I buried the goblin guards in my pit. I had stripped them of the leather armour they were wearing and had taken their spear points too. I smiled to myself, excited about what came next. I had come very far from the couch potato I used to be, and it wasn’t in the best direction either.

I took apart one of the leather armour sets for the straps and string holding it together. It was actually a fairly well crafted piece, although the leather codpiece was a bit questionable as pants were a thing. It was very closely threaded and binded together meaning the first armour set was completely destroyed for its components. I kept the other one intact for now and searched around for a nice sized millipede corpse. Eventually I found three promising specimens. I cut off a segment of carapace from each, taking care to cut in-between the miniature gaps of the shell and not crack any pieces.

Once I had got one middle piece from each bug I set my leather armour down on the floor. I then placed the carapace over my thin stomach to see which one wrapped the best. One fit perfect, one was way too small and one was just a bit larger then my proportions. Taking the one a bit bigger then my belly I placed it on the leather armour as a stencil the armour was slightly wider then the small section of carapace I had picked. I was glad my body was more emaciated thin then this, let’s say, more generously sized guard. I used the spear point to slice an area very slightly larger then the carapace, grappling it by the small amount of still attached handle to do so. It wasn’t the neatest art and crafts project but it was good enough.

I went back to the properly sized millipede and pried off 8 decent looking sections of exoskeleton? I didn’t really know what millipede she’ll was. I fitted each piece to the different sections of my body eventually finding three more pieces to cover my torso. I repeated the same trick for these pieces to complete the front plate of the armour. I then repeated the process with finding 5 good sections of carapace to make a back plate. The insect parts of my ensamble were slightly crispy but they didn’t seem any softer despite that.

Now came the hard part. I searched the room once more to find they cooked corpses of the queens guard- not wanting to leave the tribe room for the others. The frontmost part of the bear sized beasts was very much slag but the very end was simply char. I grabbed some legs from the inner most sections of the body but many were too brittle to do anything but break at my touch. After a frustrating couple of seconds I took a deep breath and started going more slowly, collecting legs until I had at least 20 in my hand. I trudged away from the corpse and sat back down next to my leather armour. I set the legs to the ground before picking up the strongest and smallest among them. I entered into my meditative state to give myself the calm needed for what was sure to be a hellish exercise.

Have you ever tried to thread a needle? Imagine creating the needle hole into the sowing instrument. It was already hard for me to do the former with my fat fingers, this may very well be impossible.

The very thought almost was enough to brake my peaceful state. I took a few moments to take in deeper breaths and ready myself. It was a while until I felt up to trying the task. I placed the larger leg into the ground and pushed it slightly into the dirt. I then took the smaller leg and positioned it on top of the head of the large leg. At the last moment I changed my mind and set up the second largest leg instead. Maintaining my breathing cycle I began to slightly tap the smaller needle. On the first tap it slid of the bigger legs surface, on the second it shattered. Staying calm I grabbed the next slightly bigger leg and tried to chisel a hole again. This one also broke on the second tap, the next after that broke on the third. The rest of the legs all broke on the third but one of the last of them actually managed to create a small impression on the centre of the surface. Warmed up I went back to the royal guard and grabbed thirty more robust legs from each bug. It took a while to find the ones that fit my requirements. Picking the needle that felt sturdiest despite it not being one of the bigger examples. I then grabbed the smallest needle and tried again. After 83 legs, two trips more to the corpses, and two violent episodes, the sowing needle was created!

Next I just had to thread the needle! Haha, haah.

One violent episode later, I was ready to begin. I grabbed the leather thread and slowly tried to inch it through the gap.

Skill levelled:

meditation IV

Easier to enter meditation

25% increased regen

Thank you. I am saved. The calm became less forced and I was able to relax enough to accomplish my tack and tie off the thread. When my boss had made us do an all day workshop on tying knots to learn the nature of ‘team building and bonding’ and ‘learning to grow close to each other in this intertwining workplace’ I had wanted to end him and then myself in short order. Now though, I was thankful for that terrible day as it had greatly helped me so far.

Now I had the tools I needed I used the tips of the surprisingly well made spears to bore the starts of a hole in the carapace that was a little more then a finger thick. Once the beginnings of the hole was made on both sides of the material I moved on to do the same on the matching piece of leather-although I only needed to tap it with the spearhead so the hole wasn’t too wide. Next I sewed the carapace and leather together pulling the needle right through the lined up holes through to the next hole up from it and back before tying it off. I then cut off the string and did the same on the other side.

