Time until level collapse: 2 days 11 hours 42 minutes.

“Got a new batch!” I said, pulling the cart behind me. It was laden with the corpses of wolves, squirrels and various other animals. Livia warned against the mechanical ‘moral’ repercussions of skinning and wearing humanoids like tannaruk and goblins, and a lot of animals like the street urchins and centipedes had no skin to flay.

Even then, I was glad I took the cart because I filled it up with corpses in no time. I couldn’t use my infinite inventory this time, storing the corpse automatically looted it and thus prevented one from skinning it for a higher quality pelt.

I pulled the cart into the decrepit building that we obtained after I wrote my name down on the permit. It was little more than a shack and looked like it hadn’t been maintained for over a decade now. There were holes in the roof and no glass in the windows. But everything that mattered was still in working condition, if a bit rusty here and there. The cellar had been fully stocked too.

“Good. I was starting to run out.” Elise replied, putting down the knife and rubbing her hands on her apron before taking it off.

“Any more clients?” I asked.

“A few.” Elise shrugged. “The whole ‘free flaying’ thing attracts attention, and there’s plenty of corpses out there for NPCs to grab without a fight. I’ve seen a lot of beggars and urchins come by with a single corpse, hoping to sell the pelt at one of the general stores to buy food with. This place has a morbid sense for detail sometimes.”

I started throwing corpses from the cart onto the pile, and Elise sat down to take a little break.

“So, got your first level yet?” I asked.

“No.” Elise said. “I’ve been doing quite a bit of skinning, but I think my lacking proficiency with bladed weapons isn’t doing me any favours here.”

“Right.” I said, awkwardly letting the conversation fall into silence again.

“Thank you.” Elise whispered after a few moments. “Thank you for thinking about me with this. I really needed something to get my mind off of things.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t want to do the masonry thing?” I asked, looking at the bloody workbench. “It’s less…”

“Making bricks?” Elise gave me an incredulous look. “It’s a pointless skill for us, and it sounds really boring. This… This is still useful. And I need to force myself to keep going. To…”

“You don’t have to. You can take your time.” I said.

“No. I know that we have time now, but I can’t let what happened take me.” Elise hissed, the anger directed at herself rather than me. “Every day I mope and feel sorry for myself, is a day it becomes harder to break out of it.

“This… This is bloody, gory and it smells really, really bad. But I can take my time, grow numb to the blood again, and it’s not hurting me. I can… I have to get over myself before the end of this floor.”

I sat next to Elise and put my hand on her shoulder. I didn’t say anything. Words wouldn’t suffice.

Elise ignored the hand, and instead hugged me.

“Thank you. For being there for me. For understanding. For giving me space. For…” She muttered into my ear. “Don’t you die on me too.”

I nodded, and we sat there in silence for a while.

“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll throw you off a building.” Elise suddenly said.

I chuckled and she let go. “Back to work. Some jackass just brought in a whole cartful of already decomposing corpses.”

Elise put her apron back on and grabbed one of the large wolves by the cuff with the ease as if it was filled with feathers. “Could you stir the tanning… whatever fluids and oils? You can’t smell the fumes, while even with a wet rag covering my nose the stench is nigh unbearable for me.”

I shrugged and walked over to the side of the room with the steaming barrels. This place fortunately came with a manual. Literally. We would’ve never figured out what all of these barrels of foul-smelling chemicals were for, or how to mix and treat them, if we hadn’t found a book that outlined the process with pictures and all. The book’s colourful description was what told me that the first barrel’s… stuff, was fully used up. Darkened like saturated deep frying oil.

I picked up the large barrel, careful not to spill its viscous contents which were no doubt impossible to get out of wooden floors, and took it outside. I put it down near the latrine we dug to dump this stuff in and toppled it.

“Second warning, bitch!” Someone shouted behind me.

I turned around, and saw a large four-wheeled cart drawn by two horses pass by our ramshackle tannery in full gallop. There were six people sitting in the back, and they all threw a javelin at the shack.

The javelins flew up in a lazy arc, and then bounced off the worn but sturdy wooden walls. One of them found a window and flew inside, and two more managed to embed themselves into the wood. Only one of them kept hanging for more than a second.

