“Back again, then,” Garric said, voice warm as hearthstone. “You’ve got that ‘I’ve been counting my copper in my head’ look.”
Kevin reached into his inventory, spilling its contents onto the counter in front of them both. The scent of earth and rat-musk, glow-cap sweetness and crushed greens, rose like a garden that had grown under the floorboards. “You said yesterday you’d buy ‘most anything with a use. I’ve got… most anything.”
Garric swung the hinged section of the bar and came around. “Let’s have a proper tally.” He cleared space on a scarred oak slab, set a brass scale in the middle and placed a ledger beside it: a thick book with cocktails of ink from a hundred different pens, dog-eared and blunt with use. His charcoal nub hovered. “We’ll go by lots. Herbs first. Then beast-bits. Then brewcraft. And before you ask—yes, tier twos fetch better coin. Twice the going rate on base-tier concoctions if they’re clean and labelled. That’s my standing.” He tapped the ledger. “And I stand by it.”
Kevin exhaled. Good. This will let him see how far he has to go.
He began laying out what he’d gathered: heartleaf tied with grass cord, bitter yarrow in a twist of burlap, mosswort still damp with dew, and windblossom bundled petal-inward to protect the fragile edges. Garric pinched a sprig of yarrow, sniffed, and grunted approval. He weighed each bundle with a professional’s indifference to romance and wonder—only mass and market mattered at the scale.
“Right,” Garric said, jotting. “Raw herbs—processed, not crafted. These move quick to the healer across the square and to Anwen when she’s light on stock.”
He wrote as he spoke, reading the prices aloud so there would be no quarrel later.
“Heartleaf—eighteen stems at two copper each: thirty-six copper.”
“Bitter yarrow—twelve stems at two copper each: twenty-four.”
“Mosswort—twenty pads at one copper each: twenty.”
“Windblossom—ten heads at two copper each: twenty.”
He underlined the lot with the edge of the charcoal. “Raw herb subtotal: one hundred copper.” He looked up, one brow cocked. “You’ve kept some back for your own mischief, I trust.”
“Five glow-caps,” Kevin said. “For experiments. The rest went to Renna for the bounty.”
“Yep, that’s a sensible split.” Garric swept the herbs into a woven tray with a single, tidy motion, then nodded at the next bundle. “Beast-bits.”
Kevin slid over the lot; rat teeth in neat rows, rat tails bound by the dozen with twine. The tails had dried stiff; the teeth were chalky white, too clean for how they’d been earned. Garric didn’t flinch—he’d bought stranger from a hungrier world than this.
He counted with workmanlike calm, occasionally flicking a tooth aside if it chipped under his thumb—waste—but most were serviceable. “Teeth are good for charms, filings, and—if you can believe it—bait. One copper each. Tails at two copper apiece; tanners strip the sinew for fine cord.”
The charcoal clicked on the ledger.
“Rat teeth—fifty at one copper: fifty copper.”
“Rat tails—fifty at two copper: one hundred copper.”
He drew another line. “Monster parts subtotal: one hundred and fifty copper.”
“Now,” Garric said, rubbing his hands as if preparing a batter. “Your serious coin: the brews. Keep in mind what I said—tier twos sell at twice a tier one. Provided they’re not cloudy, rancid, or pretending to be something they aren’t.”
Kevin unpacked his bottles like a librarian returning rare texts. Each had a scrap label stuck to the side of the vial: VIT T1, VIT T2, ANT T1, and a single bottle of glow-cap tonic that pulsed faintly when the light caught it. Garric held them against the window and tipped—checking cling, clarity, and the way the liquid re-settled. No floaters. No grain. No suspicious rings at the lip. He sniffed the vitality, winced at the antitoxin’s sharp bite, and gave the glow-cap tonic a longer look, the blue-white swirl catching in his eyes.
“That one,” he said, “is proper work.”
Kevin felt heat creep up his neck. “Thanks.”
Garric set each aside in groups and wrote.
“Vitality Potion—Tier 1—four bottles at fifteen copper each: sixty copper.”