I shook it a little to see how tight the binding was and it was pretty well connected with only a slight difference in the materials movements. I did the same with the other pieces making nine carapace and leather sections of armour. I then made three holes on the top of the bottom pieces and bottom of the top ones. I added six to the middle ones

I was quite pleased with my work so far. I reached over for my needle and frowned when looking at the leather string I had left. The string was used as decorative tassels on the arms of the leather Amour pieces as well a frame for the outside of it. I’m not sure how good it was at reinforcing the goblins apparel but if it was as bad as the decorative effect, it probably didn’t do much. However, it was the only available thread that I could use to join together my crude binding. Sighing in resignment I laid out the the front and back sections of armour separately to review my work.

‘Ugggghhhhhhh’ I moaned unhappily and laid on my back. Why couldn’t everything just happen the way I wanted and needed it to. After a while of laying and staring at the barley visible ceiling, I got up and decided to do something fun for once. My throat however was very, very dry and breathing hurt more then it really should; I prodded my sunken stomach realising it was in much the same sorry state. Remembering a discussion I read about a grilled cheese being perfectly cooked a certain distance away from a nuclear explosion I went to the queens guard millipedes bodies and walked down their length to the lesser cooked sections. The very end of the bodies were clumped slightly where they’d fallen from the ceiling. Stopping here I pried off a section of carapace to look at the meat Beneath. It was completely black. There was some serious heat behind that explosion as I was at least 50 feet away from the queen. Appreciating my hardened skin in a new light, I moved further away to the next dead bug.

After a while I found one that was over cooked enough that it was safe to eat but not so burnt it was inedible. I didn’t know if the meat would be poisonous or not but I didn’t have much of a choice. The texture was similar to burnt crab and the taste was, well the taste was not good. After a very unsatisfying meal I walked back to my armour set and sat down again.

Quickly growing bored I decided to test out the limits of my new strength. I practised sprinting from one side of the chamber to the other and leaping while doing so, seeing how far and fast I could manage. I then tried to incorporate a front flip into my run and ended up managing to spin two times before slamming face first into the ground. Grinning I got up and did the same again, this time managing two flips before landing on my stomach. I dialled it back to one flip and practised until I could do them while running and land again stationary. I then did a standing backflip, and with how high I could jump easily landed it first try. I transitioned straight into a cartwheel discovering I could keep cartwheeling until I was too dizzy to continue, my strength easily holding. I tried to finish with a back handspring and landed flat on my rear. I grinned stupidly, unable to keep the smile from my face.

Skill unlocked:

Acrobatics I

5% easier to manover in air

+1 dex

I lifted my fists in the air in victory. I didn’t know why the system gave skills for certain things and not for others and how often it would give a skill you’d already demonstrated much later, but it did. Actually thinking about though I looked over when I had gotten my skill. It was only after I did the cartwheels and handsprings that I got the skill and when I was just flipping in air it wasn’t enough. It seemed like to unlock a skill you had to show you could do lots of things that skill was, which made sense. Like the camouflage skill for example: I only received it after the goblins were searching around me and could actually see me, therefore I met the requirements of hiding in camouflage from a searching party. Whereas other skills like meditation seemed quite easy to unlock. Satisfied with my conclusion I figured that each skill must have a set of hidden requirements you have to reach before they became available to unlock.

Excited with my discovery I wondered what other skills I could discover. However, after realising there was probably an infinite number I could unlock my enthusiasm was quickly curbed- I did not currently want to try and unlock every skill in the universe one after the other.

Sitting down again in boredom I placed my hand on the corpse to the side of me. Actually, if it was truly possible to unlock any skill… I looked toward the corpse next to me with a dark glint in my eye.

I held my hand on the insects body and focused on willing my mana to travel through my body and to my hand. Nothing seemed to happen. Trying a different approach I willed my mana to travel through my hand to the body I was touching, again nothing happened. Grimacing as what I was about to do was kinda gross, I spit into my hand. Next I visualised the hate I felt toward millipede kind and watched with wonder as the spit in my hand inflated with mana turning into a grey blue orb. I kept thinking about my hatred for the insects that I’d gone to war with and watched as the ball kept inflating until it reached the size of a baseball.

