The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

The next second, ten thousand glowing crystals were separated from the main pile.

’Now make me a spatial ring that has enough space to basically hold all of these crystals.’

A moment later, a silver spatial ring was forged and sent out of the dungeon right onto his palm. He used the ring and absorbed all ten thousand mana crystals into it.

He then made a second spatial ring and stored another ten thousand crystals into that one.

With both rings secured, he used a Dungeon Door to appear directly inside Roderick’s private room in the Capital.

Roderick, who had always been an early bird, was already awake and sitting at his desk. When Adrian suddenly appeared out of thin air, Roderick instantly went on high alert, his hand reaching for a weapon before he realized who it was and relaxed.

He brought a hand to his chest and sighed.

”Can you please stop doing this? It is bad for my health.... I am growing old.”

Adrian just shrugged. ”This was important.”

He walked over, took out one of the two rings he had, and tossed it to Roderick.

”Look at it and tell me exactly how much you are willing to pay.”

Roderick caught the ring. He channeled a bit of mana and emptied the spatial ring’s contents onto the center of his massive rug.

When he looked at the massive pile of glowing mana crystals, he couldn’t help but stare at it in shock. He reached down and picked up one of the crystals, inspecting it closely in the morning light.

”Wow,” Roderick breathed. ”This is top quality.”

Adrian nodded but didn’t say anything.

He already knew that. The system basically classified those specific mana crystals as F-rank, but compared to the regular mana crystals that Roderick could get from his own crystal mines, these were on a completely different level of quality.

The so-called ’top-grade’ mana crystals that Roderick was used to seeing only held around ninety-five mana per crystal due to natural impurities. They weren’t exactly what Adrian would consider perfect.

But the mana crystals that Adrian’s dungeon produced were basically the absolute best that could ever exist.

The reason was pretty simple. The maximum natural mana capacity of a standard F-rank crystal was similar to the capacity of a first-circle mage. The hard limit for both was exactly one hundred mana.

And every single one of Adrian’s dungeon-forged crystals held exactly one hundred mana without a single drop of impurity.

Roderick inspected a bunch of them closely before looking up at Adrian.

”They are all completely identical. Almost like they are perfect clones. Where did you even find these?”

Adrian just looked down at Roderick. ”Trade secret.”

Roderick let out a sigh. ”Okay. How much do you want for them?”

Adrian thought about it for a few seconds. ”Well, what is the market price right now?”

”Thanks to the stuff that happened between us, the other kingdoms are making their moves,” Roderick explained. ”You already absorbed the Avarice Kingdom and the Ironhold Kingdom. While Avarice was an annoying thorn for us, Ironhold was pretty passive. They only caused a little bit of trouble, so we mostly ignored them.”

He put the crystal back onto the pile.

”But there are four other kingdoms on the other sides. You have only been exposed to the eastern kingdoms which are the ones currently under you right now. On the north, there is nothing but the deep forrest filled with monsters and now, even those monsters have stopped attacking. But on the south and on the west, we do have kingdoms who are ready to pounce at a moment’s weakness. And they have smelled weakness.”

Roderick rubbed his temples.

”There are three kingdoms on the south, and one massive kingdom on the west. Generally speaking, the kingdom on the west is actually much bigger compared to the three individual kingdoms on the south. If I need to give you a rough estimate, two of the kingdoms in the south combined is roughly equivalent to the single one on the west. Well... why am I even explaining this to you when you grew up in the south?” He said and shook his head slightly.

Listening to this, Adrian just nodded as he ignored Roderick’s comment. ”Okay. What about the southern kingdoms compared to you guys in Crestwall?”

”Well, we are about five times stronger than them,” Roderick said. ”We used to be around seven times stronger, but now we are only about five times stronger thanks to you. But it is not that big of an issue. We did not really lose any of our main soldiers since you let us keep the armies, but we did lose a few powerful individuals. For example, Vaneira’s general. He should probably be in your empire right now. I’ve received news that he wishes to swear an oath to be your knight.”

Adrian nodded. ”Okay. So right now you are still in a position where you can safely overpower them.”

”Well, not exactly,” Roderick sighed. ”Since we went with a managed system where the power is distributed amongst the nobles, it is hard to unify everyone quickly. We are only five times stronger than them if we actually unify everyone and take them all to war at the same time, which is not exactly convenient. Before, we could still manage somehow since the southern kingdoms had their own internal issues and fights. But now that they smelled weakness... considering how Crestwall has been weakened and your empire is still newly emerging, they might target either of us.”

Adrian nodded again. ”Well, I will leave that to you then. I am pretty sure you can handle that.”

Roderick just looked at him and sighed.

Before Roderick could say anything else, Adrian spoke up. ”Yeah, well, you did tell me about the war situation. But what about the actual price of these crystals?”

”Almost two years ago, the market price was around one hundred gold coins per crystal, but desperate people were ready to buy it for two hundred.”