What Do You Mean There Are Other Transmigrators In My Harem Fantasy?

We went to the knight outpost the next morning and found that aside from us, there were four other parties excluding the party that challenged us yesterday that would be participating in the new expedition.

As the other knight had told us, they had indeed raised the prices they were buying the Mana Crystals to two times the market price and it looks like even the city lord was getting involved.

I’m guessing the knight captain had a meeting with the people running this city and told them how serious it was because we were told that the knights were granted permission to mobilise all their resources to deal with the situation.

So ironically, instead of just sending individual parties and letting them move in the Dungeon to deal with monsters one by one, it’s turning into a massive raid party instead.

Which is why there’s a small army of people gathered here right now alongside us.

The Knight Captain stood at the front of the group and nodded at all of us in greeting.

“Thank you all for coming here again. I believe my subordinate has already relayed the new plans to all of you earlier. We will be attacking the Dungeon as a single raid party this time and we shall be fighting in a defensive formation to clear out the monsters.”

He then outlined the plan and I realised this was a common tactic the people of this World used to deal with a problem like this.

When a Dungeon is in danger of a breakout and there weren’t sufficiently strong enough Dungeoneers around to clear it, they would resort to using such defensive tactics to clear out the Dungeon.

How it worked was that instead of going around hunting monsters, they would set up a defensive position and then have scouts go out to lure the monsters towards the formation to force the monsters to fight at a position disadvantageous to them.

That way, even if the monster was stronger than the individuals within the formation, they could still defeat it with minimal casualties and the expedition will be fighting battles on our terms instead of the Dungeon’s.

And if the Dungeon was the type that featured open spaces like this one, they would actually bring along building materials and construct a fort inside the Dungeon itself.

I learned later that the Dungeon would eventually ‘consume’ these fortifications by breaking them down after a while so you wouldn’t be able to build a permanent fortification. But they would at least remain for a few days before the process happens.

If necessary, they would also use these temporary forts outside the Dungeon in case a Dungeon break was unavoidable.

Thus, there were techniques and prefabs that were designed to be easy to both set up and tear down in a short amount of time.

To think that there was an entire industry and technology designed to deal with such a disaster was pretty cool to be honest.

I guess for me, this was something that I was only experiencing for the first time but this was something that the people of this World had experienced and learned to deal with over decades and maybe centuries.

The Knight Captain turned towards us Dungeoneers to address us, “My men would be setting up a fort to create a defensive position so I would have to trouble all of you to first look for a suitable position to set up to begin with. My scouts will be handling the scouting so I just need you all to protect the scouts. Then after that, we’ll need you to defend the position while they set it up before helping us lure the monsters back to the fortification so that we can start clearing out the numbers. Could I ask that from you?”

All of us let out voices of agreement.

“Very well. We will set off immediately and we’ll do another briefing once we are in the Dungeon. Squad leaders, take over.”

He saluted and the knights returned his salute while we just dispersed and made our way towards the Dungeon.

Yesterday when our first expedition set out, it looked more like a mob of people simply leaving the city so I didn’t really feel anything about it. But for this expedition, we were following an entire knight battalion as they marched through the streets of the city and through the city gates.

I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel cool to be a part of this raid force.

And apparently news about this raid had spread to the people around because the locals we passed by all shouted well wishes at us, mostly just wishing us good luck and to return safely.

That was nice too.

We reached the entrance of the Dungeon and it looks like they had been fortifying this place overnight as well. There were already walls erected and the tent that housed the Guild staff was no longer there.

Instead of the tent, a more solid looking wooden shack now stood there, allowing supplies and equipment to be stored there.

The Knight Captain once again briefed us to go over the plan once more to make sure everyone remembered our roles before we lined up together to start descending into the Dungeon as one group so we won’t be separated.

Us Dungeoneers headed in first and we just so happened to be behind the female Dungeoneer party that challenged us yesterday, the leader moving to the back of their formation to talk to me.

“Miss Aster,” She greeted.

“Hello. Err… I never got your name,” I greeted back.

“That’s because I never introduced myself, my mistake. I am Sharille Mobass, leader of the Twilight Moons party. Pleased to meet you.”

A family name? That means she’s a noble or at least part of a noble family.

I curtsied, “Well met, Miss Sharille. You already know but I am Aster, leader of the White Dragon’s Sword Maidens.”

“There’s no need to be so formal with me, Miss Aster. I’m just here to tell your party that the challenge is still on if you are all up for it. We’ll be tasked to clear out monsters and to lure monsters back to the fortification and we’re allowed to claim any monsters we kill during this expedition. So we can still go ahead with the original rules that we agreed on, how about that?”

I turned back to look at my girls and they all had a look of determination on their faces so I interpreted it as their way of saying they also want to compete.

Speaking of which, we told Emilia about this when she returned from making us a lot of money yesterday and she was also in agreement about the competition, though she bemoaned about us not extorting them for more money before that.

Unfortunately, she did return with bad news with regards to the Grey Walker situation as she mentioned that if we wanted to teleport to Frostiminir Kingdom, there was a month-long waiting time as they were booked for the rest of the month.

The good thing was that we could either pay a premium to skip ahead of the line or try our luck at another Grey Walker guild branch to see if they had a shorter waiting time.

That threw a small wrench in our plans but it’s not something that can’t be dealt with anyway so it’s not that big of a deal.

Anyway, I turned back to Sharille and nodded at her, “I suppose my party members are still interested in the challenge. Although I do have a question though…”

She tilted her head slightly at me, “Oh? Please do ask.”

“How are we keeping track of the Mana Crystals? And how would we know that you don’t already have Mana Crystals on hand that you are planning to pass off as Mana Crystals you acquired in that Dungeon?”

The only reason why I’m asking is because… Well… I have a whole ton of Mana Crystals in my Bangle right now…

She paused to think for a moment, “You have a point… I suppose we should make an additional rule then… Since we are fighting defensively this time, how about we add in the rule that we have to bring back the head of the monster we defeated alongside the Mana Crystal we dug out? The knights would want to buy them anyway and we could just have them watch over the monster heads as our prizes to be sold as materials too. What do you think?”

I turned back to look at my girls once again and they all gave me the look that I’ve started to become quite familiar with where they’re indicating they’re leaving it up to me.

Guess that settles it then.

“We accept the conditions,” I decided, sticking out my hand.

She grasped it and we shook to cement the agreement officially.

She then turned back to move back to the front of her party right as they started walking down the stairs with us following close behind them.

Right, time for us to get to work… Challenge or not, we’re also here to make some money~