“Greetings,” the man behind the counter exclaims, “Welcome to Jordan’s Inn. All are welcome, but please respect the laws of hospitality as they will be enforced.”

The man is… healthily rotund.

Fat.

His complexion is darker and his hair frizzy. He wears an apron stained with grease and has a dishtowel over his shoulder. His enthusiasm seems genuine, but I know how easy that’s to fake.

The room is large enough to accommodate seven round tables, each with six chairs. The floor is dark stained wood, as are the walls. The lights on the walls are metal lanterns, instead of electric scones and give the room an air of antiquity. The bar counter is also wood. There’s a lot more wood than I expected.

“Hi,” I reply, stepping forward.

It’s me, John, and Hanz. Terry wanted to come, but John convinced him it was best to keep the group small. Hanz couldn’t be talked out of coming. Considering the way he and the non-humans were treated by some of the people with us, he wants to know upfront how he’s going to be treated here.

“The sign outside say’s this is a restaurant,” John points out.

“Yeah, I don’t have the rating to change that yet. I couldn’t find restaurant in my options. It was inn or tavern, and inn offers me the most choices to expansion, although it’s a lot tougher to meet the requirements for them.”

“So you still have food?” Hanz asks.

“Oh yes, if approach the bar, or sit at a table and think ‘menu’ it’ll pop up.”

I step to the bar and think it.

Jordan’s Inn Menu

Vegetable soup - 1$

Meat soup - 2$

Vegetable Platter -3$

Meat platter - 3$

Steak with Vegetables - 4$

“I’m afraid the selection isn’t particularly large at the moment,” the man, Jordan, probably, offers.

“The prices seem low,” I say, trying to not sound suspicious. I couldn’t get a coffee for a buck before the world changed, and considering the only money I’d found came from being in a dungeon, I didn’t see it becoming common.

“It’s system imposed,” Jordan said. “As the inn goes up in rank, I’ll get to alter them slightly, but I need to serve a hundred people just to rank to two, and that only lets me change the prices ten percent up or down.”

“We have a hundred and fifty or so people outside that need to be fed,” Hanz says, and his voice sounds more growling than usual. John looks at him sideways, so I’m not imagining it.

“A hundred and seventy-eight,” Jordan said, “at least who are in the range of the inn.”

“You don’t seem worried about this many strangers being here,” I say.

“An inn is a ‘safe place’. That’s what the law of hospitality is about. You can’t do harm to me or the inn unless I attack you first. If you do harm to one of the patrons, I have the inn set to throw you out automatically. It’s also what keeps the monsters that have been appearing over the last few days from rampaging in my garden.”

“I’ve met one of them,” I say.

“Big things too,” John adds, “and armored. Had to drain my mana in explosive bullets to bring it down.”

“You fought an armored bear?” Jordan asks in dismay.

“A greater one,” John says proudly.

“Do you have the meat?”

John looks at me.

“It didn’t drop anything.”

“No, it’s an animal, you need to skin it and prepare it to get anything out of it. It’s mostly ingredients, the meat, the hide, and other stuff depending on the kind of animal. I can only really use the meat and the bones, but I’ll buy those off you. Hell, I’ll buy the entire bear if you bring it to me.”

“I’ll go get it,” I tell them. “You work out prices and everything else.” I exit the inn before John can protest or ask for instructions.

Outside, I’m assaulted by questions from everyone massed before the door.

“Back off!” The yell causes them to do that. The questions were mainly incomprehensible in the chaos, but what I got was that they were all about food. “John’s working on it. He’ll tell you when it’s done.” I walk and they get out of my way, but I pick up a companion.

I glance at Terry, who says nothing.

Until he sees the dead bear.

“You fought that?”

I place a hand on it and try to pull it into my inventory.

