“Wait, wait, wait. You want me to run a chain of stores through the familia, selling potions superior to the ones on the market at a cheaper price, but you cannot tell me the recipe, the production process, the trade routes, or how you are acquiring the ingredients?” Loki leaned back in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose. Just rephrasing everything she had heard was enough to make a migraine come on.

  “Pretty much.” Light scratched the back of her head with a forced smile, fully aware of how ridiculously one-sided this conversation was. She had basically told Loki, “Just trust me, bro.”

  For certain, if Light were on the receiving end instead of Loki, she would have kicked herself out of the room by now.

  “Hmmm. I get it now.” Loki suddenly jumped to her feet and smmed the desk between them, sending a few documents tumbling to the floor. “Did you hit your head or something? What makes you think I would agree to this?”

  “I do not expect you to work for nothing. I can also provide even stronger potions to make up for our familia’s ck of healers, such profits should compensate for the extra workload of running a few more stores.”

  Loki rolled her eyes and sat back down, her ears perking up upon hearing that Light had even stronger potions. With how much trouble her familia always seemed to walk into, having another safety net wasn’t something that could be ignored. However… “And I am guessing you cannot tell me where you are getting these other potions from either?”

  “Pretty much.” Light chuckled, shamelessly.

  Her ughter made Loki sigh in defeat. Repressing the urge to release another outburst.

  If this were anyone else proposing such a ridiculous business idea, Loki would have sent them packing. A business whose sole purpose was to make as little valis as possible and then donate whatever remained to local orphanages. Even that dumb shrimp Goddess would not do something like that.

  However, Loki would be lying if she said she was not intrigued by these so-called stronger potions. She was also curious about how Light pnned to obtain them. Did this girl, whose beauty surpassed even the gods, have connections that not even she could sniff out? Or was there something else at py?

  Loki’s gaze flickered down to Light’s status, the brown parchment resting on the desk where Light had pced it. Did she have some sort of skill even the falna could not detect? Was such a thing even possible?

  Either answer sent a thrill through Loki. Just when she thought she would be bored while all her children were down in the dungeon.

  “This is getting us nowhere.” Loki shook her head and strode across the room. Opening a drawer, she pulled out a stack of papers before returning to her chair. Once seated, she slid them across the desk. “These are the stores our familia owns but are not currently in use.”

  Loki then broke down the terms of their cooperation. Essentially, all Light had to do was provide the merchandise whenever necessary while Loki handled everything else.

  Light nodded, quickly realizing how favourable the terms were. It seemed Loki did not want her wasting time on anything that did not contribute to her growth. At least, that was how Light interpreted it.

  Light didn’t know if it was healing magic that contributed to this or the fact that she had the same skills as her familia’s ace and future ace. Either way, Goddess Loki obviously wanted to pave the way for her.

  The only condition Loki added was that Light had to prove the potions' effectiveness before she signed anything and got the ball rolling. Thankfully, that would be an easy task for Light.

  After having her potion analysed by Miach, she had gained a grounded understanding of how healing worked in this world. If a fifty HP potion could fully heal anyone Level Three and below, all she needed was a potion that provided twenty HP for lower-tier adventurers.

  At first, she tried diluting the potions to lower their effects, and it seemed to work, making her feel a brief sense of accomplishment. But just as she was getting into it, her system popped up and shattered her excitement.

  [Why do you not just reduce the dosage?]

  Unlike elixirs, which Light had grown accustomed to consuming, potions were not nearly as effective and required the entire container to be consumed to take effect.

  Such an obvious solution had been staring her in the face, yet she had overcomplicated things.

  So, after transferring the lower-dosage potions into her game, she let the console analyse it. Once confirmed that it had the intended effect, duplication became effortless.

  By pcing multiple potions into one container, transferring them to the game, creating a separate save file, and then extracting them, she could generate hundreds of potions in seconds.

  After pretending to retrieve the potions from her room, Light returned with the “samples” and handed them over to Loki for future testing.

  [Normally, adventurers are recommended to have a G rank in their main stats before entering the fifth floor. Are you sure you are not rushing things?]

  Hearing the concern in her system’s voice, Light shook her head while effortlessly dodging an incoming goblin attack. With a single flick of her wrist, the goblin lost its head courtesy of Light’s sword, its body colpsing unceremoniously to the floor.

  Scanning her surroundings and seeing the five other goblin corpses, Light sighed before beginning the process of extracting their monster cores. Thanks to the guild’s starter pack, she was using a separate knife intended for the job. While doing so, she couldn’t help but consider hiring a supporter to do this pain in the neck.

  “I wouldn’t rush things but, floor four can’t offer me a challenge anymore,” Light answered confidently. Thankfully, this was not just an infted ego but an accurate evaluation of the situation. Training in her domain had made the floor too easy for her.

  Although the monsters she fought had the same capabilities as their real-world counterparts, one could not underestimate the difference in efficiency. In her domain, monsters operated at full “efficiency”, especially in group fights. When more than one monster was summoned simultaneously, they acted with perfect coordination, their thoughts and movements synchronized as one.

  For Light to be able to fight nine goblins at the same time in such conditions, the fourth floor naturally felt ckluster. It had not even been a month since she arrived in this world, yet her combat experience was already on par with those who had been doing this for much longer.

  [As long as you are prepared.]

  Light nodded as she descended the stairs, embracing the dim green glow of the new floor’s environment. The cave-like tunnels, much like the st, carried a suffocating feeling, making one feel trapped. A moment ter, she heard a notification she had not seen in a while.

