13)

Iris’s home consisted of a story and half house with a patch of ground in the front facing a stone street, and another patch in the back that held a second building. All of the back was enclosed in a woven metal fence mounted on pipes for some reason.

Some sort of plumping system? Maybe to cool the water?

The grass covering the front was cut down to barely above the dirt, like that of all the other homes on the stone street. While the grass and other plants in the back were at a healthy length, unlike the rear grounds behind the other houses.

Apparently, Iris was wealthy enough to not need to harvest her feedlot, or perhaps the other homes had as yet unseen grazing animals. I wonder how much BP they would be worth?

I set a few roaches flying around to scout out the surrounding areas. Which quickly broke my commitment to no more magical beasts. Damn birds. The next rounds of scouts kept close to the ground.

The people of this land are strange. Their homesteads are so close together but each on their own patchy bits of land. Many have good hounds, useless froo froo lap pets, or worse, cats. But no signs of any livestock.

The metal carts are fascinating though. I would really like to have a body to sit inside and drive one of them myself. Maybe try smashing it into things as a weapon.

Taking samples of the various substances get me another quest.

[ Quest- Obtain samples of 25 plants. Reward 3 BP. ]

For a moment I almost turn my nose up at such a low reward for such effort. Before I shake my head at my stupidity. I was reliant on rewards for BP right now and three for just gathering random plants was actually a great deal. What the Fell was I thinking?

Come that night, and another point seven experience for iris, the cat was inside the house. And creatures were stirring.

A bit of goo cheese was broken up and laid out in a trail to a nibbled open gap in the house. Leading up from the narrow overgrown dirt and gravel alleyway that ran down between the back of the houses on this stone road and the ones on the other side.

The refuge of all things living within the half-rural half-urban houses here. Including mice of course, which is what I wanted. As well as squirrels, an animal with a striped tail, and what looked like a large pair of ghost-faced rats.

Those last ones are too large to deal with right now but over the course of the night. First one, then two mice find their way in. Tempted by damp smelly dungeon food, and falling below copper plates and the Murder mouse’s teeth.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

[ Congratulations. You are now level 8.]

No rooms or spells. I think I might be getting those in response to my needs, and right now I’m almost speeding through with minimal effort.

Another day and I use my new reach to explore the kitchen, bathroom, and the inner half of a closet that opens into the hall. Things get cleaned and in some cases absorbed and replaced in newer forms.

Extra toiletries, newer vacuum bags, fresher food, extra plates, unscratched steel utensils, and pots without dents and burns. All newer, better, and more of.

The house itself also gets fixed up, at least within seven feet of me, then it occurs to me that my reach extends from my core. And I can move my core to any core room I build within my reach.

So each of the cardinal directions gets a new core room below the floor. From there I spread out.

For the moment I focus on the house, and I don't mess with anything with lightning flowing through it. I don't understand their contents and I don’t know if I can replace them and still have them keep working. But worn out pipes? Replaced and polished. Paint? A bright fresh coat. Furniture, clothing, flooring, even bedding? All brand new.

My host's reaction are less than delighted.

"What… what's going on? Why does everything look different? Smell different?" the old woman snatched up her cat and looked around her home in confusion. “What the hell is happening?”

Right. I may have overdone things a bit. I consider reproducing paper and ink to write her a note to explain things. But at this point, it may upset her even more. Best to just let her take a break and let her calm down.

Besides, I would have to leave the note at least eight feet away.

In the basement, I find a set of red covered books which read "The 1978 junior encyclopedia." Which I later figure out is very out of date. I can absorb and then reproduce the books easily enough, but I still have to read the absorbed copies here with me inside the core to understand them.

It’s... rather enlightening.

As well as boring. These books are not written to be read straight through but are reference books. But I do, in fact, have a lot of time on my hands. Even then I kind of skim more than read.

These people. They did so much without magic. Not even divination spells. The scientific theory. Walking on their own moon within a suit to hold in the air instead of a fresh air spell. They turned a chunk of stone into a weapon that could destroy entire cities.

The last… such recklessness. No wonder they came so close to killing themselves.

So… Awesome!

Meanwhile, I've built a squirrel murder run between two walls in an old woman's house to kill small woodland creatures.

I need to seriously up my game before I open up for business.

First, Murder mouse and company collected samples of both man made goods, plants, and bits of fur and feathers from all around the neighborhood. To build up my bank of creatures to summon. Including the two animals from the alley. Raccoons and possums.

The last has a pouch built into their bellies. Upside down.

This world is even weirder than its people.

My first victim showed up late in the morning. Tail thrashing as it scampered up to the tunnel I'd built into the edge of the roof with goo cheese smeared at the entrance. "That's it tree rat. Go for the goostow. The first taste is free."

It raced forward and back twice before it approached the dark shaft entering the house and hesitantly take a quick lick at the goo smeared at the end. Then it went still for a moment at the taste that goes right from its nose to its brain. "Got you now, my fine furry friend.”

From there, its need for more goo cheese led it into the spaces between the walls of the house where the seven foot long copper spike hung suspended by a single strand of spell severable spider silk string until it passed under the pointy bit.

Sadly I got the timing a bit off.

My land lady jumped out of her chair with a yelp as the agonizing scream of an impaled squirrel tears through the house. “What the Hell was that?”

Murder mouse tears the throat out of the helplessly pinned down rodent fairly quickly and I hit it with a Harvest spell to clean things up. But it takes Ivy quite a while to calm down. Even then she is shooting suspicious looks around the house for the next few hours.

“Sorry. I didn’t plan on that.” I decided to practice my timing for the rest of the day. Even adding a pad of triple mouse hide to quiet the slams of the copper spike after the first few thumps draw sharp looks from the old woman.

Still. 3 BP. Not bad for an afternoon's work.