Jason and Hanshi met up and exited the mine. Jason looked at the loot that he picked up in his VUI and tried to estimate the value of it all. There were several ways to consider the value of everything. At first he thought that he had easily made a killing with what he acquired, but as he evaluated things he took note of a couple of key issues. The materials that everything was made out of was rather shabby. The wood of all the houses were old and worn. The clothes were either made out of a fairly cheap material or were old and dirty. Moreover, they were Goblin clothes. They’d likely not want them based on that alone, but then throw in that they belonged to dead Goblins, there was practically no way anyone would buy them. The weapons and tools were better, but most of them were in bad condition or pretty poor quality. The most promising of what he picked up other than the ARMS stuff were the jewels, coins, cards, and small trinkets. Of these, the necklace that he had found with the Goblin girl stood out. It was exceedingly gorgeous, not befitting any Goblin. He didn’t think that anyone he knew would be able or willing to buy it for what it was worth which meant that while it was likely worth a lot of money it was essentially worthless to him at the moment. Same with the houses. Same with the clothes.

He had to sell everything that he could for as high a price as he could as quick as he could. That meant he’d likely not be selling the houses, because to sell them it would take some time and the materials just weren’t worthwhile to try to sell. Most of the other stuff he could sell for 50 to 75 percent of its value he thought, but there wasn’t much of it. The clothes he would see if he could use the ARMS systems to take apart and turn back into rolls of fabric as that would raise their value a little. He couldn’t find anything but there was no reason it shouldn’t exist. He’d ask Hanshi at some point. All together he estimated that he could probably get around 1000 credits out of all of it. That made him wealthier than most he’d seen, but he had stayed in what he thought was the slums of a rather poor town so he wasn’t all that certain how much wealth that truly was. However, there was one thing for certain. The people around him were not wealthy enough to have a slave and some of them could produce this amount of credits. It was an almost certainty that it wasn’t enough to purchase a slave then.

After considering all the in and outs of the values of everything, Jason decided that he’d save the houses, necklace, a bit of the Goblin and Orc Equipment, the crops, and the ARMS for now. He still hadn’t given any mind to the ARMS stuff yet. There was much to learn about it and it would be best to discuss with Hanshi before he made any decisions about it. There was a good chance that she had forgot things and wouldn’t think of it unless asked. That was a bit weird he thought considering she was an android. Her memory should be perfect, shouldn’t it? That’s another thing that he’d have to discuss with her along with probing for any information about the world that she knows. She’d been her for a long time and as far as he knew, she had to be one of the most experienced people in this world.

“Ever seen Orcs before?” Jason asked out of the blue, breaking the silence.

“Orcs?” she replied, not knowing what he was referring to.

“The big green guys.”

“Thought they were a different kind of Goblin.”

“You could say that, but not really. So you’ve never seen one?”

“Big, dumb, green, muscle man? I’ve seen plenty of the non-green variety. I’d love to give him a whirl, but I saw they were otherwise occupied.”

“You know what I mean,” he said feeling exasperated already with her.

“You were going hard on the female one.”

“Shut up,” he said as his mind flashed back to the Orc woman’s breast landing on his face. They walked on in silence for a bit. Both were fine with this, but Jason needed more info so he renewed his efforts to converse with Hanshi. “Do you know why I couldn’t do much damage with my sword, but could with their weapons? But they couldn’t cut through my clothes?” he asked.

“Oh, so now you’re complaining she couldn’t strip?” she teased him.

“You know what I mean.”

“I thought it was obvious. Haven’t confirmed it, but it’s because the ARMS were designed to deal and take specific damage. Non-ARMS weapons don’t have a chance at penetrating that ARMS armor, because its made of superior materials put together with superior technologies, at least nanite constructed, but very well could be femtite tech given how ARMS work. It holds up pretty poorly to the weapons because they’re similarly made and operate together, but aren’t that good conventionally. Conversely, a weapon made in any other standard way are made to be as damaging as possible so any creature with particularly tough skin or good armor will have more protection against an ARMS weapon of low grade than a regular weapon,” she explained.

“Wow, so much talking without a single innuendo. I’m impressed.”

“I’m not just a pretty face you know. I also have a great figure. My creators did a good job.”

Jason couldn’t help but give her a quick once over against his will. When he caught himself he just kept moving along as if nothing happened, “Anyways, what you’re saying is that I should keep those Orc weapons and sell off the ARMS?”