System display mana pool

240/260

Keep it displayed

A blue bar appeared in my vision and I tried not to be creeped out as the system not only complied to my demands but did it in a way it knew I would be familiar with. Moving the video game esque indicator I left it to hover in the bottom left of my vision- so it wouldn’t be too distracting. Now that I had a ball of corrosive mana in my hand I didn’t really know where to go next.

I focused on the damaging part of the mana that felt as if it was burning my hand and tried to differentiate it from the mana surrounding it. This led me to discover that the entire mana ball was actually harmful. The entire thing felt like condensed hatred in my hand.

I subconsciously entered into meditation as I tried to work out a possible solution. Now that I actually had the mana on my hand it appeared I had got around the systems blockages and could mess around as I pleased.

I started to remove the hatred from the orb, but that just caused grey blue chucks to float away and disperse into a glow that quickly faded. As removing it wasn’t an option I started dulling the emotion. While this did reduce the burning feeling it also reduced the orbs size. I tried to inflate it again with mana but didn’t make progress until I thought of how much I hated the bugs. Deciding to explore that action more I focused on how I was filling the orb.

Every time I dulled the emotion the glow around the orb increased as the ball shrunk, signifying mana leaving. Every time I filled it however, it was as if the hate filled my body before flowing down into my arm and the orb.

Focusing on that idea I filled my mind with the images of agony I had been subjected to and the sense of injustice I felt at being stuck down here underground. Everything I could think of I let fuel the hate I was feeling. Emotional turmoil I had felt over the years and times when I had faced serious consequences for things I didn’t even do. Times people had chosen to hate me for reasons I didn’t understand and times when people had been too selfish to help me when I needed them. Literally everything I could think of I tried to remember- even the most minor betrayals fuelled me. I kept pilling on the injustices and began victimising myself so much that the way people even used to look at me and walk by me became them ignoring me and thinking I was detestable- not worth their time. I kept building and building the feeling of ‘it’s not fair’ inside of me, letting it fuel the anger until it became overwhelming.

My whole body stared to literally vibrate as the hate aspected mana filled me. Before I exploded I started feeding the emotion into my upturned hand. The orb began to grow and grow quickly bursting the limits of the hate bullet spell. It lost its coherent orb shape and became a swirling liquid of potent hate. It kept growing in my hand until it reached half way up my fore arm in an upward cone. My mana bar rested at zero as I kept draining the potent emotion from my body. I felt it slowly leave the ends of my limbs and recede from my body each second. My regenerating mana was used as quickly as it could be produced.

I mentally thanked the skill of meditation for existing as without it I would of surely lost control of what I was feeling, and exploded. I also wouldn’t of been able to safely drain the charged mana from my body without it’s increased regen rate, without again, another explosion.

When all the hate was drained from my body I was left with a massive cone of supercharged liquid that slightly crackled. My arm shook from holding up the massive volume of energy, and my brain screamed. My eyes were wide with wonder at what I had wrought and my frayed mind started to shutdown from the mental strain. For a brief still moment I felt immense power in the palm of my hand, scalding me. The feeling of invincibility washed over me as I beheld the power to slay a god. The moment passed.

Three icicles were drove Into my brain and wriggled about by three malevolent forces, intent on hurting me as much as possible. I urged the cone of loathing forward with whatever parts of my mind could still think and stumbled backwards in fear as the cone traveled slightly forward. I fell backwards to my rear as the unstable shape finished it’s small arc and fell like a stone onto the earth.

I watched numb and in awe as the blue grey sun I had created bore down into hell. I crawled away with the image of the resource burned into my retinas. I kept crawling, eyes watering and mouth open towards a millipede wide enough to lay under. I weakly pushed against the burnt brittle legs until they snapped Moving my body under the cold soft underbelly of the beast I fell into unconsciousness,my body unfeeling and my mind greatly fractured by what I had just done.

I awoke much later with an aching body. I heard voices chittering and realised what I had just accomplished must of meant I’d been sleeping for a long while. My eyes still hurt from what they had witnessed and my bro g was rocked from seeing power on such a scale.

System show debuffs

Man fatigue III

Cannot use mana for 24hours. Brain functions to a lesser extent.

Dum Dum not use big mana. YOU GETTING THAT MESSAGE YET?

