I Wrote Trash Novels to Level Up, Now Everyone Thinks I'm the Hero

Early dawn. Damp fog blanketed the muddy stone alley, casting a dull grey pall over the twelve Iron Blood assassins sprawled unconscious in the mud.

In the middle of the wreckage, Lucian crouched beside one of the mercenaries, hands moving briskly through coat pockets and trouser linings, carefully unclasping cheap magic rings and slipping loose coins into his leather pouch.

Clink. Clink.

The crisp sound of metal on metal cut through the quiet morning.

Lucian counted as he worked, running the balance sheet in his head.

Mana consumption cost: about three silver for recovery potions. Boot-sole wear from the acrobatics: half a silver. Recovered from eleven men: fourteen silver, thirty-two copper, and two bottom-tier mana-regen rings, 5% boost each.

Net profit: eleven silver and change. Pathetically thin. A margin that low was practically an insult to a former finance employee's intelligence.

"Master..."

A soft voice, thick with restrained emotion, spoke up from behind him.

Sylvia approached with slow, careful steps, her sapphire eyes fixed on Lucian's small back as he worked over the motionless bodies. Her silver ears drooped slightly, her gaze still unsettled from what she'd witnessed.

"You... you're searching for evidence of the slave trade network behind the Iron Blood Gang, aren't you? Looking for a list of the sites where my people are being held, so you can plan a rescue?"

Lucian kept stuffing mud-caked coins into his pouch without turning around, answering with complete indifference.

"No. I'm checking whether we have enough for breakfast. That place at the mouth of the alley charges highway robbery prices for a plate of buttered eggs on bread. If I don't scavenge to cover it, we're skipping breakfast this morning."

Sylvia froze for two full seconds, the corner of her mouth twitching.

But watching his small fingers, caked in mud, digging out coin after coin on her behalf, her archivist's heart automatically "translated" his words into something else entirely.

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He's hiding his care behind money again... He's willing to get the hands of a great noble house's heir dirty in the mud, just to guarantee a decent meal for an exile like me!

Lucian had no time to spare wondering what his beast-eared employee was tearing up about internally. He moved over to squad leader Krass, who lay unconscious against the wall, and reached into the lining of his coat.

His fingers hit something hard and coarse.

It wasn't gold. It was a map made from dried ancient beast-hide, its edges bound with threads of silver that gave off a faint fluorescent glow. At the top, embossed into the leather, was a crescent moon cradling a pair of silver wings — the crest of the Silver Moon Archive.

Ting!

The pale blue system panel flared to life in front of Lucian:

[Ancient Item Scan: 'Inverted Spatial Relic — Vael-Kharas Dungeon' navigation map detected.]

[Dungeon status: Completely untouched. No adventurer footprints, no Imperial intervention.]

[Danger rating: Tier 3 (Intermediate).]

[Estimated value of knowledge and ancient magical resources: EXTREMELY HIGH!]

Seeing the hide map in Lucian's hand, Sylvia's whole body trembled violently. She drew a deep breath and dropped to her knees on the cold stone.

"That... that's the map to the Tomb of Elder Vael — the first archivist of my clan! Where the original founding texts of the entire Silver Dialect system were laid to rest!"

She lifted her tear-streaked face to Lucian and bowed her head, pleading.

"Master, please, take me there! The Iron Blood miners must have dug straight into the relic's entrance to have stolen this map. If you help me recover our Elder's remains, I swear I will help you decode every spatial trap within, and unlock every vault of ancient knowledge sealed inside!"

Lucian studied the map carefully.

In this world, ancient dungeons weren't ordinary stone caves. They were called Inverted Dungeons — pre-war cities or sacred sites buried upside-down within hollow geological layers, where the laws of physics and space itself had been turned inside out.

They were priceless vaults of magical technology that this era's civilization had never even glimpsed.

For one unnerving moment, Sylvia wondered whether any of this had truly been accidental. The auction, the contract, the ambush, now the map—too many pieces had fallen in his favor. She looked at Lucian again, no longer certain where coincidence ended and planning began.

Lucian looked at the glowing map in his hand, then at the dungeon's marked location — deep in the forest straddling the border between Oakhaven and Imperial territory, a lawless grey zone outside any government's reach.

The corner of the ten-year-old's mouth slowly curved into a bright, delighted smile, his dark eyes shining with undisguised financial greed.

"An ancient dungeon, unregistered with any government..."

Lucian folded the map, tucked it into his spatial ring, and dusted himself off as he stood.

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