"Come on Katherine, finish your food quickly. We have some more work to do."
'Man, I forgot how heavy pancakes can be when there is no baking powder or cornstarch. The half an apple I ate earlier isn't helping. God, I feel like a little balloon.'
"But Mother, I'm full." I whined. Hopefully she would accept that.
As if answering my prayers, mother sighed and quickly finished my pancake for me, before taking a cloth and wiping the crumbs from both my face and hers.
"Les, can I trouble you to take these dishes? The Marquess is scheduled to contact us soon, and I would hate to make her wait."
"Aye, I'll be fine. 'Sides, won't ye need to save all yer strength to serve for tomorrow night?"
'Huh, guess I wasn't seeing things earlier. Mother really did blush when she was 'insulting' the Marquess and Countess earlier. Maybe I'll get a sibling in a few years?'
I looked up at my mother, almost laughing out loud when I saw her face go crimson. She glared at Les before dragging me out of the room. While we were leaving, I could hear Les laughing.
"Mother, why do you need to save your strength?"
'Hehe, time to play innocent and see my mother's embarrassed face.'
Surprisingly, my mother just ignored me, dragging me back to towards the large white room. Her face had gone back to normal, and she was back to her serious expression. When we entered the room, she took me to the door opposite our bedrooms, revealing another large room. In the back was a large bed, almost the size of our room. A large wardrobe stood on either side of the bed. Next to the right wardrobe was an empty armor rack, while the left wardrobe had a small shrine next to it. In front of the bed was a small couch, with a table in front of it. Lining the walls were bookshelves filled with beautifully bound books. Unsurprisingly, most of the things in the room were white, with the silver accents. the floor was a beautiful light gray wood, covered in different sized rugs. Before I could truly take in the opulent bedroom, my mother continued to lead me towards the left wall, where in between two bookshelves was a door.
When she opened it, I saw a what looked like a hot spring. In the back of the room was a teardrop shaped pool with a large tinted window overlooking a garden. To the left were two stools sitting in front of something that looked like a shower, but instead of holes in the shower head, light blue crystals could be seen. On the right was a long counter with two sinks. Again, instead of a normal faucet, blue crystals were present. Next to the door we entered from was a long shelf on either side, housing many different baskets, some filled with towels, others being empty.
"Alright, Katherine. Your job is to make sure all the Water crystals work and scrub down the hot spring. You have all day to do so. Here, use the cloth from earlier. You're going to have to wipe every area twice. It's a lot of work, and you can take breaks when you get tired. I'll be in the bedroom or the main room, so if you have any questions or something happens, just come out and ask me. Any questions for now?"
"Um... how I check crystals?"
"Tap the activation rune. Look, this semi circle with a cross inside it? Thats the activation rune. All you do is press it and the crystal will start producing water."
I nodded my head. Walking over to the shower area, I pushed the rune on the silver pole. Water started flowing out of the crystals, reminding me of those rain shower heads.
"Check all the crystals. The bath is empty now, and you should start cleaning it before going inside and activating all the crystals inside it. I'm not expecting all of it to be done, just try your best, okay? If you need me, I'll be out here, alright?"
I nodded, before feeling my mother ruffle my ears again. With a quick 'Good Luck', she exited the room. 'This is quite a bit for a kid, isn't it? Though I would have loved this as a kid, simply cause I could play with the water. Also, magic crystals! Thats so cool! I wonder if you can change the output of the crystal? Could I get a slow drizzle, or a high pressure stream? God, I can't wait to be able to use magic myself.'
[Quest: Check All Water Crystals. Reward - 10xp]
[Quest: Clean bathroom.
10% Reward - 20xp
25% Reward - 30xp
50% Reward - 60xp
75% Reward - 100xp
85% Reward - 150xp
95% Reward - 225xp
100% Reward - 300xp]
'Wow, what a huge quest. Makes sense though. This is a pretty big room, like approximately thirty feet long, and twenty feet wide. That bath is huge, looks more like a small pool. The room looks clean enough, but that's coming from me, who knows what nobles define clean as. This really will take all day, huh. Oh well, 300xp is worth it. Wait, that's actually 375xp. Damn, and I get the additional 12.5xp just for tapping a bunch of runes. Cool. If I can get this much xp just for cleaning a room, I wonder what the monsters/combat xp amounts to? And what about my beloved dual culti... I mean 'fun' quests will be worth?'
Humming happily to my self, I quickly walked over to the other shower, checking if the crystals were working. After observing it for a few moments and deciding it worked, I turned it off before doing so for the sinks. When I saw that all of them worked, I walked over towards the bath. Thankfully there were stairs leading into the bath, as it was just slightly taller than I currently was. I walked over towards the more narrow side, before quickly starting to wipe the stone. Just like the table, I watched as any scratches were removed, and any dirt disappeared.
While I was working, I decided to ask the system some questions.
'What exactly do I get for leveling up?'