Mana burnout IV

Cannot use active skills or ability’s for 32 hours. Movement will hurt.

Wow you did impress me. You impressed me with your stupidity. No, you do not get the apprenticeship.

System where do these flavour texts come from?

System query:

Flavour text comes from things figures of renown have said that the system found relevant to certain announcements e.g a grandmasters words to a student.

Well that made sense, and helped me feel less targeted. Although it did say ‘relevant to certain announcements’ so it’s entire possible I was still being targeted, just with quote choices instead of straight insults.

Groaning I rolled out from under the millipede and stood up rubbing my eyes. Which of course meant when I opened them I was staring at six surprised goblin faces. My eyes narrowed as one of the goblins was holding one of my prepared armour plates across his chest in a way that insulted my beautiful craftsmen ship. Interrupting the bra fashion show I went to bullet the middling guard goblin in the face, which of course cause me to double over coughing in aching pain as my body was unable to meet my request.

Any fear the guards felt had quickly disappeared at my intimidating display. They rushed toward me as a group and I held my hands out in futile trying to dissuade them from violence. They did not halt their charge across the room. Groaning in pain again o prepared for what was going to be a very unenjoyable fight.

Waiting for the guards to reach me I yawned expressively and began slightly stretching my sore body. Slight lunging and pulling my arms to the side. When the first goblin reached me I was slightly more limbered up then I had been a moment before. Reading it’s massively telegraphed attack I stepped to the side and grasped his sodden spear shaft headbutting down and splitting the object in half I then ripped the other half of the spear from his hand and head butted towards his skull causing the talent to trigger, except the headbutt was a feint and as soon as the head popped back up I slammed the hand holding the pointy spear part of the spear into the goblins throat and slashed it back and forth brutally looking away as I did so. It was a good thing as I did.

I spotted another guard thrusting towards me with his spear and leaned back throwing the jagged shaft half of the spear at his face. He flinched back instinctively and moved enough when hit by the shaft that that side remained un-pierced. I felt a sudden pain in my other side and jerked away in reaction turning the motion into a sideways jump as the point once again tried to re-enter. The third guard has effectively caught me off guard (get it).

I spun and swung towards the guard on the lefts throat whose face I’d lightly impaled. His face had a few minor cuts but his broken nose had taken the majority of the damage. He was able to follow the momentum of his swerved spear and dive the blow. I stepped inside his reach and followed him slashing down and biting into his arm with the top of the spear. He dropped his weapon and claimed at my throat but I leaned away and he couldn’t pierce my skin. I fling the shortened spear to my left hand and dove into a roll grabbing the dropped spear as I did so. One down five left.

The remains goblins were running at Leónida me forming a circle with their spears to surround me. The one that had pierced my side was buying the time to do by attempting to close in to me and attack. I didn’t engage him and instead charged towards the retreating goblin I had left weaponless.

He looked fearful and kept his arms stretched out weakly. I lunged forward with my spear towards the right side of his body letting him doge to the left where my legs where already taking me. He realised his mistake as he saw the dangerous glint in my eye as I brought my other point to bear. He activated his defensive talent leaving me to close in on a protected body. Not willing to take the gamble of whether or not my spear would be able to stab through his skull without breaking I stepped behind the body as his head shot back up and used him as a shield from the circling friend of his who had gotten uncomfortably close to my exposed flank.

When the unarmed guards head popped back into place I reached across And slit a long line in his throat also stabbing in his chest for good measure. His comrade was enraged by his colleges death and ran forward towards me. They were decent fighters these goblins, but they had pretty one track minds. He ran towards me, and straight into the spear I lifted up and into his path. As I ripped the dagger spear from the other goblins chest and leather I saw the realisation on his face as he slid far down the spears length. He had charged forward thinking unarmed and forgot about the other spear I was holding tilted down to the floor.

I let go of the spear kebab I was holding and realised that cross guards maybe weren’t as useless as I had always thought. As there was no way to retrieve the spear with this point going through the back of my enemy I jumped towards the spear on the floor and went to grab at as the remaining three goblins got within stabbing range. My left hand scrabbled on the shaft as I struggled to grab it with the position my half lunge had put me in. The pains didn’t help as the goblins got even closer to me. After what felt like an eternity my grip was firm enough and I pulled back as quickly as I could manage. Two spear heads reached my arm as I did so and one of them tore a line in my arm and the other was knocked away as I pulled back as it had been aiming for my face.

