Melody woke up the following day, excited to get back to work. After a bath and a good night's sleep, and a little talk with her mom, she was feeling better about what she had done yesterday. Arianell explained some of the way Melody had felt better than Loghain had. Her mother talked about how she had felt herself learning more about the godblessed and how different their society was. Afterward, Melody felt more comfortable with herself and her conflicting feelings. She had very different parents, who had different views of the world, and she had a bit of both of them in her. Honestly, it made her feel special.

After a quick breakfast, she headed back to the disassembly hall with both her mother and Loghain. Once they arrived, Melody found out that two teams had returned overnight with more Beasts for her. Apparently, the Harvester crews operated through the night to catch some nocturnal species. She now had 53 more Beasts to kill and a bunch more to absorb. She quickly settled into a workflow, setting the Swarm to absorb the seemingly never-ending pile of scraps and cast-offs while she did her best to kill as quickly as possible. Making sure the Beasts didn't suffer made her feel better, which her mother approved of.

'For a Beast," Her mother explained. "Killing is a necessary part of living. Few are the Beasts that can survive without taking the life of another, even if it is just plants. This is the art of survival. Wanting to be alive, even at the expense of another, is not wrong. The problems arise when survival gives way to slaughter. Killing for the thrill is an easy path for a Beast to walk, especially those that rise through the tiers by killing higher-tiered Beasts."

"That's why it feels good to kill stuff?"

"Yes. The instincts that you got from me are part of every Beast. The key to maintaining a strong sense of right and wrong is to make sure that every life you take is used to the fullest and that you never inflict more pain than you have to."

Under the careful observation of her mother, Melody killed 46 Beasts by mid-morning. Six of the 53 were tier two, and one was tier three. She ended up with 13,426 experience. Immediately, she bought the sorting and search functions, which dropped her down to 7,426. Then she decided to invest back into the Swarm and purchased all three basic upgrades and the next level. That brought her down to 3,426. Just as she had expected, the next level of each popped up immediately. However, the cost hadn't doubled. IT was only 1,750. Checking, she saw that getting to level 4 of the Nano-Swarm did cost 2,000. Just to see what happened, she bought the second level of absorb speed. The third cost only 2,500. Unfortunately, that was now more than she could spend.

With 1,926 experience left. Melody dove into her new sort and search functions with a vengeance. She quickly began to understand why both of these upgrades were level 1. The sorter had only the most basic options, and the search bar required highly specific input to pull up anything. Still, it was a dramatic improvement on her ability to navigate the massive amount of random stuff in the Shop. Most of the reason she hadn't made much headway in this tab was how difficult it had been to find anything she was looking for.

Unfortunately, Melody still could not find anything she wanted within her current price range. All the interesting sounding things like 'Modular Adaptive Exoskeleton (Basic)' cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of experience. All she could get, everything under a thousand experience, was simple, mostly useless stuff. She could get practically any weapon she could imagine in a hundred different varieties. However, all of them had no physical magic laid into them, so they wouldn't be any better than the knife she was using. Searching, she found versions with physical magic, but they required several upgrades for her to even be allowed to buy them.

"Oh, little bird, stop frowning so much. Everyone has a slow start when they get their Calling. Just ask Loghain." Arianell said, seeing the look on her daughter's face.

"It's a class." She looked at Loghain.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, absolutely. When I first received my Calling, it took me over ten years to move past Soldier! With all the resources you have and how much your Calling seems to be able to use them, you should grow quickly. Chin up." Loghain encouraged emphatically.

"See? Now come on. I'm not letting you soak another set of clothes in blood for an entire day. We are getting those washed before the stains set in. Really, you should be looking on that slate of yours for a way to not make such a complete mess." Arainell, half-scolded, half-teased.

"Fiiine. Actually…" Melody started thinking as she followed her mother to get another bath and change of clothes.

{}

Melody spent the next week much like that, building up the basics of her class as she went. Mainly, she was focused on raising the level of her Nano-Swarm so that she could increase the construction speed. She had a favorite strategy from Warlord in mind, and the base construction speed was way too slow for what she wanted. The cost of those levels quickly became a sticking point, though. She made it to Level 8, but the next level cost 128,000 experience. She was finally considering buying some of the things she wanted from the Shop.

