Having seen Mia struggle through his penultimate failure of a meal, Brad had felt bad that he had had to serve it. He knew it was bad, but had little choice outside of serving it with the message that he had received upon cooking it.

Cooking Attempt Failed

Your cooking attempt has failed catastrophically,

The meal will taste horrendous

If eaten by a friend: 50 experience will be rewarded for lessons learned and motivation

If eaten by chef, 10 experience will be rewarded for lessons learned

If tossed out, 20 Cooking experience will be lost.

After she finished with a struggling smile on her face, she excused herself to go finish sorting loot.

“Mia, I’m sorry it tasted bad but I think I just got too excited with making it.”

“It was fine, was not the best meal, but I can definitely tell that you tried with it!” She tried convincing me with a wince on her face as her belly rumbled uncomfortably.

“Sorry, but I really appreciate you eating it.”

“Say no more, that is part of being together right?” She said cheering me up, all the while over talking her gut.

And so the moment was broken as the door flew open, a big hairy carapace being carried through the door with Rumble also dragging more loot behind him on a makeshift stick and leaf sled.

With both Mia and I shocked by the grand amount of monster loot on display we were stunned into silence for a good few moments with the only movement being Rumble dropping the loot on the floor and walking over to inspect Brad.

Questioning emojis flashing, interspersed with confused ones, Rumble was being quite invasive during the pursuit to figure out what had been happening with Brad. Having felt his forehead, checked for obvious wounds and now moving onto checking under his shirt, Brad was forced to stop his companion.

“Rumble, I am not sure what you are doing, but I am okay!” I emphatically explained to Rumble. “I don’t know why you are worried, but it has just been Mia and I here the whole time, no monsters, just chores.”

With a quick few looks back and forth between Mia and Brad, Rumble understood. With a smack of his arm to his own little head, Rumble flashed a heart emoji and a thumbs up. Leaves rustling in obvious laughter at their own prior confusion, Rumble bounced over to the peacebloom in the corner before planting himself next to it, laughter still present.

“Um, that was weird…” I said looking at my companion ‘plant-chuckling’ in the corner by himself.

“Yes, yes it was…” Mia said in shock, before moving over to inspect the loot that had just been brought into the home.

“Oh my good lord! You need to come check this out, like right now!” Mia shouted at me from across the room.

Running over to check out what Mia was in a fuss over, I saw her holding the large hairy carapace that Rumble had thrown. “What is it?” I asked, not knowing what it was outside of obviously more important than what I initially had thought.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“It is a ‘Unique Drop’!” Mia was almost screaming out of surprise, before immediately regretting it as her belly reminded her of the previous meal.

“I can’t tell much about it, I don’t have your merchant skill.” I kindly reminded her.

“It says that it is the carapace of ‘The Beast of Nightmares’! How did Rumble kill such a thing!? It will apparently guarantee venom resistance or immunity to any armor made from it! This thing will be worth a lot of money. Mia was frantically saying while wincing from her rumbling belly.

“That's great! How much do you think we will get out of it?” I asked with no small amount of curiosity.

“Well, this one we will probably want to throw up onto the ‘Auction House’. Which is pretty much what it sounds like, they auction off materials for sellers in return for a small cut of the profit. The benefit of the ‘Auction House’ is that it will display for sale across multiple cities in the region, so you can supposedly get more competition when trying to sell rare or valuable goods.” Mia explained without stopping her continued inspection of the carapace.

“That sounds awesome, but you still didn’t answer me about how much money it is worth.” I politely added before she got carried away with her inspection.

“Well that is the tricky thing about it, it could be worth either a ton of money or almost nothing at all along with the entire range in between. Chances are very good that will be worth quite a bit, but there is the possibility of few buyers competing for it.” She explained.

“I really hope that it is enough to buy a few upgrades around here.” I said wishfully.

“Oh, we for sure will get at least one item from our list of desires! This thing is a Copper 2 item level with a unique rarity tag…it will definitely pull some interest.” Mia reassured me excitedly.

“Are you serious!? How in the heck did Rumble fight that thing? I mean, he has always been strong, but Copper 2 is not only double his level but also a whole tier higher!”

With a thoughtful look pausing her response for a few moments, Mia asked; “It is quite the supposed gap in raw power. Have you by chance checked your skill levels today?”

Quickly understanding what her point was, I quickly flicked open my menus and the relevant status screens.

Name: Bradford Wallace

Age:18

Skills

Druid

Farmer

Plant Familiar (Tree) Stone 9 (89%)

Bountiful Harvest Stone 8 (21%)

“Holy crap! My skills exploded up in ranking!” I couldn’t help but shout. “Rumble is 11 percent from tiering up into copper 1 and my ‘Bountiful Harvest’ passive is not far behind!”

With a few moments of the words registering, Mia started to go wide eyed and followed up with amazed curiosity. “Rumble must have been way busier than we had given credit for! I am sure that the unique monster gave a level by itself, but it is easier to understand how Rumble took it down. Rumble has been highly effective as a solo fighter so far, so with a 3 level gap it is more understandable.”

“I’m still pretty surprised with the takedown, but if the venom resistant property of the crafting item is any indication, most likely the monster relied on venom to kill its prey. I honestly don’t think that Rumble is able to become envenomed.” I stated.

“That is a good point that I had not thought of. If that is the case, then Rumble is well matched against many of the monsters that we have been selling the loot of.” Mia pieced together.

“So do you think that Rumble has been selectively hunting specific prey?” I asked curiously.

“I do not believe so, we have been getting all types of monster loot. It is more likely that this area has favorable match ups at the current low area level. Speaking of which, with you approaching Copper tier so quickly, we may bypass some item purchases in favor of upgrading the plot level of the farm. Normally it would not be useful until into our second Spring, but you have made it relevant much earlier, we will need to upgrade it in order to take advantage of Copper tier abilities.” Mia explained.

Talking over a now continuous rumble of Mia’s stomach I quickly asked; “I’m guessing that you have already got finance projections that factor those in? Will purchasing them now speed up our overall accumulation of money or should we wait a bit more?”

To her detriment, instead of giving a quick reply, Mia’s face turned green before she expeditiously jumped up and ran outside the door.