Luke glanced over the screen that had appeared after he conquered his fifth guild.

[Champion of Sram]

[Guild members and affiliated NPCs receive +15 Strength, +15 Constitution, -10 Intelligence, and -10 Spirit while at war. Warmongering penalties increase 50% faster.]

He dismissed it and shrugged. Why was everything oriented towards strength and constitution? Well, it was fitting considering most of his guild members consisted of goblins, orcs, and trolls. It wasn’t like anything was lost after the loss of intelligence and spirit.

***

Khrx stared at the fallen cobra by his feet. He had given it seventeen good smacks on the head. Despite his attempts at taming it, the cobra had refused to comply to the very end and succumbed to its injuries. Meanwhile, the three men, who were barely living, stared at Khrx with pale faces and wide eyes. Blood leaked out of their mouths, and blackened veins pulsed underneath their skin. A few rounds of Remove Poison by Mr. Johnson wasn’t able to cure them fully.

“Kay…,” Mr. Johnson said, his voice thin. “What’s your strength?”

Khrx shrugged. “I’m weak,” he said with a sigh. Compared to his strength in reality, the strength he had in game was less than a single percent. To him, there was no difference between the two strength he had started with and the strength he had now. If he had encountered the snake in reality, he could’ve killed it with a single sneeze.

“Weak. Right. Then what the hell does that make us?” Randy asked. He coughed out a viscous black blob and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Khrx tilted his head. “Ants?” He wondered what happened to the ants. In his 701,325th awakening cycle, ants the size of humans had ruled the world. Unfortunately for them, they tasted delicious to him and suffered an apocalypse. He had left behind five queens because only a fool would drive such a tasty species to extinction, but ants were no longer around during the next time he awoke. Maybe Luke would know.

The three men muttered amongst themselves as Khrx grabbed the torches and stacked them into a pile, forming a campfire. He placed a relatively flat portion of the broken stalactite on top of it and tore off a chunk of the cobra’s side, tossing it on top of the rock. Then he sat down and waited, staring at the piece of meat.

“Why’re you cooking it now, but not before?” Mr. Johnson asked, recalling Khrx slurping the other four snakes up like noodles.

“I was too hungry to wait,” Khrx said, not taking his eyes off the now-sizzling meat. “But now that I’m not as hungry, I can take my time.” He flipped the meat with his fingers and hissed before sticking them into his mouth. It was annoying how his body wasn’t resistant to heat.

Mr. Johnson shook his head before administering another round of Remove Poison. The dark color of the men’s veins lightened, but it was still going to be a long while until it was completely gone. He sighed as he leaned back, waiting for his mana to recover.

Khrx continued to tear apart the snake. When he was halfway through, he pulled a human skeleton wearing a bag out of its stomach. With a blank expression, he tossed the skeleton aside and broke off a few of the snake’s ribs. His tail, which was swishing back and forth lazily, stiffened and pointed at the skeleton. Khrx blinked and grabbed his tail, attempting to wave it around, but the tip remained pointing in one direction like the head of a chicken while the rest wriggled like a rope. He furrowed his brow and walked over to his makeshift hotplate and dumped the ribs on top. His tail continued to point in one direction, swiveling along with the motions of his body. He sighed before waddling over to the skeleton and gave it a nudge with his foot. He looked at his tail and asked, “What? It’s just a bag.”

Khrx grabbed the bag and gave it a good shake. The metal buckles rattled around, but there were no other sounds. He opened the top and peered inside before flipping it upside down. He gave it another shake, but nothing came out. “It’s empty.”

“Whoa! That’s a bag of holding,” Randy said, his eyes widening. He climbed to his feet but fell over into a crumpled heap a second later. He propped his chin up while clawing towards the skeleton, dragging his body along. “If we sell it, we’ll be rich!”

“Bag of holding?” Khrx asked as he held up the bag and spun it around. “Don’t all bags hold things?”

“It’s a special bag that has more space on the inside than it does on the outside,” Mr. Johnson said. So the rumors about killing beasts without weapons were true. Items really did drop, and an extremely rare one like the bag of holding too. In reality, there were only ten bags of holding in existence, all of them created eons ago by an unknown existence.

Khrx frowned. What good was this bag? The next time he died, it’d be gone. Why couldn’t the cobra have given him something more useful like more charm? Well, treasure was treasure. And if it was a valuable treasure, it had to be hidden. Khrx stuffed it down the neck of his onesie and tied it around his waist so that it rested on his stomach. He tore a slit open on his onesie, letting the top of the bag protrude like a kangaroo’s pouch. He nodded at his handiwork and tried stuffing the skeleton inside as a test. Like magic, it shrank as it entered the bag. Khrx reached in and pulled the skeleton out, causing it to grow again.

Randy swallowed at the sight. “Hey, Kay,” he said with an ugly smile on his face. “Why don’t you let me hold onto it for you? I heard they’re awfully heavy, right? A child shouldn’t be carrying around a twenty-pound bag. It’ll stunt your growth.”

Khrx’s expression darkened.

“What are you saying, Randy?” Mr. Johnson asked, grabbing Randy’s ankle and dragging him back. “Khrx killed the cobra. The bag belongs to him. Don’t forget our main purpose is the gem at the end of the dungeon.”

Randy stared at Khrx before sighing. “Yeah, you’re right, Jim.” He hung his head as he leaned back against the wall, his expression unreadable.

Khrx snorted before continuing with his meal. A surface dweller coveted his treasure, but how was that any different from usual? If Randy really did try to steal his bag, he’d torture him, find out where he lived in reality, and rob him and all his relatives blind, adding onto his collection. Khrx sighed as he munched on the cobra, reminiscing on his first treasure. It was a pearl he had picked up while digging for oysters to eat. A fishfolk tried to steal it from him since he was still just a baby dragon back then. In the end, all the wealth of the Fishfolkian Empire had fallen into his hands, causing its eventual collapse. His parents were right when they told him he needed wealth to make more wealth; after all, how else would he bait rich people into stealing from him?