Another change was their upper limbs. Instead of spikes, hooks, or wooden blades, their arms ended in what looked like oversized baseball gloves. I felt like if they brought those mitts together, they would overlap to form a big cup or a bowl. I had no idea why, though. Those didn’t look like offensive modifications.

  My doubts were cleared up just a moment later.

  A new Woodman walked into the earthen hall from another opening. It held its hands together just like I had envisioned. In the empty space between them, I could see a wriggling Pixie, darting about in every direction, clearly in a panic. It seemed to be held in place by a greenish glow that came from the wooden mitts surrounding it.

  The monster approached an empty cage and literally shot the Pixie out of its hands like from a cannon, releasing a faint flash from its joined limbs. As the violet ball entered its designated prison, a dark emerald pulse passed through the wooden bars and down the single leg of the structure, heading into the ground.

  Locked inside, the Pixie quickly lost its vigor and hovered in place almost lifelessly. It was pretty obvious that this birdcage-like thing was sucking its energy from it and transferring it somewhere else. If my guess was correct, the destination of that mana was the current whereabouts of the Seed of Doom.

  I pulled back, not willing to risk getting spotted and glanced at the pink ball floating between me and Aisha.

  The drakan lady raised a brow at me. “So?”

  “I think these Woodmen are capturing Pixies, and using those weird cages to suck the energy out of them for some reason. It doesn’t look good. And there’s a new type of enemy in there that can somehow catch them,” I explained.

  “The hell? I’ve never heard about anything like that before. It’s so damn bizarre. Why are they doing that?”

  Shaking my head, I spread my arms out, palms up. “No idea, besides transferring the energy to the Seed, of course. In any case, it’s bad news for us, and for our new friend.”

  Bringing her axe forward, Aisha smacked the shaft into her hand. “I say we wreck their shit.”

  “I agree. What do you say about trying some guerrilla tactics?”

  A vicious grin rose on Aisha’s lips. “Hit and run?”

  “Hit and run.” I smiled back.

  “Oh, boy. Here I go chopping again!”

  She activated her Berserk and lunged through the opening. I chuckled to myself and turned to the pink Pixie.

  “Stay here. We’ll free your friends. Just run away if any of those monsters come your way.”

  Not waiting for its non-verbal confirmation, I followed after my excited mate and sprang into the chamber. By the time I got there, Aisha had already cut down a few of the cages, slicing through their column-like supports. It seemed enough to disrupt the connection they had with the Seed or whatever powered them, and the little wooden cells’ green glow faded. The released Pixies scattered in every direction, zipping towards every available path of escape.

  Since we had to hurry, taking this chance with no combat-type Woodmen present in this underground prison, I followed after Aisha and began chopping down another row of those fucked up pillars. I couldn’t topple them with one strike like she could, but three swings of my smaller axe did the trick.

  Spontaneous laughter and shouts accompanied the thudding of my handaxe as my violent partner wreaked havoc in the chamber, both amongst the enemy’s ranks and amongst the imprisoning structures. With just one use of her Whirlwind, she destroyed an entire section of those wooden cells.

  The Woodmen obviously tried to fight back, but their hands were clearly designed to catch Pixies, and they could only try to bash at us with either side of the incomplete bowl. Whatever the magic in their limbs did, it didn’t affect us. I felt some strange pulling sensation tugging me towards them, but it was weak, perhaps comparable to my Telekinesis.

  In less than three minutes, the prison facility was in shambles. I noticed the first signs of backup arriving, hinted by the crumbling earth and numerous sticks poking out of the walls, and hastily turned towards Aisha.

  “Chill the fuck out, now!” I shouted. “You are not yet on the level to speak with the manager of this pet shop!”

  My words, imbued with the power of Command, brought her out of her rage and she hastily ran at me. I only realized her intentions after spotting her sparkling eyes and sly grin.

  “Oh, no, no, no—umph!”

