Moving right along, it goes around the world, moving right along… how long have I been running for now? I dunno, my lungs hurt though, so I’m probably fine? It’s also dark out, so I can’t imagine that it’ll be particularly easy to find me even with skills to track me…

Well, whatever, if the opposition arrives they’ll simply have to be… dealt with. For now, I’ve got some stock to take!

HP and MP is full for yours truly, Jasper has been chilling in the inventory for about an hour now, she’s fine… Screech has been asleep for just as long, so, what’s her stamina at?

101/121

…A little lower than I expected is what it is, but oh well, she was at near single digit amounts of stamina prior so I suppose I should’ve expected it. Well, I’ll let her sleep a little longer before I yell at her again.

Jerry is fine as well, but he’s been very… quiet, ever since I used him as a body shield. I mean I get it, I guess? But also not really? Can’t say I’d hold a grudge if somebody was given the option to either take a knife to their throat or send it to their friend to give them a flesh wound, and they chose the latter option with me being their friend. That’s just, mmm, common sense, no? It was death for me or tank a bit of damage for himself.

Well, as far as I’m aware, that’s not even why he’s upset, so I’ll stop jumping to conclusions.

Bottom line? We’re all pretty much good. I’m a bit low on stamina, Screech is still asleep, but otherwise we’ve all come out no worse for wear! I mean, I’m at negative eleven instead of negative ten karma now, but like, well darn I guess that’s just what I’m doing now! Negative karma for the win I guess.

It’s simply the way things are. Maybe I’ll go about changing that if I can figure out how exactly to change it to begin with, but if I’m already far enough down the tree there’s probably going to be good reason to stay on it. Karma is gained from things other than pvp, so clearly it’s not just a PK punishment. With how many drawbacks it has described on the karma information page, I’d imagine the content that it unlocks will be just as lucrative.

Anyways… staying in this town is definitely gonna be a no go. I’m not sure about other towns, but I think I can at least check them out with negative eleven karma. It’s not like I got instantly outed with ten, so… it shouldn’t really be an issue? But either way I’m not heading out right now.

It’d be a shame for me to just pop out without doing ANYTHING around this place… so I might as well do some grinding, no? Test out a few things… you know, level up a few times… each monster is reliably worth seven experience on average, so… I just have to kill a few hundred! That should be easy enough really, with Song of Wrath only costing ten MP, Screech should be able to use it twenty or so times before she needs to take a nap, and every time she does it she’ll agro a huge crowd towards us!

Jasper will get her minions up and running, and well… from there it’s ggs! I could bring Jerry out as well and get him some experience, but he doesn’t really offer me anything right now to be honest… like, I know his passive talks about eating stronger monsters to grow and what not? But, er, their bodies disappear before he can, so how is he supposed to do that? It’s either through getting kill credit or I’m missing something. I sincerely hope it’s the latter, because he’s not getting kill credit.

He has cool baseline stats and all, but nothing interesting that would warrant actually getting him up to speed with the rest of the crowd. I may keep him around to speak to him and what not, but… keeping him at the average level of the “party” is kind of pointless if he can’t contribute in any meaningful way. Maybe I’ll level him up later! Just… not right now.

Sorry little guy, in due time.

“Alright Jasper, think I’ve run far enough away this time?”

“...Mmmh..”

“Oh it’ll be fine. Even if they do go all the way out of their way to come find us, we’d be able to deal with them lickity-split! It’s not like they’re THAT strong, there were just a lot of them, no?”

“M.. mm-mm.”

“...What are you so worried about?”

Whereas her tone of voice would usually be unbothered, matter of fact, downright uninterested to be honest, she’s lazy she doesn’t really care about most things, she just does them because I ask. And it’s… a little odd for her to have that level of devotion in the span of a week or so, but eh it benefits me. Moving on, like I said, she usually does not care about the things I ask her about; only me.

I haven’t paid it much attention, but every time other people are mentioned or, we’re just around other people in general, she’s always very slightly… on guard so to say. I took it as just being “stranger danger!” but… I dunno, this feels a little bit more deeply seated than that.

“Mm.”

“Me? I’ll be fine. You should be worried about yourself nine times out of ten.”