Besides the levels, Melody had also purchased the upgrades necessary to get to the fifth level for both the sorting and search functions. At that point, they worked well enough that she was comfortable leaving them as they were for the foreseeable future. The rest of the experience she spent all went into an interesting set of upgrades she had found. Melody had found items in the Shop that were already enchanted with a massive variety of physical magic. Naturally, they were more expensive than the unenchanted versions, but it got her thinking. What if she could add physical magic to whatever she wanted with the Swarm?

So far, she hadn't found an option to add physical magic to existing items. Loghain had laughed at her when she brought up the idea and told her that was because physical magic was all about bringing out the potential in an object, but Melody hadn't really followed the hour-long lecture that followed, beyond the fact that her idea was fundamentally impossible. What she had found, was a series of upgrades to the Swarm and Interface that would let her modify items in the Shop to her specifications before she constructed them.

When she found them, she impulsively bought them. That had made all the shop items with enchantments disappear. Then, she bought several similar upgrades until she ended up with the ability to basically take any Shop item as a template and edit almost every aspect of it before construction. All told, it had eaten somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred thousand experience for all the upgrades. But now, Melody was ready for her next step.

Melody had spent a lot of the downtime she had over the last week talking with her mother and Loghain about weapons. She had no training and wasn't looking to spend a lot of time learning how to use one. Also, it had helped her learn more about fighting in general. After all that talk, Melody had landed on one option she was confident with. That had led her to now, where she was making her very first purchase from the Shop after a whole week of gaining experience.

She was buying a gun. Guns were not very commonly used for several reasons. Firstly, they were a significantly more mechanically complicated weapon, and the Gunsmith skill was difficult to rank up. That alone made them expensive. Much more so than anything of equivalent rank. That wasn't the main problem, though. The main issue was ammunition. Bullets were small and often made up of multiple pieces. Loghain had explained that this made them especially difficult to imbue with physical magic. A properly enchanted bullet could be as expensive as the heart of a tier-five Beast. And one shot wasn't likely to kill a tier five. It just wasn't worth the money.

That was where Melody's Nano-Swarm shined. It might be difficult for a flesh and blood person to enchant bullets, but it was just a matter of having the right resources for the Nano-Swarm. So here she was. Melody had bought the bullet first. Doing so, Melody got a pleasant surprise. She hadn't known since she hadn't bought from the Shop before, but she had essentially bought the 'blueprint' of the bullet. A new tab was added to the Interface labeled Construct. In it, she found the bullet blueprint. From now on, all she needed to make more bullets was resources, not experience. She hadn't been worried since the bullet had only cost 20 experience, but it was still nice.

Moving on, she found she could add several kinds of physical magic to the bullet, limited only by the types of resources she had. Keeping it simple, though, she merely increased the bullets mana density, essentially increasing its damage. Once she made it, this bullet would go right through the hide of most fifth tiers. And it cost barely any resources since it was so small! Moving on to finally getting the firearm to go with her new destructive little friend, Melody ran into her millionth roadblock. She didn't know which of the guns she could buy would take the bullet she had bought.

A quick search and purchase later, Melody was 500 experience poorer, and the Shop now told her what kind of ammo any projectile weapon used. Looking through her options, Melody sighed. She had bought the cheapest ammo, so it made sense that all the matching guns were equally cheap. She had spent 500 experience to learn something she could have figured out with a bit of thought.

BANG

Melody nearly jumped out of her skin. Looking around wildly, she found the source of the noise. She was sitting in the back of the disassembly hall as she had been the whole week. The only real difference between then and now was the series of cages that had piled up against the wall. All the Beasts higher than first-tier that had been caught for Melody had just been left here. The noise had come from one of them.

At the bottom of the pile, in one of the largest cages, was one of the third rank Beasts. There were only four, so Melody knew all of them by sight, and this one was the most recent third rank captured. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a lizard, with the face and general body of a wolf but covered in greyish scaly skin. Currently, it was staring at Melody while growling aggressively.

Loghain walked over to the cage from where he had been sitting playing a card game with a few of the other guards that were apparently on break. They had started coming over here recently to hang out with Loghain. The big man stared at the Beast, which wasn't paying any attention to him, still dead on staring at Melody like she had somehow offended it. In a flash, Loghain pressed a point on the cage door, and there was a brief glow that ran over all the bars before winking out. The instant the glow was gone, Loghain's hand blurred forward, slamming into the Beast's scaly throat, cutting off its growl with a startled whine.