  Aisha leaned forward a little as she ran, scooping me up and throwing me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Cackling wildly, she sped out of the earthen cavern before we could be surrounded by our enemies. Laughter echoed and complete destruction trailed in our wake as we sped homeward.

  Chapter 24

  A New Objective

  Aisha carried me on her shoulder the entire duration of our trip home. She continued to run forward, shouting for me to call out directions every time we approached a series of openings. It was difficult to guide her, while constantly bouncing up and down as I tried to crane my neck around to compare what I could see with my map, but at the same time the situation was funny and silly enough that I tolerated it. I decided to let her enjoy her bit of mischief.

  Not that far from home, we ran into a small squad of Woodmen—four of them to be precise—and stopped to deal with the monsters, since they’d wandered too close to our apartment for comfort. Each of us was already warmed up, so we quickly dispatched the stick boys without much of an issue.

  Finally reaching the entrance, we jumped inside and locked the door behind ourselves, sighing heavily afterward. We glanced at each other and started chuckling, in sync.

  “That was one hell of an escape,” I commented with a smile.

  “You can always count on me, partner.” She gave me a wink.

  “I’ll keep that in mind whenever I need to snag a sack or two of potatoes from a nearby market during our Time Off. You seem like the perfect person for the job.”

  Aisha snickered and lightly slugged me in the shoulder.

  “I thought you enjoyed being on top of me. Looks like I was wrong.”

  I rolled my eyes, a smile still curling my lips.

  “But, to be perfectly honest, I do have some experience transporting hefty cargo that way. I used to help with construction before becoming an adventurer. You know, carrying a log or a beam every now and then. Not all drakan are battle junkies. Those who aren’t, make good laborers,” she admitted.

  “No wonder it felt like you knew what you were doing. Thanks for the trivia. Unfortunately, my life up until now wasn’t nearly as interesting, so there isn’t much I could share in return.”

  “Don’t say that.” Aisha shook her head. “Pretty much everything about how your realm functions I find amazingly interesting. I would love to learn more about your past too.”

  I chuckled, peeling my back off the door. “Perhaps I’ll try to think of a thing or two that might provide some entertainment. Most tales would be connected to my work in an office, though, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  Aisha grinned and sauntered over to my side. After glancing into each other’s eyes for a moment, we leaned in to join our lips together in a brief kiss. My companion chuckled into my mouth and walked away first.

  “So far, you’ve exceeded my every expectation, so I feel pretty good about getting my hopes up. You have yet to disappoint,” she threw this last quip at me while her beautiful, scaly tail swayed enchantingly behind her back.

  When she stopped, so did I. Our wrists buzzed faintly. Aisha brought her smartwatch up to her face, and I echoed the motion.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  Congratulations!

  Your brave performance netted you enough experience to raise your level!

  Lucas King: Level 5 -> Level 7

  Gained Attribute Points: 14

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  “Huh. A double level-up,” I muttered to myself.

  “Same here.” Aisha backed up and joined me from the front. “We must have been really close to Level 6 before crashing that wooden party. That’s the only explanation I can think of. We haven’t leveled up since finishing the Tutorial Dungeon.”

  “Those weird Woodmen must have given us a lot of experience points, then. We did best a Woodknight earlier, but even that didn’t push us over the threshold to Level 6. Or the cages counted too.” I rubbed my chin.

  “Whatever it is, this is nice. Any growth is welcome, and I got a skill out of it too.”

  “Oh? Which one?” I glanced at her wrist.

  “Sharpen. First time I’ve seen it, actually. I didn’t have anything like that in my previous run.”

  “I think I recognize that one. Care to bring up its details?”

  Aisha nodded and carefully navigated to the proper menu before triggering the illusory description function of her watch. A see-through display of text sprang up between us. She was getting better at handling this magitech stuff.

  We read the description.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  Sharpen (F)

  Condensing your mana, you can coat your blade with it, making it much sharper than what’s naturally possible to achieve. No common whetstone can match the spell’s effectiveness.

