The second contract with the Part-timers was more usual. A pack of bronze-rank Ratters was rampaging through a farm. This put us on a time limit to contain the damage. The Ratters were about a meter and a half tall when on two legs, which they were half the time. They looked a little like rats. Their snouts were rat-like, and they had fur like a rat's, but I think the person who named them needed to see an eye healer. They would drop to all four feet to dash about. They were a different variant to what I had seen before.
They were nothing like Kai. Iron-rank Kai was the size of a large rat. Bronze rank Kai was half again bigger.
Mara sailed us across the lake on Freedom, and we trooped inland to the farm. Mara’s map is fantastic. There were reported to be over twenty of them.
“There are thirty-two,” said Kim after watching for a couple of minutes. I had no idea how she counted them as they all milled about—a combination of her Eye essence and her Knowledge Essence, I suppose.
Kim had a Tether skill like me. Mine drags those caught to the centre and cancels stealth, and, at bronze, it inflicts Inescapable to stop teleports, etc. Hers just holds those caught in place and inflicts mild electrocution, inducing muscle spasms. At bronze, the electric shocks also stop skill usage. “It is great at stopping shoplifters and other thieves,” she said.
Both Kim and Mara used bows as their primary weapon. Neither was a specialist archer, but both were scary accurate—Kim from her Eye Essence skills and Mara from her Wind Essence. I literally saw one of Mara’s arrows curve to hit a Ratter in the eye. Mara would never run out of arrows as long as she had mana as she made them. I was only slightly jealous of her wood essence. Only slightly.
The eyeshot didn’t kill the bronze rank Ratter, but it went down injured, and Kai swarmed over it, poisoning, burning, dehydrating, draining mana and good old-fashioned biting. The Ratter swiped a claw, sending Greenstone Kai flying, but the claws didn’t damage him, and he was immediately running back into the fray. Chitin Kai lost a bit of chitin when it happened to him, but he wasn’t seriously damaged. Bat Kai was swooping in and swiping at eyes and ears. As it was daylight, I had Night Kai in me, powering my claws.
Susan was working the edge of Kim and my tethers with her Warhammer, breaking bones and heads. She mostly stuck to Kim's Tether as mine dragged the Ratters toward the centre. When enough Ratters were near the centre, Kim would shoot an arrow at my crystal centre rod, making it explode. I would toss Ardisia into the mess to finish them off and recast the tether in a different area.
Jules and I were essentially corralling the Ratters. I was better at that as I had my Hunter Step, and Jules's only movement skill was a switch teleport from his Balance Essence. He would switch an escaping ratter with himself to bring them back. Once, he switched me with a Ratter, which confused both of us. We will need to work on that. He mostly used this skill in the kitchen to get stuff. I could see his co-workers getting annoyed about that. Imagine a cook reaching for the salt and grabbing an onion because Jules switch teleported them to use the salt and never put it back.
Jules claimed to be a support and imitation healer, but he was not lacking in the damage department. He had a conjured knife from his Blood Essence, and he inflicted a crippling hunger on the Ratter he targeted, then it would Haemorrhage blood, and he would then essentially butcher it. It was a single target only, and he had to watch that he didn’t get surrounded. He was doing this while buffing us with health and energy through his aura. He also had a Blood Harvest Spell, which sucked health from the recently deceased monsters to boost his health, and he could transfer that to others with his Transfusion spell. There was nothing imitation about his healing.
I was testing the latest version of my armour, so I didn’t have my weapons, but I went in with claw and teeth. I would reabsorb Ardisia, and she would strike out from me with her vines, restraining and poisoning the Ratters, and I would finish them with my claws. Then Kim would explode another of my tethers, and I would toss Ardisia into the blood bath to finish them, and we would go again.
I thought we made a good team, and this was only our second contract.
After our second contract with the Part-timers, Mara told me about the rundown boat shed on the edge of the dock area. It was actually for sale rather than to lease, but it would require a lot of work. There was a large shed with a ramp to the lake, where a boat could be hauled out of the water. The shed was not big enough to house her Cog, but the space in front of the shed was big enough to have the cog out of the water if she wanted to work on it. A small dock was attached. She said she would help me renovate if I let her tie up at the dock for free.
There was a wagon-sized track down one side of the building and a wagon-sized door halfway down for deliveries.
I didn’t have the money to buy it, although the silver-ranked chainmail and knives I took from my kidnappers went a long way—especially the chainmail. The coin from the sale of the ant eggs in Vitesse helped and Nia loaned/gave me the balance, not that I was going to tell anybody that.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The shed itself was about 10m long and two stories high. The floor and the lower 1.5m of the walls were stone. The rest of the walls and roof were rotting timber with many gaps. On the street side was a reception area and two offices on the ground floor. Above that were two larger offices and a kitchen area. Once I got the offices weatherproofed, I would make the upstairs into a bedroom and living area. There were stairs from the upper area directly into the boat shed as well as into the reception area below.
