“Ah!” James took off a few yards down the path they’d come from with a girlish shriek, convinced the tunnel was going to come down on his head. It would seem that his aggression toward Merrick wasn’t just due to jealously and he had a very real fear of cave-ins.

  While this set off a whole new round of bickering, Merrick was busy making sure he kept the trowel aligned with the non-existent seam that would have run along the otherwise solid looking boulder where the triangle shape appeared. Sure enough, his implement of mass reduction plunged straight into solid rock as if it were loose mud and he was able to jiggle his tool back and forth to carve a straight line in the rock.

  After repeating the process on the remaining two sides, Merrick found himself at a loss. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to pry the now theoretically loose triangular stone away from the similarly sized hole it was flush with. Pushing it forward could crush anything laying behind it, or potentially even push a hidden button and trigger a trap.

  “Why don’t you suck it out, wall licker.” James’ response after Merrick voiced his problem almost made him sad he was fleeing the Stronghold. He wouldn’t be able to see the look on James’ face when he told him was going to stop trading literal alchemical solutions for his carved sticks. The difference between James’ personality one on one and in a stressful, group setting was night and day for Merrick.

  “If only we had a rogue in our party, pretty sure every one I’ve ever partied with has had those silly suction cups in their kit. Had the same line every time, ‘Never know when there is going to be a wall that needs to be scaled.” Rod started rummaging through his hunter’s kit, setting things down one at a time trying to find any tool that could help.

  “More like ‘there's always a lady’s bedroom window to be peeped through’. I’ve been reapplying grease to my walls monthly since the last incident. Did you know there's even a group of people who sell the anti-peeping measure as a weather proofing service?” Mary spat.

  “It probably wasn’t even a real pervert, just someone working for the greasers to drum up service calls.” James had slowly walked back to the group but he occasionally shot weary glances at the ceiling. The idea of loot seemed to beacon him back over against his greater survival instincts.

  “Weird that you’d jump straight to defending a pervert, James. Almost like-”

  “That's it! Pass me that fishing line, Rod!” Merrick unintentionally cut off the insult as he grabbed for a spool of line Rod just tossed onto the tunnel floor.

  Fishing line in hand, Merrick pulled out a length of line thrice the length of his trowel and pushed it against the blade of said tool. Then, careful not to dislodge the string, he pushed the trowel back into the one of the top most slits that made up the triangle, once he was hilt deep, he grabbed both ends of string and shimmied the line until half of it crested the top of the triangle and started flossing it down until it was roughly half way down on either side.

  He pulled out his trowel and then, with a slow pull as to not to snap the string, slowly pulled on the fishing line. The pyramid of otherwise solid stone slid out cleanly, much like a clogged pipe being flushed clean. As the stone landed between Merrick’s feet, a powerful floral scent began drifting through the tunnel.

  “Woah, I don’t think anyone has ever found an Everdew Bell this shallow in the dungeon, or a twinned growth at any level for that matter.” Mary leaned forward, recognizing the flowers within the now open crevice as a natural treasure occasionally popped up at local auctions.

  The flowers, of which there were two, looked every bit of a normal flower were it not for the fact that they appeared to be growing on top of solid stone. They both appeared to be growing out of the same base and rather than penetrating the rock beneath them, their roots were growing down the side of the rock and intertwining with roots that most likely lead to the barren honeysuckle that had tipped them off.

  “Oh! Perfect, we can leave right now and sell them to split. I can buy plenty of quality fletching materials with my split and still have time to join Mary for dinner.” James’ rapid mood shift once again sent Merrick reeling.

  “Nope. ‘S not up for a split, unfortunately. All three of us bypassed the loot and you actively refused to investigate since you were afraid of a cave in.” Rod shut James down immediately. He had no personal need for coinage and could tell by the way Mary was gingerly coaxing the flowers to lift their roots.

  He may not know exactly what they did, but the fact that Mary could identify them at a glance and the look in her eyes told Rod they were something good. If they were sold at auction, she’d not have a chance to buy them for sure. If he managed to successfully argue that they all belonged to Merrick on the other hand, well that was a different story. Big brother Merrick was plenty clever when it came to skill acquisition, surely he couldn’t be completely oblivious to Mary’s affections.

  Mary, with a slight frown on her face after successfully removing the purple cup-shaped flowers from the crevice, let out a sigh before agreeing with Rod. By all rights James, Rod, and herself had wanted to keep moving along. It was only after they’d been convinced by Merrick that something was wrong with the cave-in that they slowed their advance and were able to discover the hidden loot.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “But hidden caches of loot are always split by the rogue, that's common delving courtesy.” James pushed on the attack.

  “But this wasn’t a cache of loot, it was a couple flowers growing that Merrick managed to find. Falls under the same rule as those branches you’ve been picking up with no intention to share.” Rod countered while putting James’ argument in check.

  “He wouldn’t have been able to get them out if it weren’t for your supplies, and would have surely mangled them trying to harvest them without Mary’s assistance!” James was unwilling to give up and called in his backup pieces.