I looked at the slowly disappearing dust cloud obscuring the thugs, and then looked at Elise as she walked out of the tannery.

“Did we just get hit by a medieval drive-by?” I asked.

“There’s two tanneries in town, apparently.” Elise said. “The other one doesn’t like us muscling in on their market. Their thugs came in to offer me a ‘merger’ about two hours ago, essentially demanding me to work for them.”

“And you told them to fuck off?” I asked.

“Nah, I agreed. What do I care for the negligible profits that tanning makes? Might even get some free raw materials to work on, if we merged.” Elise shrugged. “But as I’m not the one whose name is on the certificate, I think they ignored my words and took your absence as declining their offer.”

“Right.” I said. “That one javelin that made it in…”

“Fell into a barrel. No damage.” Elise said, pulling the lone hanging javelin out of the wall and putting it in her inventory. “Crappy junk. Nothing but dents to the house, it has seen a lot worse.”

“Do you know where this other tannery is?” I asked. “I’ll have a little talk with them.”

“Opposite side of the town, about north north west. It’s called Foreman’s Skins.” Elise said.

“Really?” I asked.

“This dungeon has clearly been designed by prepubescent boys.” Elise said.

“You just keep on working on your skinning, I’ll resolve this.” I said. “By getting you that merger and more materials, if possible.”

“Wouldn’t mind a cleaner workplace too, if our competitor’s building is nicer than ours.” Elise said. “But no pressure. I’ll make do.”

I nodded and went into a jog.

I probably wouldn’t catch up to the cart, it had too much of a lead on me. But I had 20 points in dexterity and they probably returned the horses to a trot after the tannery left their sight. It was more a matter of whether they’d make a turn or lose me in the crowd, not their speed.

And of course, it mattered whether they would return to the protection of the guards before I caught them. The tannery was in the decrepit outskirts of town, surrounded by abandoned ruins that saw only the one guard patrolling to ensure they weren’t infested with monsters. At least, before Ben stole said guard. I hadn’t seen many monsters yet, courtesy of the haunted mobs exterminating everything around here. But nigh abandoned or not, it was still on the outskirts just minutes away from the densely packed neighbourhoods.

I wasn’t surprised when my suspicions were correct. Whether these guys were competent enough to make some turns to shake off pursuers or just had their horses go faster a bit longer than necessary, I soon ran into the bustling streets without spotting them.

Probably for the best. We weren’t planning on fighting these guys, not if it wasn’t necessary. Which would likely be the result of me talking to the hired thugs rather than the tanner.

I kept jogging, my endurance allowing me to keep this pace up pretty much indefinitely, and went in the general direction Elise pointed me in. With a little detour.

“It’s a hellish inferno! This is war eternal!”

I found Alexa where I last left her, flying over a bench singing her songs. I hadn’t been around for her first few performances inside the tower, but apparently her songs made a huge tone shift after she got her electric guitar.

“They try to change you! Crush and break you!”

I didn’t recognise the song she was singing right now, a hard rock or heavy metal song she grunted with the deepest growling voice she could pull off. It was still pretty feminine.

I recognised the song she sang when I dropped her off here this morning, something by Sabaton. She was still wearing her schoolgirl outfit back then, but since donned her rockstar outfit. Either she grinded her singing and guitar skills to level 5, or the song didn’t need pitch perfect vocals. Maybe both.

“Trying to tell you what to do! They’d like to have control of you!”

The biggest change was the crowd, though. She was playing for pedestrians before, most people ignoring her or even giving the girl a wide berth. Now she was surrounded on all sides by what might genuinely be every orc, dwarf, minotaur and teen boy in town.

A crowd of a hundred and some men were headbanging and doing air guitar solos, and I assumed that the guard blankly watching the crowds was the only thing keeping the people from starting a mosh pit. They were all glowing red, and as I approached the same strength buff enveloped me.

“Seaaaarrrrch!!! Deep inside! Remember who you are!”

Alexa seemed to be having a good time, and making good progress. I didn’t know how much gold she was raking in with this, but it should help immensely with her skills. Assuming that numbers helped with skill grinding, that is.

I was kind of planning on approaching Alexa and asking her how it went in between songs, see if she wanted to take a break or join me for our little talk with Foreman. Her charisma and bartering skills would be useful. But it seemed like I underestimated her. I expected her to have a couple of gold in her hat and maybe one or two pedestrians linger to hear the rest of the song, nothing like this.

