Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
His arms were continuing to whine at him, but the cool air kept them shivering too much to do more than whine. There was a deep soreness in the limbs still, and while he couldn't do much to stop that, he could increase it. His limbs, little weasley shits they were, were complaining the whole time that he spent lifting and lowering heavy things behind the church.
Which was too bad for them, because Adam had no intention of stopping at any point. There was quite a bit of stone rubble and miscellaneous garbage around the back of the church, so that's what he spent his early morning waiting on the meatbags to wake up again. They actually slept in beds like morons.
Beds were death traps, too soft to easily move off of, a blanket over top slowing you down, a sense of comfort luring you to your death. No, beds were horrible things and Adam intended to never go near one if he could avoid it. So he slept leaning against the fireplace hearth and ready to spring up and stab the first fucker that tried something after breaking in.
Then, the moment he started hearing birds screaming, he was up and over to the well to wash off anything that had accumulated. His arms were still torn up, his legs and biceps still bruised, and everything was yelling at him. That was fine, because apparently healing potions existed and would probably help. At worst, it was probably opium in a bottle and would numb the pain, and that's all he really needed it to do.
This was all just surface level damage, it didn't matter. The muscles underneath the torn strips were still fully functional and the bones were doing fine.
So after his morning wash, the other two still weren't awake, so Adam took to going through half-remembered motions of exercise that the Marines put him through. But to do that, first he needed to clear the space out.
So Adam spent the next hour or two cleaning. Big rocks moved to the side and set up like a stone wall. Wooden boards used to reinforce said stone wall. Glass bottles and smaller trash swept up and to the side with the one broom he found indoors. It was a scrub-broom, so immediately after sweeping all the loose bits to a single pile he started with his first exercises.
Pour well water onto stone. Use push-broom to scrub the floor. Murder the dirt underneath with his muscles. Plus side, this didn't let any dirt get into his half-open wounds and lead to potential infection. Also plus side, scrubbing stone with a broom was still a half-decent workout, and it got the area clean for later use.
If he had money, he would pay some chucklefuck kid to do this for him. Currently, they were down to his bag of stolen valis and about three-thousand vali in the guild bank account after yesterday's deposit. He hasn't counted out how much was in that bag yet, but he was going to empty it out at the potion shop today so they had more room to carry cores in.
From his eyeballing it, they could probably fit another twenty five or so in there. That's like having two Burden's carrying cores instead of one, much better profits. Average income per run round about three-thousand two-hundred vali. If his estimate was right, that was about one-thousand eddies and change per run.
He made a note to check how much the shittiest armor cost to cover his arms with. Something there would cut down on their long term costs significantly.
…Actually, he stared at his black cloak, drying from the wash, and then his arms again.
He didn't really need that, did he? Adam dropped the broom for a moment, then went over to find his sword.
—
"Oh, how long were you awake?" His employer sleepily asked, rubbing her eyes and re-stoking the fireplace with old wooden furniture. Adam grunted in thought as he finished wrapping the slightly damp strips of black leather around his arms. It wasn't quite proper armor, but against the sharp nails and teeth of things the size of children and small dogs, it would be more than enough for him to tussle more freely.
More importantly, it was a completely free way to potentially lower their expenses, so it only made sense to do. Even if they only lasted a single run, that was a good one-thousand valis saved. Each run they lasted would be effectively another one-thousand in the account, and make the trip to buying gear that was worth a damn that much quicker.
"Couple hours." Adam grumbled, testing the wraps and making sure they were going to stay on his arms securely. Layers of leather that slightly overlapped and held all that good blood in his arms where it belonged. Meat frames needed that to function, and replacing it was a pain. "Leftovers?" He asked.
She yawned and pointed at the wooden chest they had. Adam got up to look inside, and saw that it had a few rows of shelving currently holding old hashbrowns. Being hashbrowns, they hadn't expired yet. Being a day old, she couldn't sell them.
So Adam reached down and started to devour them. He'd only take a third for Burden and Tinytits to take the rest.
"What were you doing while awake?" Tinytits rubbed her hands together and held them in front of the fireplace, her eyes still bleary.
"Cleaning the back." Adam grumbled through a mouthful of potato. "I'll wake the kid."
"...This early?"
"We have meat to butcher and valis to make, he's got a good eight hours already."
"My my, my child works so hard~" Her attempt to sound mature was ruined by the massive yawn and sleepy blinks that immediately followed. She wasn't really awake yet, it seemed. Adam briefly grumbled to himself about how much slack he was picking up here.
—
"We're heading out!" Burden spoke with a smile and a bow. Adam waiting near the door and watching.
"Stay safe, and do your best!" Tinytits replied with an enthusiastic bow of her own. Turning her gaze towards him, she gave a mild glare. "That includes you too, mister! I don't want to see your arms all torn up like that again, you hear me?"
