“I can give you six coppers a day, five days a week for twelve hours of work each day. That’s the best I can offer for unskilled labor.”
Shockingly, the man who smelled like a stable was giving me the best offer so far. At a meager thirty copper a week for sixty hours of work, that wasn’t a good sign.
The worst part was that no one had anything truly heavy for me to move. For some reason, nobody was looking for a guy to carry their horses or pull their carriages. Damn animals taking jobs from honest, hard working humans, not that I’d even seen a horse since coming here.
“Thank you for your time, sir.”
I decided to be polite on the off chance that I took him up on his offer. Sadly for me, no one wanted to purchase my skills. It seemed like most jobs were based on apprenticeships and trade skills which I just didn’t have. I was an excellent salesman, but traders without goods or money weren’t exactly worth much. In fact, the few men I spoke to about it told me they’d let me work for free and gain ‘experience.’ Just what I needed, an internship when I’m flat broke.
So much for getting paid to workout. At least I’d killed a lot of time and I’d get to go back to my grind fest under the cover of darkness, so that was something. I’d had an idea a while ago to wait until nighttime to lift people’s wagons and whatever, just for the sake of pushing my muscles harder, but it just didn’t seem worth it. If working out in a dungeon automatically doubled my gains, which was my current working theory, then the resistance would have to be massive to outweigh the loss of potential. Not that it couldn’t happen, but moving people’s goods around under at night sounded like a riskier venture in the first place. No one was going to arrest me for doing push-ups in a dungeon.
I killed the last bit of time by doing some one legged squats in an alleyway, like a normal person would, and then sprinted out into the fields as usual once it was dark enough for me to escape attention. The idea was that those people from before had a magical torch on them, so they probably wouldn’t just stumble around in the dark like I would.
I turned out to be right. The blue glow was visible from a kilometer away, giving me ample time and space to go around them without getting close. Once back at my favorite spot in the world, I decided to try something a little different today.
The bees didn’t come out of their dungeon unless I took them with me, and they took a while to wind up. So what if I jumped in, jabbed a few of them, and then jumped out? That would allow me to grind experience while also advancing the only active skill I had that didn’t involve tearing reality itself. Probably shouldn’t level that one if I can avoid it.
With my bulletproof plan ready for action, I jumped into the portal and greeted my buzzing friends. This time, I tried to dodge their attacks with minimal movements. If I could just roll my upper body out of the way of an opponent, then they’d be perfectly within striking distance.
The roaring of the hive greeted me as usual, letting me know that the welcome party was on the way. Really, insects were such courteous hosts.
The first one flew at me, trying to tear directly into my chest as I leaned to the side. Without budging my legs, the maneuver wasn’t fast or big enough to allow a full dodge, but I could pay it back tenfold. As the stinger grazed my left ribs, I leaned slightly more to position the back of its stupid head to be in line with my right shoulder.
“Jab.”
My fist flew at incredible speeds, caving in the head of the actually flying monster. It collapsed lifelessly to the ground as another of its kin flew in for an attack just a moment later. My positioning hadn’t changed, and these simple creatures were still smart enough to capitalize on that. I tried to roll my waist to get out of the way but was forced to take a step back just to avoid the business end of the monster.
Then I got an idea. A truly stupid idea. The kind that you know will kill or at least maim you if you had the poor sense to listen to it. Obviously, I did just that.
The stinger was still en route to my face with an eta of less than a second. I could jump back further, but the bees had me surrounded at all times, so the only real retreat would be through the portal. That would work, and it might even be smart. Just a little tactical retreat to avoid getting eviscerated by a giant stinger or two hundred.
But momma didn’t raise no bitch.
“Jab.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
My right fist caught the stinger first, cracking it like porcelain.
“Jab.”
My left then flew out as I took a half step forward, catching the creature's bulbous bottom cleanly and launching it several meters away. As quickly as I could, I checked my health to memorize what number it was at and see if I was about to die. A quarter of a day had passed, so I was only a hundred health up from the last time I’d checked, but I kept the exact value in mind anyway.
