A few hours later, after having skipped pretty much an entire day of work to play video games and make an ass of himself, Director Carlyle looks down at the meter in his hand and says, "Two-sixty… four. Congrats, Malcolm. Even after more than eight hours sitting next to a mid C monster with boobs, you only went up one point. Your mana levels have officially balanced out. Come by the Bureau for a physical tomorrow and we'll have you back on active duty soon after."
"Finally, I can start making money again," I sigh in relief despite the fact I had gotten almost two hundred thousand dollars for three mountain goblins and their starter kits just a week ago. "Find me a nice big outdoor portal at the top of E grade and get Ms. Gwyn's approval."
"It can wait, see you tomorrow," he replies with a dismissive wave farewell before walking out the door.
"That is one bored and lonely man," Lucinda said with a sad shake of her head a few minutes after the director left after dinner. Kind of reminds me of me, nothing but work and home, but my personality is way nicer."
"You're also nicer to look at," I remark before I can stop myself, getting up to put my dishes in the sink.
"Your birthday isn't that far away," Lucinda suddenly reminds me from where she was already washing her own dishes.
"Good night!" I state simply but sternly before hurrying up stairs. That night, I went to sleep on my floor and woke up being smothered as usual by my familiars.
The next day, I went to the director's office for my appointment and was then brought to another floor higher up in the Bureau building. There I found myself in a large open lab sort of room not unlike where Poniard's tests were performed. The biology director was even there, which turned out to be because he was one of the minds that originally developed the operation I underwent.
My physical was mostly just the usual breathing, exertion, and physical capabilities check.
Using only my calves and ankles I could standing jump three feet in the air, I could now wrist curl five hundred pounds, a full punch could produce almost a ton of force, I could run at a top speed of thirty-seven miles per hour for over two hours, I could squat just over nine hundred pounds with one leg, I could hold my breath underwater for over three hundred seconds, a simple front kick could produce over a ton of force, and certain bones in my arms, legs, and chest could withstand thousands of pounds of force before breaking.
Apparently, I had strength stats comparable to an upper D tanker with the overlay of my MP enhancing my senses and agility beyond that of swordsmen and marksmen at my level. Plus, I now weighed two hundred and forty-odd pounds nearly naked. It was more like I was built like a tanker with the stats of a high-speed ninja.
Then and there in the lab I was cleared for active duty and my entire team was put back in the listings for portals. I had not even left the building before receiving a call from Ms. Gwyn asking about my stats and what kind of dungeons she should look for. I told her a list of good dungeons would come to her in another day or two so she should just take her pick.
For now, I hurried back to my property to feed the raptors one of the few remaining D grade slime cores and taken them out of the barn to run the property. Being D grade speed-type monsters themselves, the six raptors gave Poniard and Glaive a run for their money on the agility course for over an hour before tiring out. In a straight line, though, road raptors could go over eighty-MPH so there was no hope for my familiars in a real race.
I considered spending money ordering more critters from breeders but the two goblin babies being raised by the hobs were already learning to run so they could start training soon. Under the influence of daily trips to the greenhouse and the other critters, their originally lower-mid E grades had risen to proper mid E levels since my return from the territory. However, these were goblin children were now at the prime state of development to influence.
Who would I be if I simply handed them a training video and sold them off? These two goblin babies were the perfect opportunity to experiment on goblin potential. They deserved much more investment than a basic package contract.
To this end, I took it upon myself to place another order for both E and D grade slime cores before spending the day keeping the goblin kids busy around the recently installed pleco and koi pond while drinking lots of water from around the pine tree. They were still too small for proper communication skills but the hobs made sure to keep them more or less in line with my orders. They were good mothers.
Because I was at the property and not at home I could go to the half-acre archery field and set up some foam targets before taking out my magic dagger. It was too big to call a poniard despite the general shape of it but when I looked up the word athame that Si-Pon gave me for magic or ceremonial knives it came of with a confusing assortment of different blade styles and sizes. An athame was pretty much whatever somebody wanted to slit a goat's throat with.
So, I named my magic dagger Goat.
