Fresh sits on the floor of the shop, eating her second breakfast with Jubilee as she tells them about her encounter.

“You goo-brain!” Jubilee is quiet as they take another bite of their food. “I want to be mad since you went out of your way to be an idiot this time, but…” They sigh. “Maybe it’s fine, it’s just like we said last time. Friends in high places.”

Fresh sighs a breath of relief, happy that Jubilee isn’t mad at her this time. “Mm! It’ll only help us if she tells the church good things! But also, she just seems really nice, but…” She thinks for a moment. “Do priests not get paid a lot?”

“Priests?” asks Jubilee. “Eh, not really. They get a bunk and a dress from the church, but their bread and butter they have to find themselves. Same with their class training, all out of pocket. Officially there’s no fee to become a priest. Unofficially, they’re ‘encouraged’ to make a…” Jubilee coughs. “- ‘small donation’. Usually they join adventuring parties down into the dungeon for a cut.” Fresh finishes her roll, looking around to see if anyone is watching before wiping her fingers on her robe. “And of course, they’re also ‘encouraged’ to give a cut of that cut to the church too. So they don’t come out with much in the end,” explains Jubilee. “Priests can’t do much on their own, they aren’t really offensive types, so they’re reliant on having a group to earn money. No way around it.”

“Huh… but with a two-person-party, she’d still make fifty-percent, right?”

“Uh… probably? You’d have to ask her what they arranged. But a low-level priest and whatever the orc is, a fighter maybe, they aren’t getting further than level twelve… maybe thirteen now that he has an enchanted weapon,” says Jubilee. “I doubt she can get rid of ghosts at her level. So they’re probably making a little over a hundred a day. Split that in two and then take away a chunk for their donations and you’ve got your end total.” Jubilee stands up, adjusting their mask. “It’s not something you do to make money. It’s something you have a calling for.” Jubilee shrugs. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

Fresh gets up as well. “Do ghosts drop items?”

“Sure? Why wouldn’t they…?” asks Jubilee.

The girl blinks vacantly. “Where do they keep them?”

“What?”

“The ghosts, when they die, where do the items come from? Do they have ghost-pockets?” Fresh thinks, raising a finger to her chin. “And if they do, why does the item become touchable if the ghost dies?” She looks towards the side of the room, thinking. “Actually… How does a ghost die? Isn’t it already dead?”

“…What? Ghosts drop ectoplasm. It’s ghost-goo.” Jubilee leans in. “Which should be familiar to you, since it’s the only thing floating around in your head.”

Her finger taps against her chin. “Can we buy some?”

“What are you going to do with it?” asks Jubilee suspiciously, their eyes narrowing.

The girl’s eyes light up. “I want to make something. I have an i-!”

Jubilee raises a hand, stopping her. “I never want to hear that sentence again. Yes. If anybody offers us any, we can buy it, if you think you can make something out of it.” They sigh. “Come on, let’s open up.”

“Okay!”

The morning starts as usual after that. There were quite a few people standing outside already. Not as many as the day before, but still a lot. It appears to Fresh that the pattern of their customers seems to be repeating itself week after week. There’s a large surge, then it slowly dies down until the next boom a week later, once all of their potions had been used up.

The necklaces and the daggers are big ticket items and draw people in too, but each customer only needed one of each and then never again. Jubilee’s idea with repairs seems to be their first ‘constant’ stream of income, the way things are developing. Repairs come in every day, even if nobody wanted anything else, they were still making a profit.

“This is really good work!” says the man from the day before, as he rotates the piece of shoulder armor around in the sunlight to look at it. “There’s no cracking or hammer marks or anything!”

“It looks like it did when it dropped,” says his caster companion, staring up at it with him, somewhat bewildered.

“Yeah,” says their priest, turning over to Fresh who is standing with a prideful smile behind the counter. “How did you do this?”

Fresh lifts a finger, winking. “Magic!”

The crowd moves along, as the other twenty-six people from the day before come to pick up their equipment too, all of them just as awed to just as varying degrees as the party before them. Just as many and then some others too opt to leave some equipment with them. Jubilee takes care of the pricing for the repairs, as Fresh has no idea what it costs. Each individual piece has a different price, depending on the size and the material and the damage. For a while, the girl considers asking why they don’t just offer a fixed price to keep the math simple, but soon enough she realizes how suspicious that would be. At the price she has in mind, some of the repairs would be obvious profit losses, considering the damage they have. People would ask too many questions.

Much to her dismay, the chickens don’t move as often as she’d like. But everything else gets carried out every so often by adventurers coming in for repairs.

Fresh feels a little stronger than she did yesterday, but running up and down the stairs to stow away the armor and weapons they were leaving behind is deeply exhausting work and there are clearly more of them today than yesterday. The entire free wall of her room is lined with weapons and armor and equipment of all manner. Fresh leans against the wall, panting as sweat drips down her forehead, as she drops the latest robe down onto the heap below herself. This felt harder than going through the dungeon.

To her delight at least, when she comes back downstairs, Jubilee informs her that they had purchased some ‘ghost-goo’. Fresh looks at the little jar of translucent chalky, glowing, argent liquid and smiles, thanking Jubilee and taking another trip up to her room, this one feeling less exhausting than the others before.

As the day spans further onward towards the late afternoon, Fresh can’t help but notice that the red-wizard hasn’t come today either for her soul-potions. Maybe she was finally sick of them? Fresh supposes that that’s what happens when you drink the equivalent of a box of them in three days.

