Initially the climb was far less difficult than Will had imagined. The villagers had built paths into the bramble. In some places stalks were propped up horizontally and carved down to give safe passageways. In other places stairs and bridges had been built to span the gap between the large pathway stalks. Will could see hundreds of giant raspberries just out of reach of where they could be easily harvested, but equally could see many berries within easy reach the farther they went inside the bramble.

They were attacked frequently and without break. In the first hour they killed hundreds of shrikes, with a quarter of the kills going to Koma, who had the incredible ability to leap from stalk to stalk without any hint of falling. It put Will’s heart in his throat the first time Koma lept to a stalk over twenty feet away. But Koma leapt the distance without issue. And when he noticed Will’s distress, he leapt back with equally little issue. Will tried to tell Koma not to do that, but the willful beast ignored him, and Will was forced to stop worrying or have a heart attack.

As they climbed higher, the paths became more and more sparse, and they were forced to rely on their climbing skills. Seeing as Will had only ever climbed artificial climbing walls a handful of times, he was forced to rely on his already greater than human strength. After a few minutes of this, he looked at his status sheet to see if there was anything he could do to help him out. He wasn’t generally concerned with looking at his status over and over again, but realized he had neglected his status for far too long. He had leveled up 8 times since killing Madracora, and not allocated a single stat point.

Status

Will Thompson.

Age: 22 yrs (Earth)

Height: 6’ 2”

Eyes: Green-Hazel

Skin tone: Fair

Hair: White

Blessing: Human (King).

Class: No class selected.

Level 16 Human (King)

Stats

Strength: 26

Dexterity: 19

Constitution: 21

Intelligence: 28

Wisdom: 24

Charisma: 25

Luck: 5

It seemed his Intelligence Wisdom and Charisma had continued to go up from the one point to each per level he got from his blessing. It was enough that his intelligence was now higher than his strength. He appreciated this, but since he didn’t feel any smarter than before, he had to assume these did not affect true intelligence, or true wisdom either. Charisma was still to be determined. Until then, Will had forty points to distribute, and since his sword was still his primary mode of attack, he would put it into his physical characteristics. Will thought for a moment, and put twenty points in strength and ten each into dexterity and constitution. He felt the new power as it flowed into his body, and climbing immediately became much easier. He had nearly doubled his strength.

Status

Will Thompson.

Age: 22 yrs (Earth)

Height: 6’ 2”

Eyes: Green-Hazel

Skin tone: Fair

Hair: White

Blessing: Human (King).

Class: No class selected.

Level 16 Human (King)

Stats

Strength: 46

Dexterity: 29

Constitution: 31

Intelligence: 28

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Wisdom: 24

Charisma: 25

Luck: 5

The group climbed for several hours, and one by one, the followers bowed out, unable to keep the pace. Eventually it was left to just Will, Emerys, and Amalise. Oddly enough, Koma kept the pace just fine. He leapt from thorn to thorn like a mountain goat, standing in spaces far too small for him. Will was glad to have him along, as it made the increasing shrike attacks far more bearable. Finally, a large mound of sticks caught in between two stalks provided a spot to rest. Will, Emerys, and Amalise collapsed into the bowl like depression in the middle. They weren’t tired, not physically. But the climbing and fighting for hours had worn them out mentally. Emerys threw out a large thick piece of canvas which they nailed to the stalks to make a bit of a tent to rest in. It wasn’t until then that the three preoccupied people noticed a handful of eggs in the middle of the pile of debris. It wasn’t until then that they realized it wasn’t a pile of debris at all, but rather a nest.

The eggs were large, larger than an ostrich egg, but speckled like the egg of a songbird.

“So what do we do with them?” Emerys asked. “Smash them or try to keep them?”

“Keep them of course.” Will said. “Eggs this large will command a decent price I’m sure.”

“I thought you didn’t like money, given what it did to your dad and all.” Amalise said. Will snorted.

“Money is great. My Dad’s problems were his own damn fault.” Will said. “I might be willing to take friends over money if the choice were presented, but why choose if I don’t have to?”

“Fair enough.” Emerys said as he reached for an egg. He touched it and grew confused. “I can’t add it to my inventory.” Will tried and got a notification.

Living creatures may not be added to inventory.

“The eggs are still alive. They have to be dead to go into inventory.” That did raise some questions about the guts that were even now decomposing in his inventory. Bacteria were alive, weren't they? Will thought to try something and called upon his cold concept, but only slightly. He extended his cold aura around the eggs, but kept it to refrigerator temperatures. It was far easier than he realized. It was late spring and this far north the temperature was in the mid seventies. He realized that he could only bring the surroundings to near freezing with his cold aura. Unlike in the frozen mid winter where he could freeze trees with a thought. Tempering his cold aura by a few degrees was easy enough, and soon the eggs were added to his inventory.