  [Sign-in location: Tower of Babel, Floor 5. Reward: System Status Function]

  Light raised an eyebrow expectantly. “Status.”

  Name: Light Ashford

  Race: Human?

  Main Css: Locked

  Sub Css – [Chef – Level 1(Next level 100 XP) ]

  Age: 0

  Level: Locked

  Stats: Locked

  Unallocated Experience points: 4,545

  Skills:

  Innate Skills: [Grade S: Fictional Exchange], [Grade S: Skill Book Creation], [Grade S: Innate Domain]

  Other Skills: [Grade SSS: Charm Negation], [Grade S: Fairy Cannon], [Grade B: Marksmanship Talent]

  Magic: [Grade A: Ariel], [Grade A: Avenger], [Grade SSS: Cleanse], [Grade B: Dia Panakeia]

  “That is incredibly unhelpful.” Light rolled her eyes. Just when she thought she had unlocked something useful, she was practically given a corrupted Excel document. Not to mention some of the skills were a completely different grade compared to her Danmachi status. “Should I even ask why that question mark is there? Let me guess, you cannot tell me?”

  [Requesting information… Information is cssified as restricted. Permission rejected.]

  “Shocker.” At least Light had finally learned why her Cooking development skill had remained at the same rank all this time. It would have been nice if her system had expined that she had been accumuting experience points with every kill and that they were just sitting there collecting dust. But compining would not change anything. Instead, she simply used most of her experience points in one go.

  [Chef Level 1 has been upgraded to Level 9.]

  As soon as she spent 4,500 experience points, the system notification resounded in her head once more. Additionally, a flood of cooking techniques and recipes was injected directly into her mind, and even her muscles seemed to be subtly adjusting to store the muscle memory necessary to best suit her new cooking ability.

  Light wasn’t sure what scale her system operated on, but if this level-up was anything to go by, it was far too powerful for Danmachi. Just by levelling up her subcss eight times, she had gone from a complete novice to an expert among experts. If she happened to come across a God of Culinary in this world, she doubted he would be able to match up.

  Maybe in his true form, he would be able to wipe the floor with her, but that would be comparing divine powers to mere technical ability. The deck would be far too one-sided to make it a fair match.

  The sheer amount of new information flooding her mind would take years to fully process. Many of the recipes were beyond anything from Earth, featuring ingredients she had never even heard of.

  Flexing her hand into a fist repeatedly, Light noticed the subtle change in her body. Although strange, it was not unpleasant. It felt as though she had taken a step closer to becoming who she was meant to be, whatever that meant.

  Unfortunately, she did not have the luxury of pondering such a nonsensical thought.

  Even at the entrance of the fifth floor, Light was forced to draw her sword and parry an incoming strike. At speeds far beyond those of goblins or kobolds, a being resembling a living shadow lunged at her from her blind spot, attempting to impale her.

  Thankfully, even with the system’s distraction, she had not forgotten where she was.

  “So this is a War Shadow, the ‘newbie killer,’” Light mused after parrying it’s cws and pushing the shadowy humanoid creature back, her gaze locked onto what appeared to be its single golden eye. “I can see why it is so feared. Its speed and habit of sneak attacks present quite a different challenge compared to the first four floors.”

  Despite this, Light smirked. “Thankfully, speed is also my forte… Tempest.”

  As green winds surged around her, she used the enchantment to reinforce her legs and charged forward, eclipsing the War Shadow’s most prized attribute as if rubbing salt into its wounds. If dungeon monsters were capable of emotion, no doubt the creature would have been offended by such a dispy.

  But whatever it felt, its fate was already sealed.

  Shifting the wind enchantment to her sword at the st moment, Light sshed through the monster’s torso with ease, cutting it cleanly in two. With endurance not being the War Shadow’s strong suit, the kill came effortlessly.

  Watching the monster fall, Light mused, “No wonder Ais finds it difficult to increase her stats now. Her wind enchantment is such a cheat code.”

  Afterward, Light downed an elixir to restore what little mana she had lost. An action that would have been a sp to the face depending on who saw it.

  On a new floor that Rose had warned her had an increased monster spawn rate, one could never be too careful. Light would rather be at her best than regret it ter.

  The next new enemy that crossed her path was the Frog Shooter. A disturbing creature with the body of a rge frog but with a single eye atop of its head. Its slimy tongue acted as a projectile, capable of being fired from its mouth at high speeds.

  Fortunately, its means of attack were not as complex as those of humanoid creatures, and its flexibility was much lower. Additionally, its tongue could only be shot in a straight line. Meaning that as long as one focused on where the frog was standing and aiming, predicting its attacks was simple.

  As for Light versus this new creature, once again, she proved to be its worst matchup. Zipping around the dungeon floor with Ariel, the Frog Shooter could not even reach her shadow. Unfortunately, its fat body made killing it in a single blow difficult. Which also proved retrieving its monster core was a messy and tiresome task.

  Despite how easily Light won her first two fights, the following hours were anything but straightforward. She had initially benefited from finding isoted monsters, but now she had to fight them in groups. Sometimes with the two species even cooperating.

  Keeping an eye out for both shadows and projectiles was mentally exhausting.

  After many fights, Light’s armour had been tested more times than she wished to admit. The disgusting saliva of the frogs had soaked her clothing, making her feel like she had been reborn in Konosuba. Meanwhile, the cws of the War Shadow had drawn blood on more than one occasion.

  Despite that, Light wore a rge, silly smile. Her system, hidden in her shadow, mentally noted that if the previous Light from Earth had seen her now, they would never believe she was the same person.