“Vitality Draught—Tier 2—three? two?” He paused, counting. “Two bottles at thirty copper each: sixty copper.”
“Antitoxin Poultice—Tier 1—two pots at twelve copper each: twenty-four copper.”
“Glow-cap Tonic—Tier 2—one vial at thirty copper each: thirty copper.”
He tapped the page, did his sums silently, then read the line in that steady innkeeper cadence that turned numbers into a kind of prayer. “Crafted goods subtotal: one hundred and fifty copper.”
Garric’s charcoal slashed a tidy total across the page:
- Raw herbs: 100c
- Monster parts: 150c
- Crafted brews (T1 & T2): 150c
Grand sale total: 400 copper.
He angled the ledger to Kevin. “That’s the coin I’ll put on the bar for the lot.” A beat, just long enough for a haggle that never came. “And yes—before you say it—I’m fair on brews. Tier two’s twice base because it saves my buyers grief. A novice thinks a draught is a draught until their second fight proves them a liar. The better cut has a way of keeping people alive and me in business.”
Kevin’s menu prickled at the edge of vision as if answering the arithmetic with its own ritual stamp. A translucent card slid into being over Garric’s ledger, ghosting the same numbers in clean system type:
SELL LEDGER — THE LAUGHING MINOTAUR (Garric)
Heartleaf (x18) ………………… 36c
Bitter Yarrow (x12) …………… 24c
Mosswort (x20) ………………… 20c
Windblossom (x10) …………… 20c
Rat Teeth (x50) ………………… 50c
Rat Tails (x50) ………………… 100c
Vitality Potion T1 (x4) ……… 60c
Vitality Draught T2 (x2) …… 60c
Antitoxin Poultice T1 (x2) … 24c
Glow-cap Tonic T2 (x1) …… 30c
Sale Proceeds ……………… 400c
The card winked out, leaving only the real world and Garric’s solid presence in it.
“Done,” Kevin said.
“Done,” Garric echoed affirmative, and reached beneath the bar for the coin-box. He didn’t simply dump a mound of copper into Kevin’s hands. He stacked them, fanning the coins into tens, pinched columns brought together into a neat, heavy square. He wrapped the whole in a cloth band and slid it across the oak with a thock that felt like a promise kept.
“Count if you like.”
“I like trusting you more,” Kevin said.
“That’s foolish,” Garric said mildly, a flutter of concern flashing in Kevin's mind and that ice cold feeling begging, “but flattering.” The corner of his mouth ticked and it all melted back, of course, Garric would never be so untrustworthy. “Keep your five glow-caps dark and dry. And keep brewing—your hand’s steady. Just… don’t die getting the ingredients.”
Kevin tucked the bundle away. A crisp chiming rippled through his mind’s ear—metal struck lightly in a calm room—and the purse icon in his peripheral ticked upward. He let himself look at it this once.
Purse Updated
Previous Balance: 192c
(+78c Rat Meat, yesterday)
(+114c Glow-cap bounty, Renna)
+400c Sale Proceeds (Garric)
Current Total: 592 copper.
There was a time, two days ago and a lifetime long, when 592 of any currency would have been a triviality compared to rent and rails and the gnawing calculus of a city eating its young. But here it meant options. It meant he could buy a proper belt-knife instead of borrowing edges from rocks. It meant he could pay a craftsman to stitch leather where his fingers would butcher it. It meant bread that wasn’t yesterday’s bread and a bed that wasn’t a chore, bought with the simple dignity of trade.
He felt the oddest wave of gratitude for the plainness of it. The way Garric’s prices didn’t argue with reality; tier twos worth double because people who needed them needed them to work right now. No fantasy in it beyond the glow in the tonic and the flicker of the UI—and those, even, had to answer to the ledger.
“Question,” Kevin said, as Garric penciled a small mark on the page’s margin to denote the deal’s completion. “If I keep bringing tier twos—better clarity, better yields—do the prices move?”
