It felt weird to not go to Lizbeth's to work. I'd only known a few days of the routine, and now that it was stripped away, I felt lost.

Thankfully, I had a to-do list. Made my day a hell of a lot easier.

Derrick's Inspection Checklist

-Set up bedroom-

-Install stove and preparation space-

Repair roof

-Clean out rats-

Clean out cellar

Repair any cellar structures

-Set up tables and chairs-

-Washing up area-

-Garbage/waste disposal-

I hadn't remembered setting up the washing up area or arranging for garbage and waste disposal, so I assumed Mel took care of those, along with the stove and preparation space.

Honestly, she'd done more on this list than I did, and it made me feel super guilty.

I needed to do something nice for her. I wasn't quite sure what, yet, but she was such a lifesaver.

And for more reasons than just her help with my silly dream of opening an eatery.

When I met Mel, I was trapped in Duncan's little world. Another gear in the windmill. A slave in all but name. I did his dirty work and played his games, but it always came at a cost. I needed better gear, more potions, and transportation. My expenses were so high there was no way to keep up with it, so I kept going to him for more money. Which just put me further into his clutches.

Being on the outside of the system now, I'm able to see how fucked up it was. But when you were in the day-to-day, just grinding and trying to live without invoking someone's wrath, you didn't really see the strings. It was just the cost of doing business. Of being a badass adventurer. Who else was going to save damsels and clear dungeons and get the loot?

I was on one of those "save the damsels" quests, only my damsel was a middle age man who'd gotten lost in the woods. Again. I swear, half of the quests I did during my stint in Kinon were rescuing this man who thought himself a woodsman but had the survival skills of a newborn kitten.

Somewhere along the way, I'd heard a fucking ruckus. Just a cacophony of sound and excitement, which immediately got my blood pumping. I remember rushing into the clearing, brandishing my sword as if I was going to find some life-or-death battle between an adventurer and a big bad boss. It wasn't clear, but for some reason I'd thought there was a dragon involved.

What I found was a single raven and a pixie.

Every instinct had told me to run. When pixies are involved you just Don't. And that don't had to have a capital D. Get the fuck out. It wasn't worth it.

But for some reason I called out, asking if she needed help. She was obvious hurt, and the raven was closing in as if to finish the job.

The pixie - Mel, obviously - cried out that she would grant me three wishes if I saved her.

I think Mel thought she was going to die, even with my help. Otherwise I don't think I would have gotten such a great deal.

One boot-to-bird later, and Mel was safe, but instead of thanking me for my efforts she passed the fuck out.

It was touch and go for days. I cared for her like you would a bird with a broken wing. She was so tiny and fragile, and I had no idea if she would make it.

But eventually she did, and she asked me my wishes.

The first was immediate, and was every adventurer's dream. I boosted my stats. A flat +30 in everything.

I'd taken stat-boosting potions and food in the past, but generally they gave at max +15%. A +30 felt fucking amazing. Like the best high in the world. I was smarter, faster, stronger, and could do some good talky-talky. It was great. A+, 10/10, would recommend.

But I really hadn't known what to do with the other two wishes. So I kinda sat on them.

Mel was irked at first, but she told me she'd hang around for a few days and observe my life, and then she could recommend what else I should wish for.

And after only two days, she had my second wish.

To get out.

She couldn't erase my debt. Money, being a construct of man and not something of nature, wasn't exactly a thing she could alter. But she was willing to help me escape this life, and could guarantee I'd get away clean.

At first I thought she was mad. But after another day or so of really observing my situation, it made a lot of fucking sense.

I was in deep. And if I had a magical way to just get out and start anew, I was going to take it.

How we actually got away was pretty uneventful. I don't even know if Mel had anything to do with it, or if it was just dumb luck. But while on the road, trying to put as much distance between us and Kinon, Mel had a suggestion for the third wish.

She wanted us to stay together, even if it was just until I was settled.

The wish gave her a human form, something every pixie had the capability for, but never wanted. But Mel wanted it, and so I made it part of the wish.

I sat on the edge of my cot, thinking about all this, and I was honestly surprised. Mel had only been in my life for a few moons, but it felt like forever. And everything I had now was thanks to her. Doing something special for her wasn't just a whim now, it was a necessity. I just needed to figure out what.

After racking my brain and coming up with nothing, I decided to go downstairs and actually get some work done.

Mel was nowhere to be found, and that was only slightly worrying. While there was a chance she was at the Olde Day Inn, fucking with Day and making him regret his little afternoon rampage from yesterday, there was an equally good chance she found a different eatery to con free food out of, or was just taking a bath.

Could never tell with a pixie.

My main focus for the day was the cellar. If I took care of that, it would check multiple things off my to-do list. And taking out two birds with one proverbial stone was a great feeling.

I took some of the [Cut Stone] and [Cut Timber] we had left over before I jumped down into the cellar. I focused on setting up my escape route, since I wouldn't have a pixie to help me get out again, and I didn't want to be trapped down here when Mel came home.

Repairing the stairs was super easy, barely an inconvenience. I had to use the sledgehammer to knock out the old stairs, but then it was just mostly putting down the new stone and letting the system complete the work.

