After the ensuing chaos settled down, Annali came over and began healing my swelling ankles. Various adventurers struck up conversations with me about my fight with the centipede, wanting to get to know me, wanting me to join their party, and other topics.
Honestly it was a bit to much for me to take in all at once, so I mainly responded curtly and said things like 'thanks', 'nice to meet you', and 'see you back at the post!'
Finally the horde had been completely cleaned up, and adventurers were gathering up their bounties in a pile and staking their claim. For most it wasn't exactly realistic to bring the bodies back inside themselves, so the guild would send out workers to take stock and deal with the monster corpses on site.
This way adventurers could receive a quote for compensation on the spot, and then go cash in at their post.
Unknown to myself, two specific adventurers of interest from the center formation were watching me from a distance after hearing about the Stone Ranker who virtually soloed a stray Geode Rank monster.
Jabari Aziz looked at me in interest, suddenly realizing he might owe the adventurers involved an apology due to the danger of accidently letting the centipede slip. He now felt grateful to 'The Genius Newbie Einer' for preventing quite a few potential casualties.
Along with Jabari was a certain Geode Rank girl with long pastel yellow hair and black pits of eyes, who stared intensely towards me, the girl I passed at the guild registration office.
She currently wore high-quality tight-fitting leather armor with a shining rapier at her side. Making a mental note of something, she turned to organize and deal with her own bounty.
Annali finished healing my feet and legs, and I thanked her as I stood up and stretched, feeling relieved now that my first combat experience was finally over and I could relax.
'I guess I should go find those two goblins I killed as well,' I thought, remembering them in lieu of the centipede. I would be carrying them over to where the centipede was since dragging it over seemed like it would be pretty hard.
as I moved to go with my temp party back to where we fought the goblins, someone from behind got my attention.
"Erm, Einer...? I heard that was your name..."
I turned around and saw a girl with a long pole-like staff standing awkwardly.
"I just wanted to um... thank you for saving me. When you attacked I think I probably would have died so..."
"Yeah? I'm glad I made it in time then, don't worry about it too much."
I held out my hand towards her, and she stared at me for a second before gripping it. We shook hands and I thought of how to respond.
"Nice to meet you..."
"It's Kimi."
"Ah, see you around then Kimi"
"Mmm!"
And with that done with I went to catch up to Brad and co. to pick up the goblins we had killed.
After a short walk I found the two goblins I thought to be the two I killed, which didn't really matter as long as I only picked up as many as I killed and left intact, but I just felt more comfortable taking the ones I knew were mine for some reason.
Carrying one over each shoulder I trudged back to the burnt centipede corpse, and dumped the two [Clawed Goblins] right next to it and sat down to wait.
After about 10 minutes I noticed guild workers had begun to come out of the town through the gate and spread out. They worked their way through groups of adventurers, armed with clipboards and plenty of documentation.
After another 20 minutes one of the workers finally got over to where I was, and began to ask me questions.
"Hi, I assume these are yours," he motioned to the three deceased monsters.
"Yep."
"Alright, can you reveal all of your ID's info and let me see?"
I dragged my finger across the card, the information I gave back at registration coming to existence on the previously blank surface.
"Fireball I see, burn marks check out... Level 0? I see we're overdue for an ID reassessment appointment."
"Ahaha... yeah I guess so." I felt a cold sweat coming on, not wanting to mention that I literally got my ID earlier in the day.
"Anyhow, you must be pretty grateful you were so lucky." He continued to strike up conversation while simultaneously filling out my information and bounty quotes.
"Lucky?"
"Yeah, if this guy wasn't a bug type monster you probably would have died today you know?"
He seemed to have just nonchalantly said something super important as he casually examined the corpses of the monsters I had killed.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Bug types are well known to have a weakness towards fire, specifically those with carapaces, when you blast this thing you're basically boiling it alive. A stone ranker like you would normally stand no chance no matter how close to Geode Rank they are. Their natural armor makes temperature regulation difficult, and you probably wouldn't have gotten away with as much burn damage on a mammalian type for example. Then again, the explosion would probably do more damage against an armorless monster, so whose to say?"
Haha? Wait that's not funny...
Anyways I felt pretty happy to be learning new knowledge I hadn't even considered before, and then the worker handed me a receipt.
"You can redeem this at the post, please leave the bodies here and we will deal with them, seeing as you're 'new' don't think we won't know if you take them anyways."
Mr. Worker gave a typical token warning as he walked off with a wave, and I laughed slightly while looking away and down to the receipt in my hands.
My face froze.
Stone Rank x2: 24 Dali|
Geode Rank x1: 125 Dali|
Material Value Quote: 206 Dali|
Total: 355 Dali|
What.
That was not what I expected at all! why had I just earned more than double what I was supposed to!?
I ran after the guild worker and stopped him to ask about it.
"Hey! What's up with this, how did I get 355 Dali?!"
"Hm? Hey dude don't blame me, those [Clawed Goblins] are virtually worthless and you kind of ruined the carapace's appearance too, so I can't give you full price on that material quote, sorry. Anyways I really got to move on."
The worker speed walked off to another area, while I was left there astonished.
'I had thought the bounty was compensation for the monster bodies, but it turns out that was just incentive to counter the complaints of adventurers from being forced into dangerous work. I guess they also pay for the actual material value on top of that then...'
It made sense, the [Clawed Goblins] were bottom of the barrel ranking-wise and only really had their meat and claws to offer. Meanwhile the [Bladed Centipede] was large in size, had a hard segmented carapace that I could only imagine the uses of, and not to mention it was just higher ranked in the first place, which automatically made every single piece of it more useful and valuable.
Even its flesh would provide greater nutrition than a Stone Rank monster's would.
As I walked back to the Guild Post, I was stuck between a state of bliss and lament. Bliss because of the money I was about to be paid, and lament due to the realization that from now on, my [Fireball] would probably continue to absolutely destroy the bodies of enemies I had killed.
Another reason why I wish I could be an Armor Knight! Blades are just as deadly and much more friendly towards the condition of the body, only requiring you to selectively cut a vital areas to receive a well-preserved corpse.
I angrily opened up my stats panel and begrudgingly assigned every single AP to Sorcery.
However, as I watched my power more than double in one go, I felt like maybe it wasn't all that bad.
'Who wouldn't be happy to kill monsters in such a badass way? I should start looking on the bright side! Plus, I'm sure I can find a way to make my fireballs more clean when it comes to killing, I just need to work on it instead of complaining as much.'
'Status, Stats.'
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[User: Einer]
[Rank: Stone]
[Level: 13]
[Stats: >]
[Skills: >]
[Unique: >]
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Stats:
AP: 0 [+]
Force: 10 -Locked-
Agility: 10 -Locked-
Vitality: 10 -Locked-
Wisdom: 10 -Locked-
Sorcery: 29 -Enhanced-
[Hidden Stats...]
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