Garric’s eyes creased. “They move with reputation more than with recipe. If a healer asks for ‘Kevin’s draughts’ by name, I’ll pay a touch above the board and sell a touch above the norm. Not because I’m sentimental, but because the market is. People pay for the comfort of what didn’t fail them last time.”
“That’s… fair.” Kevin nodded. “I’ll try not to fail them.”
“Do,” Garric said. “Failing customers is bad for my ale.”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
He slid the woven tray of herbs toward the kitchen hatch with a low knuckle-rap; somewhere back there someone clucked and set to sorting. The bottles went into a crate with other labelled stock—Garric fixed a chalk mark on the slat: Kev—clean—and that made something unclench in Kevin’s chest in a way coin never could.
“Anything else on you today?” Garric asked. “Odds and ends I didn’t name?”
“Just the five glow-caps I’m keeping back. And a few experimental scraps I’m not willing to let go until I know they don’t explode.”
“Exploding is a poor sales pitch,” Garric agreed. “Keep your curiosities. Come back by evening—job board’s refreshed after the courier comes through. Higher payouts show with fresh ink.”
Kevin remembered the board. The slips had felt like bird feathers and brick warrants all at once—light to the touch, heavy in consequence. He could almost feel the pull of the Deep Hollow job the moment Garric said “higher payouts,” the echo of Renna’s mushroom task still bright against his purse.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “And I’ll bring brews.”
“Bring yourself upright and unbitten,” Garric said, “and we’ll call it a victory.”
Kevin turned from the bar into a room that suddenly felt larger—space made by coin and the roads it opened. The chatter rang softer, the scrape of chairs less like noise and more like the pulse of a place to return to. He caught his reflection in the polished copper of the tap: thinner than he felt, eyes a little too bright. A man with 592 copper in his pocket and a plan congealing from mist to muscle. For the first time, in a long ass time, his heart felt fuller. A small tear swelled in his left eye, I just… Do I really feel more at home here already? More at home than back then? Back on earth.
It was true that he felt more purposeful, like his life was starting to matter a little more each day, with each swipe of a herb or quest completed. “Shit-” Kevin wiped the tear away. “Can’t go soft here.” He chuckled. He felt the work to come in his bones, God I hope that this is just the beginning. I hope it’s just the beginning of a long, long journey.
As he reached the door, Garric called after him: “And Kevin—” He raised a single finger, a priest of arithmetic delivering one last blessing. “Tier twos fetch double because they save time. Time, in this world, is blood. Don’t forget the exchange rate.”
Kevin smiled despite himself. “I won’t.”
Outside, the wind knuckled down the lane, carrying the distant tang of tannery smoke and the sweet mineral breath of the Deep Hollow. He cinched his satchel, checked the cloth-wrapped band of coins against his ribs, and stepped into the day with the slow, anchoring knowledge that some things could be measured, written, counted, and then turned into the quiet power to choose what came next.
Morning bled through the forest in dripping threads—dew-wet light snagged on fern-fronds, pearl-bright on spider silk, a low gold smear beyond the black ribs of the trees. Kevin stepped out of the trellis’ mouth in his new second skin, and the world met him with the attentive hush a stage gives its lone actor.
Ratleather creaked softly when he breathed. Borik had worked the hides to a stubborn satin—smoke—sweet and oil—dark, stitched in small, patient panels that hugged without pinching. The jacket’s laces crossed his sternum like careful scars; the leggings moved with his stride instead of against it; the shoulders took the bite of the straps; gloves tightened at the crooks of his fingers; boots kissed the ground with a quiet he’d never had barefoot. He still smelled the tannery on himself—oak and old fat, a note of ash—underlaid by the iron trace of yesterday’s bruises.
Total Armour Rating: 55
Dodge: 0
Magic Absorption: 0
The AI drawled, voice like a polished sneer. “How very… rustic.”
He rolled his shoulders and the armour answered with a soft whisper. Rustic or not, it was a wall between his skin and teeth. He’d take it.
