Chapter 1723 - 1020: Sain Cards

Today is Maru’s day off.

Because she’d been helping Leon train his body-that-turned-into-Ash for quite a while, everyone was completely exhausted in both body and mind, so they decided to have a three‑day mini vacation, and the Strategy Group officially went on break.

But even though it’s called a vacation, everyone from the Strategy Group is living together in the same mansion, so they’re seeing each other all day every day anyway. It kind of feels like they’re resting and yet not resting at all.

Drew went to drink with his fellow disciple Roger. Going by past experience, he might be able to "borrow" some materials produced by Pokemon from him, and maybe even just straight‑up bring back a Pokemon.

Tal went to the gym. It’s hard to imagine a half-beastman mutt like him still needing to go to a place like that, but supposedly the gym owner spent big money to hire adventurers who’d learned Gravity Magic in the Sain Dungeon to work as staff.

The adventurers’ job is to use Gravity Magic to create high‑gravity training rooms at twice, three times, even four times normal gravity for those muscleheads to work out in. They say this idea is about to take off in gyms across the entire continent.

Sain Dungeon really is changing the world.

As for Maru...

Unfortunately, even though she has her own social circle, at this particular moment she’s realized everyone is busy working, and she’s the only one left with nothing to do, bored out of her mind. Right now she’s wandering aimlessly around Lake Lienia.

Rather than being bored stiff, they might as well keep exploring the Dungeon!

"Speaking of which, why did I sneeze just now? Did I sleep badly last night?"

She rubbed her nose, and for some reason her intuition was telling her that her own captain Leon was probably up to some earth‑shattering, ghost‑crying, gods‑wailing new trick again.

Because from the very first day of vacation, that guy eagerly dove into Sain Dungeon and hasn’t shown his face once—now it’s already the third day!

What is Leon stirring up this time?

Don’t tell her he’s going to vanish for a while again, only to show up at the end with Sain Dungeon broadcasting city‑wide that he’s done XXX thing?

Maru has a lot of faith in her intuition, and even more faith in Leon’s ability to cause trouble.

"What the hell is the boss doing right now..."

At this moment, Leon is in the gathering hub, super‑intensely exploring the map. The exploration itself is the same as always: run into new, powerful Monsters, fight and maneuver against them, and in the end either win or lose; then stumble on new scenery, pick up new items, meet new people...

Looked at carefully, isn’t that experience super rich and colorful?

But since he hasn’t run into anything particularly impactful during all this, his subsequent exploration adventure in the hub is just like usual. Written down, it might have some interesting bits, but it’s mostly the normal stuff.

Maybe only when he runs into a Boss Monster or something will it really have impact—now that would be fun.

"So what am I supposed to do today...’"

Maru wobbled down the street, wandering aimlessly.

These days Academy Gate Town has been thoroughly remodeled by humans into a livable place. The area’s been expanded, the buildings extended, rows of structures in wildly different styles packed close together. There are even Warriors putting up buildings outside the safe zone, betting that the Monsters won’t dare try to force their way in.

Since way too many people want to invest here, the safe zone’s been expanded over and over and still can’t meet everyone’s needs. In the end people even set their sights on the Reyalucaria Magic Academy.

Because there aren’t many Monsters in there—if they could clear out all the Monsters inside...

Then Reyalucaria would become ours!

Apparently quite a few people are currently plotting this, though Maru has absolutely zero interest in it.

A lot of people she knows have settled down in Academy Gate Town, but it’s broad daylight on a workday right now, and hardly anyone’s just out wandering the streets like her, so she can’t find a single friend to drop in on.

Still, since Academy Gate Town is inside Sain Dungeon, and over half the people running the place are from the Yanor Kingdom, there’s no way they’d be short on entertainment.

"The Sain Dungeon one‑year anniversary card set is out, huh."

Maru stared at the sign of a toy shop by the road, sinking into thought, muttering to herself:

"Last time I bought a whole box of the Yanor Londo set and still didn’t pull a flash‑card Gwendolin. I’ve got a bit of pocket money today, should I take another gamble?"

"Bad luck, miss—the Yanor Londo sets on the market have all been bought up by Princess Serine. Rumor has it she pulled a shiny Ornstein. So enviable. Want to try some of the anniversary sets? There’s a chance to pull the new hidden cards." the shop owner inside said.

"Eh...." Maru’s eyes went wide as she let out a long, disappointed sigh.

Nobody knows which genius came up with it recently, but they actually decided to take all the things from Sain Dungeon—whether residual shadow characters, Monsters, or weapons—and print them onto cards to make booster packs for sale, under the name "Sain Cards."

Every booster pack has random cards inside, and they’re ranked as white, purple, gold, flash, shiny, and so on. The higher the Level, the lower the pull rate, and the higher the market price.

Rumor has it the value of a shiny card has already been hyped up to the point you can buy a small house with it. That’s honestly kind of terrifying.

Although these cards come with a carefully designed ruleset, the stores all advertise them with "collection value" as the selling point.