Rei found that triggering Tasks at home was much harder. She tried cleaning and cooking and practicing Judo, but Tasks only seemed to occur when it was something she had to put conscience effort into.
Like now.
[Task]
-go through Judo exercises until your muscles ache
Reward: 5 exp
And then, it would give her a pathetic amount of exp. She resigned to the fact that leveling up wasn't easy, and sorted through the information she knew.
Maybe it would be easier if she chose a Class, but she was still uncertain about what she wanted to do. There were Skills she supposed, which she currently had none of, but she wasn't sure how to earn them.
She figured for now, the hard way was the only way, so doing a bunch of small and difficult Tasks it was.
[Task complete]
[+5 exp]
She flipped onto the dojo floor and waited for her stamina to recover, before thinking about what she could do to trigger more Tasks. Then some ideas came to her. What if, like with the Judo, she just did her normal routine except everything to the extreme.
So Rei did.
[Task]
- clean the entire house until it's spotless
Reward: 10 exp
[Task complete]
[+10 exp]
[Task]
- weed and water the garden
-trim the bushes
-rake the yard
Reward: 15 exp
[Task complete]
[+15 exp]
[Task]
-do the extra field maintenance you've been slacking on
Reward: 10 exp
[Task complete]
[+10 exp]
Rei kept at it, tired and sweaty from working harder than ever, and only breaking to eat food.
[Task]
- hunt for dinner
-forage for food
Reward: 15 exp
Bonus: hunt for tomorrow's breakfast for 10 exp
She went out into the forest as usual, carrying her homemade bow, and emergency crossbow. She wasn't an expert at archery, but she'd taken it up after her Grandpa died, having to bring in her own meals.
Spotting a rabbit, she crouched and waited. Rei couldn't help grinning, when as expected, a fox came out for its meal. Right when the fox had made the rabbit go limp, she shot it in the chest.
It stumbled and died, the rabbit still clenched in its mouth. Just then, as she went to collect her kill, she got a pleasant surprise.
[Skill-Bow Hunter-learned]
While using any type of bow, your accuracy is increased by 20%
-Passive, E-Rank
Rei thought immediately about becoming a better archer and making a bow her main weapon, but remembered what she'd learned from her Grandpa. It was always better to have skills in every area possible so that she'd never be caught unprepared.
She'd always suspected he secretly wanted her to become a top-rated Adventurer.
She finished up her Task, picking up some mushrooms on her way out of the forest.
[Task complete]
[+15 exp]
[Bonus Task complete]
[+10 exp]
When she got back to the house, she got another pleasant surprise, Aspire gifting her a Task that wasn't nearly as difficult.
[Task]
-cook dinner and eat it
Reward: 5 exp
Bonus: prep the food for breakfast for 5 exp
Rei joyfully enjoyed the last light of the day, eating her dinner out on the porch so as to watch the sun be weighted down and replaced by the moon.
[Task complete]
[+5 exp]
[Bonus Task complete]
[+5 exp]
She hadn't particularly enjoyed learning that Tasks were giving such little exp, but she was reassured by seeing how much she could earn in an uneventful day. Maybe tomorrow she could earn an even greater amount by entering a Dungeon.
She still had no plans of becoming an Adventurer, but the Dungeons would help her become stronger, and earn her some extra cash.
Rei grinned, watching the stars fill out the sky.
She settled into a restless sleep there on the wooden floor, and dreamed of the past...
'Rei knew perfectly well that she was supposed to be asleep. She knew, but it didn't matter.
The world was the kind of gray one could only ever see if they opened their eyes while underwater, or perhaps when they took a walk at twilight.
Rei was curled up beneath her desk in the corner, staring blankly at her bed as if accusing it of a hundred sins.
She was supposed to be sleeping, yet all she could do was wrap her arms around her knees and look instead out the window.
It was just left of her desk, so she could see a portion of the roof from under it. And her father was out there now, shouting at the phone. And her mother was shouting at him from on the balcony just below the roof.
They argued so much, that they didn't notice one section of the roof had gone grayer, just the right size to fit a person.
Rei definitely couldn't sleep now.
She wondered if she should shout to her parents, but it would be fruitless. They wouldn't hear over their own voices. Or possibly, they'd just yell at her for not sleeping.
She watched the figure, slinking and blurry just like the painted portrait of a stray cat in an alley. It came forward quick, slashing out a claw to skewer her father's phone.
In another quick movement it had sewn her fathers mouth shut with the searing heat of red. It let her father be like that, moving to scoop her mother from the balcony and turn her into a splat on the ground.
Cats lived to squash bugs, and her mother was a bug, screeching and dirty, and always moving in groups.
The figure came back for her father who had at which point choked on his own throat, and brought out an even sharper claw.
It drew itself up and cut and prodded and played with his corpse until the tiling was rose.
Rei had always loved the color rose.
So Rei watched as the cat-figure flicked its weapons clean before retracting them and darting off to disappear into the gray.
Rei looked at the flowers of red. Her limbs loosened and she uncurled. She came out from under the desk, crawled into her bed, and did as she was supposed to.
She fell asleep in seconds.'