“No, I’m fine.” I pulled my mouth closed with pure force of will and put Claire back on the ground. “I think you were affected by the transfer. Try to pull yourself together.”

I moved away from her and moved towards the closest monster corpse. My staff showed no damage, but the thing's armour had been ripped apart. The brutality scared me a little.

“Rook, are you OK?” Rose hovered next to me, a faint smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. “You need to take a break. You’ve been pushing yourself since we came back-”

“No!” My refusal came out louder than I had expected, so I took a moment to calm myself. “I know I have a thousand years, but do you think I can just mess around? I took my time, tried to be cautious, and you see what happened? Claire died. I died.”

“I know that, but you can’t keep this up.” Rose waved at the corpses around us. “The overflow pulls out your deepest emotions. I know you’re angry, I know things haven’t gone well, but you have another chance.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” I turned to her, my arms trembling with suppressed rage. “Do you want me to slow down? Who will pay for that then? I don’t care about many people, and most of those I do want to protect are in this room. If I die, you die.”

“I know.” Rose closed her eyes for several seconds before she looked back up at me. “I’m not asking you to stop, but this isn’t healthy. Please, just take a break.”

“I’ll think about it.” I turned back to the creatures who had been demolished during my overflow. I could feel Rose’s gaze on the back of my neck, but I ignored her as I leaned over the nearest ant.

I tried to ignore it, but I guess she’s right. I’m just running away from my problems. Pushing things too fast is worse than being overly cautious…

But there weren’t any other options. I had to at least meet up with the bandit king in the next two months. If he left before I managed to find him, it would be years before I got another chance. I glanced over at the results of my short period of full power.

Maybe it’s because it was an overflow when I unlocked the Rage skill? But how did that happen… Never mind, I’ll figure it out later. Gather!

The ant vanished as I collected the loot from its corpse. After I had collected around half of the room’s loot, the voice in my head admonished me out of the blue.

**Inventory full. Please discard unneeded items. Capacity will be increased as skill rises in rank.**

“Well, damn.” I sat down on an ant and opened my inventory. It was packed to the brim with all sorts of trash. From how little restraint I had shown up to this point, it was surprising it had lasted so long.

I guess that makes my decision easier. Rose did want me to take a break, but she didn’t say WHAT she wanted me to do instead. I can spare a few days at least, especially as this will help me in the long term.

At least my skill automatically sorted the loot into different sections. I could create new groups at will for easier filtering, but that didn’t add anything to the total capacity. My first move was to pull out all of the lower level materials.

A pile of slime cores and wolf materials dropped in front of me. Those alone cleared a chunk of space, but it wasn’t enough to collect everything in this room. I ignored the rest of the loot and focused on the low-level materials which littered the ground.

If I process these, it should lower the amount a bit, right? It will also let my skill grow significantly. Bryan said the gains from crafting are lowered after level five, but it should still help a bit.

I started on the hides. It took a lot longer for each one than my previous processing, which made sense as those had been tiny squares in comparison. They would barely patch up a tear on someone's clothes, whilst the skins in front of me could be used to craft at least one piece of armour each.

The first one passed without a hitch, so I moved onto the next one. The success rate was OK, but the quality varied wildly. I had to keep my attention focused throughout the full process, or defects would scar the final product.

It took me several hours to finish the hides, by which point I was a bit peckish. I scanned through the inventory and pulled out some dried meat. It was tough but tasty enough that I could stand it. After several seconds of chewing, it fell apart into several strands.

As the meat lost its consistency, a wave of taste washed through my mouth. The outer skin had looked like toughened leather, but inside it was soft and pure. As I had began to appreciate the sensation, it vanished. There was only half a stick left, so I stuffed it into my mouth and set back to work.

I have enough of these to last for a week or so, but I can’t get too greedy. Sorting this stuff out is bound to take a few days at least.

With my will in place, I continued with the processing. The hides were finished after a few hours, after which I moved onto the bones. At first, I was confused as to how to treat them, but my smithing skill working quite well. I could always reshape them later with transmutation, so I just worked on them without worrying about it.

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After half a day had passed, most of the low-level scraps had been processed. I stored the wolf materials back in my inventory, which left a good chunk free, and turned to the slime cores. At first, I thought to use my smithing skill on them, but Claire moved beside me before I could begin.

‘Could I take some of those?’ She wobbled back and forth on her pillar next to me as she spoke. It was odd to have an orb speak directly into my brain, but it wasn’t the strangest thing I had seen up to now.

“Sure. What do you need them for?”

‘Slime queens can absorb other cores to level up. If I take all of those, it might help me gain a bit more control.’

“Oh, right. Go for it.” I stepped past the cores and moved to another free area. The other loot would have to wait, I had to make more space in my inventory first. My kleptomaniac nature had come back to bite me, but a hard day's work was well rewarded. My inventory would soon be stuffed to the brim with processed materials.

