In a sudden flash of white, the small rat vanished. The half-devoured
sliver of pork sat abandoned on the cobblestones, still glistening
with sauce. Mud blinked in the ringing silence, then hurriedly pulled
up his menu, his fingers trembling as he navigated to his skills tab.
There, sitting
directly next to [Cooking (Level 1)][Summon Monster
(Level 1)]
He tapped the icon.
A submenu bloomed open, revealing a long, depressing row of empty,
locked slots, except for the very first one. It was occupied by a
flickering rodent icon labeled [Small Rat (Level 1)]
Eagerly,
Mud selected the option. He looked around the alley, expecting a
burst of light, a wormhole, or well… anything.
Nothing.
“Weird…” He frowned, looking back at the menu. The summon
option was still active, the text a pearly white. He tapped it again,
but this time he noticed a faint blue circle projected on the ground
at his feet. It was a targeting reticle, tethered to the movement of
his right hand.
Excited,
he waved his arm in a series of frantic, experimental gestures, but
the circle just danced aimlessly over the trash.
“Go
web go!” he snapped
his wrist towards the wall with two fingers pushed tight into his
palm.
Nothing.
Obviously.
“Ummm… Summon Small Rat?” he whispered.
There was a muffled pop, like a bubble bursting, and a pathetic puff
of white smoke. Standing exactly where the blue circle had been was
the rat from before. It looked up at him, unbothered, its whiskers
still matted in barbecue sauce.
“God,
you’re kind of an ugly little shit, aren’t you?” Mud reached
down, gently tapping the rat’s head with one thick finger. The fur
was coarse and gritty; the creature didn’t even flinch at his
touch. “I can relate.” He picked up the abandoned sliver of meat
and offered it back.
“I’m going to call you Ricky. You remind me of my uncle; he was
a bit of a rat, too.”
As
the words left his mouth, a system prompt chimed, and a screen
appeared in the air, glowing with a soft, persistent light. Change
Monster’s Nickname to Ricky? [Yes/No].
He tapped yes, and the name solidified above the rodent’s head for
a brief second before fading into the UI.
“Well, Ricky, let’s see what you’ve got under the hood.”
Mud began flipping through the sub-menus of his summons tab, his
frown deepening with every stat reveal. “Your just about as useless
as I am. I guess this is going to be a b-e-a-utiful relationship,”
he sighed.
He
leaned back against the ally wall, scanning the lines of data. “At
least you’re quick. And you’ve even got a few skills: [Stealth],
[Scavenge], and…
[Urban Warfare]
The first two were self-explanatory, but the third caught his eye.
He tapped the text to expand the tooltip.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
[Urban
Warfare (Passive)]Increase
all damage and the ability to dodge attacks when fighting within the
defined boundaries of a town, city, or settlement.
“Not quite as useful as I had hoped,” It was a niche buff. In a
quest to reach the “Final Island,” he probably wasn’t going to
be spending an excess of time fighting inside of the towns.
“So the question, I guess, is what can I actually use you for?”
Mud asked, mindlessly scratching the little guy’s cheeks. Ricky
leaned into the touch, kneading his tiny paws against Mud’s palm
like a cat. “You definitely aren’t going to be fighting the Great
Boar. I’d need about four hundred more of you for that.”
The answer wasn’t in the stat screen; it was in the world around
them. .
If he couldn’t beat the boar with force, he would bury it in a
mountain of gold. Mud’s eyes narrowed as his plans started to take
form. He didn’t need to swing the sword himself. If he had enough
currency, he could simply hire a few of these other Travelers in the
plaza to slaughter the beast for him. He could buy the victory.
When he thought about it that way, he was hit by a sharp, unexpected
twinge of homesickness. It reminded him exactly of the world he’d
left behind, a society where money, and greed were the ultimate
cheat, capable of bypassing talent, effort, and even morality.
He looked down at Ricky. The rat looked back, grease still shining
on his fur. They were both outcasts in this world, but maybe with the
right exploit…
***
“Okay, Ricky. Listen. People in my world are always losing things
down these drains, and it’s the one place no other ‘Traveler’
is ever going to look. Let’s see what we can find in the gutter.”
