Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
He needed to get stronger faster, and for that he needed to get valis faster.
Theoretically get these numbers up higher would be better long-term improvement from the medieval-ass gear they were using here, as demonstrated by how little his punch did to soldiermeat's hands earlier, but that didn't help him in the short term. In the short term, he was in a decidingly shit situation.
His punches were capable of smashing bricks into gravel, he had tested the other day during his time clearly out the back. Removing larger rock and brick rubble by turning it into a much more manageable pile of gravel. He had bruised the palm of that 'level four'.
It was more than a times four increase in durability, soldiermeat didn't have the hard calluses and bulk that some of the meatmonks he killed in the past did. Their arms were much harder, and this 'falna' thing increased based on the inherent abilities of the individual. Soldiermeat had much more average looking hands, and they had stopped his panzerfaust flat with minimal damage to the underlying tissue.
A times four increase wouldn't do that, Adam would still be capable of turning his forearm into gore if it was just a times four. It was more like a times eight or nine increase in durability from his best estimate. Assuming an equal level of increase across all four 'stats'? Agility, Dexterity, Endurance, Strength? An otherwise average meatbag that was eight or nine times faster, stronger, and more durable was solidly into proper fullborg levels of prowess. Upper-end fullborgs at that.
Stuck in this meatframe and with no proper guns? Adam would have to get real fucking clever real fast to kill something like that. He could do it, it would be like killing an ACPA while stuck in a Gemini, and he's done that before, but the margins would be far closer than he would like.
Sure, it proved that he could get his own meat to a similar level eventually, but that didn't help him right now if some big mean motherfucker decided to mosey up to his little operation and rip his greencorp a new asshole next week.
If some level four or higher decided to pressgang his little corp tomorrow, Adam wouldn't have any options for telling them to fuck off. He needed to get stronger immediately.
And the best way to get stronger would be to make money to buy some nice little 'no thank you' options just in case. Which meant that he and kid needed to step up their fucking game and start making more money yesterday. He couldn't go too fast though, because going too fast meant the kid wouldn't get time to figure out how to kill the shit in the way of the more profitable lower levels. If he lost the kid as backup, his delves would be crippled in money making efficiency.
That would just make the initial goal even harder, and therefore was unacceptable.
They'd have to go just slow enough for the kid, but Adam knew what his best option for money making was after checking the core bounties from the guild.
Needle Rabbits, floors seven to ten, cores worth seventeen-hundred and fifty a pop. Going down to floor eight and nine would be ideal, it only had kids, dogs, and the other 'newbie killer' Killer Ants. Going one floor deeper would hit three new types of fucker that would eat into opportunity costs. Going to floor seven would have them deal with flying moth fucks, which would waste their time and costs in ammo to handle them.
The ants weren't bad either, cores worth fifteen-hundred and seventy-five a pop, but the bunnies were the more valuable targets.
With all of that in mind, he had remembered how convenient it was to have children carry his bags around down there, with those japbrats hounding him that one time. They mentioned 'doing Supporter work' with audible capital letters an hour or so in, leading him to asking guildmeat what that was.
Leading him to his current situation, staring at a bunch of children wearing arms and armor, with similar dufflebags on their back. Scrappy behind him with a curious head tilted, and guildmeat presenting the five kids with a wave of her hands.
"Our supporters on-hand available for contract negotiation." She introduced with a polite smile.
"You start them young around here?" He idly questioned, taking measure of the supposed 'supporters'.
"Young?" One of the ones in the lead asked, a kid with dark brown hair and eyes, reaching up to scratch his chin with an amused look. "I'm thirty-eight years old. You never see a Pallum before, kid?"
Adam raised a brow and looked down at the one who had spoken. "The fuck is a Pallum?"
"Yer looking at some." The lead replied, a hand resting on the hilt of a child-sized arming sword on his belt.
"...Children?" Adam asked.
One of the children spat on the stone floor, causing guildmeat to flinch, before stomping away and out of the room. Adam didn't bother watching that one go, eyes still focused on the one that was actually explaining shit.
The one in the lead frowned. "I'd appreciate it if ya didn't say it like that. Touchy subject you see? But practically yer about right. We're a little-folk, but we feast and fuck like anyone else."
Adam nodded, not really caring if they were actually children or not, and got into the meat of things. "We're going down for twelve hours, planned for floor five, potentially as far down as floor nine depending on rate of progress, but no deeper." Guildmeat flinched at that. Scrappy almost bounced on his heels.