  Available Uses: 2

  Duration: 2h

  Recharge Time: 8h

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  “Yeah, it’s pretty much the Sharpen that I recognize from the game.” I patted Aisha on the shoulder. “Congratulations. It’s your first step on the new course that you decided on earlier. This is one of the first skills available when following the development path of physical violence.”

  “Neat.” She chuckled. “Is it any good?”

  “It gets much better later on, but the initial version is nothing to scoff at. Slicing slabs of metal like butter will be a daily thing for you in the future. Right now, you can make your weapon about twice as sharp as normal. Great for our current situation.”

  “Can’t wait. Too bad it has only two uses of two hours each. That’s half the uptime, considering the recharge rate.”

  I shrugged. “You can’t get too OP, too quickly. Charges will increase and the recharge rate will be reduced with each rank. Also, though the description doesn’t mention it, but there’s a neat trick to this. Even if your weapon is dulled or damaged, the condensed mana kind of overwrites that, since it covers the blade slightly above the metal.”

  “That’s amazing.” Aisha glanced at me with a wide smile. “Does that mean that it retains its shape even if a bit gets chipped off?”

  “Yep. Exactly that.” I smiled back.

  “Great. But, I still won’t neglect maintenance. Nothing eases one’s mind like knowing all your gear is in perfect condition.”

  “I would expect nothing less from you.”

  With a soft chuckle, I patted her shoulder and entered the main section of the apartment. I was really grateful for all of Aisha’s efforts to take good care of our equipment.

  “Are we going to distribute the stats now?” she asked, beginning to unbuckle her armor as she trailed behind me.

  “Sure, in a bit. First, though, let’s check our storage. I think that’s a much more pressing matter than tapping a plus symbol a few times.”

  Aisha seemed to agree, as she didn’t voice her disagreement or any concerns. We quickly made ourselves more comfortable and strode to the room next to my bed. After walking into our little warehouse, I was taken aback.

  My lovely drakan partner peeked over my shoulder. “How is it? Do we need more?”

  “It’s all gone.”

  “What? Already?”

  I made some space and she joined me inside the storage room, seeing for herself that not a single vial was left behind. They had all turned into D-Bucks while we had been gone. I could literally smell the money that had been added to our account.

  But, that also meant one more thing.

  “Good gods. My cooking is going to rise like two ranks from this.” Aisha chuckled wryly. “We better set up that forge—or whatever—soon, because I can’t bear using the pots again.”

  “Damn right. The vials are going out like hot cakes.” I turned around to face my Berserker mate. “You don’t have to force yourself to help if you don’t want to. I can see how it might get unbelievably boring after a day or two.”

  She shook her head with a soft smile. “What kind of a Subordinate would I be then? I ain’t no freeloader. I was just joking a bit. If you tell me to get in the kitchen, I will do so without a word of protest.”

  I snickered at her obvious jest. “I know. I was just letting you know too. Let’s check our earnings, before setting up a proper, professional drug den.”

  We walked to the PC side by side and sat down in front of it together. This time, Aisha didn’t bother with the second chair next to mine for herself. Instead, she settled herself comfortably in my lap, head resting against my shoulder, with her legs curling sideways over my left thigh. Her tail brushed slowly back and forth against my right thigh.

  This cursed tease.

  I checked the D-Market first, and found that our reviews had pretty much doubled since the last time we’d checked them. Several hundred more messages asking about another batch of the mixture pretty much clogged our inbox. The available vials had run out in little more than half an hour after we’d restocked.

  Insane.

  We had to cash in on this opportunity. There was no doubt that competition would soon surface, and when that happened, it just wouldn’t be worth it. The time and effort we’d expended were already fairly significant, when compared to the reward. We weren’t planning on slaving our lives away for a D-Dollar or two.

