Chapter 619: Thief Crying Thief

Around the same time Verdell and Valerie made their exit from the city with great fanfare, somewhere within the sewer system not too far away from the two, a group of adventurers covered in filth emerged from a secret side channel that had been covered up just seconds earlier.

"What are we supposed to do now?! Not only did we end up losing the crystal bunny to some bulky lady warrior and her tag along dwarf, but we won’t be able to enter any of the cities within the northern frontier for the foreseeable future- no, not just the northern frontier. Even beyond it, we might have some difficulties."

"I know that much! Originally, it might have been worth it, but as you said, we didn’t even get the crystal bunny. Meaning there is no way we can go through with our original plan for pulling out of the northern frontier, its simply far too expensive..."

"Haaa... How troublesome... I swear if I ever find out where those two are, I will-

"Calm down! We need to focus! It won’t take long before this little hideout is discovered..."

And along with their emergence, the sound of their complaints could be heard throughout the sewer, as the leader of the group was forced to step in to calm everyone down. Knowing that their time was limited.

Sure, they might have managed to just barely shake off the adventurers who had been chasing after them thanks to their already prepared escape route, but it wouldn’t be long before they managed to sniff them out.

Originally, they had intended to use an expensive teleportation scroll, a rare magical scroll that could teleport someone or in some cases, a group of people a certain distance depending on the quality of the scroll itself.

But... Without the crystal bunny, using something expensive like a teleportation scroll no longer seemed worth it.

After all, while the teleportation scroll in their hands was only a relatively simple one that took a group between 5 and 20 people depending on the race and size of the people involved, around 200 kilometers in a straight line from the original location, teleportation scrolls were expensive.

Expensive to the point where they would have never thought about buying one on their own, as the one currently in their hands had been obtained through sheer luck in the past when they had been exploring an ancient ruin deep inside a crystal tree forest that should have been left behind when some kingdom or other faction attempted to expand into the northern frontier like the Adventurers Guild was currently attempting.

Even at the worst price, it would go for at least 10.000 gold, while expensive could make it go for around 20.000 gold if not more.

The only reason why they were willing to use something that expensive was because it would allow them to get their hands on something far more worthwhile than just this bit of gold.

Sold through the guild, a crystal bunny could fetch between 100.000 and 200.000 gold depending on its condition, while selling it to a powerful adventurer could have the other party assist them with future class advancement.

Of course, the assistance of an SS Rank Adventurer wasn’t the reason they wanted to obtain the crystal bunny, but instead because they knew selling it to the right noble could easily make the value of the crystal bunny jump all the way from 200.000 gold that the guild offered for pristine quality, all the way up to 500.000 gold in a best-case scenario.

With that in mind, using a teleportation scroll didn’t seem that wasteful.

Alas, things were not meant to be between them and the crystal bunny, and it had already vanished alongside the damnable thieves that had stolen it from right under their noses. Meaning that it no longer seemed worth it to use the teleportation scroll to escape from the northern frontier.

At the very least, if they sold the teleportation scroll, they would be able to recoup the losses they had ended up suffering from the countless traps they had set up throughout the crystal tree forest in a way to ensure the crystal bunny didn’t escape and also to make their own escape easier.

"How about we lay low at the pawnshop for a bit? The owner is my cousin, and he should be able to hide us." As the group had fallen silent to ponder over their predicament and what to do next, one of the adventurers who had just finished wiping his face clean spoke up. Drawing the attention of the rest as he continued, "the pawnshop is in an isolated part of the city and rarely sees a lot of traffic. Hiding there won’t be hard and after a month or two, it should be fine for us to start moving about again if we keep our heads low and don’t draw any unwanted attention."

"Hm... Good idea, we would be able to save the teleportation scroll this way. Lead the way, we will go and see how the situation is there. In any case, we can’t stay in this place for long." Nodding his head in response to this suggestion, the leader of the group signaled for the man to take the leader, something the other party happily agreed to. Wanting nothing more than to get out of the sewers as fast as possible and take a shower.

The rest weren’t much different from him, as they similarly also wanted to get out of the sewer and get a shower to clean themselves up after the horrible situation, they had gone through to crawl into this place in the first place.

After all, the entry point into a sewer from outside a city was far from clean. Especially one where the normal slimes that would clean up the place couldn’t survive outside of special facilities within the cold climate of the northern frontier. Facilities that couldn’t be placed below the city and had to be placed outside the city boundaries because of the... Smell that surrounded them.

The only positive was that these unique facilities only held slimes so weak that even the local monsters didn’t bother with them...