Ten levels. Each class would end after hitting level ten, hopefully giving you an advanced follow up worth picking. Skills had the same limit. I learned a lot of useful information on my business date, but nothing more critical than the first bits and this one.

I couldn’t get any beat on average stat numbers or even levels from her, and apparently it was impossibly rude to ask people. The one thing I knew for certain was that, with no known maximum cap for total class or profession level, any random on the street might equal me in stats. Who would have thought that my ridiculously overpowered passive skill literally handed down by god was nothing more than a catch up mechanic. I was hopelessly behind from the start.

Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and I headed straight for the alliance building. The mood had soured as soon as she delivered the bad news, but almost two silver coins worth of food was hopefully a good enough time for me to ask her out again. Maybe a decade from now when I had a moment to spare outside of training.

The good news about this world was how long the days were. Even with a long lunch, I still had plenty of time to get to the alliance building before rush hour. It also gave me plenty of time to think about how fucked I was.

Magic was off the table for a decade which may incidentally be my time limit. That stupid geezer really should have prepared me better for this mission or at least given me a stronger start for the trouble, but there was nothing I could do about that now. For the time being, I’d just have to make sure that I gained enough stats manually to push myself past everyone and everything else in this world and all the others. So really, nothing had changed.

I made my way through the incredibly simple structure and up to the desk. There were no surprises for who would be behind the counter, so I prepared for an uncomfortable negotiation.

“How can I help you today?”

She spoke sweetly as if we were friends, so I gave her my best smile as I took out my little dog tag. I slid it along with a small copper coin across the counter to make it clear I was no longer an easy mark.

“I’d like to use the class crystal please.”

“That’ll be one silver or four if you want privacy.”

She didn’t miss a beat, reciting the same price from the other day as soon as she glanced at my license.

“Now I know I was new at the time and it was all kinds of unpleasant for everyone. I’m not even mad about the pricing. But you know as well as I do that I’m not making any money without getting stronger. Even if I wanted to pay your price, I literally can’t. You were only the third person I spoke to since coming here after perhaps years of solitude, and I could really use all the friendly faces I could get. So what do you say?”

I gave her my prepared speech, knowing that it would be impactful and—

“I can’t give out discounts for circumstances. The price is one silver for supervision and four without.”

This fucking bitch. It took every ounce of self control I had not to reach over the counter and throttle her. Who in the world has the audacity to swindle someone and, once caught, double down on their lie? I just stood there, blinking through my confusion and rush of anger.

“I know that’s not the price. That’s just what you charged me when I didn’t know better.”

She tilted her head at me, smile never wavering.

“I do apologize, but the price won’t change so easily.”

Now I looked at her more closely, identifying this not as some mindless drone in my surroundings but as an active threat. Admittedly, the woman looked well put together. I’d guess she was in her mid twenties, well dressed and had an accent of perfume that indicated she had no issues with money or big problems with saving. Either way, she either needed the coin to feed her habits or was making so much at this job that she didn’t need any in the first place. Judging by the looks I got from the rest of the room, I could guess which one.

So Lorie was nice enough to tell me what this woman charged her, but that didn’t mean I could get that price. Everyone here was just going along with it, so I probably couldn’t do much about it either. All in all, I was stuck. I barely had more than three silver to my name and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let an active antagonist look at my status.

“What are the prices for dungeon cores?”

The real question was whether she’d fleece me on both fronts. The answer was, apparently, yes.

“Fifty copper for level one, one silver fifty copper for level two, and five silver for level three. I’ll happily give you the other prices as they come up.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

This was a problem. I couldn’t afford the power ups that I had access to, and I couldn’t make the money with any real ease. If I hadn’t turned off survival mode then her greed would have literally killed me. How the hell was this allowed?

I had my guesses. There were plenty of examples in my old life where being someone’s kid gave you a free pass to just be a burden on everyone around you. You ran a fork truck into a shelf, knocking it over and costing the company thousands in damages? Good thing that daddy’s the general manager, otherwise you might get punished for that.

That’s what I figured was going on here. Something about her face just screamed nepotism on top of ‘please punch here.’ I really didn’t like being taken advantage of.

Alright, new plan. Grind my way to the point where I can risk fighting some people on the low. Then, once that is figured out, I beat her ass and just steal the crystal before jumping into a dungeon for a training montage.

I let my mind wander through the fantasy for a moment before shaking my head. That would be great, but I needed a better plan.