Then again, I guess I shouldn’t make any assumptions about how NPCs acted in the dungeon. Or for a medieval setting with drive-by carriages to not know the concept of a flash mob.

Instead I looked over the crowd until I found some other familiar faces. Ben was headbanging along with everyone else, while Tatiana was clearly struggling to figure out how to do it with her long and flexible swan neck without giving herself whiplash.

“Having fun?” I shouted over the crowd.

“Yeah! Not really my genre, but we can’t be picky down here!” Ben shouted back.

“I like it! Don’t know who this is, but the guitar solos are nice!” Tatiana chimed in.

We enjoyed the rest of the song, and the two songs after that. But Alexa eventually grew tired and called it quits. I had to intervene when some of her new fans demanded she kept going, but with the ever present threat of the guard the NPCs didn’t escalate things. It came close though, and this concert likely would’ve ended with a few bodies on the floor had I not reminded them of the uncaring executioners.

Alexa meanwhile started shaking hands. A few fans kept clamouring over her, but I made sure the line kept moving and no one tried to steal her. Downside of being a small fairy, at least four people actually tried to pocket her and slip out before anyone noticed.

She then signed some papers, chests and one baby, her ‘signature’ a series of messy quill strikes made by a young girl who never used one of those things even before she shrunk to be as tall as the writing utensil itself.

“Oof! I’m tired. And hoarse.” Alexa said, landing on my shoulder. “And sweaty all over. This place reeks! And tired. Did I already mention that one? Being famous is exhausting.”

Livia: Some rigid performance training, tight scheduling of post-concert fan activities and plenty of vocal endurance training can alleviate that some.

“Or I can just put a few more points in Constitution. That’s how that works, right?” Alexa quickly countered.

Livia: Not for the mental exhaustion.

“Uuuuuuuurrrrgghhhh…..” Alexa sprawled herself dramatically over my shoulder.

“I think that dinner will mend the mind some.” I said. “You’re probably hungry, aren’t you?”

“Yeah!” Alexa shot up excitedly, belying her claims of being wiped out. “I’ve made like soooo much money, about three hundred gold or so! Dinner’s on me!”

“Didn’t we steal about ten ti-” Tatiana said, before stopping herself. “Right! That’s a lot! Well done, Alexa!”

Alexa beamed.

“We still have plenty of food from the first floor, though.” Ben said. “It never goes old, or even cold.”

“Nope! I like junk food, but not every day! Not after a whole week of it!” Alexa said. “Dinner freshly prepared! We’re going out!”

“If you’re buying, why not?” Ben shrugged with a smile.

“So, anything interesting happen today?” I asked.

“Not really. Thinking about maybe hitting the Mayor’s office tomorrow, there’s got to be valuable stuff in that mansion, but today we just pickpocketed and broke into houses. Which is getting kind of old, to be honest.” Ben said.

“Are the outskirts still underpopulated?” Tatiana asked. “We still haven’t managed to get any of that good ectoplasm. Maybe we could go scout the further surroundings for those spectres?”

“Yeah. I’ve been collecting corpses to skin, and it seems like the spectres aren’t even killing the street urchins faster than they spawn anymore.” I said. “There’s still plenty of corpses out there, they’re easy enough to find with the minimap, but it seems like most spectres have just left this area.”

“Maybe we should kill another guard to rejuvenate their numbers?” Ben tried.

“We fought the guard with less than a tenth of their health left and one of their arms already gone, and even then they were almost the death of us.” I said. “Elise isn’t going to join us for this, and Alexa and Miho aren’t built to contribute much to such a one-sided fight. Even with the new weapons and attribute points we since gained, attacking the guards is assisted suicide.”

“I too am not looking forward to fighting one of them again.” Tatiana said.

“I would! I can use the quick level boost!” Alexa said. “But even I know it’s too risky.”

“Fine.” Ben sulked. “We know what to expect and can prepare a killing floor for it, but sure. Let’s not kill another guard. It’s not like it’s a lot of experience or anything…”

“There is something else we can do.” I said. “I was on my way to a tannery to discuss a merger. I could use the help.”