Stats
Strength: 10
Agility: 11
Endurance: 11
Vitality: 12
Wisdom: 25
Intelligence: 30
Perception: 27
Willpower: 31
*Available Points: 5
I wasn’t exactly sure what to increase. Presumably, they were all useful. My mental stats were far better than my body stats. I should probably try to balance everything as much as possible. I wasn’t at a point where specializing would do me any good.
But… the awkward numbers also just bothered me.
I bumped vitality to 13. Desperate for a little more resiliency. Then I increased perception to 30, so that felt better. Damn, only one point left. I had so many ones thanks to merging with Candy. I needed four points to get to the next five-point increment. I increased endurance to 12. I wasn’t going to save a point just because of my own weirdness with numbers.
The whole thing was rather anti-climactic. I didn’t feel any different. As far as I could tell, anyway. But given I hadn’t felt crazy different with stats in the thousands, maybe that was just how it worked. I had certainly been crazy strong then, so… each point had to mean something.
Fuck. I would have rathered a skill.
No! I couldn’t let myself get all mopey. This was good, this was amazing. I could finally level up. After… so fucking long. No! I was happy, this was great!
“Do you have more stew?” Candy asked.
I deflated with a sigh.
After absorbing the last of the stew mush, I had a nap. Yeah, that's the degree of excitement my life was. Mid-day naps. But naps were great, and I would die on that hill.
“Pamela,” Candy prodded later as I lay in bed. “Can you make more stew now?”
“I have to go buy groceries,” I grumbled.
“Oh, can we go buy groceries now?”
I forced myself out of bed. “Fine,” I sighed. If I wanted to eat dinner tonight, then I had to buy groceries. It wasn’t much of a choice. I tried to tame my appearance to some degree, combing out my hair, wiping the sleep from my eyes. But there was only so much one could really do to look presentable in my current state.
I pocketed the shillings and stepped out onto the small balcony, which descended downstairs to the street below. I locked the door with the fancy, ornate Victorian key. Which, not to nitpick reality here, but wasn’t very medieval. Then again, none of this was particularly medieval, especially not the damn video game system in everyone’s head. This was a different world with different rules.
I descended the stairs and once again took the city in.
I was a whole five stat points stronger. And nothing had changed. Well shit.
Avoiding the horse manure and general grossness of the city was becoming increasingly second nature. I vaguely knew where the market was, Martrix had mentioned it, and big as it was, Agocester wasn’t by any means a major metropolitan city. It was tightly packed, sure, but mostly just because the exterior wall wasn’t that big.
Still, it was full of enough winding cobbled roads and twists and turns to get slightly turned around. Despite my irrational worries, there were no problems. I was just someone out and about like plenty of others. I did see a few men in scalemale, coats marked with some kind of house crest. Guards, maybe, or soldiers? They just seemed to be on some kind of patrol. I kept my head down and continued on. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention.
I did a double-take at one of the passing shop windows. It reminded me of one of those esoteric witchcraft shops from back on earth. While not exactly my thing, they were always cool to explore. Plus, incense was always a nice treat to spice the day up with. Obviously, this wasn’t an occult shop, or it was, but… it probably had more to do with actual tangible magic.
There was no point in going in. I had five shillings to get me through the week. If I was going to buy something stupid, it would be better boots, definitely not magical paraphernalia that I couldn’t even use.
Oh, but there was no harm in just looking a little. I ducked through the open doorway. Just a quick look around, and then I’d go to the market.
“Welcome!” The man behind the counter greeted me jovially. He wore a vest and spectacles, but he was younger than I first thought, with well-groomed short brown hair.
“Hi,” I smiled, “cool place you got here. I just thought I’d take a look around.”
“Of course, take your time,” he nodded.
It was too chaotic to be considered organized, but not really messy either. The whole place smelled of dust. There were shelves of books, surfaces covered in trinkets and treasures. It was like an antique store, but if the antique -ness wasn’t… antique.