Letting out a hiss of pain I took another step back. I felt fierce burning from my hip and arm that temporarily overshadowed the not so low level ache I felt throughout my whole body. I was Injured on two levels and they both sucked. I reflexively went to use hate bullet but stopped just before I triggered the skill and it’s consequences. Knowing I had to stop bleeding in order to keep up the current pace and realising my heavy breaths were a sign the adrenaline couldn’t keep sustaining me forever I took some more steps back and started calming myself.

I hadn’t tried this before while trying to kill things but I figured if I could do it while missing a rib and a couple organs, I could do it now. I dropped into meditation and immediately felt the blood flow decrease and my breathing become less ragged. I looked behind me quickly to see how close to the wall I was and looked back to find the guards a couple steps closer. I had About ten steps before I reached the wall.

Naturally the first thing I did with this information was jog ten steps backwards. I then sprinted forwards towards the left side of the small circle they formed. I chucked my spear weakly towards the left goblins right spear wielding hand at medium speed and leaped after it. I knew from my previous experimentation I could roughly match the speed of a weak regular human throwing a spear with a leaping stride. The goblin was forced to move his spear aside to avoid his arm being pierced. My throw was nicely aimed and so would of impacted his lower arm. In response the goblin lifted his pear holding hand with both arms and tired to position it to stab me. As I landed and leaped towards him again his spear weakly plunged into my shoulder but I ducked enough to dislodge it before it struck bone. Now inside the guard of the grey skinned humanoid I slashed sideways towards his throat. Surprising me he chose not to active his defensive ability and so I grabbed his neck with my free hand twisting his body and backing up as I did so. Doing what I did best I whipped my head forward into his as he tired to do exactly the same. Their skull might be able to survive a blade edge, but it couldn’t survive a headbutter.

Dropping the caved in goblin I danced back from the spear thrusts of his friends and felt the pressure of the two of them on my stomach before I retreated back the the caves wall. They stepped with me but didn’t immediately thrust again.

Of two guards left one of them was female. The female members of the species were slightly taller-not too much just enough to be noticeable-and had slightly thicker-but still same length-tusks. They could also spit sticky goop out of their mouths. I found that out by the sticky substance being fired on my face and fusing my eyes shut.

By all counts these two goblins should of been able to easily end the fight. My back was to the wall preventing dodging to a large extent and my eyes were fused closed blinding me. Unfortunately for them, this was the exact situation I had been prepared for. I’d waged a war against the millipedes dead on the floor all around us and I was responsible for the corpses littered throughout the hive. I had spent a large portion of my existence here making these ground predators my prey and I had built fort carapace out of there mutilated bodies. To anybody else this combination would of been fatal, but I was an enemy of all millipedes to crawl the earth, and they would all tremble! That made these goblins less then nothing to me.

I stepped forward gracefully and groped the two spearheads, pushing them behind. I heard the air swoosh as they passed me and the breathing of the two goblins in front. Forming a fist with my sliced bleeding hands I lightly tapped the tops of the two goblins skulls, causing them to panic and activate there talents . I spit my short, short spear into my left hand and stabbed into the left goblins chest aster I did so. I then heard the rush of air that signified the goblins heads springing back out of their shells and headbutted down on the females head once I felt she was repositioned, cracking her skull into small pieces. As I did so I switched from stabbing the lightly armoured chest to punching my weapon into the goblins throat instead. I took a step back slowly and let the two bodies fall to the floor.

I paused there for a moment and considered waht I had become. I fought back the urge to vomit like I had before. I had done what I needed to survive and I would continue doing what I needed to survive. I would not feel regret for my actions. It was easy to have morals, but when you weren’t sure dying for them would grant you heaven they become a lot easier to ignore. I would be better later, as soon as I could afford that luxury.

I grabbed the bodies of each goblin and put them on each shoulder. I went back to the other goblins I had killed and picked them up too going back to where the fight had started at my armour ‘workshop’. I cut the leather armour off each dead goblin, taking them apart for the strings and straps they were made with. I was about to do the same to the female, but I decided I could at least give her her dignity. I was not however, letting her keep an intact throat. I sliced open the throat vertically-grimacing as I did so-and looked for the gland that had allowed her to spit sticky goop.

