9)

Between floors. Keeping busy.

By the time the old woman had wandered off with her lunch. I had almost enough of the copper I needed for my quest.

I also noticed a bin under the water source where Iris had been tossing the paper packaging from her food. Which seemed a promising source for new materials.

Since the cat seemed to stick around her mistress when Iris was eating. It seemed an opportune time to send out the scouts to find their way over there.

Which proved to be correct as the gatherers were able to send along units of plastic and ten more of something called clorox from an open container below the sink. As well as a lot more grime and filth.

They also found the mice.

The creatures had the entrance to a nest back there. Which would make future raids a bit problematic. Luckily the gatherer they nabbed and started to munch on had just collected some of the clorox. Which the mouse got a mouthful of. Giving the rest of my gatherers and the scouts a chance to escape.

One day I was going to do something about them. Gatherer #2 will be avenged.

Meanwhile, there was a lot of iron to be found in this house. Instead of clever joints and glue to hold the woodwork together. Nearly the entire place had been nailed in place with a variety of iron nails. Some of which, the ones holding a decorative baseboard, could be removed without bringing down the house.

Iron was much too hard for my gatherers to munch up and send to me. But the old wood behind the fridge was soft enough for my boys to chew the nails free. And as long as they were at it I had them chew down all the soft rotting wood with a plan to replace it when the back wall was within my reach.

This also let me discover that the walls were both hollow, as well as filled with more dust, cobwebs, and dried up dead insects. If I had the storage I could really clean up here.

But then... I could expand the storage rooms. I had only built them to the starting size underneath the bottom of the kitchen floor. I could expand them down to the top of the material on the sub level ceiling and nearly double the storage space. All it would cost me is some undesignated material. Which is what I wanted more storage space for. Win, win.

There was a lot of rope like material in the walls that was soft enough for the roaches to chew. But once they really got to chewing on it, the ropes turned out to be filled with copper wire with lightning flowing along them. Poor gatherer #5. You will be easy to be replaced, and also soon to be forgotten.

So, just a little nibbling on what turned out to be something called rubber. Ten units worth of nibbling, and then I had another part of my quest done.

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Seven materials collected and three to go.

I really wish the manual was more helpful on what constituted a material.

I continued stocking up on materials throughout the rest of the day. Almost all of it undesignated which also served to clean the house. Reports from my scout mapped out the interior parts of the house between the walls. But my attempts to scout out from them, squeezing the scouts out from between cracks, resulted in numerous brave little roaches falling prey to that psychotic beast, Buttercup, the scourge of my life.

Nevertheless. I did find a dining room off of the kitchen. A larger room with padded couches and chairs, with all but one spot on the couch covered in junk and litter. A set of stairs leading up to a set of dusty little rooms. And a little bedroom in the back opposite what I would call a bathroom.

It had a bath inside it as well as a porcelain toilet and sink. It seemed like Iris was a woman of great wealth, even if she didn’t live like it.

The door to the bathroom is closed and my host doesn't seem to be home at the moment. So, “Unleash the horde, glory to those who get me some materials.”

The porcelain proves to be too tough for the gatherer's mandibles, but they find something called “Caulking” which seems to be used to seal up the edges of the bathtub counted.

I also get some toothpaste, soap, and a new type of wafer thin paper. But none of those count as materials. I did set the roaches to cleaning up the room, including all of the toothpaste caked onto my host’s toothbrush. She can thank me later.

I send a scout to investigate the drains. And well, let’s just say the people here are serious about their sewage drains. And any future needs for undesignated material were not going going to be a problem.

They don’t make their sewers quite big enough for adventurers to go in to kill off sewer monsters, which may be a problem for them later on. Oh well, they can always send in goblins, fairies, and other little people adventurers to deal with it when the rats start arming themselves.

But the time I’ve taken care of the worst of the mess in the bathroom. My host returned home with shiny bags of supplies. A lot of which turns out to be food that she put away in the fridge and cupboards.

Then she opened the last bag, took out a package, and tore it open. Setting out the contents on the counter in front of her before throwing out the packaging and the bag it came in.

Then she starts setting out little gray squares all about the kitchen. Two of them getting tossed under the fridge with me.

-Ping-

[You have identified a Roach motel]

Housing for roaches?

Nope. It’s a delivery system for a poison called Fipronil. Well, thanks Iris. I’ll just go ahead and take those for some future need.

Kind of a wasted effort on her part, since It’s not like my boys are going to eat any of that. But it does give me a chance to increase her kill count to point zero seven experience points for her. And she was too busy to notice the seven copper coins.

Ten materials out of ten.