Adam stared for a moment, before turning to open the door and walking out. Tinytits made a sound similar to a 'grk!' as he completely ignored her and stared down the road.
After a few moments, Burden caught up with a half-smile and furrowed brows. "Still giving out goddess a hard time huh?"
"She's worrying too much about meat. We're already getting potions for it." Adam rumbled a reply. A thought came to mind, and he unstrapped his stolen sword and handed it over to the kid. Burden took it with a blink.
"You didn't have the muscle to do panzerfaust." As they had found out yesterday, the kid simply didn't have the ability to shake in the right ways to do it. Not even telling him to think of boiling water worked, and that's how Adam first learned how to do it, so Adam was mostly lost on how to teach it to him other than the circular motions and force-building forms. "So you get to use the sword. That wimpy ass dagger isn't enough for your skinny arms."
"Hey! I'm not skinny!"
Adam stared at the kid for a few moments as they walked. He then raised an arm and flexed the bicep. Burden stared back for a few moments, before glancing down at his own arms.
"...You may have a point." He sheepishly muttered. "But still, don't you need a weapon?"
Adam started to shake his still flexed arm in just the right way, still blankly staring at the kid. Point finally proven, the kid nodded.
"Alright, I'll do my best. Please be patient, I've never used a sword before."
"Just swing it at things, it's a sword, it'll handle the rest." Adam grumbled out. "Where's the potion place again?"
Burden shuffled through his pockets to pull out the paper again and squinted at it. "...Uhh, the third building on the right on the next street, it has a picture of a potion hanging at the door."
Adam was pretty sure they passed by it yesterday, which meant it was conveniently along the way back to the dungeon. Good sense of placement by his employer.
"Is that it?" He asked, staring at the building in question. Burden glanced down at the instructions in his hands, then up at the building and street names.
"I think so."
Pushing his way through the door, heralded by a little jingle of a bell overhead, Adam figured that this was indeed a potion shop. An incredibly stereotypical looking potion shop that really should be investing in better protection against thieves. They had bottles just sitting on shelves, instead of behind nice iron bars. Drugs were usually pretty expensive, in his experience.
"Hello, welcome to the Miach Pharmacy! How can I help you?" A thin looking guy with long straight blue-black hair smiled from behind the counter, wearing some sort of tunic, short cape, and tie-up vest.
"Hello! Hestia said you sell potions right?" Burden called with a smile. The man's face brightened up slightly at the mention of the name. Adam kept his pace steady towards the counter.
"Ah! You wouldn't happen to be her new familia would you? I passed by her stand the other day and she was bragging on you two. Here, would you like a free sampl-"
"Absolutely not." Adam grunted out, finally reaching the counter and cutting the man off. Raising and dropping his stolen coinpurse on the counter, he placed his order. "I want all the healing potions that can get me, starting with your cheapest and shittiest ones and going up."
The man behind the counter blinked, furrowing his brows. "Y-you want my off-stock? It's not nearly as effective and hurts a lot more to drink you know?"
"Hey Adam, he said he was offering a free sample, weren't you complaining about prices yesterday?" Burden asked with an equally confused expression.
"Anything offered for free isn't actually free, it just means it's going to screw you over later if you take it. Either because it's poison or you get too used to the handouts." Adam rumbled out an explanation for the brat, before turning back to the man at the counter. "I want your shittiest, cheapest health potions, all of them I can get for that. If you try to offer me anything for free again I'm buying them somewhere else."
The man gazed at him for a moment, before an understanding smile came to his face. "Ah, so you're that kinda mortal huh? I understand. Still, are you sure you want the offstock first?"
"I said so, didn't I?" Adam grumbled. This wasn't that difficult. "Just let me spend my money already, meatbag."
The man chuckled, spilling out the bag and starting a count of all the coins, muttering under his breath as he did so. Adam paid close attention to the numbers and the coins they corresponded to, better to figure out their values now and not later.
"Alright alright, you can buy the offstock, but I'm giving you a bag to hold it all in at least." The man replied after counting out the sum. Adam grumbled, but didn't refuse this part. An extra bag was yet more cores he could carry back on each run, so it was just long term profits there.
"Your total comes to twenty one offstock healing potions for seven-hundred vali each. That's three-hundred vali left over. Let me go get those bottles for you, I think Naaza-chan-" Adam's fist shook. "-got those done last night."
The man disappeared behind the door that was just beyond the counter. Adam turned around to lean against the counter, arms crossed, as he waited for the man to come back. Burden, at the very least, looked contemplative and thus not making annoying noise.
At least for a bit. "What's with that name?"
"Hmm?" Adam responded.
"Meatbag. You use that word a lot." Burden responded.
Adam wondered how he was going to explain it for a moment. Rumbling aimlessly as he pondered this, he eventually spoke after a moment. "There was a kinda… philosophy I guess back home. Metal is better than meat. You know what a prosthetic is?"
"Yeah, they're like golem arms for people. Gramps had a friend with one when I was growing up." Burden responded. Good, he was familiar with the concept.