He did realize that this was a little messed up. These eggs were likely fertilized and were growing into new birds. He had just frozen them to death. Oh well, they were just birds anyway.

After a few minutes of lounging in the nest, they were ready to go again. Will checked his inventory before they left to find that Koma had continued to kill more birds in their absence. Will was sure he could feel Koma’s delight at the situation. Will transferred the guts from the new birds to the compost pile, and continued climbing. They visited several dozen more nests as they kept on becoming more and more numerous. Eventually Will’s pile of eggs had grown over a hundred. He discovered that if he turned the temperature on the slot with the eggs down and set the time settings to normal, he could add the eggs directly to that slot without cooling them first. It made Will think that the prohibition against adding living creatures to the inventory was not a limitation of the inventory, but rather a rule imposed by the creator. He especially thought this because he could add a bunch of eggs and immediately stop time on that slot. True constraints would not allow that kind of tampering.

“So, we have killed a lot of birds.” Will said.

“Yes?” Emerys asked, turning to Will while off-handedly killing a couple more birds.

“How valuable is a silver peasant exactly? I assume that is currency.” Will asked.

“Well a silver peasant is five times as valuable as a silver slave, which is about thirty times as valuable as a copper slave, depending on what the exchanges are thinking at the moment. I am surprised you don’t know money at least. This system of currency is pretty much universal.”

“We have something different where I come from.” Will said. “Could you explain this to me real quick?”

“Sure. There are five coin denominations. You have the Slave, Peasant, Lord, Baron, and Crown. The Slave is the least valuable obviously. A peasant is worth five slaves, a lord is worth twenty, a baron is worth fifty and a crown is worth a hundred. You then typically see them in copper silver and gold. A silver piece is about thirty times as valuable as a copper piece of the same denomination, but that varies. A gold piece is about fifty times as valuable as a silver piece of the same denomination, but again that varies with the availability of gold.” He saw Will’s confusion and went on as he continued to kill birds. “You can get a meal at a local tavern for anywhere from a copper peasant to a copper lord, or five slaves to twenty slaves.”

“So wouldn’t a silver peasant for each of the, wow, I think we are over a thousand birds now. Wouldn’t that be a bit much?” Will said. Emerys’ eyes widened at the realization.

“I have been thinking the same thing,” Amalise said. “I am glad to see that I am not the only one to see it. By the time we are done he will owe us in the realm of ten gold lords.”

“Hell yeah!” Emerys yelled as he smashed two birds at once. “Payday!”

“No.” Amalise said. “I didn’t realize how numerous the birds actually were, or how easy they would be to kill. We should be paid in coppers for each bird. Lord Aalto won’t pay what he promised. Not at ten gold lords.”

“Just to do the math real quick,” Will said. “Ten gold lords would be the same as two hundred gold slaves. Which would be ten thousand silver slaves, and three hundred thousand copper slaves. That is a lot of money.”

“Enough to buy a manor in the countryside.” Amalise said. “Maybe a castle, with a walled village around it. That would be enough money to buy the town of Bramble under normal circumstances.” They fell quiet as they killed birds and contemplated the situation.

They continued their looting of eggs and killing of birds, and approached what seemed to be a main grouping of nests. This sped up both the attacks and collection of eggs, and it started to wear them down in a real way. Since it was starting to get dark, they started to look for a place to bed down for the night. They found a nest slightly larger than the others and set up their canvas. They were about to set watch when a huge weight crashed into the canvas shrieking and trilling.

It only took a second for Will to disengage from the cloth, but took three strikes of a claw in that time, each one chunking his health down by five percent. He finally got a look at what had attacked. It was a bird, hovering above him with wings buzzing like that of a hummingbird. It looked like the shrikes, but was three times the size, and every proportion was wrong. The wings were huge, the claws and beak were oversized, and when it opened its beak to caw, long jagged teeth folded out.

Will was never one to be overly affected by horror movies. He found them fun more than scary, and had a penchant for laughing where others screamed. This was different. Oh so different. Chills ran up and down his spine and he was frozen. It wasn’t until Emerys tackled him out of the way of the next swooping attack that he was able to move and summon his sword from his inventory. The monster bird swooped again, and Will lunged with all his enchanted might.

It was the wrong move. Will realized that as the momentum of the now dead bird took him over the edge. The bird disappeared into Will’s inventory as he fell. The thorny vines flashed past him and he enchanted himself for durability as fast as he could.

He did not know when all went black.