I had five hundred and four health going into my engagement with bee number three, and I ended it the exact same way as the last one. Two swift jabs took it out of commission with barely enough time to check my health before jumping away from a fourth.
Five hundred and three. For the low price of one health, I could kill each of these little shits as they came to me. Time for a little payback.
My fists flew with renewed vigor, excitedly biting into insect carapace whenever they were bold enough to attack. But that only lasted a minute before they got wise to my tactic. Once I saw five of them coming at me from different angles all at the same time, prepared to kill each other in order to cage me in, I just sprinted through the portal.
The night sky greeted me happily, the big old moon and stars reminding me that I remained just a tiny ant in this world of giant bugs. Nothing like a little bit of perspective to make your blood boil and set your soul on fire. Just give me a few decades, you stupid universe, and I’ll punch the fucking moon out of the sky if I have to.
“Stats.”
Lawrence Schlager
Classes
Brawler: 3
Ability Scores
Health: 499/1020
Strength: 85
Agility: 96
Resilience: 102
Awareness: 31
???
Passive Skills
Infinite Scaling
Unarmed Combat: 26
Pain Tolerance: 15
Masochist: 11
Active Skills
Dimension Tearing: 6
Jab: 1
That got a frown out of me. I was sure that my jab skill got better, but maybe it was like my class level? What if anything I learned from the stupid mana rock required me to go back to it for an update? That would make my grinding sessions a whole lot worse overall.
I mean, the advanced classes seem to be where it’s at and I probably only got this one thanks to my unarmed combat skill. If that’s the case, then grinding my only new skill to a high level is probably my best bet for getting an even better follow up class. It would really suck if I got saddled with Acrobat instead.
Oh well, not much I could do about it aside from punch more bugs. With that in mind, I stepped right back through the portal in time to see the bees flying back into their hive.
“Don’t worry,” I called out to my buzzing friends. “I let myself in.”
It was going to be a productive night.
----------------------------------------
Filling my days without dungeon grinding was proving to be a challenge. Sure I could just do pushups in the alliance building until night fell, but I couldn’t get even a single point from that. I’d know, I tried. People were still looking at me weird for that one, but that was nothing new.
Part of me debated taking one of those literal shit jobs just to get something productive out of the daylight, but there was just no way that six coppers a day was worth more than even just staring at the sky would be. If my day was going to be agonizingly boring, I may as well get a stat point or two out of it.
By the second day, I concluded that I just needed to make a gym. When I left my beehive, I sprinted to the woods beyond the plains, taking my stuff with me. It was still dark out, perfect for a man that didn’t want to be caught by nefarious ne'er-do-wells and cruel criminals. Once there, I got back to my old training routine and punched the biggest tree I could find, determined to keep going until I knocked it to the ground. Before I knew it, the sun had risen and gone back to bed. Unfortunately, the tree was still standing.
Just how long was I in that other world? Seriously, I punched down five trees before moving onto the invisible walls. If I kept at it and remembered which tree I was hitting then I could probably figure it out by back calculating it, but that seemed unlikely. Trying to find a tree in a forest was like trying to find a piece of hay in a haystack. I’d succeed but never pick the same one twice.
So much for that plan. I went back to my nightly grind session before trying a different technique on day three. I’d been sad about the lack of a gym in the god-zone, but I still managed to make some equipment with what limited tools I had. Here, I had all kinds of stuff available. There were sticks, rocks, and other things that could probably be useful for…something. With that in mind, I looked up to remember which way the sun was and how it related to the town. Hoping I wouldn’t get lost, I ventured into the woods in search of vines.
About five minutes in I decided to change my mind, witnessing a giant snake fighting and strangling what appeared to be a bald bear. Who knew that a bear with rhino skin instead of fur would look like such an otherworldly monster. Meanwhile, its opponent just looked like a snake with incredibly normal, earth-like patterns. Despite the real tournament vibes I was getting from the engagement, since the movement in the tree branches proved that they doubled as spectator seating, I decided to get the fuck out of dodge.
Whoever the fuck suggested that being outside of a dungeon was safer than inside was a god damn liar.