8)

In the middle of a scheme. Mood- Conniving

It’s nearly an hour before I hear Iris heading back my way. At that point, I had nearly given up on her.

She set her bowl and spoon in the basin where the water come out and turned a nob to fill the bowl with some water. Then she turned in the direction of the fridge and stood then for a moment before hesitantly moving towards it.

My sacrificial bugs stood ready.

As she reached for the fridge door and stepped forward to look in the fridge, three warrior roaches raced under her descending mock lizard slipper clad foot and were crushed beneath her weight.

“What? I killed three what? Roaches?”

Oh yeah. Notices. She gets those. So much for subtlety.

The old woman stumbled back to reveal three shiny copper coins instead of three gooey spots on the ground.

“What. The. Heck?”

“She gets coppers for killing base ranked bugs. I got iron coins for most of the copper ranks dungeons creatures I killed. I didn’t see any copper coins until I killed a copper three monster. What kind of bull turds is this?”

While I was raging on Iris’s windfall of a reward. My landlady was still reeling over her kill count.

“Point three experience points? Reward three cents? Where did those pennies come from? Is this something from that class thing everyone got?”

Point one experience per roach. So I would have to do this… one hundred and ninety seven more times. Great.

She poked at the coins with the tip of her slipper. “You know what, Nope. I ain’t touching those. There has to be something online about all of this.” Then she hastily made her exit.

Well, waste not. Three gatherer roaches raced out to collect the coins. A moment later I was hitting one of them with an identity spell.

-ping-

[ Copper penny. The lowest value unit currently In the local area.]

Huh. I guess they don’t have iron coins here. They did have a very well done side view of a man with some sharp cheekbones on one side of the coin and a fancy building on the other side. As well as a bunch of writing I could not understand a word of.

Time to check the manual.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

So, grumble, grumble, I get to understand the local language. But only in spoken form. I guess they don’t expect a dungeon core to spend a lot of time reading things.

A few hours later with only a few visits from the cat and I had the first of my two storage rooms completed.

[ You have built your first storage room. Reward 1BP]

[ New quest: Quest for inventory]

{Gather 10 units of 10 new materials. Reward 2 BP]

Well, that's something to work on.

I set the builder to work on the next storage room. And now that I had some storage space to work with...

I decided to keep one coin around for decoration, while the other two went to the material needs quest.

[You have acquired 3.27 units of copper]

And with that, I am on my way.

Stripping the floor below the fridge got me ten units of linoleum. Bits and pieces of loose material from the sub-level got me ten of paper and wood. Bits of paint collected from the back wall got me ten for that. Reproducing plastic from the undesignated material paid out ten of that.

Five down, five to go.

The dead ants only counted as undesignated material as did all of the dust. A bit of the fuzzy material on the ceiling of the sub-level counted as paper somehow.

The wax from the wax paper counted as its own substance. But it cost me 1.4 units of undesignated material for one unit of wax paper. It was still worth it to fill up another ten units toward my quest.

Towards late morning, my builders had finished the second storage room. But I got nothing for building another one of the same room. Shortly there after, Iris showed up again.

This time she was coming into the kitchen slowly like she was hunting something. Well, let’s give her something then. This time I only send two roaches scurrying toward her. Only to have her let out a curse and start stomping.

A moment later she spoke up. “That did it. Turn off notifications. There, now I won’t be seeing things. I wonder what set that off in the first place."

This time she collected her reward with a groan as she bent over to collect her prizes. “Well, at least they’re shiny pennies. I wish the stores would still take them, but at least the banks still have to take them. Going to have to set out some traps through, unless Buttercup decides to earn his keep.”

So much for collecting ten copper. On the other hand, she was only a hundred and ninety five roaches from leveling up. Even with notification off. A level up message would appear the next time she leveled. I just had to hope she would spend her ability point on health.

Thinking about it, I may still be able to get some copper coins out of her kills. After all, she did turn off her notices…

The old woman puttered around her kitchen. Putting sliced bread into some device that toasted it. Smearing some sort of thick brown spread from a jar in a cabinet and getting the whole thing readied to be carried out on a plate.

Meanwhile, I got seven more roaches crushed below her feet. Buttercup got two of them as well as three more when they tried to recover the coins. A spider got crushed below her plate, while another one positioned itself in a cabinet to die under the jar when Iris returned it to its place.

All without the old woman seeing a thing, Hmmm. Maybe a point in perception wouldn’t hurt her either.