As it turned out, I didn’t need to go find the crafter I was looking for. She had found me way before I had reached her station.

“Where are they!” Blair shouts, sprinting towards me. She bumps into several people on her warpath, but she doesn’t stop to apologize to a single one. When she reaches me, she grabs my shoulders, her eyes glowing with excitement. “Where are the monsters you brought me! Oh I can practically smell the high quality materials you have!”

“Can you really smell them?” I ask, maybe a bit stupidly.

“I might as well be able to. I have a bit of a knack for sensing these things.” She taps her nose as she speaks. I don’t know if her knowing I had some powerful monster corpse on me was the result of a skill or a terrifyingly accurate intuition, but now wasn’t the time to pry.

“We probably need to go outside the city if I am going to show you this. Maybe even to a different floor.”

“Ooooo you must have a lot of bodies stuffed into that aura of yours if you are worried about what people are gonna think.” She says, grinning. “Any who, it does not matter! We can go to floor eleven. I doubt any prying eyes will be there to see all your secrets.”

“You’ve made it to floor eleven?” I ask, genuinely surprised.

“Of course I have. I actually just got back from completing floor ten.”

“I thought a crafter would have more trouble than most when it came to fighting your way through the floors.” I say as we walk towards the staircase.

“Fighting? Well there was hardly much of that. Squashing anything in my path was easy enough until I got to floor 9, and from there I just outfitted the royal guards with some shiny new gear. That got the King to let me pass to floor eleven. I even got a shiny new tier for my pioneer title.”

I can feel a bit of the color drain from my face. “Have you told anybody else about that yet?” I ask.

“Nah, didn’t really think to. Should I be telling people?”

“No. Well, you can if you want, but I would strongly prefer if you didn’t.”

“Then I won’t tell a soul. You know what they say, happy corpse supplier happy life.”

We arrive on the eleventh floor halfway through the conversation. The small island surrounded by open ocean felt way too nostalgic considering it really hadn’t been too long ago that I was last here. I wanted to continue down the line of conversation we were on and see if she really meant what she’d said, but she tore the direction of the conversation from my hands.

“Now, show me the goods.” She says, eagerly rubbing her hands together.

I turn away from her and take a quick look at the island we stood on, making sure it would be big enough to fit the titans corpse. It seemed to be big enough, so I released the corpse from my aura, feeling a wave of relief when I did. It felt like a burden had been dropped. The feeling of a full stomach was gone, and I even felt a bit lighter.

My expression slowly drops for a moment when I think more about the unspoken metaphor, and I quickly derail that train of thought before I start getting disgusted just thinking about my aura. I turn my attention back to Blair, who for once finally seems to be quiet. She is just gawking with an open mouth at the humongous monster.

“I...” She trails off. Without warning, she suddenly sprints off towards the staircase at top speed. “I’ll be right back!” She shouts.

Seeing how fast she moved startled me, and I quickly checked her level, shocked by what I saw.

Human (Level 45)

It looks like somebody has been hard at work. No doubt she’s been held back by the materials she’d had on hand, and this corpse would certainly benefit her greatly. Before she returns, I start reabsorbing the corpse into my aura, grimacing at the mana expenditure and the bloated feeling in my stomach that I did my best to ignore.

Ten minutes later when Blair reappeared, she looked around frantically for the now missing body of the titan. She even did a quick lap around the island in her hysterics as if it might be hiding behind a palm tree or something. The whole lap only took a few seconds, but that was enough for her desperate eyes to turn to angry ones as she looked at me.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What did you do with it?” She asks.

“Before I answer, just know that I am not giving this to you out of the kindness of my heart.” I say.

“I know that! That’s why I’ll make you an item or two out of it.” She complains.

“No, I want more than that.” I say. “It is becoming increasingly clear that I am pretty much the only person who can bring you quality materials. In return, I want you to be a crafter on retainer for me. I want you to be willing to supply me with equipment appropriate for my level as long as I keep supplying you with these rare materials.”

She glares, but sighs a moment later. “Finally you realize it. I was hoping that you’d let me sucker you into basically free materials a bit longer, but maybe you aren’t as simple as I’d thought.”

“Well, no more of that.” I say. “I’m thinking of this as an investment, so I want to see some returns.”

“And you will get them.” She says. “Just let me work away at the corpse of that thing and I’ll have you some armor in a jiffy.”

“I’d much rather you reach level 52 before making me anything.”

