were more pros to joining an established power and rising through the ranks than making his own territory.
However, this was something a person who transmigrated from Earth would never budge on, no matter how clever!
Once a person transmigrated, they would eventually step on the path of building their own powers and territory one way or another, especially if they had a certain amount of power.
Earthlings valued free will and intelligent utilization of the social contract. 10/10 times, an earthling transported to a backwards world - like those focused on cultivation or medieval European worlds - would be disgusted by the backward governance, poor socio-economic policies, and classist laws, striving to make a place similar to the standards of earth.
Even Darius had not been different, shaking his head at the shitty standards on Fallon continent's various kingdoms and empires. Only Gravitas deserved some inkling of his respect, yet their Foreign Policy was utter garbage.
However, to kickstart a territory on Fallon Continent and attract settlers, one needed to have a dungeon nearby!
It was imperative and crucial, otherwise how could settlers secure a place to extract resources?
How could the budding territory secure a means to expand if it was out in the middle of nowhere? There absolutely has to be something of value nearby, and a dungeon was the best possible kind.
After all, although Transmutation had helped him create heaps of resources to kickstart an explosive growth period, his 100 CP alone was a hard limit, making it impossible for him to cover everything on his own.
Of course, the type and grade of a dungeon were also important. Types of dungeons were already known, as they were separated by element. However, Darius had learned that dungeons had grades too!
A Basic Dungeon had only 3 floors. An Intermediate Dungeon had 5 floors. An Advanced Dungeon had 7 Floors. A Master Dungeon had 10 Floors. Finally, a Grandmaster Dungeon had a whopping 15 floors!
All types existed on Fallon, and many had been claimed. The top 10 kingdoms and empires had Grandmaster dungeons in their capital, and Master dungeons in all their cities.
Kingdoms and empires in the top 100 had at least one Master Dungeon in their capital and Advanced Dungeons in their other cities.
Those closer to the top 20 had even more than one Master Dungeon.
The rest of the kingdoms and empires had at least an Advanced Dungeon in their capital and Intermediate Dungeons in their cities.
Then there was poor Andrato, which had 5 Intermediate Dungeons including the one in the capital and 20 Basic Dungeons.
When such a comparison was made, it made a little more sense as to why all the others looked down on this fledgling kingdom.