  Our account showed a grand total of 6,392 D$. A bit more than I had initially calculated if you could call it that. I’d just made a quick back-of-the-napkin estimate after our first payout had arrived. The solution’s popularity kept surprising us greatly.

  “Why is that one block glowing a bit more than the others?” Aisha asked while I was shifting through the menus.

  “Which one?” I swiftly returned to the main screen and looked around. “Ah. Assignments. No clue. Let’s check.”

  I selected the stylized rectangle and was brought to a log that recorded our Dungeon runs and listed our current tasks. While Tutorial Dungeon 01 was grayed out—still clickable, though—the next one, the Beginner Dungeon 01, had a slight green tint to it, followed by an exclamation mark.

  Tapping it revealed not only the information we had already seen, regarding the Dungeon we were tackling at the moment, but also a new button. This button, named Additional Tasks, had appeared along the bottom of the text box. A pulsing plus symbol accompanied the new writing.

  No surprise there, I clicked it.

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  Bonus Objective 01

  You have discovered the unfortunate plight of the Pixies, who were inhabiting these earthen caverns long before the Dungeon leaked into them, and demonstrated your desire to help the oppressed entities. Free all of the Pixies from the hands of the Seed of Doom and they might return the favor by helping you in your struggle to clear the Dungeon. Bring peace to their underground home to receive additional rewards.

  Rewards scale with the number of Pixies saved.

  Completion Time: Until Clear

  ★━━━━━━━━━━★

  “Looks like we missed the notification when we focused on the level-up but… Woah,” I mused.

  “Sudden Quests are rare. We are really lucky. We can now hit two birds with one stone. You planned on trying to save as many of them as we could anyway, didn’t you?”

  “Within reason, of course, but yes,” I replied. “I guess there’s now an actual incentive for that. Do you know anything about the rewards?”

  Aisha spread her arms out, palms up. “Usually, they would be listed below the objective, but we got a scaled reward. Those vary, ranging from some common equipment to maybe even things like Residence Upgrade Permits or Subordinate Tokens. For sure, we will at least get a significant bonus added to our normal clear reward.”

  “That sounds enticing. What do you say?” I glanced up at her.

  She showed a wide grin. “I’m all in for wrecking some more of those creepy-ass cages. Besides, the quest hints at a possible alliance with the Pixies. I’m like super curious how they could actually aid us. I’ve never heard of a Pixie fighting back. Pranks and mischief? Sure, plenty of times. But combat? Nah, not even once.”

  “It’s settled then. We are going to hunt the jailers before we face the Seed of Doom. I welcome any help making that task safer and easier.”

  “After we finish playing restaurant, you mean.” Aisha snickered.

  I chuckled too. It was impossible to refute.

  Not wasting any more precious time, we navigated to the Residence Management submenu and began plotting another room to add to my apartment’s bounds. We chose to set it up on the other side of the bed.

  Not wanting to overspend this early in my new career, we only purchased two 5x5 square meters of additional space, placed them one after the other, which cost us two thousand D-Dollars. We had to pick up a door, too, and I slapped it into the empty hole that appeared in the wall.

  Buying equipped rooms was so much better than this.

  Moving to the additional space, we found a completely empty five-by-ten chamber, as expected. It was necessary to throw a bunch of small utilities inside before we even began filling it up with equipment. Aisha watched from the doorframe while I operated the construction simulator from my PC.

  I attached a few simple lanterns to the walls, which gave the room a pleasant yellowish hue, for the sake of a nice atmosphere. Next, I placed a narrow hearth in the middle of the room, covering only half the available space since we didn’t need all that much at the moment. The actual purpose of this chamber hadn’t been decided, so why waste money?

  To match it, I bought a few metal cauldrons on tripods—or quadpods, in this case—setting them up over the shallow pit in the hearth. With the main portion of our forge or lab ready to go, I added a single furnace in the far corner, so that we could get to smelting the Darksteel Ore too.