  “I still don’t see what that has to do with giving you a share, doubly so since you not only tried to discourage him from attempting to excavate them but also threw insults at him while he was working hard to harvest his fairly found goods.” Rod savagely knocked his arguments to the side. “Besides, he only borrowed some fishing line from me. Didn’t even cut it off the spool, it’d be downright greedy for me to try and leverage that into a loot share.” James swiftly found himself in check once again.

  “I also wouldn’t feel right trying to take a split of the Bells. I already offered my services for harvesting plants when we were in the landing zone. Nobody would ever want to let a druid do their harvest if they charged such a massive tithe and it’d be a shame to see so many natural treasures have their effectiveness drop by botched harvests.” It was obvious Mary was reluctant to part with the flowers.

  Rod and James may not know the specifics of the everdew bell, but Mary and Merrick had amplifying information on it as it was suited to both of their chosen professions. The violet flower, shaped like an upside down bronze bell one would find in a bell tower, was a peculiar natural treasure. Given enough magicka, either directly or via siphoning nearby flora, the flower would generate a potent nectar to be harvested.

  Said everdew nectar had a myriad of uses, but was notable for its ability to occasionally increase the potency of any herbs that were watered with a diluted solution of it. It was also useful for alchemists because, as with most energy dense liquids, it made for a powerful base when it came to potion making. The energy was rich and mostly neutral and could be used for healing concoctions and poisons alike.

  “Are you able to separate them without damaging them?” Merrick finally weighed in, also with a slight frown on his face and a furrowed brow. As far as splitting the loot went, he was mostly in the dungeon to collect experimental materials to use while his caravan was on the road in the following days. He didn’t really care if he stepped on any toes by accepting the both of the flowers as Rod and Mary obviously intended. A burned bridge or two hardly mattered when he was looking to change his entire identity and never look back.

  Namely, he was attempting to find dungeon spawned materials that were copies of each other in order to determine if the SIM present in his [Skill Log] stood for Simulacrum. As good as the coin might turn out to be, they’d only be able to get around 20 percent of the value at an auction house and there was no chance an auction would occur and conclude before he was due to leave the Stronghold in roughly 12 hours.

  He also knew that the proceeds from both flowers wouldn’t even come close to covering the many debts he’d incurred from his once-sponsors. There might have been a chance if it weren’t for the interest on said loans. He cursed his past self for agreeing to such predatory loans, as well as whatever twisted devil came up with the idea for compound interest. Had he been successful with his Merge skill, he still likely would have ended up under the thumb of a noble house due to the loans. So selling the flowers was out of the question for him.

  As far as trying to Merge the flowers went, it was a no go for him. For the same reason he had never experimented on Enchanted items, he wouldn’t start on natural treasures either until he had some measure of success. It was far too cost prohibitive. Even if he was willing to, however, there were only two of the flowers and his skill needed at least 3 items to combine. He’d be sorely tempted if he found three of them, but they only popped up once or twice a year in the first place. He wasn’t likely to find a third.

  He could just try to keep both of them to himself, but he feared there was a good chance they’d be warped by the Nexus Portal the following day and it would be far too wasteful to destroy them both at the same time. On top of that, a single bell was energy intensive to maintain and grow, two might even bankrupt him before they started to have any returns.

  Instead, when Mary handed him two cleanly separated Everdew bells, he handed one back with no hesitation. It was far, far better to invest in goodwill just in case there were more treasures found that day. The apogee was set to start in less than 12 hours after all, it was the season of dungeon based miracles and he wanted to make sure he kept the favorable loot split.

  - - - - -

  With wide eyes, Mary accepted the radiant purple flower from Merrick. She did her utmost to stop tears from welling up in her eyes and she carefully stored the plant to preserve its life and ensure a smooth potting later and then helped Merrick to do the same. The brute was obviously used to chopping plants up for potions and had no idea how to ensure they survived a transplant.

  What Merrick didn’t know, what nobody other than she and her father knew, was that she was able to feel a symbolic link between plants. Her innate skill, one that she shared with her father, allowed to know what plants grew best or worst together, allowing them to adjust an herbal garden to get a multiplicative increase in efficiency from their plants.

  Ignoring the fact that this would allow her to create an herbal array that would not only not drain her precious plants’ vitality to energize the Everdew bell but boost its efficiency while also benefiting all plants used in said array, the gift of this flower had an even deeper impact for her.

  She could see that the two bells were so strongly linked that she didn’t think any level of distance from each other would ever stop them from sharing a singular energy body. So long as one thrived so would the other. She couldn’t help but feel like it was further proof of her fate being entwined with Merrick’s, an inexplicable feeling she’d had since she first set eyes on him years ago.

  She decided to finally shed the last of her reservations and show the dense man that she meant business. Now that they were done packing away the bells, she stood up on her tippy toes and planted a kiss on Merrick’s lips, with her arms wrapped around his neck.