FOREWORD: Oof, my third place position for Re:E in the wpc190 contest is threatened by two books that just entered the contest but have already knocked several other books down the line because they came with previous followers. Help this asshole out with some votes on Re:Entertainment and I'll dump 5 chapters there and here. my goal from this is to have at least 50 votes when i wake up tomorrow- evening- so that's basically one FRNSTG chapter per Re:E vote. not counting the Zalts >.> no offense, oh ye faithful
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By the end of the demonstrations, only three wounded mountain goblins remained while six other bodies were spread out in the fighting zone. None of the goblins I trained had lost a fight or been injured, but it did take the fencer with daggers a little longer to weave around the iron rod than the other two. Black mark did not even bother dodging, just ran in behind his shield and steamrolled the other goblin to the ground.
The goblin who was originally punched by white mark, though, took longer in the unarmed fights because he was asked to be an upper fighter more than a lower fighter. The fencing goblin simply kicked the knife from the other goblin's hand before clawing into its throat. Black mark never managed to disarm the other goblin but evaded the knife and punched the other goblin in the head until it went weak and I had to stop the fight.
All in all, the footage was far too gruesome to simply post and was uploaded via a different part of the marketplace as a pay-per-view item and extremely mature content. As soon as I linked it to my business page with a picture of the victors up close in full regalia and mosaic censored bodies in the background, my business profile started coming to life with deposits for every one, four, eight, and twelve-hour unlock of the fifteen-minute video.
Normally, a video like that would be highly illegal to put on the internet and the FBI would probably show up at my door in a few hours. However, this was an ugly but legitimate business that dealt in the preservation of human lives at the expense of monsters from other worlds.
Plus, it was only available to people with some form of Bureau or government affiliation even though these people were probably streaming my video in God only knew what places for more money themselves.
Why else would somebody pay for a twelve-hour unlock at a thousand dollars?
Before my very satisfied customers left, Mr. Fjord had a few last things to say. First was that he offered me a position working for his clan with a negotiable salary in the 'single digit' millions. With a group of people not much below one hundred, which qualified a guild, helping to supply me with creatures I would never have to work portals again.
When I told him know he wanted to work out a supply contract not unlike the Bureau's. They would pay me for training creatures and they would bring me creatures to train while allowing me to keep two out of ten as breeding stock. I told him that his people can come to me individually with a single creature per contract and get a discounted basic package.
Just like everybody else.
Then he started asking about the restrictions on numbers of contracts per person and looking for loopholes to try and work my like a sweat shop because I refused to work directly for him. Because of him, I had to come up with a self-harming business policy of only two contracts per person for life. Of course, this meant I could never reveal my bulk deal with the Bureau as well as any other similar deals that might come up.
When he finally left it was only after caving a little and allowing this one contract to count as one of his daughter's instead of his own. THIS MAN WAS SHAMELESS! Finally, though, he and everybody else got off of my property with everything they were promised and nothing else or less.
Once they were gone I immediately went and picked every needle remaining from the pine tree for more than ten pounds of alloy material. Once the tree was stripped bare, though, the glow between patches of layered bark brightened briefly before fading. Then the entire angled top of the tree with the branches that grew needles simple fell off.
In its place a one-inch sprout was already forming, this one pointing straight up without any environmental interference. Unsure of how to feel about this, I could only have Glaive carry the ten-foot pine top while putting the goblins and kobolds away. Luckily, we had Si-Pon to deal with our new but injured goblins by healing them and putting them to sleep.
After feeding everyone, I took Poniard and Glaive out to take a few pictures of the pine tree before calling a ride to take us home. Luckily, the director had a simple two-layer proto-suit made for Glaive that closed in the back around her tail. In 'proper' clothes and walking with a slow but upright posture she almost looked like she had a job as a Protector.
However, while carrying a branch of pine she looked like a genetic experiment taken out to play fetch.
On the ride home in the back of a Bureau transport van I contacted both Karen and Johnathan about the pine tree materials to see who could come up with what. Since Johnathan was not an actual craftsman or mage he could only use his printer and lab to synthesize raw materials or 'cast' folded metals.
Karen had the big brain energy when it came to different uses for the needles and tree so I decided to only give Johnathan half of the needles for raising the quality of my MP scrap stockpile and give the other half as well as the pine top to Karen.
