C003 You Make My Blood Go Upstairs...!!!
2006 Words
"Ring leader... Its eyes have two 'X' and I guess it's being knocked out already."
"I saw you biting its ears just now Matilda... Are you hungry again or something?" asked Jean Lethal as he joined Matilda to check if the monster has finally met its demise or not... "
"I was checking to see if this Honey Bear would taste like a Gummy Bear or not. Earlier when I poke at it with Vendetta, it sounded like a gummy bear with its 'Toing' 'Toing' sounds.
"IT MEANS SHE IS STILL HUNGRY...!!!" I shouted on the other side of the Boss as I was checking the trap door that would release all the spoils. "Over here, I've found it guys."
I informed them to come over as once I release the lever for the trap door, the spoils would be gushed out and spill over to the ground. It's the most unexpected place to find the trap door and it was placed directly above its twiggy tail on the back of the rump where Jean Lethal was thumping earlier.
....
"Boss, It's like opening its asshole to get to the spoils. It is a surefire way to spoil my appetite..."
"Ewwww... I'm sure not getting near it. Looks so disgusting. Who designed this monster anyway to have a trap door just above its asshole?"
"Ask the Director then, he had the perfect answer..." I replied as I used Matilda's storage bag to retrieve and store all the spoils inside it.
We collected the spoils and head back to the encampment on Cruising Along technique. The moment we reached there, we can't help to stare at each other and began to laugh. "That was one funny Boss, don't you think so?" I can't agree more with Matilda's findings but we are more interested in the spoils than anything else.
The grey wolves that we grind earlier yielded a handful of coppers, wolves' tails, claws and some furs. The spoils from the boss were more impressive as it dropped 3 wooden chests, several gold coins, some shillings and a handful of coppers as well. It also dropped a dagger, a wooden buckler and a pair of cloth cape.
There were 2 poor quality ruby and 1 poor quality emerald and these will be placed inside the storage space later on.
"What are we going to do with these dagger, buckler and cape?" asked Jean Lethal after Matilda had appraised them and found them to be Common of the lowest rank.
"Maybe if we take 2 daggers it would be a much better weapon. There would be a chance to meet with a passing adventurer one of these days." I recommended and they both agree since we have no use for them unless it's a sword or a staff or a polearm.
Fusing two similar items of different grades would yield a better weapon so we decide to keep the great aside. It's still early and we decided to here back to the site earlier and mine for copper and tin.
"Let's try mining for copper first and see what we can get from these," Matilda suggested as we started to mine them with our picks. After 5 strikes, we had gotten some stones, coal, flint and 3 copper nuggets.
This is the first for us to head for the college and after some time, we have to wait about 2 minutes for the mines to respawn before we continue. We were at it for about an hour before we decide to head back and call it a day.
Back at the encampment, I choose the items that could be fusion and set it aside in my personal storage bag as we settled down to make dinner for us and for the guests.
....
I received another 4 more pouches of shards and I passed it to Matilda for safekeeping. Well, today would be a fine day to fusion some shards, shall we?
Matilda passed me the rest of the shards to me and totalled to 196 pieces of shards and could easily make 39 gems and I went to the realm of mind and made the 39 gems of rubies and emerald.
"Should I take the risk of a 10% failure rate if I try to fuse the poor quality sapphire and a 25% failure for the poor quality diamonds?" I thought as I looked at the status for making the sapphires and diamonds based on the current craftsmanship level that I have.
Too bad I'm not a gambler in life and I don't take any chances unless in a life and death situation. However, it's best if I just wait it out a little bit longer until I'm pretty sure that the chances to make Fair quality gems would be increased to 100%.
Based on the success rate now, even after I had read the tomes, every poor quality ruby and emerald would add a 0.25% to make the fair quality ones and now both are rated at 29%. I need to make exactly 400 poor quality ruby and emerald before the chances would be at 100%...!
"Wow...! This system is rather difficult to catch up. We have another 10 more days before the mine gets depleted and it would bring about the chances just slightly above 53%."
"Don't tell me every time I make a fair ruby it emerald it would be a ratio of 2:1...?!?!" I scratched my head at the unfairness of being a crafter and disclosed this information with the group.
Jean Lethal confided with Matilda and said that once we moved to the other encampment in Brotherton, we could equip the weapon and armour with poor quality gems first.
"Don't worry boss...it would be great if you take things slow and steady. those shards won't be going anywhere soon, right?"
"Ya...the items in the storage space could be sold off to the NPC and they buy almost anything. There's nothing left for us to grind at this moment."