There was a strange pair shaped organ covered in swirling patterns of thin veins. It was neon green and slightly more crumbed then a pear with an open hole in place of a stem. I grabbed the gland and looked away as I ripped it out of the throat and the arteries surrounding it.

I lay the sticky gland and the ground and once again gathered up the evidence of my crimes against goblin kind. I headed off towards the hole I had left in the ground with my totally safe mana experiments and threw them down there, walking away after I did so and not hearing a sound as I walked away. I pulled up my notifications as I went.

800/250

Mythic title unlocked:

Enemy to millipedes

25% more damage to millipedes

millipedes are hostile

You hate bugs, they hate you

About time. I really did hate millipedes. Strange that the title was mythic though when I had before this only able to unlock things very rare at most(class excluded). Shrugging it off I sat down to finally finish my armour.

I took the extra leather threads and finished joining up the back and front plates creating Two finished sides of armour. I shook each pieces a little holding it from the top like a carpet and they kept shape pretty well. Although I did decide to poke a hole in the centre of each carapace to more tightly bind it to the leather underneath.

Next I went out to search for more carapace ti cover my arms, shoulders and sides. I took a load of plates from the small worker millipedes as well as any from the especially wide millipedes I could find. When I had enough prices to work with I returned back to the worksite and took off my shirt. I sowed two of the smallest sections onto each arm-one before and after the elbow. I then snapped one especially long section of armour in half and placed it on my shoulders, snapped side sanded down first. I poke bid holes with the thinnest spear heads in the shoulder sections and side sections. I then sowed the arm, side and shoulder pads into the shirt with some smaller threads. I left some space around the holes I’d poked so I could thread them. After I’d sowed The pieces of armour in multiple times until I ran out of thread I moved onto the last part of the design.

I took the leather straps that had been used to hold the sides of the goblins armour together to join the armour together. I made the bigger holes in two places of the top back and front pieces and used the straps to join them to the shoulder holes. I then poked holes in two of the middle carapace pieces and joined them to the large side sections I’d made of another especially long section.

Finally, the work was done. I put my shirt back on, grimacing at how much of it I had cut away so it still fit me. My pockets were full of the lose fabric. Now I just needed to test something out. I trapped the spit gland from earlier and used some on the back of a worker millipede. I then placed another millipede on top of it using the substance as glue, or cement even. I waited for about ten seconds before testing it. I kicked the joined millipedes and sent them toppling over. They remained joined however and even withstanded a headbutt while staying joined. Confused I reached my hand in between and bashed a path to the goo. As soon as I could touch it it started to slowly become more mailable in my hands. It appears touch or heat made this substance deteriorate, otherwise though it seemed sturdy enough. I walked back to the work station satisfied with my experiments.

After killing the guards I had snuck out into the tunnel entrance to make sure nobody had heard the battle. Fortunately for me, nobody had. I’d then snapped off the mandibles from the non toasted queens guard. I picked these pieces up now from the floor of the workstation. I used the spit gland to stick then to the front of my armour, I attached the two larger mandibles together into a claw as they didn’t fit on the front of the armour when I lay down to crawl.

I smiled as I swung the wolverine esque weapon. I hadn’t planned on making it but it replaced the snapped top of the spear I’d been using before. I sanded down the aerated edges where I would be grabbing it and some extra ones outside of that just in case- I did not want to injure myself mid fight. I squirted the rest of what the gland could hold on either side of the handle section of the claw. I then grabbed the two remaining straps I had as well as the scraps made from when I’d trimmed the straps currently in my armour. I wrapped the straps all over the smooth parts of the weapon and after I’d finished I patched the thinner parts with the scraps.

All together it wasn’t the best designed weapon. To join it together I’d used goblin spit and then over wrapped it in leather, making the grab uneven and overpadded. But I was sure it would work, and that was enough for now.

Satisfied I’d finally created what I needed I moved on to the next part of the plan. I checked my wounds from the battle to see that all marks had faded. Curious I pulled up the shirt, happy the multi segment design meant I could do so. The place in my torso where my flesh had been obliterated couldn’t be seen, all of my torso was perfectly normal. I really was changing into something completely different, it didn’t scare me as much as it should have. It wasn’t mediocrity, and it was honestly hard to see that as anything but an improvement.