“Why level 52? Isn’t evolution at level 50?”

“Yeah, but it’d be better to let you get more used to the skills you unlock and upgrade from the evolution.”

“Ugh. Fine.” She finally laments. “But I would like your help with one thing before I start working to reach level 50.”

“What is it?”

“Help me find a permanent spot for all this shit.” She says, holding her hand out. I see a ring on her finger briefly glow purple, and suddenly the immediate area around her is dotted with crafting stations of all kinds. There was a tailoring table, a forge, a furnace, an anvil, a table with gems studding it that must be meant for enchanting, and even a mannequin that was made to fit armor.

“Do you have an idea in mind for what kind of place you’d like?” I ask. I don’t bother arguing or telling her no. I could see the reasoning behind not wanting to have the body of a titan laying around the outpost while she worked on one part of it at a time.

“It’s got to be somewhere that isn’t too out of the way. It also has to be somewhere that basically nobody is gonna find. If they do find it, they better be worth talking to or I’ll chase them out with a bullet to the foot.”

I assumed she meant that figuratively, but her ring glowed again as she summoned a very modern looking revolver into her hand and spun it around on her finger. I wasn’t about to question the lady with a gun, so I elected to ignore it.

“Is here not fine?” I ask. “Anybody getting here would be a pretty high level and definitely worth talking to.”

“They’d also be able to teleport right in the middle of my workspace.” She says. “I need it to be a place at least a decent bit away from the entrance to whatever floor its on.”

I think for a moment. I think for a few minutes actually. There wasn’t really anywhere I could think of that met all of her requirements within the first five floors, and neither of us could travel to floors 6 through 10. The idea finally hits me, and I look to Blair.

“How confident are you in making a forcefield?”

__________

“Done!” Blair says, clapping. It snaps my attention back to what she was doing, the small but complex mana construct in my hands falling apart from lack of concentration.

“Finally?” I ask. “Am I free to go?”

“Not quite yet. I have to make sure it works still.”

I groan, tired of sitting in this bubble of air. I’d been here for the past twelve hours while Blair had been hard at work setting up her base of operations. I had escorted her down to the 13th floor, and after walking a short distance from the entrance, made a large bubble of air for her to start working in. She had spent some time studying the barrier of mana I had made. Within 6 hours, she had made an enchantment on the ground beneath us that roughly mimicked what mine could do, though not nearly as well. Spells could pass right through, and the only thing it really was made to hold back was the water.

I had spent the entire time fending off sharks that had come to attack us. It only took a single strong mana bolt to take them down, which meant it didn’t require much of my attention. I had been getting extremely bored waiting for her to finish up making a defense system to protect the place for her. Said defense system was made up of two turrets that would fire big balls of mana at anything too close to the bubble wall. A few other enchantments she had drawn would then draw in the mana from the corpses, using it to power the system. Assuming the sharks never stopped attacking, it could run by itself indefinitely.

The first victim of the turrets arrived after only a few minutes of waiting. The shark had rammed into the mana barrier, and almost immediately after was pelted with several balls of mana. It died shortly after, and its energy was absorbed and put back into the system.

“The cycle of life truly is a thing to behold.” I say sarcastically.

“It really is.” Blair says without a hint of sarcasm. She was clearly proud of herself.

“So where are you going to be storing the corpse, or any other materials for that matter?”

“Well now I just have to dig myself a storage bunker.” She shrugs. “It will take a bit on my own. But it could always be sped up if you help.”

“I’m not doing more free labor.”

“Damn. Guess you really are done being suckered into this stuff.” Blair says, shaking her head. “I’ll pay you 25 silver coins for your time.”

“Coins?” I ask. “Wait, did that woman from the great city actually convince our council to adopt that?”

“Yep! I was actually pretty stoked too, as now I can set standard prices for my work. Not to brag or anything, but I am starting to accumulate some disgusting wealth.”

“Good for you. So how much is 25 silver actually worth?”

“Don’t know.” She laughs. “When you have so much money, it’s hard to appreciate its value.”

“Sounds like an excuse to underpay me.” I say, crossing my arms.

“You caught me.” She throws her hands up overdramatically. “I’ll pay you 50 silver, which should be enough to buy a couple of fancy meals if you really want to splurge on that. I’ve heard you have a bit of an affinity for tasty food.”

“Well, I guess I can’t deny that.” I say, a shovel made of mana appearing in my hand. “So, just point to what you want dug up and I’ll get it done.”