The rest of the evening past in a blur of activity and pain for Nero. Regular training included sparring, team battles, common weapon forms and a few muscle building and endurance exercises. By the time the instructors called the day to a close, Nero was sore in places he had never thought could be sore. He had come pretty close to dying a few times as the difference in levels meant he took much more damage than the other trainees.

Luckily, the training hall had an ointment of a sort that prevented severe bruising, so instead of looking like he had gone three rounds with an elephant, he looked like the walking dead instead as he slowly limped his way to the park. He did not even have the energy to lift feet as they dragged along. His spirits were not helped by the fact that Jorry was chuckling to himself on his shoulder.

"You look horrible." The small serpent commented.

"Thanks," he said sarcastically.

"You're welcome." Apparently, snakes do not get sarcasm. Now that he thought about it, what did they understand? He had never really tested Beast Tongue in any depth barring a few talks with Jorry, and many of the inconsistencies could be accounted for by the fact the snake was merely young.

Either way, that was something for tomorrow's Nero to worry about. As he hauled himself onto his favorite bench in the park, he tried to think about what he would need to do once he woke up. He could always go back to the bookstore for some reading, but he had other things to do as well. Nero needed to set up some sort of exercise regime and find a new source of revenue now that he did not want to risk meeting the mice.

Nero's eyes started to droop as he felt Jorry slither his way down his chest.

"I'm going exploring." The serpent said. "I'll be back by morning."

"Alright." Nero absently murmured, the words not really registering in his tired mind. "Good night."

Kaesar's night passed in what seemed like moments. It was filled with blurred visions of distorted colors, at one point he was sitting at a desk in school, and a giant version of Jorry in a suit was trying to teach him about proper footwork. When Nero pointed out the fact the snake didn't have feet, he was slapped by the snake's tail. Then he was hit again, and again. Over and over his companion hit his face with the tail. Eventually the stinging started to feel different, and it was with a clouded mind that Nero realized that the sun was up in the park and he was awake.

Why was he still getting slapped then?

Looking down at his chest, he noticed the small snake with its tail poised to strike once more. Thankfully for Nero, sitting up dislodged the violent serpent before it could whip him once more.

"Why did you wake me up?" Kaesar asked.

"I was bored." Was his answer as Jorry gave what Nero could only guess was a snake's equivalent of a shrug. "Besides, it's morning."

"Alright, I guess we should get going." Standing up he stretched, feeling a bit stiff from sleeping on a bench. He was still sore from training, but it was less painful this morning and more like the pleasant ache that came from exertion. Picking up his companion and putting him on his shoulder, Nero started moving into town. "First things first, we need a job."

"Why?"

"Because living costs money." Nero deadpanned to the snake. "We need money for food, clothes, and tools. I have some ideas for training, but the items it will require will almost certainly wipe out the money we have at the moment."

"What are we doing then?"

"You gave me the idea actually."

"I did?"

"Well, the dream you did. You know what a dream is right?" Nero decided to take the offended look he received as confirmation. "Anyway, where I come from people can talk to each other from very far away. It is cheap, and anybody can use it to coordinate with others. It is a relatively new thing," it was only a few centuries old, so it was comparatively new, "and before this was invented, people had to deliver messages by hand. If I can get a job like that, then I can be paid to run all over the city."

Nero was bassing his idea off the premise that morse code and the like couldn't be used due to monsters attacking any infrastructure outside of cities. On top of that, NPCs couldn't use the network function of the menu, so they did not have access to the internet for communication. Because of this, large-scale networking was probably more difficult in Gods' Nature than in real life. He was also counting on magical communication not being widely available, and thus paperwork, packages and such would need to be hand delivered. If this were the case, people would need to be hired to carry messages. Nero was trying to become the medieval equivalent of a mailman.

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After asking a guard if an organization for such a purpose existed, he was directed towards the top of the hill. It was a formal looking building made of stone, and many people were entering and exiting it every minute. When Nero entered and met the receptionist, he told him his purpose for a visit. The man looked at him gratefully before directing him to a side room where he started discussing employment at what he learned was called the Carrier Guild.

They spent ten or so minutes discussing various facets of the job. Nero would work from sunrise to noon five days a week and get paid based on how many deliveries he made, any tips he received for quick work would be his to keep but, because he would only be working within the city, the average pay for delivery would be rather low. On top of that, he would not be trusted with deliveries of high importance right away. That made sense to Nero, they couldn't let just anybody handle military communique's, large sums of money or items of value.