Once we got home I used my connections with the Bureau to drop a certain director's name and have the driver deliver some quick packages for me. Then it was time to relax in the living room with the couple of extra hours that I had today. It had been a while since the last time I played any video games but the little bros were surprisingly online and active so we quickly started another private server challenge.
At some point one of the bros brought up the fact that his cousin who lived near where a portal appeared had been exposed to MP and now registered in the middle of F grade. Some people had all the luck, I started at the bottom and had to work hard and kiss ass just to reach E grade up until my surgery. Still, the responses were mixed.
One of the other two little bros was trying to console him while the other was congratulating him. The little bro with the exposed cousin was actually happy but then wondered why the other kid felt bad for him. The odd bro out couldn't help but talk about how dangerous and scary it was as well as how much it would suck to lose somebody.
"I'm D grade," I suddenly found myself saying, silencing the entire group for a moment until the kids started laughing at me.
"It's one thing for us to believe you're over six feet and two hundred pounds on a video game," one of the little bros says while catching his breath from laughing. "But it's entirely different if you want us to believe you're a Protector. How old did you say you were again, sixteen?"
Wanting to kick myself for having opened my big mouth, I sigh tiredly and say, "One minute," before I have to stop building my stronghold. Going to the entertainment center, I hook up a simple streaming camera to my console before sitting back down to start streaming both my game and myself on the couch. Then I invited the others to watch my screen.
"What the fuck is that?!" One of the little bros just starts screaming into his microphone, probably meaning either the goblin or the kobold sitting on the floor in front of the couch beside my legs. "Oh my God, how big is your dog? Is that even a freaking dog?! What the- mom? No, no, no! Mom! Look! This kid said he was a D rank Protector and we didn't believe him so he started streaming and LOOK AT THOSE THINGS!"
"Unplug your headset real quick," I tell the bro so that his mom on the other side will hear me over the TV. When I hear the brief crackle of somebody disconnecting, I point to my right and say, "This is an upper D grade goblin shaman named Poniard, I caught and trained him back when they were only E grade. This is an adult stage evolved kobold named Glaive, I caught her and a dozen others recently in a neighboring territory. Have you guys ever heard of the goblin poo meme?"
After that I was pelted with loads of questions from not only the little bros but their parents as well before I finally ended up having to tell everybody a shortened version of my life story. Thankfully, nobody tried to interrupt with their condolences about the loss of my parents or got weird about the experimental testing at the academy. They just shut up and listened until my story was done.
Of course I withheld information about my surgery and the director despite bringing up my taming side business, but there were just some things I really could not share with pretty much anybody.
Since one of these families had a relative who was now graded and would end up in an academy soon, I was eventually asked about where I lived and if they could bring the cousin to visit me and learn more about the academy and future job. I was terrified at the prospect of such a visit, mostly because there were things I could not say about the academy as well, but I could not say no either. So, finally, I just told them the address for my property and to give me a date at least one week in advance
Even though there was not much I could really do for the kid I could at least run him ragged for a day and figured out what his MP type was. On top of that, sparring and working out in the vicinity of the kobolds and the warped pine would be a perfect exposure treatment. Even if he could not yet own his own weapons, I could still give him some basic armor pieces for when he graduates or goes on training expeditions.
After that I used dinner as an excuse to get going and ended my gaming for the evening. Reaching out to calm myself by petting either creature's head at the same time, I lean back against the couch and stare tiredly up at the ceiling. "What did you do this time?" Lucinda asks almost pleasantly from where she was busy in the kitchen.
"This kid I play with has a cousin who was exposed by a portal opening and now he's mid F and I accidentally told them I was a D grade and now their parents want to meet me and sponsor the cousin," I reply without ever looking away from the ceiling. "It's moments like these when I kind of wish I was back inside a portal or even a territory."
"Dinner will be ready soon," she reassures me briefly, "and you can't get any of my home cooked meals in a portal. So what, you have to shake a few hands and be some kids idol? Give him a free goblin and he'll worship you for life. Let him shoot one of your revolvers a couple of times so he has experience before he goes to the academy. Let him take a few swings at Poniard, too, really scare him into taking his future job seriously."
"Poniard would make him take a desk job with the Bureau," I argue while frowning at the ceiling. "The opening of a gate gave him a mid F starting point, that's not small considering loads of people can go without exposure at all. His consumption rate for MP is probably pretty high, I bet he'll get twenty or thirty points from six hours locked in a box with a broken troll core. I'll let him fight one of the hobs, I never directly trained them to do anything but taking care of the property."
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