With Mara moored at the dock, I was not completely on my own, and I had plans to hire Susan to create a stone alchemy area for me in the large shed. I was a fairway from town and on the lake edge, as far from the temple as it was possible to be and still be in the city. The city wall was only one block away from my shed, and it extended out into the lake. The dock area had a stone seawall about a meter above the lake level with two access ways for ships to come and go. These were just seawalls now, or, I guess, lake walls, but they had gates and defences that would activate during a monster surge.
I was pleased with the position. It was only a block of warehouses, and then I could be over or around the wall and outside the city. It didn’t take much to run on the lake around the wall with my Hunters Step. Yes, it was all farms on the other side of the wall, but it was the closest I could get to the wilds and still be in the city. I would go for morning runs through the farms rather than through the city. Mara was also happy to drop me off anywhere on the lake edge.
The Part-timers seemed to be doing double duty, helping me. Mara and I had the office area weatherproofed in a week. The shed would take longer. Kim got me some good deals on furniture and would look out for some more specialised alchemy equipment I wanted. Susan made me a stone shed inside the leaky shed so I could store ingredients and equipment near the wagon doors.
I set up a non-explosive, non-poisonous lab in one of the downstairs offices for now. I sat down and wrote a list of Alchemy projects I wanted to work on.
1. Improved Armour—bronze rank, sand hardened and transparent like my iron rank one. Once I have the bronze resin mixture, it is straightforward, but the Ratter fight showed some changes I needed, plus I want to add more alchemical benefits if I can. I am still working on incorporating Ardisia into the armour.
2. Liquid fire. I had iron-rank sticky fire, so bronze rank should be an extension of that. What else can I use it for?
3. Make cheap health potions and hair cream. Jory inspired me.
4. Acid uses. I have a strong acid from the slimes. How can I use it?
5. Acid burn cream. Analyse the cream and recreate it if possible. Maybe do this before the one above.
6. Poisons. I have some ingredients in my garden and a Venom Kai, and now I need different poisons to enhance the team and coat my weapons and webs.
7. Poison antidotes.
8. Find how to get or create silver-rank versions of the above. For this, I will need to find a silver-ranked alchemist to work with. Hence, revisit the job offers.
I can start on items 1 and 3 in my current lab. All the others need a hardened and ventilated area. The large shed is well-ventilated but almost falling apart. We are working on that.
Things started to fall into a routine. The Part-timers would meet one evening a week to plan the next contract. I would go early and help Jules cook the meal, and we would slaughter and prepare the next beast for the business plan. I was learning a lot. We were experimenting with the short-term benefits of the Hunters Feast using a variety of herd animals and fish.
The next day, we either prepared for the job or left to do the job if it was a longer job. Usually, we tried for a prep day and then did the job the next day, but some jobs were more urgent. Then everybody split up to their weekday jobs, and I worked on my alchemy.
The Resin for the armour was pretty straightforward. The armour itself was not, as I wanted changes to accommodate Ardisia’s vines without opening more weak points than I had to. I consulted an Armourer and experimented. I was using a bronze rank copy of my iron armour as a default and then made changes and tested how they worked. This was an ongoing project. Unfortunately, I was now operating far beyond where any skill book could take me. Getting Ardisia’s essence incorporated into the armour was proving very difficult.
I made a batch of health potions and hair cream. Nobody would buy them as I was only an apprentice, but the Part-timers were grateful. I started to try to target the potions to specific uses, like the acid burn cream and the anti-fungal cream.
Susan finally created my stone lab, and I started on the acid and liquid fire. Like my armour, the bronze level sticky fire with the liquid fire and my resin was a fairly straightforward upgrade from the iron rank. I only had to adjust the ratios and add an additional stabilising agent.
Before I could try the same thing with the acid, Mara approached me. “Theo, do you know how to use a bow?”
“No, I usually throw javelins for my ranged options.”
“If you are going to crew on my ship, you need to learn to use a bow.” So she started teaching me basic archery. Archery was the main defence for Mara’s Freedom, and the ballista was an extension of that. She has a large supply of arrows and ballista bolts made and stored on the ship. She showed me where they all were, and I sharpened them for her. Most had wooden arrowheads, but she had some with iron heads.
I could hit the side of my shed from her boat, but not much else. Mara set up targets on the rock wall enclosing the docks for practice, and I was improving. It helped a lot when I bought a skill book on Basic Archery. Now, it is just practice, practice, practice. Luckily, Mara makes her own arrows with her wood-essence skill. I am not jealous… much.