He leaned down, his joints popping and his back screaming as he
gently placed the rat next to a heavy stone grate. The gaps were just
wide enough for a creature of Ricky’s size to squeeze through. With
a happy, muffled chitter, the rat slipped into the darkness and
vanished.
For a few minutes, Mud stood there alone in the alley, anxiously
tapping his foot against the cobbles. He was starting to wonder if
the rat had simply abandoned him when he heard a faint scraping
noise. A grungy, damp Ricky emerged from the shadows, a small prize
clamped firmly in his jaw.
It was a bent spoon.
“No, Ricky. Not trash, We need value,” Mud said calmly,
attempting to explain the nuances of the economy to a rodent.
Apparently, summons didn’t learn the value of gold until level 2.
Over the next ten minutes, Ricky brought back a water-logged stick,
a pair of sodden undergarments that Mud refused to even touch, and a
gray, pulsating clump of… something he couldn’t identify.
“Okay, one more shot, Ricky,” Mud wiped a bead of sweat from his
forehead. “One more try, or we’re moving to Plan B.”
This time, the rat was gone longer. When he finally scurried back
out, he was carrying something small that caught the dim ray of
sunlight that was streaming into the alley. It was a metal band,
dented and caked in filth, but unmistakably gold.
“Very good, Ricky! That’s exactly what we need!”
Caught up in the win, Mud reached down to pat the excited rat, but
he immediately regretted it. The sensation of sewer grime on his palm
was slick and cold, and the smell was almost enough to make his
‘healing meal’ reappear.
A short while later, after checking in at a few different businesses
to compare prices, Mud was able to sell the ring.
“Four hundred gold for an old, beat-up ring we found in the gutter
of society? Not to bad, buddy. Not bad at all.”
Mud patted his shoulder, where a freshly bathed, or at least
fountain-rinsed, Ricky sat perched. The rat looked incredibly pleased
with himself, his fur still damp and spiked out in odd directions.
Mud felt a rare, genuine grin tug at his face, maybe for the first
time since arriving here.
“Now for phase two. We need ingredients and a product that we can
sell at a good volume and a large profit margin.”
He summoned his menu and began scrolling through his [Cooking]
tab. His eyes skipped over all the higher-tier, complex recipes they
couldn’t afford and settled on the basic staples.
“Biscuits, maybe? Flour would be our main ingredient. It’s a
classic starter recipe, usually designed as a basic XP grind for
beginners.” He winked slyly at Ricky, “But I have an idea I want
to test.”
***
Hours later, sweaty and smelling of woodsmoke and flower, Mud
crashed onto a rickety, stained mattress in the cheapest inn he could
find. The springs groaned miserably under his weight, loudly
protesting his presence.
Thankfully, his gamble had paid off. The cooking mechanics in this
world were responsive to technique, not just the recipe’s
ingredients. By using a clever blend of local seasonings, he had
managed to replicate his ‘Special Biscuits’, savory, crumbly
treats that tasted remarkably like cheddar, but without any actual
dairy. They were similar to the ones he used to bake for his
lactose-intolerant Uncle Ricky, a cheap, effective trick.
After some grueling haggling at several of the local eateries, he
flipped the batch for seven hundred gold. It was a profit certainly,
but not the ‘mountain’ he needed to buy his way out of this
digital hellscape.
Worse, the sun had begun to dip below the city walls, forcing him to
surrender another fifty of his hard-earned coins for this ,
which was actually just a storage nook at the back of the inn, where
they kept the extra cleaning supplies and some sacks of grain.
Trying to wind down and ignore the metal springs biting mercilessly
into him, Mud pulled up his [Cooking] tab one last time. A new
notification was pulsing in the corner of his vision, He’d unlocked
a new recipe.
[Savory
Pork Stew]Effect:
Small, temporary boost to Constitution (+2) and extra Health
Regeneration.
His heart skipped a
beat, stat food, a staple for any good build.
But as he scrolled
down to the requirements, the excitement turned to lead in his
stomach.
Main ingredient:
Fresh Boar Meat.
“Damn this
place...”