I could guess that I was accruing experience through every kill, even if I had maxed out my class already. Not just because I’d hit level three as soon as I got a class, but also because something about punching a bee felt right, beyond my primal need to fist fight giant insects. It was almost like my body could feel the experience as it rolled in. Not that I had any idea how much I got at any time, but it would probably help for figuring out if a dungeon was worth clearing. After all, there was no reason to grind mobs that didn’t give experience or loot.

With that in mind, I headed out. The beehive still had plenty of residents to clear out and there was always a chance that they were worth something. I just needed to learn a carving skill, but if I could teach myself martial arts by punching trees then this would be easy.

I made my way to Alliance Alley as Lorie called it and searched the stalls for a good carving knife. Unsurprisingly, I had lots of options. Thanks to that, I was able to barter around and manage something I hoped was pretty good for a silver. So long as I kept it in its sheath, I should still be able to bury my stuff outside the portals whenever I got there without worrying about rust. That would be embarrassing.

There was still some time to kill, but I’d still not found a good way to use it productively in the city. With nothing better to do, I sat in a corner of the market and tried to focus as much as I could on my peripheral vision without turning my head or eyes. It may have been boring and slightly unpleasant, but it wasn’t any worse than staring into the dark had been. At least this time I had stuff and people to look at.

It also gave me the added benefit of seeing other people barter. There was a lot of selling at this time of day, with people coming back from dungeons carrying packs full of loot. As far as I could tell, the focus seemed to be on things that would make good gear.

Well that was pretty obvious, but I was feeling good about carving the stingers now. So long as I was able to get good at it, I’d be willing to bet I could make a ton of money. From the way each group would hold up fingers occasionally, I was able to even get a feel for what danger level dungeon each ingredient came from.

I’d definitely want to come back and learn more, but this was a really good start.

Once the stalls were packing up for the night and the adventurers, or I suppose stabilizers, were leaving too, I made my way to my favorite gate, said hello to my good friends, and took off my pants in preparation for a sprint. No matter how badly I wanted more classes and skills, the first thing I was buying after I got my payday was a pair of robust shorts. Now that I owned and wore boots, taking my pants off just to go sprinting felt like such a waste of time.

The rest of the night passed as usual, but with the added fun of trying to get the bee corpses out of the dungeon when I made to leave. I obviously wasn’t carving them while still inside and none of the corpses I’d left lying around ever lasted long. If I tried to duck out and then back in, they’d carry their dead away with them. If I baited them into jumping out with me, then I’d be taking a ton of damage either from the first attack landing or from eating a follow up.

Basically, I was guaranteed to take damage when bringing them out no matter what. The first thing I tried was to just kill them as close to the portal as possible and kick the corpses through. Unsurprisingly, giving up my footing while under assault from uncountable foes hadn’t been my best idea. I succeeded, but gave up hundreds of health for the one corpse. The plus side was that I also managed to catch the fucker that impaled me, dragging him through the portal as I left.

With my first two subjects in front of me and hours worth of health to recover, I unburied my knife and got to work. The results were terrible. My stats made using the knife easy enough even without any skill, but the anatomy of the strange ant-bees was completely unknown to me. I just decided to use my first few as a learning experience, cutting them up and seeing what I found.

The knife barely scratched the outer carapace, and I realized an even bigger problem. Nobody had contested me at my hunting spot even when I had come during the day. I’d always just assumed that the people here were lower level or spooked by numbers, but then I saw a party enter a danger level five dungeon. It couldn’t just be that I was incredibly strong compared to them.

Each level I got before gave me six points in my stats. If they had professions and classes in the forties, then they’d have close to five hundred stat points by my count, and that didn’t include any mastery or initial bonuses. That would make them at least as strong as me with way more skills, and that was if their spread in stats and choice of classes was even.

No, it was much more likely that people focused three stats at most and chose their classes accordingly, meaning they’d be close to two hundred in their primary stat, and that was excluding grinding them the way I already had. If they could workout like I do for even a twentieth of my progress, then they would easily double my numbers.

So why had they avoided this dungeon before? I’d answered that exact question earlier today. This was ultimately a job and no one wanted to work for free. With the danger of the hive, it would have to pay pretty damn well to make the effort worth it. Nobody was contesting me for my hunting spot not because it was impossibly dangerous.

Everyone avoided it because you couldn’t carve the monsters. Why grind enemies that don’t drop loot?

I groaned in annoyance. Back to the drawing board.