"Those grey wolves even refuses to come out from their holes and the Honey Bear was nowhere to be seen."
"It seems that the Boss doesn't respawn after being killed or it takes more than 24 hours for it to respawn."
"I guess so, ring leader. Hmm...could I make a request once we are in Brotherton?"
"No problem, Matilda. Keep that in mind first."
....
The following 10 days were spent on mining instead and the spoils were accumulated in the storage space and Jean Lethal was in charge of selling those unimportant ones such as stone, wood and sticks. All proceeds go inside the storage space.
Matilda herself was in charge of the finance from the storage space and uses it to purchase perishable items from the market to prepare meals for our guests and us for the next 10 days. Since the depletion of the mineshaft was approaching, we decided to make things light and only goes to the market every evening to store the spoils and sells those unnecessary ones.
In those 10 days, the dwarfs had handed us a total of 490 shards of 4 different types of gems and it was the day that we are going to break camp and leave the hearth.
"So long, young adventurers.Till we meet again in Brotherton. We would be heading there tomorrow and we good to be seeing you there too." one of the dwarfs bade to us their farewell as the mine shaft mysteriously disappears.
"Alright then, once you're there, stack a pile of rock near a tree on the path to indicate you had arrived. We would soon break camp and head there." I replied and bade them a safe journey.
....
"I'm going to fuse these shards first so we don't carry too many items. I'd be back here in 30. Pack the things and don't miss anything." I instructed as i went to the realm of mind and fuse those shards to become poor quality ruby and emerald.
After successfully fused 98 ruby and emerald, I handed the poor quality gems and balance shards to matilda to be safe keep. Since we had two men on our band, the load was distributed evenly.
It was after dark when we finally left our hearth and heads to Brotherton which was close to 10km away and since we have equipment on our backs, we didn't use our Cruising Along but walked on.
It was close to midnight when we made a diversion towards the town of Byram, which was 10 mins away. We rested a bit at the tavern and had a plate of fried rice each with smoked fish and we were surprised to see the same setup of merchants in this town.
"Guess all the towns here are the same, right miss?" Jean Lethal tried to make small talk with the tavern mistress as she seemed more sociable and approachable than the one in the last town.
"Yes, it is. There may be an addition or two but the range of goods sold in the merchant district varies in the big cities. There are a whole lot more adventurers there and the rest of my sisters were making more profits than the smaller towns."
"I see, so you have more variety of foods in the cities then?"
"The food and prices remain the same, the only difference would be the drapery, blacksmith, physician, ornamental seller and the peddler. Other than that, they may have some additional but only a marginal difference.
"I like the clothes you have on, does it comes from the drapery here?" asked Matilda as she found the leather pants and the white cotton blouse to her liking.
"Oh yes, dearie... it is available here at the drapery. Just mention me and you'd get a discount. It may not be much but it's better than nothing." the tavern mistress added and Matilda's eyes lit up at the thought of SHOPPING...!!!!
"Thank you for accommodating us, Missy...we better be on our way now..." I said as i bade her adieu after Matilda had settled for the p*****t of the meals. Matilda went over to the drapery and asked the prices for the clothes and whispered in my ear the price and the intent to buy them.
"Go ahead...you're holding to the finance. Choose one for yourself too JL, I'm going to fuse and make them more durable before you wear them the next time. You could sell them your old clothes back to the drapery."
The two of them ended buying a set of clothes each and we walked back towards Brotherton.
As we passed the market place, something made me stopped in my tracks and made my blood go upstairs...! (a pun) I was looking around with a murderous intent look in my eyes as Matilda and Jean Lethal stopped and wondered at me.
A distance hand-held bell toll as the person was making his call. *Clang Clang* *Clang Clang* "Hear ye...hear ye...healthy and young, a full set of teeth...strong as a bull...and sleeps like a log..." *Clang Clang* *Clang Clang*
=*=
I only have vague memories of my childhood and had miniscule recollections of who my real parents were. I was told by my adopted parents that i was given away at birth since my biological parents cannot afford to take care of another child in the family.
"Use a condom next time, dear parents, if you plan to have a night of wild throes next time and not making babies like adding kittens in the household."
Yup...I was given away to a barren family that accepts babies and kids and were kind enough to raise them even though both of them were mere farmers that depended on wheat crops and a small vegetable farm.
What little they earned from the wheat crops would go for the care of their adopted babies and children. I was the latest and youngest at age 0 and an addition to the group as the oldest was 18.
- Writer