System Query: Inventory limits

Your inventory is limited by your effective strength, as well as the size of the item to be placed in it. Only an item no more than half your volume can be stored in your inventory. Stack size is not calculated as part of that limit

This means I can have a stack of fifty vitamin boxes, even if those would be taller and larger than I am stacked before me, but I can’t put one armored bear in it.

“Did you go up a level from beating it?”

I roll it until I can grab a front and back leg.

“Chuck, did you even look at how much experience you got from beating it?”

“Terry, I’m fucking busy.”

“And I’m fucking trying to help you manage your class, or did you forget you came to me asking for help?”

The utter deadpan of the swearing makes me look at him over my shoulder and the asshole is grinning at me.

It costs me willpower not to reply, but he’s earned this victory.

I bring up the last combat entry

You have killed an Armored Bear(Greater). You gain 4000 XP (damage ratio - kill blow).

“Four thousand XP.”

He looks at me expectantly, so I check my level.

“I’m still level six.”

“You’re probably close to going up.”

With a heave, I pull the bear over my shoulder. It feels too light for the size so I glance at my stats pool. I can lift three hundred and fifty-seven kilos. I’m losing slivers of stamina, so this might mean I’m above that. The gloves. I put them on for the fight and didn’t take them off. They add to my strength.

“You need to be more attentive to your combat logs,” Terry says as he walks by me.

“I know.”

“You also have to look at what you can get, work out ahead of time what you want to do so you aren’t making those decisions at the last moment, or worse, in the middle of a fight for your life.”

“I know.”

“Have you worked out how you want your ability tree to branch?”

“I know.” And I screwed up.

His glance is quick and holds more amusement than judgment. “Have you at least read up on some of the stuff you can do?”

“I went through the skills I have, and some I might want.”

He wants to ask more, but we walk out of the trees and the crowd surges toward us, only to back away in a mix of fear and awe. Maybe I need to start carrying a dead monster on my shoulders everywhere I go, since telling them to back off doesn’t last.

Entering the inn poses some problems, but I get myself and the bear in. Jorgan is slack-jawed as he watched me approach.

“Where do you want it?”

He shakes himself. “This way.” He steps through the door behind the bar and I go around it to follow. The kitchen is a room nearly as large as the dining area with a wood stove a fire pit with hooks on handles that can swing over it, a long counter, and a tall box that could be a fridge, although it’s made of wood. Jordan is stretching a tarp on the floor. It looks out of place with how shiny the plastic is.

“I take it those aren’t original,” I nod to the fridge and stove, then drop the carcass where indicated.

“Then I picked the kind of business this is, all my state-of-the-art kitchen appliances were replaced by what you see. I have a wood oven in the backyard. It’s a good thing I started with a high cooking skill and that I get bonuses for being the inn’s cook as well as using proper equipment because I don’t think I’d be able to use any of those otherwise.”

“At least they didn’t just stop working and leave you in a lurch like most tech I’ve seen.”

“My van’s dead, somewhere in those woods.”

“I don’t remember this area being wooded.”

“It wasn’t three days ago.” He looks at something only he can see. “One morning it was all fields, the next one the trees were my height, then it was a full-grown forest starting a hundred yards around the house. I think only making it an inn kept them from overtaking everything except the road.” He motions for us to head back.

“Okay,” he says as I join John, Hanz, and Terry on that side of the counter. “That’s a lot of meat, but not enough to feed everyone you have. It’s going to let me make fifty meat platers. That will heal up to a hundred hit points off the bat—He looks at me— and it will boost your endurance for the next four days. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough vegetables to make it any better.”

“It’s probably best to keep those for the vegetarians,” Hanz says.

“The bear’s going to pay for the meals,” Jordan continues, fortunately, the system does let us do barter, and I’m on a network where I can buy and sell. Unfortunately, there aren’t even a dozen of us on it right now, and I’m the only one in the feeding business, so they can’t really help me.”

“You have a way to talk with other businesses?” John asks.

