I talked with my new buddy Reichken for a while, making sure he understood the specs for my shorts. With that out of the way and the man giving me a price I couldn’t yet afford, I passed the rest of the day training my awareness in the market. My spot in the corner with a tiny ledge where the cobbled stone jutted up just enough for a little seat, was quickly becoming my favorite place in the city. Not because it was just so fun to watch people buy and sell shit but because of the stats.

Training with the bees had been pretty effective, but I was limited by time. I’d then assumed that staring into the darkness of a dungeon for hours on end would help me improve at the highest possible rate since it could go on indefinitely. I was no longer convinced.

My awareness was ticking up by the hour. The task of watching and listening to such an enormous group of people simply required me to process way more information than anything else I’d tried thus far. It was probably the listening that caused the biggest change. It wasn’t just the buzzing of wings that I had to hear directionally, but individual words that I picked out of the crowd to help learn the price of things.

Thanks to the incredibly profitable day, I left town more excited than usual. I didn’t have my shorts yet, but I’d need to rise and grind if I ever wanted to afford them. Really, with a price tag of eight silvers for a pair of pants, I was expecting something truly spectacular. Unfortunately, I also had to deliver the materials.

On the plus side, cutting the wings free from the bee corpses would probably be easy with my newest tool. I just needed to get a corpse through the portal first.

With all of my gear buried outside, I stepped back into my colosseum of buzzing to consider my options. I already knew they wouldn’t fly through the portal on their own. I’d originally used that fact to keep the big rift to my back, but the giant fuckers managed to get behind me anyway, so that really only served to cut off one of my escape routes. It wasn’t that much of a surprise considering they moved in three dimensions while I was stuck on the ground, but it still pissed me off.

But I was beginning to think of a slightly different plan. I positioned myself to be just in front of the portal, my back to it as I was practically begging the annoying bugs to fly at me from behind. A few approached from the front first, dying in spectacular fashion, before I got my first challenger. With a little bit more movement than was necessary to simply dodge, I slid to the side as soon as it got close. Now, the bee was directly between me and the portal.

The strongest jab I’d ever given launched it backwards and through the gaping maw in space.

“Fuck yes!”

I cheered, too excited to hold myself back. Apparently, the bees felt the same way, taking advantage of my awkward positioning to get another glancing blow on me.

“Fuck me!”

I rolled out of the way of the follow up attacks and through the portal, gaining yet more grass stains in unconventional places. Fortunately, I had a mostly intact corpse waiting for me, begging to be dismembered. There was a small dent by its head where I’d hit it, but the bulk of it was intact. Digging up my cleaver, I worked to change that.

With my stats and the sharpness of the cleaver, I was able to chop the creature into pieces, separating it at each of its segments and cutting the wings loose. Then, I retrieved my regular knife to remove the insides, determined to do what I could to increase the price.

I even tried to save the poison or whatever sack was attached to the stinger, but that was a lost cause. Maybe I’d just bring the whole bottom one day and pay someone to show me. If each stinger could net me six silver instead of three, then I could be swimming in coins.

Wait. Why would I do that, though? I hadn’t really been thinking about it, but it took me all of ten minutes of combat to kill half a dozen bees. Sure I’d only gotten one of them through the portal, but that was ten minutes for one corpse.

One corpse I’d just spent an hour carving up.

Maybe I’d get faster as I got more used to it, but wasn’t I losing money by trying to be efficient with my kills? Wouldn’t I paradoxically get more money by getting less value from each of them? If I’d spent that hour on more grinding, I’d be pushing my numbers higher while also getting more stingers to sell. And chopping those off took less than a minute each!

Frustrated at myself, I separated the valuable monster parts from those worthless fleshy bits and developed a new plan.

I could recover a quarter of my total health during the day. Meaning that I should just focus on being as efficient in grinding as possible, launching corpses through as consistently as I could, and then leaving once I hit seventy five percent health. Then and only then would I carve up my loot and spend time on it. If I ran out of time, I’d just chop stingers to speed things up.

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Satisfied, I got back to work. Sadly, my projections weren’t that accurate. It was closer to one out of every dozen kills that actually went through the portal while the rest stayed behind. I was beginning to suspect that every corpse that stayed in the hive was just fed back into it, churning out another soldier in time. With hundreds of the monsters around me, I’d either have to kill them all in one session or whittle them down slowly by dragging one out at a time.

