The hot soup warmed his chilled bones. It was overly oily, and the meat tasted a bit off, but Thomel couldn’t care less about that right now.
A nice upside to having the Survivor boon was that it meant he didn’t have to worry about blowing on the soup to cool it down; he could just slurp it and be fine.
His tongue still got a bit hot, but it was nowhere near as bad as it would have been pre Survivor boon.
Once he was finished with the soup, he used the grainy bread to mop up the remaining liquid and devoured it.
With a sated stomach and bags beginning to form under his eyes, he headed off to find a bunk.
He’d take a shower in the morning, or rather when he woke up since there was no difference between night and day here.
The only real way you could tell the time was by what the crowd was doing; people who stayed stationary for a few days and weeks tended to go to sleep at the same time and eat punctually as well.
Slipping into the hallway, he picked a room at random and tried to open the door. However, he found it locked.He tried his luck two more times and, on the third attempt, he managed to secure an empty room.
Walking inside, he closed the door and collapsed on the company sheets. Sleep took him into its warm and loving embrace as soon as he closed his eyes.
He dreamt of an endless storm and a horde of impish creatures brawling within it, only for them all to be swallowed up by a colossal maw that stretched out over the horizon.
Stirring awake surprisingly refreshed, Thomel pushed himself off of the sheets and rubbed at his eyes, letting out a yawn that would make Marace proud.
He felt rather well rested now that he woke up on his own initiative rather than the stampeding horde of people.
image [https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/98736668/43bd2a66acfe494a812c5cd6f766aa97/e30%3D/1.PNG?token-time=1711065600&token-hash=7Ko-nAe_QabTfDId8xm3JVpzDfIxcDZumXwh-mNyKAI%3D]
There wasn't much point in sleeping to be well rested before assigning the points he'd been given, since no matter what, they were all going into the physical attribute. But still, it was a good habit to have.
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Once he was done with the system, he started rummaging in the drawers for some company clothes. Grabbing a couple, he headed for the showers.
He passed a couple of people along the way but nobody he knew.
Once he was finished and clean, he started walking towards the canteen, driven by both hunger and a desire to see Axel or one of his other friends.
It was the only real place anyone could be, which made Axel's absence last time a bit odd.
It was even odder he wasn’t there this time;even after spending a solid few minutes looking around Thomel hadn’t spotted the rather large man.
Giving up, Thomel walked overto the counter and ordered himself an eggs benedict. It set him back a fair amount in terms of credits, but he’d be more than making that up once he got himself another mission today.
Once it was ready, he got his plate, then went over to the table which, as far as he knew, everyone he counted amongst his friends sat at. Axel may still show up after all.
He didn’t have high expectations for the eggs benedict, but what the cooks lacked in food quality, they more than made up for in the quality of their sauce.
He tried to take his time and savour the meal, but he ended up just wolfing it down with glee in under two minutes.
Leaning back contentedly, he was idly considering what sort of hunt he should go for when he noticed a trio approaching him.
They all had dyed hair; one red, one green, one white, and it wasn’t just the hair on their head that they dyed either. They’d dyed their facial hair as well. White had a pristine moustache making him look like some old sheriff, red looked like a berserker with a blood-soaked beard, blue looked like he’d spilt kool-aid in his beard, but it was still a rather cool dye job.
“Thomel, right?” The red guy asked him, reaching out his burly arm for a handshake.
“Yeah, can I help you?” He replied, firmly shaking the bigger man's tattooed hand.
“Of course you can, we wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t.” The artificial redhead said, laughing heartily like Thomel’d just made one of the funniest jokes he’d heard in years.
“So what would I be helping you with?”
“All you have to do is simply exist. You’ve got some kind of buff that activates when something comes after you, right?” The green-haired man said, offering his hand for a handshake as well.
Thomel obliged and, while shaking the cartoony man’s hand, replied, “Yeah, why? You planning on using me as some sort of radar?”
“I would have phrased it better but… yeah basically. There’s some sandworms in the world we’re heading to that are impossible to track accurately, pretty much every Tracking boon just says they’re below us, but none tell us how far below they are.”
“Alright, go on..” Thomel nodded his head, still looking curiously at the trio.
“We have everything else covered, the only real threat is a sandworm attack, which you’ll be able to predict…?”
“Yeah I can do that, though how did you hear about my boon?”
“One of the people in our team took part in that ‘security’ mission. When we were wondering what to do, he told us you saved his life during that failed assault. You told him to start running because something was hunting you.”
“Alright then, so what’s the mission and the ratio?” Thomel asked with raised eyebrows.
“Mission’s to harvest a nest’s worth of Xel scorpions. We’ll split the pay equally, which amounts to some hundred thousand credits each depending on the haul.” The white-haired man said, speaking for the first time.
After a brief, awkward silence while Thomel soaked that in, he added on. “In a best-case scenario, we’re looking at three hundred thousand.”
“Yep, count me in.” Thomel enthusiastically exclaimed, a smile blossoming on his face as he reached over to shake the white-haired man's hand.
“Happy to have you on board. You can call me white, the big guy Red and the little guy Green.”
Thomel almost said ‘are you joking?’ but quickly recovered and introduced himself. “Happy to meet you all.”