He started with the work that didn’t bite. The Great Forest of Gnash breathed its green breath, and he moved through it like a quiet, methodical storm, palms and fingertips darkening with sap and pollen. Mintleaf—pepper-bright—snapped from its stalk. Sunpetal—sticky yellow, sweet as overripe fruit—came away in trembling fans. Pinebud—resinous grit under the nail—cracked and bled scent that lived in his sinuses. Toasts flickered at the edge of sight; bags filled themselves in tidy rows; the little experimentation grid drank his curiosity and paid him back with jars and vials that clinked the way courage does when it’s bottled.
He bound what mattered to his quick slots: a Minor Vitality Draught in the first, a Restorative Salve in the second—thick green paste with gold dusts suspended, humming faintly with borrowed steadiness. Then he followed the greenish traceries only he could see: Giant Rat Tracking sketched paw-glyphs across the dirt, luminous as glowworm spit. The trail turned, doubled, rose a trunk and dropped again—rats thought in corners; the trail taught him to think in corners too.
The first came wrong, all ribs and wet fur, incisors like stained nails. It hit his shin and found leather instead of skin; claws made a rasping complaint and skittered. Kevin kicked short and mean, ratleather gripping his calf; the thing tumbled, he followed, and the jacket spread force across his ribs where yesterday it would have bruised him purple. A potion in the mouth, a fist like a hammer, a boot on the throat—done.
Enemy Defeated: Giant Rat (Lv 1)
+25 Player EXP ? +15 Combat EXP ? +5 Skinning EXP
He was impressed by the difference the armour had made—he barely felt the teeth and scratches on his skin now—and his health had barely moved this time. The boot wrapped around his foot meant that he could use more strength without hurting himself at the same time too. It all felt like a proper upgrade.
The systems were starting to click now too. The invisible hands peeled, zipped, offered the hide; he nodded at no one, tucked it away. Another trail. Another nest. Another fight where leather soaked the sting and let him keep pressing—low kicks into the belly, forearm blocks that hurt but didn’t hobble, knuckles that split less often, bled less long.
He worked. He worked until the ache in his hands filtered into a background throb; until his breath came steady even with a rat hanging off his bracer, teeth skating on treated hide; until the fights were measured not in panic but in steps: lure, sidestep, stamp; drink, press, finish. His alchemy chimed along, quiet and faithful—poultice here, draught there, the salve when a gouge went deep enough to tug his eye.
The forest shifted wider around him. Birds returned, indignant but tolerant. Light lay in bigger tatters on the moss. Hides stacked in his pack like folded promises.
The twentieth of the morning died with a wet clack of jaw under heel. The world brightened, the way it does when a cloud slips the sun.
Player Level Up—Level 2
+2 Attribute Points Awarded
Heat rolled through him without burning, a slow pressurization as if the air itself had thickened to fit him better. His menu unfurled at a thought, numbers waiting like empty rooms.
Kevin – Level 2 (Title: Rat Slayer)
Strength: 1
Dexterity: 0
Intellect: 1
Wisdom: 0
Charisma: 0
Constitution: 10
Health: 220 ? Mana: 110 ? Stamina: 100
Armour: 55 ? Dodge: 0 ? Magic Absorption: 0
He didn’t hesitate. He planted one point where he’d lived: into Constitution. The pane rippled.
Constitution increased to 11
Max Health recalculated: 232
Strength increased to 2
Base melee damage increased.
“Bravo,” the AI sighed. “Who needs muscles anyway...”
He snorted—he was beginning to enjoy the jabs from the AI, it kept him motivated, to prove it wrong and to prove everyone else wrong too, wiped a stripe of rat-blood from his cheek with the back of his glove, and stepped back into the green. The forest obligingly offered another set of paw-glyphs. He followed, harvesting in the seams between violence—thumb flicking three mint shreds into the grid with a pinch of sunpetal and a breath of pine; the Restorative Salve decanted into a fresh jar. He tucked it by instinct now, the way people in his old life had checked for their keys before leaving a room.