"Well we had prosthetics back home, kid, and they were better than anything a normal limb could manage." Adam grinned savagely. "Arms made of proper myomer-muscle and titanium bones, plated in chrome and steel. They didn't get tired. They didn't yell about all that pain they were supposedly in. They were stronger than the strongest normal stuff, you could even put weapons in them."
"...So metal over meat is…"
"It means why would any fucker still waste their time with meat when you could upgrade to metal? You said they had prosthetics here right kid?"
"They should."
"Remind me to track those down once we got the money for it so I can get rid of all this fucking meat and it's bullshit. These arms have been yelling at me since yesterday."
"I thought you said they weren't in too much pain?!" Burden sounded simultaneously irritated and worried. Brows furrowed and frown on his face.
"No." Adam grumbled. "I said it was just pain. It doesn't matter. It ain't slowing me down, it's just screaming in my ear."
"Sorry, did you say you were hurt?" The man called out with a worried tone.
"It's none of your business is what I said!" Adam called back with an irritated rumble.
"Sorry, sorry!" The man came back out, a satchel bag and hand raised. "God of medicine, you know? I can't help but worry about these kinds of things. Your order is ready." So this is the 'Miach' or something? Were all gods going to be this unimpressive or what?
Adam grumbled as he took the order, counted the bottles inside, and took one out to see how it worked.
"Now it is offstock so it's going to burn as it-." Miach tried to warn, which Adam ignored and downed the bottle in one go.
He paused.
Lowering the bottle.
Adam closed his eyes.
Breathing in once, holding it, then exhaling.
Opening his eyes again he replied casually. "Not bad. Almost had me."
His body was screaming at him. His shitty meatframe roaring in disapproval as the apparent magical potion went to work on it, starting from the deeper internals and working its way outwards. It wasn't too bad. He knew what to brace himself for in the future, so he'd be ready for it.
The apparent god was staring at him with a deeply worried expression. Adam ignored it and turned to Burden, before jerking his head for the door. "C'mon kid, we got meat to butcher."
Burden too, was staring at him with a worried expression. Adam ignored it and walked out the door. The kid followed soon after, racing to catch up. "A-are you healed up now?"
Adam's limbs were still burning, so he wasn't sure yet. Handing the bag back to the kid, he unwrapped one of his arms to check. Adam raised both brows at what he saw.
Skin covered in thin white lines and discolorations of scar tissue, but otherwise completely restored, twisting the arm to and fro, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary with it. Flexing again and again, the burn slowly died down to a mild soreness and nothing more as they walked along.
Functionality completely restored, surface-level damage repaired, breaches in outer layer patched.
"Goddamn, these are good." Adam commented mildly, starting the process of re-wrapping his arms.
"Adam! Blasphemy!" Burden complained at him.
He ignored it, his mood was too good from how effective these things were.
His mood was promptly ruined when he looked up to see a horrible sight.
Frowning deeply, he moved to cross the street and walk down the other side.
The thing in front of him moved to block him. It was faster than him, unfortunately.
He narrowed his eyes, stood up straight, and glared at the thing blocking his path forwards.
The thing stared back, brows narrowed and ears flicking.
Burden deadpanned at what he was seeing, as did several other meatmaids looking through the nearest windows. "Adam just ask what she wants."
"I don't give a shit what she wants, I want her to fuck off." Adam growled back, still glaring at the thing blocking his way.
The brown-haired catmeat was in the road before him, stance wide and ready to intercept him. She raised her hands, and the bag that she was holding. Wide but determined eyes and flickering tail. "Advertisement sample. Free of charge. Dine at the Hostess of Fertility, nya!"
"Fuck off and die, catmeat." Adam replied with a snarl, flexing his hands into violent shapes. Unfortunately there were entirely too many witnesses here to murder her. "Your diner is overpriced, never eating there again."
Unfortunately, Burden walked over to the cat and offered a hand to take the 'advertisement sample'. "I'll make sure he eats it, thank you for the sample." His face was bright and tone all too pleased to be accepting random bullshit from random meatbags.
"Like hell I will!" Adam growled out. Catmeat bowed and backed away, entering the diner again and staring out from the windows. Adam kept up his furious glower as he began to move forwards again.
"If it's advertising, then It's not free right? So it's fine to accept it." Burden responded cheerfully. "Plus, now we have another bag!"
"We're returning it when we get back." Adam rumbled with a stormy tone. "Not touching that shit. It's probably poisoned."
"Ah, you're right, we probably should return the bag afterwards." Burden ignored the second part of his words entirely, causing Adam to growl and look dead ahead again.
Exhaling heavily through his nose, Adam stomped his way to the dungeon, glare set and hands shaking. He needed to kill something. Preferably a lot of things, and green children and small dogs would do just fine. Burden followed behind, practically skipping with his new bags slung over shoulder and on his hips.