“That’s probably the case. The units, even higher grade ones are not going to make a difference right now. You just have to hit someone more. Since I trained you that shouldn’t be a problem for you. Higher grade armor and the crystals are worthwhile to keep though. Never know when an ability will be useful, and better armor is better armor.”

“About that, you mentioned that the crystals could be used to add abilities…” he said trailing off, prompting her to tell him about that.

“Yeah, higher grade ARMS have slots that you can put crystals in to modify their capabilities. It’s a pretty simple process, but its best to get engineers to do the modifications. Something they do helps keep the mod from malfunctioning, the effects are usually better, and they’re usually better at synergizing the mods with the equipment. It might not seem important at first, but you don’t want to try to use an ability and find that the mod is currently on an inactive ARMS or worse, on a weapon you’ve been robbed of. Then some mods require more power than others which means putting them on lower grade ARMS will result in them not working or as not as well as they should. Or you could put them in an ARMS that has too much power and you haven’t made the proper adjustments which causes them to burn out or blow up, taking with it the ARMS unit and possibly you. Anyways, we’re not there yet. You need to at least get a G grade ARMS before we start worrying about that.”

“Ahh. Ok. So what’s next?”

“First, to sell your stuff in town. Then we’re going back to the Arena. Need to get access to higher grade dungeons. To do that you need to do better in the Arena.”

“Right”

The two of them traveled for a short ways back towards Gondaluke, but before they reached town Hanshi told Jason that she had other business to attend to and she would meet him later, telling him to, “show her how strong he has grown,”. and, “maybe she’ll reward him for it.” It sounded appealing, but he knew she wasn’t serious. That’s what he believed anyways. He couldn’t be sure unless he asked her and even then she would probably say, “Would you like it to not be teasing,” in a teasing manner. It was really difficult to get a read on her and if he thought that she was serious that would put all sorts of other things in his head in motion. As far as he was concerned, she was something of a teacher. what red blooded male doesn’t fantasize about a teacher at some point? That’s all it was however and with that he could put it out of his mind. Most of the time.

When Jason got back to the town he made his way to market and soon realized he had no idea where to begin. After wasting some time attempting to learn where he might be able to sell things he gave up. Instead of wasting more time he decided to head back to the Tik’r’s inn to check back in. When he entered he heard the ambiance of an active pub which surprised him. Inside the dining room was all but completely full. Rina was moving quickly from table to table taking orders and delivering food to their proper places. The Tik’rs’ were in the back. Awlrek manned the chef’s position while Su handled the pass and bar, dishing out the food and maintaining the quality so that Awlrek could concentrate on what he was doing. It looked like he very much needed to focus considering all of their customers.

Of the customers there, most were mammalian males while there were females about they were sparse and among the groups of males for the most part, but there were a few primarily or exclusively female groups. One of these groups was fairly unique. It was several Sil`phane women lounging around a single human male. They were in the corner and while they weren’t doing anything it was a bit off. The women seemed to be fawning over him and he was petting them as if they were his pet cats. From time to time he would grope them as he stroked his hand over their bodies. Jason was irked, but he ignored it thinking that it could just be natural for their culture. He hadn’t spent much time around the Sil`phane even though they were the majority of the population of Gondaluke. He’d spent most of his time with the T’kata, Eaug’rn, and Hanshi so he was still unfamiliar with almost all of their culture.

Jason sat at the bar and waited for Su or Rina to take note of him. It didn’t take long. Su was over to him as soon as she found time to break away from what she was doing and asked what he wanted order. Meanwhile, Rina too had seen Jason come in and had stealthily came up behind him. As he was about to order Rina jabbed her fingers into either side of his torso eliciting Jason to sit upright, eyes wide. For a moment, everyone in the pub’s eyes fell on what was happening with Jason and Rina. When they saw him bolt up right, they tensed and were about to move to protect her. In the time that he had been gone Rina had become something of a star attraction for the the Tik’rs’ inn. People found her refreshing and even though most of the crowd didn’t spend the night at the inn they did eat and pay for several meals a day based almost completely on Rina’s pleasant disposition. Although Rina insisted it was due to the great food that the Tik’rs cooked, but everyone knew that the real reason that the inn was booming was Rina. Ever since they went to the bathhouse shaving had been a hot topic around town and many came by to discuss it with her. As more came in for that, others believed that the place must be great and followed them in. Discovering Rina to be their waitress was the final blow. Once fed they were hooked for life and would come back as often as they could.