At some point during the construction process, I actually gained a level in construction, which gave me a good giggle. At least I knew that, if cooking didn't work out, I could always fall back on getting into the builder business.

After the stairs were done, I went about inspecting the rest of the cellar. There were a few support beams that were destroyed that would need new timber, and so I worked on those next. One at a time I used the sledgehammer to clear the broken beams out of the way, and then set the new ones into place with some elbow grease, gentle hammer taps, and lots of groaning. Seriously, I sounded like some training camp for martial arts.

The supports went in easy enough, though, and I then turned my attention to the last bit of the cellar structures: the shelves. I cleared out the stuff I wanted to keep, bringing it upstairs into the kitchen to keep it out of the way. Once those were safe, I started cleaning up the broken bits.

About halfway through this, Mel returned and she helped me by setting up a fire brigade line. She stayed on the stairs, and I brought things to her and she put them in the bins she'd gotten for garbage disposal.

I wouldn't say it was fast work, or even fulfilling. By the time we'd cleared the debris, I was sweaty, breathing hard, and generally in need of about eighteen naps to make up for the energy expenditure.

We took a break when the last of the garbage was brought up. Mel produced some weird folded pastries from the ice chest, and I set about warming them up in the wood-burning stove. Because I hadn't prepared them, I didn't know how long they would need to heat through, but after about ten minutes they were sizzling and some of the filling had burst out, so I fetched them from the oven.

Thee pastries were filled with some sort of tomato based sauce and cheese. When I asked where she got them from, Mel explained there was a pastry cart in the market selling them, and she figured they'd be a quick meal.

Because of the wood-burning stove, they had gotten a little charred on the bottom, but it made for a crispy crust that was delicious.

As long as you didn't burn your mouth eating it too soon.

No regrets.

After our miniature meal and some well-deserved water, I got back down into the cellar and finished out the task. I wanted shelves again, because it was a really great idea. They just needed to be stronger.

I used stone for the risers, ensuring that each tier of shelf would have enough to support its weight, as well as the weight of whatever we stored on them. I also varied the heights of the shelves a bit more. Towards the back of the cellar, where it was cooler, I put the shelves closer together, but with a large space at the base. I figured this would be a great place to store our ice chest, and then the shelves above could be things that needed to keep cool but not necessarily cold, like cheeses and vegetables.

Towards the front of the cellar, where the shelves were closer to the stairs, I made the shelves far apart. Here's where we would store our various jars of spices, flours, and other staples. We would also need large spaces to store bags of potatoes and other necessary staples, and some of those would be huge.

Before dusk, we were finished with the cellar, which felt great. Two things were done off the list, and while I was bone tired, I felt energized to keep going. Mel wanted to argue, I could tell, but she let me set my own pace after a warning that I was only human.

Since there was only one more thing on the list - repairing the roof - I got to it. The task mostly consisted of feeding [Cut Timber] into the ceiling until the durability of the roof maxed out. Not exactly the most time consuming or dangerous, but it did wear on my arms something fierce.

I finished out the day by going into town and getting an early evening bath, and then picking up a meal from some random eatery (the sign on the door had named it Nowhere Eats and I thought that was a shitty fucking name, but apt) before coming home and splitting it with Mel. We went to bed with full bellies, a completed task list, and smiles on our faces. Sure, I was sore all over, but it had been a good, productive day.

Remember how I said everything's temporary?

Yeah.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a notification blaring in my consciousness.

They Live!

You thought you'd killed them all, but there's still some left. Rats are destroying your cellar - quick, clear them out before your work is undone!

I don't think I ever moved so fast in my life.

My brain was still half asleep, struggling to get with it, but my body was moving. Every sore spot was forgotten, making me wonder if they'd even been there.

Mel muttered something sleepily as I threw open the trapdoor, but I didn't respond. I just called my sword to my hand and charged forth like the barn was on fire and the only way to save it was to stab something.

I'd love to say I took care of the rats calmly and without frustration. But, by the time I'd gotten down there, they'd already destroyed two of the shelving structures and were hard at work on a third. The ice chest also sat in splinters, and the pastries Mel had acquired were little more than crumbs on the floor.

I became a whirlwind of rat destroying anger. My blade moved faster than I thought it was ever capable of.

I was pissed. Not only because the rats were back, and not only because they'd interrupted my sleep with this fucking bullshit. But because I'd worked so hard and was so close to finished, but they had to come out of hiding and fucking ruin it.

Well into the night, I chased the rats down and murdered them. I crawled into hard-to-reach places and demolished nests. When I was through, the cellar was once again coated in rat blood, but I'd saved a few shelves. Some of them even had containers on them.

The others weren't so lucky. I mourned the supplies we'd lost, but they were from the original inhabitants anyway. Well, except for the ice chest and the pastries.

I crawled back in bed sometime in the early morning, and Mel stirred again. She asked me what was wrong... But I was too tired to answer, and too frustrated.

My dreams were filled with squeaks and blood, and collapsing structures. At one point we lost the whole damn eatery as the rats' incessant gnawing finally brought the place to its knees.