I was pretty positive which was more likely. When I’d finally hit my health limit for the night, there were only six corpses waiting for me despite the literal hundreds of monsters still inside. I’d never even seen an end to them, meaning there could be over a thousand. They were still giving experience though, I could just tell. So for now, I’d just take it as a blessing rather than a curse.

Sadly, my efficiency decreased the longer I spent fighting the buzzing monsters, so half the night had escaped me by the time I was done. Thanks to my trusty cleaver, I managed to clean out the first four before the sun began to rise. Worried about encountering people with all of my loot, I quickly removed the remaining stingers, threw my clothes on, and grabbed all the loot I could.

That turned out to be more work than I’d thought. Carrying two badly damaged carapaces and stingers the day before had been easy enough despite their size. Four of the exoskeletons proved to be a lot bulkier than I’d expected. I was pretty positive that the clumsy fumbling I had to do to get everything in my arms would have popped any of the stinger sacks even if I had managed to extract them. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Still, I also had six full sets of wings to bring with me. Technically, bugs have two sets of wings as I discovered, one full sized and one half but I refused to give the insects any more of my mental real estate. If I admitted to paying that close attention to their anatomy, then that meant they had won. We couldn’t be having that.

My jog to the gate was a lot less graceful than before. The fumbling once I got there was even more embarrassing. The nice gentlemen recommended that I try a backpack in the future, and I thanked them for the suggestion. After all, I was about to make a bunch of money. I could afford to get some nice things for future convenience.

Making my way back to my new best friend, I only dropped my bundle twice. Maybe I’d even get a point in agility thanks to all this juggling I was doing. Reichken himself was almost surprised at the sight of me, not that he showed it. He probably was though, I had been quite industrious. His neighbor who I had shirked the other day looked at me, obviously annoyed. That cheered me up immediately. There really was no revenge quite like living well, but the nameless merchant was still on my shitlist.

“Reichken, my good friend. I come bearing gifts.”

I spoke cheerfully, placing my bundle of goodies on the table in the back of his stall.

“Wasn’t sure how to remove the wings individually so I brought them whole. You think that’s enough for some pants?”

The short man nodded at me while considering the haul.

“More than.”

That’s what I was hoping to hear.

“Then how about a full set? I have to strip whenever I fight to avoid tearing my clothes and not having to do that would be great.”

For the first time, I saw a twinkle of amusement in the stoic man’s eyes. So he did feel emotions! It faded fast, which only made me resolve to grind my awareness even higher.

“Same price. And not enough,” he spoke while pointing to the pile. So I’d need to bring more wings to get a full set of clothes, but that would be fine. I wasn’t exactly running low on materials after all.

“Sure. Just get started on the pants in the meantime if you don’t mind. I’ll even pay for them up front.”

The craftsman just nodded, sifting through the pile of materials with a great deal of care. After a few inspections that involved hammers, pliers, and a measuring stick of some kind, he reached under the stall and counted out coins for me. This time, I got paid in proper currency, four large coins and two small, all silver. I immediately slid one of the large coins back to him along with both of its smaller cousins, paying him upfront for the pants and covering the rest of the cleaver’s cost.

Knowing where I was going after this, also I couldn’t help but ask for one of the bigger coins in its smaller tender. The last thing I wanted was to be scammed and short changed in one sitting. That would just be salt in the wound.

That out of the way and my coin pouch nice and full, I headed towards the alliance building once again. I didn’t know for sure just how much I’d improved since my first day here, but I was optimistic about my chances.

Walking into the building, I still tested the woman behind the counter.

“Class crystal please,” I spoke confidently, presenting my dog tag when it was asked for.

“That’s one silver or four without supervision.”

At least the price hadn’t gone up, but that would probably change if I started paying it. I’d probably want to wait at least a week before coming back, just to prevent her from going from silver to gold. Just because I had gotten a raise didn’t mean she deserved one.

Sliding four coins across the desk, I watched as her smile widened.

“Right this way, sir.”

Just keep smiling, Law. Stay civil.

She led me down the familiar walkway and left me to my own devices afterwards. She was honestly so lax about it that I’d already begun plotting my revenge before I’d realized it. All I needed was a way to sneak out of here with a crystal more than half my size and it’d be easy.

With a sigh I stepped into the room and gave the giant rock a handshake. As I did, words bubbled up to tell me about myself. It was a weird experience, all in all.

Calculating experience…

You have reached level 10!

+14 strength, +14 agility, +14 resilience!

Class mastery bonus:

Class choices available.

Finally, time to see if I have any good options this time around.