Another tap and another glow, and Loghain walked back to where he had been playing, giving Melody a little wink. She smiled back at him. She wasn't sure what was going on with that wolf thing, but she wasn't going to stop Loghain from shutting it down. It had been really creepy to have it growling at her. Now, it was curled up in the back of its cage, though she could swear it was still glaring at her like she was the one that had hit it.

Ignoring the observer, Melody focused back on the task at hand. The cheapest gun was only 500 experience, which Melody felt was a perfectly reasonable amount for what was essentially a test. It was a simple pistol with a wooden grip and metal barrel as the default, which Melody had no reason to change right now. All she was doing was adding some better rifling than the default and increasing the durability of the whole thing as far as the base materials could handle. She had no way to tell how strong the gun would need to be to handle firing the bullet she had made without exploding.

Satisfied that what she had made would hold up, she constructed both the pistol and a bullet. Even having bought the construction speed upgrades up to the eighth level, it still took a solid minute4 to make the bullet and almost five for the gun. Finally, Melody had the weapon in her hand. Looking around, she checked to see if anyone had noticed. She hadn't told either her mother or Loghain that she was doing this today. She wanted it to be a surprise. The only thing watching her was the Beast from earlier, which was now standing in its cage and glaring at her. It wasn't making a sound this time, just staring. Were its eyes red before?

Melody shuddered. It was super creepy. She'd be even more weirded out if it was fourth tier, with a human level of intelligence, but it was just an animal right now. Still, glowing red eyes were always creepy. Smiling at her new armament, Melody began figuring it out. As the price would suggest, it was a simple design. Trigger, firing hammer, and the barrel was a breakaway. The whole thing was a lot heavier than she had been expecting. It was also very large for her small hands.

Opening it up with a click of the latch, Melody slotted the bullet into the single chamber and clicked it shut. Shed made sure to be careful in handling the now loaded and deadly weapon and reminded herself of the rules Loghain had told her when they discussed weapons. He had been very serious while he explained proper respect for weapons meant to kill easily and quickly, and it had scared her a little. Not that it had stopped her. The danger kinda made it more exciting. She did have to be careful, though since if she managed to mess up, she wouldn't be able to come out here anymore. And she was having so much fun.

HOWL

The wolf's cry was long and loud. Melody, startled once again, gripped her new pistol tightly. She watched as Loghain started to rise once again, but then everything went wrong.

A wave of energy pulsed from the Beast, and the blood-red glow in its eyes grew to cover the whole creature, making it look like it had been soaked in gore.

At the same time, the cage the wolf was in glowed brightly before flickering out.

In the next instant, the scaled Beast burst out of the now unenchanted metal like it was tissue paper and raced toward Melody with a fury.

Whipping the pistol up, Melody cocked the hammer and squeezed the trigger as she closed her eyes tight.

If this didn't work, the Beast would-

BOOM

The gun flew from Melody's grip. She hadn't been ready for the kickback, and it simply jumped from her grip. In the next instant, she felt herself wrapped in a warm embrace she was intimately familiar with.

"It's alright, little bird. Momma's got you." Her mother's words were calm and soothing, even as Melody heard the cries of many Beasts combined with the sound of blood spraying and bodies slamming to the floor. "Are you alright, my little bird?"

Reacting to the concern Melody could hear in her mother's voice, Melody popped her eyes open. What she saw was more than a little surprising. The floor was littered with the bodies of many Beasts, all the cages they had once occupied ripped open, much the same as the one the scaled wolf had been in. Standing over them was Loghain, his armor counted in their viscera, an axe in one hand, the crushed remains of some unfortunate Beast in another.

"Little bird? Melody?"

"I'm fine, Mom." Melody was surprised how fine she actually sounded, and how fine she felt. She was stunned, but any fear was gone. "Really. Did I get it? The first one."

Loghain, done with his dismantling of the escaped creatures, barked out a laugh. "I'll say." He reached down and pulled a corpse off the floor. Melody hadn't noticed it among the carnage. It was the wolf, the left side of its skull completely blown out. It looked like she had got it right in the eye. The red energy was nowhere to be seen.

Arainell took a long look at the Beast, her face carefully blank.

"Melody, we're visiting your grandparents."