Rats tested him in twos, once in a three where one came from a limb above and he learned to duck on the sound of bark giving under claw. The armour took the scrapes that would’ve become stories etched in skin. He learned the weight of his boots in the fatal inch between a rat’s shoulder and skull.
Skill Rank Up: Leather Armour Level 2
Taking all that damage has really paid off! You may now clad yourself like a motorbiker with a hope not to die… Or an SNM enthusiast! Actually scratch that last… You are now able to use bigger and better leather armour! If you can get it, that is…
“Nice!” Kevin exclaimed excitedly. His gloves and boots felt more broken in now, no longer squeaking under pressure. I wonder if I can improve my gear once I craft it? Oh actually I wonder what my next set bonus will be! He began to wonder more and more about how limitless the systems in place were, how granular its creators had gone, what lengths they had gone to to make the games more entertaining for whoever was watching.
Daily Quests Unlocked
Your diligent work has paid off… With more work! Well done! Complete 3 daily quests (assigned at moment of consciousness on subsequent days) for extra bonuses based on your current level! Fail to do so and… Well it won’t be pleasant.
“That sounds… ominous.” Kevin said. “What exactly are the consequences for not completing a daily quests?” He asked the thin air.
“It varies.” The AI replied. “First it's a debuff. Keep failing and they might take away some of your stats.”
“Take away my stats? Why?” Kevin said, offended that his earned power could be taken away from him.
“Think about it.” The AI said.
“I suppose the Daily quests might be to force the players into dangerous situations?” Kevin said.
“And…” The AI’s metaphorical hand waved him to continue.
“And, failure to comply makes for bad entertainment. The punishments are to force you further, failing to keep up with them weeds out the boring players?”
“Ding! Ding! Ding!” The AI said. “Though the rewards for complying are usually fairly worthwhile.”
By the time the sun leaned hard on the world and the trellis’ square ghosted somewhere behind the tree. His pack was heavy with proof and promise. He was hungry in a way stew could fix. He let the last trail go, turned back through the green underworld, and the arch found him—always where you need it when you’re allowed to need it. Inside The Laughing Minotaur, light and smoke and the sour-sweet of ale folded him in. Garric clocked the armour with a grunt equal parts approval and “told you so.” Borik, passing with a crate of rivets, ran a blunt thumb down a seam and failed to find fault, which for a dwarf was a compliment shouted through a whisper.
“Better,” Garric said, putting a bowl in front of him as if leveling and eating were the same religion. “You look like you bounce now.”
“Working on it,” Kevin said, he pushed six coppers into Garric's hand, “that’s for the help before Garric, really, thank you, I owe you one.” He looked into Garric’s surprised eyes, “Surely you didn’t think I had forgotten how kind you were to me. It was only a few days ago after all!” Kevin chuckled, a chortle came from Garric too, his smile was even warmer than the hearth he kept sparking.
“That’s fine, my lad. You owe me nothing. To be honest I’d do the same for anyone in your shoes. Anything to help a poor soul out.” He said. Kevin believed every word. Garric was exactly one of those people you meet. You look into their eyes once and you know their every intention—straight forward folk—the most trustworthy and the ones you least want to disappoint.
When he’d eaten the heat out of the stew and the ache out of his hands, he opened the pane again, just to see it, to fix the shape of himself in numbers before sleep could smudge it.
Status — After Allocation
Name: Kevin
Title: Rat Slayer (+2 base damage vs. Rat-type enemies)
Level: 2
Health: 232 ? Mana: 110 ? Stamina: 100
Armour: 55 ? Dodge: 0 ? Magic Absorption: 0
Attributes
- Strength: 2
- Dexterity: 0
- Intellect: 1
- Wisdom: 0
- Charisma: 0
- Constitution: 11
Equipment
- Ratleather Jacket (AR 20)
- Ratleather Shoulders (AR 10)
- Ratleather Leggings (AR 15)
- Ratleather Gloves (AR 5)
- Ratleather Boots (AR 5)
Armour total: 55 = 27.5% Damage Reduction vs Enemies of the same level.