For today's practice with Goat, I measured the distance and strength of the smallest flames I could produce and then sling from the tip of the dagger. Si-Pon's estimate was that a candle-sized flame took about four MP to produce and one to sustain every second or two depending on skill and affinity. To produce a candle sized fireball took twice as much as the flame and several seconds worth of 'sustenance' before it was finally able to travel across ten yards and set the foam aflame.
By the time I had a successful strike from ten yards away, though, I was running pretty low on actual magic points. Since it was magic and not a real thrown attack, the flame struck dead center on the middle target face and splashed to cover the two inches of bullseye diameter. The magic flames were a bright yellow and only lasted for a few seconds but that was enough to burn through the plastic to the foam and cause the target to burn on its own with low orange flames.
A second strike basically depleted my mana but more than doubled the size of the original 'impact' and caused the foam fire to spread and drip dramatically for several inches around the bullseye.
Since my mana pool was lower than the grade of the water around the warped pine, I decided to post a case of mana water bottles in the highest valued market and then set one aside for Karen. Then I drank a bottle in a single go before replacing the cases around the pine.
Using the remaining bottles of water not only for myself but for Glaive as well, I let Si-Pon and Poniard start teaching the adult kobold to use the mana pool it had long since developed as a being from the other side of the portals. I was more than a little disappointed to see Glaive firing multiple unnecessarily large fireballs with their larger pool before tiring, burning away most of their target. Why did I have to be so much weaker in magic than my familiars?
Despite the disparity between myself and these creatures who come from worlds of magic I did not despair but instead worked harder. Eventually I reached a point where after five bottles of successive mana water and magic use my body began sweating steam. Si-Pon had to step in and peck me in the head to make me stop burning myself up.
After that short burst of mana burn I was made to go rest with the healing artifact. I was glad for that, though, because once the steaming stopped it felt like my body had dried up and stiffened painfully. When I was finally able to move around after twenty minutes of slowly squirming in agony, Si-Pon explained that this was an affect of using an impure mana source to replenish my own energies.
Hoping to avoid further problems of such a nature, we set up new targets in the back field by the greenhouse so that we could rest and recover more naturally in the MP rich environment. It took ten or so minutes between three to five 'spells' every time, but in this method I did not hurt myself anymore. Since I could not use the mana water the way I wanted, I posted another case for bid with the starting bid at half the value of the previous case that had already sold.
The rest I decided to simply barter with Karen for proper but cheap mana replenishment. Four more days ended up passing in this fashion before I finally received the call from Ms. Gwyn that a list of portals had been sent to her. They were all upper E outdoor portals with combinations of different creatures in different environments.
Ms. Gwyn then sent me the list of portal reports so that I could skim through and look for any that would be particularly profitable. At first they all looked good with various forms of goblins and beasts or different cohabiting beast types. With my boosted pay and contribution despite being D grade in E portals, I could claim more loot than before.
Standing above all the rest, though, was a portal whose readings breached into upper D on a number of occasions during formation. Under the portal's basic information was a picture taken from just inside that showed the inside of an enclosed mountain valley. At the back of this valley roughly a mile from the portal that opened near the mountainous ridge a thousand feet overhead was a large but primitive settlement of wood structures roofed with hides with cohabiting mountain and forest goblins.
This alone was incredibly rare because the two usually fought with one another, but there were apparently a number of both trolls and ogres of high enough intelligence to work together in a stalemate of sorts. There was a cave and shallow spring-fed stream flowing through the middle of the settlement, on one side was where the mountain goblins lived and the other was the forest goblins.
There were two confirmed ogres and two trolls who were pretty old and the age of the hobs present also seemed to suggest nobody would replace them. If they did not work together, without upper evolutions the settlement would slowly be picked apart. However, we were going to be doing just that.
In the soil and water reports taken from the brief scouting trip into the valley, I found the reason why. The place was so rich in iron and other metal ores that the water was tainted. It might not be enough to make sick creatures whose bodies naturally contained lethal amounts of metals but it was enough to reduce their MP consumption.
Ms. Gwyn agreed that this would potentially be the best dungeon for us in loot, captures, and in testing my newly approved abilities.
*