If I show these to Karen, she’ll have a fit. I need to go to the Holy Kingdom eventually, maybe I’ll see her again. I glanced at Claire, who had settled on top of the slime cores like a mother hen… or more precisely a mother slime. I hope she doesn’t mind. I need to persuade her old comrade to help me… and it sounds like they weren’t close.

Claire noticed my gaze, so she gave me a friendly little wiggle. Now that I knew the truth about her feelings, I felt awkward around her. The fact her protective feelings had evolved so drastically over a few days confused me. She had seemed so mature, so in control… how was it possible that she had fallen in love with me?

I turned back and set to work. The ants provided tough armour plates, acid pouches and… legs. The legs were classed as a consumable item, but I didn’t personally agree. For the acid pouches, I had no idea how to process them.

The others did mention alchemists, maybe I can get that skill when I go back into town.

That left the armour.

Leatherworking didn’t have any effect, but smithing did. The uneven and lumpy plates were melted into a rough sphere. After I had knocked away the impurities, their total size had shrunk massively. What was left was a dull brown orb which pricked at my hand as I rolled it around.

“Oh well, it’ll do.” I tossed it into my inventory and moved onto the next armour plate. My mana was close to zero, but I now had a perfect way to fix that. I switched over to the Rage pool and continued my work. At first, there seemed to be no difference, but then I analysed one of my processed materials on a whim.

Ant Armour Ore - Processed by a beginner crafted with the Rage attribute. Low chance to grant relevant increases to items crafted with this material.

A quick check on one of the previous items proved that it had the same message, but with ‘Novice’ instead. That worried me a little, but after I asked Rose she calmed me down.

“Don’t worry, no one else can see what attribute crafted it. People don’t expect any increases from any crafter under advanced as the chance is so tiny, so they don’t pay too much attention.”

“Right.” I nodded as I turned back to my work. For now, it didn’t matter, but once my crafting went past intermediate I would have to be careful. If any of my materials gave a ‘Novice’ attributed increase, questions might be asked.

Until that point, I could just ignore it.

The rest of the ants took close to four days to complete. That included all of those I had looted in the previous fights, plus the ones I had killed during the overflow. At worst, I could give the group a share of the processed materials. They should be happy with that, at least. There had been one other benefit of my work on the third day.

My Smithing had increased to advanced.

Unfortunately, the rest of the ant materials would have to stay as they were. I also had the materials gained from the goblins, but those would take a bit more finesse.

It was mostly armour, weapons and trinkets. They were sorted into types, ranks and rarities. I pulled out the lowest of the weapons, which were at the basic rank, and analysed a few of them.

Their descriptions didn’t give me much hope. Whilst this world didn’t have anything as immersion-breaking as damage numbers, even the information on the weapon warned of their fragility. If a low-rank weapon was used to hit a high rank of the same type, the result were easy to guess.

The low-rank weapon would shatter like a piece of glass.

My staff was of an unknown rank. My analyse skill didn’t bring anything up when I checked it, but the fact it showed no damage after my rough treatment proved it wasn’t too low.

After I had sorted out all of the basic rank items, I started my smithing once more. Leatherworking and Clothier would have to wait their turn. I melted the weapons down into rough lumps, bashed off the impurities, and stored them in my inventory. They were mostly lower rank ores, but they were easier to store and would fetch more when sold than the base weapons, at least if I could believe what Rose said.

I would have to be careful who I gave them to. As long as it was anonymous, the low chance of a Novice attributed effect shouldn’t come back to bite me.

After six days passed since I had arrived in the heart of the dungeon, the last basic weapon had been destroyed. My inventory was much cleaner, and I had more than enough space to store the remaining loot. I collected the last few scraps, melted down the few basic weapons I got, and moved over to the dungeon core.

Rose spent most of her time resting. She had used up her power to help Claire and still had to focus on my well being. My body had been through one reconstruction, but that wasn’t enough to heal the injuries yet. Rose had guessed I would need at least another two or three to get back to normal.

“Hey, I’m done.” I flicked the crystal, which had settled down against the wall. “Oy, wake up.”

The core flickered like an old monitor as it scraped up against the wall. It rose to head height before it lit up fully.

“Oh, that took less time than I expected. Are you sure you’re human?” The core shook as I glared at it. “Just a joke. Are you going to leave now?”

“I can’t stay here forever, I have something important to get done.” I looked up into the darkness above us. It seemed bizarre to think I had dropped down from that height a week ago. “Can you send us out, please?”

“I can, but I have a proposition for you.” The core jiggled worriedly, as though it was worried I would dismiss it offhand. “Do you want to become the owner of this dungeon? I can’t stand living here anymore, it’s so dull.”

“Wait, do you want me to be stuck here forever?” I shook my head adamantly and folded my arms. “No way. Send me out, now.”

“Please, give me a chance to explain. What if I said you could leave whenever you wanted? You wouldn’t be stuck here, and neither would I. Win-win, right?” The core shifted towards me and rested against my chest. “Please, help me out. I’m begging you. I’ll go insane if I’m stuck down here for another hundred years.”