I don't recommend sleeping on the floor of a barely-constructed hovel your first night in it.

Mel seemed to sleep like a newborn kitten, just lightly snoring the whole time through.

I, on the other hand, was awake for basically every moment of the night. If it wasn't the floor randomly creaking, it was the howling wind through the not-quite-a-window-yet holes. Or the roof threatening to collapse in under the weight of a little early morning rain.

At one point I swore I saw a rat picking at our garbage from dinner.

I paid twenty gold for this.

Twenty whole gold.

For a shit-show operation of a building that I somehow had to turn into an eatery before I ran out of money.

Most of the night was spent panicking. I'm not going to try to hide that. I'd had really bad anxiety as a kid, and so I had some good ways of dealing with it, but none of them were working.

Eventually I just got up and started working.

Mel slept right through it all, bless her heart. But I swept up the dirt and hay (I was sure to copy my design to one of the design scrolls the building designer gave me for this sort of thing before I swept it up), cleaned out our trash, and set about investigating the floor for soft spots. I thought about checking out the cellar, but there was a lot of squeaking coming from that general area, and I really didn't want to have to fight rats in some commoner's clothes. I'd just hire some adventurer to take care of it later.

That's what I was now.

A potential quest giver.

If only my folks could see me now. Would likely result in a lot of screaming and some swift kicks to the ass (not to mention the "why haven't you settled down to have kids yet" bullshit my mother was always good for), but maybe eventually they'd think I was rising up in the world.

You know. Or not.

By the time Mel woke up after the sun rose, I'd actually done a pretty decent job of getting the place functional. The floors were no longer a fire hazard, and I was able to formulate a plan from the design menu for the building.

"We need 50 [Cut Stone], 40 [Cut Timber], and 12 [Iron Bars]," I said after consulting the menu a final time.

"And I need breakfast."

"Mel. I'm serious. If we want to get this place up and running, we need basic materials. And they'll take time to get ordered and brought here, so we need to start on it right away."

"Harps. I'm serious. You want to play chef and that's lovely. I'm here for you. Absolutely supportive. But if I don't get some eggs and perhaps a nip of brandy in a big ol' cup of coffee, I'm going to murder someone." She looked at me from under a halo of wild blonde hair. "You look like someone who's ripe for murdering."

Normally I would have teased her. Egged her on, if you will. Perhaps I would have shelled out for some big digs, going as far to peck at her with some pretty cunning puns.

But there was something in her glare that told me not to fuck with her this morning.

Perhaps it was because she slept on the floor.

But she was a pixie. She didn't have to sleep on the floor. So this wasn't my fault.

I sighed and collected my things.

And by my things, I meant I dusted my hands on my pants. "Fine. I'll get you some fucking eggs."

"Aww, you gonna cook for me, Harps?"

I didn't say anything, but I glared daggers at her as well. "While I'm gone, attempt to do something productive, okay?"

"Tch." Mel sat upright, crossing one leg over the other. She ran her fingers through her hair to smooth the rambunctious locks. "I'll give it some thought."

I didn’t stay to push the matter. Wouldn’t have helped any.

The outside air felt nice to breathe in. For a place with so many holes in the wall, the ventilation was absolute crap. Either that, or the storage area downstairs was hiding some particularly smelly corpses. I should have told Mel to check it out. But if I were going to be that mean, I'd want to be there for it. Witness the screaming and carrying on for myself.

Drink in her misery.

After about fifty or so steps towards the market, I was done with this. I wanted to go back and force myself to curl up on the floor and just sleep. Or maybe I could just take some of this coin and rent a room at a local inn until I was too broke to do anything else.

But I'd sold my armor. I wasn't going to get that back. So I'd just need to suck it up and finish this quest.

Quest.

I dropped my head into my hands.

I blamed my forgetfulness on my lack of sleep. But as an adventurer, I'd always relied on quest givers to tell me what to do. Sometimes those quests would give me interesting skill ups. And while I wasn't looking to become a builder, by having property I was, technically, a quest giver.

I stopped in the middle of the road and opened the appropriate menu on my character sheet.

"Let's see here... generate a quest. Good, good. Target, well, uh, me. Reward... well I'm not going to pay myself, so just experience... fetch 50 [Cut Stone], 40 [Cut Timber], and 12 [Iron Bars] from the [Mystic Falls Market]... good, good..."

Standing in the middle of the road, talking to yourself, gets you a lot of weird looks. But at least it kept the beggars away. I'd had enough of them the day before. But by the time I was done, I had a quest that would reward 200 [Builder] experience, and that was better than nothing. When I got back to the hovel with the materials, I could actually generate a quest to build up the damn place too. Maybe when I needed to do repairs, it would be worth it for me to do them on my own, just so I could keep skilling up. Sure, it wasn't going to be my primary profession, but it would save me a hell of a lot of professional fees.

The Mystic Falls Market was... quaint. Like the rest of the damn town. There were a lot of people selling livestock, and I really wished I had the space for even a few birds. Or a cow. Just something that would be able to produce a constant supply of materials. If I even cared for the bugger, I knew it would produce high quality materials, and those would make my dishes even nicer.

But, alas, there was no space for that. Eventually I might be able to afford to buy out my neighbors, and then make a real thing of it. Or just purchase someone's farm on the outskirts of town and make Mel work there. I'm sure she'd appreciate being around the cute little animals... up until she realized she'd have to kill them.

Would I be so mean? Nooooo.

Never.

At all.

Absolutely I was going to do that.

I was already forming the master plan. This would be my true magnum opus. Torment Mel for everything she'd done to me since I saved her from that raven.

Sounded like a great idea.

Eventually I was able to find a woman selling building supplies. She didn't have everything I needed on hand, but she took the order and I paid the fee, and I got a little quest update with a ticking countdown that told me she'd have everything by the next morning. I arranged to have it all delivered, and then bought a set of [Simple Tools], which included an array of items I'd need to get the place prepared for the materials.

Before I left the market, I even bought Mel some breakfast. The eatery looked to be about as nice as my place was now, and the old woman who ran it was none too happy to hear that I was opening a restaurant in town. At least until I told her I was only a level one chef. Then she was delighted to have me.

I wonder why.