I went straight for the books. History, folklore, monsters, politics, magic! Oh, so many books on magic. Books on skills, sword fighting, armour smithing, and journals from a variety of names I had never remotely heard of before. This place was a treasure trove.
The literacy rates must have been higher than I had thought for books to be sold like this. I spared a glance at the man, still not really able to figure him out.
There were small wooden swords, bells, bowls, pottery, simple jewelry, and an oil lamp, which I rubbed just to check for a genie. Then there was weirder stuff: bones, pelts, a few skulls from some kind of animal.
“Do you buy things?” I asked the shopkeeper.
“Sometimes,” he nodded, “what are you hoping to sell?”
I glanced around, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “Do you buy slime cores?” I wagered.
The man raised one long eyebrow. “Yes, I buy all sorts of monster parts. You’re a mercenary?” He asked, his disbelief obvious.
“Kinda,” I offered vaguely. “The next time I get my hands on some, I’ll drop by. What’s the going rate?”
“A shilling each,” he offered casually.
“Two,” I countered. Bargaining felt like the right thing to do. And given how dangerous slimes were considered, one hardly seemed like enough.
“15 pence and I won’t ask questions,” he smiled.
I pursed my lips. “Alright, I’ll keep that in mind,” I smiled right back.
I’d have to find another buyer to compare prices, but maybe…
I stepped back onto the street and continued towards the market. “Candy, how does the whole slime spawning thing work? Because if we can make 15 pence a core… that could add up fast.”
“You want to kill them?! But we have to grow the hive,” she protested. “What good is spawning them only to kill the poor helpless things?!”
“For the money, Candy,” I replied.
“Wow, you are cruel,” she snorted.
Okay, maybe I had gone a little money hungry. “I know you want to build a hive,” I explained gently, skipping around a cart full of barrels, “but we need money, or we’ll starve before you can even start building it. Plus, you need to decide where you want to build it, and what you want it to look like and stuff. I’m sure there are tons of complicated plans that need to be done.”
“No,” Candy refuted. “I just start spawning slimes, and they begin gathering mana and building for me.”
“Oh,” I replied. Given their general mindless nature, that made sense, but I assumed Candy wanted to… do a little more. “I thought you wanted to be villainous?”
“I do! But we need to be strong first, and… I’m still not sure how to start spawning slimes,” she admitted. “Your body has so little room to condense cores.”
I tripped, catching myself on the wall. “Hold on, what? You have to do more wacky shit inside me?! You can just… ooze them out?”
“What? No! I have to condense my mana into the core somewhere warm and safe, and then provide a little slime for the plortling, and then it can be sent in its way,” Candy explained. “Though… I’m not sure I will even grow up to be a brood mother now. You’re so… constricting, I don’t know if I can grow big enough now.”
I groaned. Why were things never easy?
The market was bustling, and I had to wiggle my way through a crowd just to get to any of the stalls. Then, of course, as always, my missing hand was a problem. I bought a delicious-looking loaf of bread, and after paying and getting change, I realized I couldn’t really carry anything else. I should have brought a bag, obviously.
It was immediately a mess. But a loaf of bread was only a few pence, and a big block of cheese was a shilling. Thanks to a kind farmer who bundled up everything in a spare sack for me, I got some potatoes as well for a few more pence. Already abated, my arm hurting from prolonged use, I spent a few more pence on an ale at one of the tables. And it wasn’t a waste! It was liquid calories. If I wanted to get drunk, I’d drink wine.
Finally, for a shilling, I got two meat pie-looking things, which the woman very kindly helped back into my sad-looking sack.
At least people were willing to take pity on me. It was a strange phenomenon. People stared, I felt them stare. Most just stared, but some, like the baker, seemed a tad more sympathetic. And that was good, that was really good, because I started to realize just how fucked I would be without others' kindness. Candy wasn’t the only one who needed people to care about her.
My arm wasn’t ever going to grow back. I would always need people’s help. I would never be as independent as I had been again.
Fuck
I headed back after picking up some butter.