“Not really. I can put up what I need and the products I’m offering in return, and they can make offers on them. It’s sort of like an auction system. It seems there should have been a central store where we can sell and buy directly, but that’s not available for some reason.”

“The system can’t communicate with it,” Terry says. “We should be able to buy skills and spells from it too.”

“Maybe we need to unlock it?” John asks.

“There’s nothing about unlocking that in what I read,” Terry answers. “And any time the system tries to refer us to it, it’s an error message that results.”

“Something takes over the world,” Hanz says, “and we screw it up in the process. Typical.”

“Nothing says we did this,” John says, and the orc shrugs.

“We still need to feed everyone,” I say. “I don’t think rationing is going to fly, especially not with the religious gang. The more members that leave them for the rest of us, the more extreme they seem to be.”

“If you can bring me more meat, I can make more. My current setup, on my own, lets me prepare twenty-five meals an hour—don’t ask how that’s possible, I’ve seen myself work and I still have trouble believing it. If I can get help from anyone with a cooking skill above five, we can get more meals ready.”

“We’re going to have an easier time getting anyone to help you cook than help with the hunting,” John says. “I’ll see who wants to help before we form hunting parties.”

“If it helps,” Jordan says, “working under me will make their skill increase faster since I’m also a teacher.”

“Can I buy one of those full meals?” I ask, “I need the healing before I take on more of those bears.”

“Just pick it in the menu.”

You have selected Steak with Vegetables

Price 4$

How do you want to pay?

$/Barter?

I select money. I have it and I don’t want to deal with figuring out the barter system.

My dollar total drops by four dollars and Jordan disappears in the back, returning a few minutes later with a large plate of steaming meat and vegetables. I devour it. It’s good. Good enough I should take my time, but after pulling the pickup all the way here, my hunger isn’t going to take a back seat to my taste buds.

I sigh in satisfaction once I’m done

You have eaten a Steak with vegetables, Quality, Fine. You have been healed 200 hit points, you will receive a 10 point bonus to your Aether and 20 point bonus to your endurance for the next 4 days.

My health is maxed, my stamina jumps and I just feel plain good. “I got more bonuses than you said I would.”

“You took the steak and vegetables, that gives a bonus to a random attribute. And this meal came out better quality, so the bonus itself was increased. I haven’t made enough meals to figure out the system, but those I’ve cooked have been of good quality, so they are what I go with.”

“Can’t you just charge more for them?” Hanz says as John returns with eleven others. Nine on one side, and with the fox woman and goblin on the other.

“Classifying the menu by quality is something else I’ll be able to do once I rank the inn up a level.”

“These are going to be your helpers,” John says.

“I’ll help,” a motherly woman says. “Just don’t put me with one of those.”

Jordan nods. “Then you can leave.”

“I said—” she starts, her tone insistent.

“Have you looked at me, Madam? I’ve been on the receiving end of your attitude enough I’m not going to tolerate it in my kitchen. As the chef and innkeeper, I decide who works at which station. If the idea of working with someone who isn’t like you is a problem then you are welcome to wait outside until the food is ready.”

With a huff, she left.

“You got one of the religious gang to volunteer?” Hanz asks.

“No. Racism isn’t limited to them. How much meat do you need us to bring back?”

“That depends on the size, I doubt you’ll find another big one like that, but if you bring more than is needed, I’ll find a way to pay you for them too.” He motions to the kitchen. “If you’ll follow me, we’re going to get started.”

“Then it’s just about us forming hunting parties,” John says.

“I’m doing this alone,” I state.

“Chuck—”

“You heard him, there shouldn’t be anything as big as that bear out there, and I did a lot of damage before you saved my ass. I need to practice my fighting and that’s going to be easier to do if I don’t have to worry about hitting someone as I swing my bar.”

“You realize that you’re asking to find the only other big monster in the area with that statement, right?” Hanz says.

I grin at him. “Don’t worry, if that happens, I’ll just scream was a terrified child.”