Weed walks down the streets of Rhodium, deep in thought. Until now, the previous quests in the Last-Sculpting quest-chain were not that difficult. But suddenly, this overwhelmingly difficult quest appeared. However, he thinks about all of the “impossible” accomplishments he has achieved, both in Royal Road and the Continent of Magic. Inspired again, Weed decides he’s going to have to have to start immediately, and finish the quest before the wars in the center of the continent spill over to the North.
Weed walks to the Church of Freya and makes small talk with the High Priest before requesting to get all the Paladins and Priests as his Contribution value allows him to. The High Priest tells Weed that the church can only mobilize 240 Paladins (~300 lvl?) and 120 priests (~310 lvl?) for Weed because everybody else is busy dealing with the Embinyu Sect. Weed accepts the help and finds out that Alberon is also accompanying him. He then heads to Lou’s Church and obtains 400 paladins, including the strongest paladin in Lou’s Church, Derry, (and possibly one of the NPC swordmasters? Not sure) wielding Lou’s holy sword (the sword that was stuck in the Lich Bar Khan and sealing a part of his powers before Weed killed Bar Khan).
After Weed logs out, he goes and cleans his yard; one of his hobbies is doing housework because it was inexpensive. However, he then notices that his dog is gone (it notes here that the dog was supposed to be food but then Weed feared that complaints from animal protection organizations may come and he may be fined a “whopping” 20,000 Won aka 17.68 USD). Not finding the dog anywhere in his garden, Weed decides to head to Seoyun’s place next door, and finds Seoyun in shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt washing the happy dog. To remind the dog (Mombosin is the name I think?) of who’s the master, Weed gives the dog a series of commands: Sit! The dog attaches his rear onto the ground. Lie down! Thudding noise Breathe! Pant pant pant.
Weed then sits on a chair nearby and looks up on the sky, thinking about his financial accomplishments the past year (tv contracts, item selling, etc) and thinks about what would happen if the Arpen Kingdom was destroyed by the Hermes Guild (essentially the worst case scenario to his finances). His thoughts then wander to his current quest and its difficulty before being interrupted by Seoyun’s invitation to make lunch for him.
After going back to Mora, Weed heads to a shabby pub where he searches for, and finds a white-haired old man. This man turns out to be Jaden (?), one of the most famous NPC thieves in the Northern region. Weed wants to hire Jaden in order to deal with the dangerous traps in the Roderick labyrinth. Although Weed had dealt with traps before by either just taking the damage or using Van Hawke as a living sacrifice (lol, poor guy) it was different in the Roderick labyrinth, which has traps that would result in the death of many people if they were set off. Jaden says he’s willing to be hired for 5000 gold per day, but instead of answering the offer, Weed pulls out a bottle of wine, and eventually haggles down the price down to 3900 gold a day. However, the NPCs around the pub notice Weed and instantly drop to their knees. They then begin to badmouth Jayden who eventually gets pressured into joining Weed (not sure for how much, presumably very cheap or even for free). It also notes here that Weed could have just ordered Jaden to come with him using the authority of the King but that would’ve lowered loyalty and worsened his relationship with the mercenaries. Weed then considers who else to bring with him to the Labyrinth and rules out of his living sculptures besides Bach (The guardian of the previous Arpen Kingdom, created by Geihar Von Arpen, which Weed obtained from the last quest in the sculptural mastery quest chain) due to the fact that being both a warrior and a barbarian, Bach as significantly more health and vitality (health regeneration) then everybody else.
Marfan (also translated as Mapan depending on which translation/text is used) receives a whisper (gaming term. Essentially a way of privately communicating that can be done from anywhere between friends/guild members/etc.) from Weed asking Marfan to bring over 22 carts (70,000 gold) of top quality supplies towards a certain meeting place. Despite of Marfan’s unease over the bandits and monsters roaming the lands (he has hired lots of mercenaries to guard his supplies) he safely reaches the meeting point. He is astounded by the large crowd of paladins and priests gathered before him and asks Weed why the Paladins are there. Weed simply replies that it is for a quest. Marfan wonders if it’s for the Master Sculpting quest but Weed replies that it’s for a quest chain above the level of the Master Sculpting chain (Not sure about this, may be wrong). Marfan then looks around more closely and notes that Alberon and Derry are both present, with Alberon wearing the Crown of Fargo. Weed then yells out how they are going to clear Roderick’s Labyrinth in order to preserve the peace of the continent. Marfan immediately turns pale, thinking about how nobody has ever came out alive from Roderick’s labyrinth. After giving out his speech and raising the Paladins’ morale, Weed starts heading into to the basement (summarizer’s note: I believe that the labyrinth is located under basements of a ruin. I may be wrong though), which has an eerie chill even in the middle of summer.