[Host receives a single stat point per level, and gets a skill point every five levels. You can use the stat points to increase a stat by one, and you can use a certain amount of skill points to either unlock a skill or level one up. And before you ask, you can earn skill points through quests as well. A quest that offers 500xp has a 25% chance to award skill points, and that chance increases every 500xp. Additionally, any achievements the host completes awards stat points and skill points. An achievement can be anything, from killing 500 slimes to completing 100 quests.]
'Thats cool. Is there a store built into this system? Lots of novels and stuff from my world always had systems having store.'
[That feature unlocks at level 25. You will not receive the currency for the store until you reach that level either. Examples of items in the store are stat/skill points, weapons, weapon/magic techniques, materials, and more.]
'When you say 'techniques' do you mean like the fighting style or magic spell? Or do you mean those cultivation techniques that do very little and are forgotten/rendered useless in like a year?'
[You chose a fantasy world, and as such you will be able to purchase magic spells or fighting styles. They are ranked appropriately. For example, {Fireball} is an Adept rank fire magic spell. However it can be enhanced or simplified, raising or lower its rank. This means that, if Host is smart enough or determined enough, Host can buy all low rank spells and learn how to upgrade it for free. Conversely, if Host buys a high ranked spell, Host can learn the spells that were combined or enhanced to create said spell. This principle works for enhancing or gaining skills as well.]
'Thats awesome! So I could, theoretically, buy the most advanced spell in the store and reverse engineer it to learn all the lower rank spells?'
[Correct. However, the store has tiers, and you wouldn't be able to afford said spell until you were appropriately ranked.]
'Obviously, I'm just asking about the theory. Still, that's cool. I'm guessing that if I suddenly buy a spell that should be hard to learn for the people of this world, it'll be suspicious?'
[Probably]
'Helpful. Well, looks like I could become a 'Genius', but that seems boring. Obviously I'll still learn magic, but I'm content so far with just being a simple servant. Can't imagine walking around this world like some kind of Protagonist, being hounded by random people to either join their group or fight people who can't believe a servant is more talented than them. Sounds extremely tedious. Well, time to just put my head down and clean this ginormous bathroom. 387.5xp is a lot of xp, so lets get to work.'
I started methodically cleaning everything. After going around the bath twice, I clicked on all the runes, allowing the bath to start filling. Interestingly, there was a red crystal in the center, and using my amazing deductive reasoning, I decided it was a fire crystal to heat the tub. I'm a genius, I know.
I looked out into the garden, and as I did, I saw the sun reach its zenith, meaning I had already been cleaning for a few hours now. As I got out of the bath, my mother opened the door, a plate in her hand. I ran over to her, my stomach grumbling as I did.
"Hungry, huh? Well, you've done a real good job so far, Katherine. Here, eat. Are you tired? Want to go take a nap?"
I grabbed the plate and looked at the food. A slice of bread, orange slices, and a few slices of meat. I shook my head at her question. Give up my huge amount of xp? Over my dead body.
She chuckled and watched me eat, occasionally wiping my mouth or patting my head. After I scarfed down my food, I handed her the plate and said "Crystals work! Bath clean and has water!"
She ruffled my ears before nodding. "Well, if you want to keep going, then be my guest. You know where to find me."
I watched her leave, and got back to work. I reentered cleaning mode, which is just turning off my brain and mindlessly wiping off the floor and decorations around the room. Occasionally I would get a quest update, telling me my percentage completed, ad they made me so happy.
Time passed relatively quickly, and I saw the lovely 100% completion. My mother would occasionally peek in to see what I was doing, and I would stop and give her a smile. When she peeked the last time, I told her that I just had the baskets to do, and she helped.
"Good job Katherine. It looks great! I'll go grab dinner; wait in our room. We are done for today, and we have to make sure we are rested up for when the Marquess, Countess, and Young Lady arrive."
Nodding, I went back to our room, sat on the bed, and accepted the quest completions.
[Quests Completed.
Quest: Clean Bathroom - 100%
Reward - 310xp]
[Level - 1 (462.5/100)]
[Would you like to level up? Y/N]
'Yes!'
[Level -1 -> Level 2 (362.5/150)]
[Level - 2 -> Level 3 (212.5/225)]
'Status.'
[Katherine Zara - Dogkin
Age - 4
Level - 3 (212.5/225)
Stats:
STR - 5 (10)
CON - 6 (12)
AGI - 5 (10)
DEX - 7 (14)
CHA - 7 (14) -> 8(16)
WIS - 6 (12)
INT - 7 (14)]
'Maybe if I increase my Charisma more, I can seduc... I mean persuade the Young Lady to be good friends with me? Hmm... is she going to be more like a 'Young Master'? If she is... hehehe, this'll be easy. Just increase my charisma a bit more and be her 'exclusive maid'! HAHAHA!'
[Please calm down, your mother will be here soon. Let's not scar the poor woman.]
'Fine.'
'...Is there an achievement for making it through my first day?'
[Ding! Achievement unlocked: No, go to sleep already.]