“MHM.”

“Whaaat? You know me, I always make it out of every situation.”

“??? Mh-mmM. MMmmMm-M.”

“I only ever get low, I never die.”

“MM.”

Errrrrrrrrrr, I was on one health earlier to be fair… With a little less luck I could’ve just died? But… would I lose? Luck is a skill too, no?

“Nah, I’d live.”

“...”

“Oh relax, I'm only joking. I know, I know, I’m a risk taker. But you know how I literally can’t die, right? From a… different plane of existence and what not? I won’t ever ‘die’, you will. So like I said, you should be much more worried about yourself than you are me.”

And in a way, she kind of is I think. Like I said, some sort of issue lodged in there. I just happen to be the target of concern at the moment. I could also be completely wrong, this is all guess work after all, but…

“Trust me, I’ll be alright. Now, speaking of being alright, howzabout we get some leveling done?”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“...Mm?”

“Oh yeah, my machinations are cuhrayzee.”

“...Mm???”

“Mass destruction Jasper, mass destruction.”

“...Mkay.”

—

“Wakey wakey…”

121/121

“Come on, no reason to be asleep still!”

“...”

“Ah-you aren’t even asleep to begin with! Now how did you do that?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

“You know, out of all three of you, you’re definitely the one I’d least expect to just be able to shut up! You talk so much I just tune you out most of the time, but here you are being so utterly silent I can’t even feel your presence of mind!”

“You ignore me?”

“Half the time yeah.”

“I don’t think you get to be angry at me ignoring you then.”

Pff-bold bird. Brave bird, even. Though they’re not exactly wrong…

“Trying to worm your way out of trouble are you?”

“No definitely not.”

They are… shockingly good at hiding their intentions through this mental speech thingamajig. Whereas Jasper doesn’t have any actual verbiage, but I can get a clear picture through just her thoughts, it seems to be the literal opposite with Screech here. She’s a good liar.

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

Oh well!

“...Right. Well, you’re not exactly wrong, per se, so I’ll maybe let it slide.”

“I won’t ignore you if you don’t ignore me?”

“...Maybe talk less and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay!”

She’s surprisingly un-miffed about that, or maybe she’s very miffed, can’t tell, as I just discussed! I’d get yelled at by most other people for saying something like that, so perhaps we’re chill here. Or maybe she reaalllly wants those truffles. Can’t tell!

“Well, first things first, I’ll need you to help a liiittle bit here. Just use a few of your skills, help me test out a few theories?”

“Oh I love testing theories what are we doing?”

“Well, if you’ll take a look around…”

[Double-Summon!!]

“You’ll see that big ‘ol horde of furry rodent things off in the distance!”

Summoning both Jasper and Screech at once, the former merely huffs and lies down whilst Screech peers over at the horde. Peers over, you ask? Why shouldn’t there be a multitude of canyon walls preventing such a thing?

Why NO of course not! Do you take me for a fool? Having hit something with a fireball, a whole ROCK SLIDE happened! I’m not going to go ahead and use a sonic attack in the middle of the canyon, that’s just asking for copious amounts of sediment to find a place upon my backside.

I was looking for a while, but after another hour I finally managed to find a clearing in this place! It’s still rocky and uneven and all the other unpleasantries of this place, but there’s more than ten feet of maneuverability. Oh and also the, you know, few dozen, maybe hundred rat monsters around the place, but that’s good for my purposes so…

Here we go!

“All you need to do is use [Song of Wrath] and uh, yeah that’s it!”

“Alright!”

“But wait a sec-”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK MY EARS-

FHAfhahgahwghaghjahwghahgshgghhh… not that bad the seventh or so time, but I think this is Jasper’s first time having been blasted and… yeesh, her fur is standing on end…

“Jasper are you alright?!”

“”

Not even stunned silence, her eyes are wide, her muzzle a grimace.

She might… need a moment.

A moment perhaps too long, given the now swarming

Karst’s Scourge-LVL 5

The now swarming those.

“Right, wanna give [Morrigala Metamorphose] a bit more testing then?”

“Sure!”

I’ll buy you a moment Jasper.