The rest of the day goes on like this, not eventful, but busy and soon enough the evening comes and the two of them, exhausted, shut the door for the day.

“Jubileeeee~” cries Fresh, falling down back against the counter as her legs give out.

Jubilee doesn’t argue today and simply sighs, relenting as they fall down too, leaning against the counter next to her, just as exhausted as she is. “Okay. We’ll hire someone. We can probably get away with paying them fifty Obols.”

“An hour?! That seems really high,” exclaims Fresh, somewhat surprised.

“What? No, a day, ding-bat,” groans Jubilee.

“Oh…” Fresh taps her finger to her chin. “That seems really low.”

“So? If they’ll take the job for fifty, it’s only in our best interest to let them.”

Fresh shakes her head. “You get what you pay for. Minimum wage. Minimum effort.” Jubilee turns their head towards her and stares for a while. Fresh fidgets. “What…?” asks the girl nervously.

“Have you been reading books? Ones that aren’t wet? That’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Fresh just laughs meekly, not able to tell her friend that she was just parroting something she had heard somewhere in her old life. It takes a lot of arguing, but Fresh ‘convinces’ Jubilee that instead of a fixed sum, that they should offer a clean percentage of their daily profits, that way their worker has an incentive to work extra hard. Though her arguments are mostly fueled by tearful begging and emotional pleas and Jubilee is clearly just too exhausted to want to fight about it, so they relent.

The two of them set to finish the rest of their work, splitting up like before so Fresh can finish her mountain of repairs and then, much to her suffering, make a new batch of minor soul-potions and antidotes, as their pantry is running low. All of them turn out normal-quality, much to the girl’s dismay. She really wants to make better ones.

Minor soul-potions: 19 Obols each - 110 sold = +2090

Antidotes: 15 Obols each - 24 sold = +360

Bone-daggers: 49 Obols each - 2 sold = +98

Odd and ends: ~40 Obols each - 0 sold = +0

Glass-chickens: 30 Obols each - 0 sold = ~0

Mushroom-caps(Blue): - sold 0, bought 41 (6 each) = -246

Mushroom-caps(Orange): - sold 0, bought 30 (5 each) = -150

Goblin-teeth(Small) - sold 0, bought 48 (1 each) = -48

Iron-Ingots - sold 0, bought 3 = -20

Magical-talisman(Glass) - sold 17 = +867

Tote Bags - sold 19 = +95

Ectoplasm - sold 0, bought 1 (13 each) = -13

Repairs (Various) - sold 27 = +874

Total (Gross) = +3867

5% Merchants’ guild deduction = -193

12% Taxes = -464

10% Savings and upkeep = -386

Total (Net) = +2822 Obols

Earnings = 1411 Obols each

Later, well into darkness, exhausted, Fresh drags herself upstairs and falls into bed.

The next day comes and repeats itself much like this one, though the repairs slow down too, as the bulk of them are done for now. But still, there is an occasional trickle of people coming in solely for repairs. Some of them even leave with a potion or a necklace as well. As it’s a slow day, Fresh, with Jubilee’s blessing, sets to work in securing the building a little more.

It’s still an old, wooden structure at the end of the day, and there is only so much she can do without digging deeper, but even some superficial work would go a long way for now. Fresh sets to the task, dragging some of the left over lumber downstairs and using her crafting abilities to slice it into planks. She tears out some of the old boards down by the wall and replaces them with the new ones, pressing them tightly and snuggly together.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Cut(Straight)] (Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Fasten]

This does little for physical-security, of course, but in her mind, stopping the constant cool draft that enters the house counts too.

“It’s spring now, what’s it like in winter?” mutters the girl, thinking about the freezing nights she’s experienced here and promises Jubilee to have this place sealed up and warm in no-time.

They just shrug “Why bother? You can just wear a coat,” says Jubilee.

Fresh puffs out her cheek and turns back to rip the next board out, placing the old, time-stained wood down next to her to grab a new piece. She obviously doesn't have enough wood to do the whole house, nor enough time. But if she does this little patch beneath the window now, then that’s a spot taken care of. Bit by bit, she can fix it up. Soon the wall is done and she gets to her next idea.

Rubbing the sweat off of her forehead, she leans over, holding her hands above one of the heavy iron-ingots that they had bought today and slices off a long horizontal strip, setting it to the side.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Cut(Straight)]

From the rest, she makes a hollow rectangle that is open on both ends, as well as a small chain. Getting up, she goes to the front door.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Small Iron Chain] [Small Iron Chain](Normal)

Holding her hands against the door, she secures the ‘tube’ into place on the wood above the handle and then grabs the rectangle, sliding it in and affixing it to the chain.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Fasten]

Jubilee watches her from behind the counter. “A chain-lock? The door already has a lock though?” they ask curiously.

Fresh turns back to them, raising a finger. “Now it has two!”

“Uh… sure,” says Jubilee, tilting their head. They lift their finger, pointing to the spot next to her. “You know there’s a giant window literally right there… right?” they ask. “If anyone wants to come in, they’re not going to bother with the door anyways.”

Fresh ignores that statement. “Can I go into your room? I want to put locks on our doors too!”

“Huh? Why…?” asks Jubilee suspiciously.

The girl shrugs, before she bends down to pick up her materials. “So the demons don’t get us in our sleep,” she answers plainly.