Thankfully, the combination of higher literacy, due to everyone needing to read message popups, combined with less developed communication infrastructure meant there was a backlog of reports, messages, packages, and payments to be delivered. There would be no lack of work. The lower pay would also not affect Nero too much, his only expenses were food and the occasional change of clothes when they began to rot.

The process was surprisingly painless. In the modern world, people are required to jump through a number of hoops to get approved for jobs, but here it took him applying and a quarter of an hour of discussion. While Nero appreciated the ease, he couldn't help but wonder if they were too lax with their security. For all they knew, he could be a spy sent to gather intelligence on the country's defenses.

It took a moment for Nero to realize the absurdity of those thoughts. Who would want that information anyway? And if they did, how would they even use it? This wasn't a world where countries were neighbors, where people would travel the globe in a few hours due to flight. This was a world where the closest significant settlement was on the other side of the planet on the east coast. Even if you wanted to make an argument that the lost city that was being developed could be an enemy, they were still months away.

It might be a problem in the future, but in Gods' Nature right now the only threat that cities faced was monsters. While it was possible that some form of infiltration by monsters could happen, if they wanted to destroy the keep then a direct attack was more likely.

Come to think of it, if monsters developed sapience, were they still considered monsters? What was the dividing line? Jorry could be classified as a monster due to being an animal with the ability to grow by killing humans. What about humans or other humanoid beings like orcs or elves, could they be considered monsters? Nero shrugged his shoulders in dismissal and just decided to view the issue as something to research later and set about making his first delivery.

Despite living in the keep for over a month, Nero was in no way an expert on its geography. More than once he had to stop and ask for directions. Due to that and taking some wrong turns he ended up taking over half an hour to arrive at the shop he was searching for.

The rest of the morning followed that pattern, and by noon he had delivered nine letters and two small packages. His pay for the day's hard work was a meager sixty-one copper coins. Compared to the silver coins he had received for his extermination jobs it was pitiful. It couldn't be helped though, these were low priority deliveries, and he had taken quite a long time. Thankfully he wasn't in desperate need of money.

On the other hand, he had gotten another point in strength due to all the running he had done throughout the morning, so it was still a net gain in his eyes.

Once he was finished delivering messages, he set off towards the mage association where he had animated the stuffed snake. That had only been a few days ago, but it felt like much longer due to all that had happened since then. He didn't spend a lot of time there, only checking the price of what he wanted to be done. He did not have the money at the moment but that was fine, he was in no rush.

His idea was to get training equipment for Jorry. Nero had plenty of options if he wanted to train, the entire internet was full of regimes that did not require equipment, but that was not really the case for Jorry. After all, who had tried to train a snake in strength, dexterity, or endurance before? Snakes were almost pure muscle and were generally capable of doing everything they need to without training. In a game, however, gaining stat points was unlimited and thus everything could benefit from training.

Nero's idea was to use two pieces of metal and use magic to magnetize them to repel each other. Jorry could then coil around them and try and compress them close to each other. It was a magical equivalent of a hand strengthener. In that way, he could gain stat points in strength while Nero trained. It would be slightly less costly than the animation had been but it was still outside of Nero's budget for the moment.

Since Nero had no idea how to train endurance bar getting hit, the only other stat Jorry could train at the moment was dexterity. Snakes already had excellent motor control and were some of the most nimble creatures in the animal kingdom, again because they were almost pure muscle, so the only thing Nero could think of was some sort of obstacle course that would force Jorry to bend and contort in ways he wasn't accustomed to. Once again though, he was stymied by lack of funds to make something like that.

Thus, when the pair arrived at the park once more, Nero went with only other option he could think of.

"Alright, I want you to hang from the branch like we practiced before," Nero told his companion.

"Why? Are we hunting something?" The snake suddenly way more excited.

"Nope," Nero popped the 'p' sound as the serpent wilted in disappointment, much to his quiet enjoyment. "What you are going to do is hang there by your tail and pull yourself up using only your upper body. Keep doing that over and over."

"Do I have to?" Jorry whined.

"You want revenge right?" The snake gave a reluctant nod. "For now this is the only thing I can think of that can get you some stat points. Once we get some money, we can find you a more enjoyable way to train."

"Fine." Jorry slid from Nero's arm on to the branch.

Watching the snake hang from the branch and try to pull himself up, Nero wondered if this was perhaps the first time in history that a snake tried pull ups. Shaking that thought off, Nero set about his own training.

****

"Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best."

John Webster