Nods from the collected children, showing they found that agreeable… he'd need a way to distinguish them from goblins with his labels. Minimeats? Except one on the side with lighter brown hair, who clicked his tongue. "Need to pick up the kids at four, I can only do ten hours. Hopes of rescheduling a tad?"
"No." Adam bluntly replied. The brown-haired kid nodded in acceptance, turning to the lead kid and speaking again.
"I'll have to sit this one out, Tomas. Fianna be with you."
"Tell the missus I said hello, Chilchuck." The apparently named 'Tomas' replied with an accepting nod. The brown-haired kid made his own way out of the room, gently closing the door behind him as he did.
Adam waited for that one to leave, then continued his negotiations. "Contract payout will be ten percent of total earnings." All three remaining kids, showing that they were professionals, did not physically react to that. Unfortunately for them, Adam had commissioned more mercs for jobs that they had years alive. He could see the gleam of a perceived good payout in their eyes.
"Drop items will be retained by the party, but the supporter will be allowed to use their share of the payout to purchase them from the party at guild standard prices. Supporters will act to harvest slain monsters and call out potential ambushes. The party will act to protect the supporters, kill monsters, and cover retreats if overwhelmed."
"Any other support required?" Leadkid asked, rubbing his jawline in consideration.
"Not contractually obligated or rewarded, but permitted under a pro-bono basis." Adam dictated.
Leadkid considered that for a moment, looking the two of them up and down briefly, before slowly nodding. "Alright, the terms are acceptable. Now which one of us are ya wanting to hire? Susie here c-"
"All three." Adam cut him off with an annoyed glower. Causing the kids to blink and glance at each other briefly.
"Hiring all three of us… for ten percent total?" Leadkid narrowed his eyes. The other two kids were also staring carefully, consideringly.
"Ten percent each." He rumbled, knowing that he already had them at this point.
"Bargained and Done. Guild Advisor Eina Tulle as contract witness, then? Let's get it in writing." Leadkid replied quickly and surely, speaking on behalf of his fellows to secure the job dangling before them. Adam rumbled in amusement as he turned to guildmeat, who scrambled for a moment to get out a quill and paper to write up the contract outlined.
Adam pulled a chair over, and sat down at the central table in the room. "Pull up a chair kid, the fiddly bits will take awhile." He advised, knowing that this was going to take at least an hour to get the specific wording agreed upon. Working with professionals was always a long affair, but at least there weren't any fucking lawyers here to make it a whole-day bullshit banzai.
Fucking lawyers. Wasting his goddamn time, all the time.
He should find a lawyer here so he could kill it.
—
"So how long have you kids been in this line of work?" Leadkid asked as they began their descent down into the dungeon.
"I got my falna six days ago! Senpai got his the day after." Scrappy enthusiastically replied, causing some amount of unusual shuffling behind him as they made their way down.
"You got yours before 'senpai' over there?" The token girlkid asked, one with green eyes and red hair and a freckled face. "Why's he the senpai then?"
"Ah, Adam-san has been fighting way longer than I have. I just started, but he was in the army before coming to Orario. He's really good!"
"Ah, you've killed surface monsters before then?" Girlkid asked him more directly.
He didn't bother turning around. "Define monster."
There was a pause at that, before Leadkid responded. "Hateful creature, just wants to murder and eat upright folk, has a little core in the center?"
Adam thought for a moment, did anything he killed before qualify as… Ah, cyberpsychos. They had little brain or heart cores, and were generally loose nutters that liked killing things. They were pretty fun to stomp on the occasions he got to. "Maybe a few hundred? I wasn't keeping track." Not of them in specific, at least. He really should've been, in retrospect.
"Pretty good numbers for someone without a falna. You got a favorite weapon, maybe forget it back home?"
"We used guns back home. Guns and swords usually, sometimes fists and feet." He explained. "The guns around here are shit one-shot things that still use open powder. I'm saving up for one of those 'Bowguns' I saw last time we were in the Hephaestus floors."
"Ah! Up in Barry's Ballistas? He's actually my nephew on my mother's side." Blondkid responded at that with an audible smile. "What model were you looking at?"
Adam started paying slightly more attention to the Blondkid now that his preferred subject of weapons had come up. "The crank-operated repeater model. The automatic model seemed interesting, but comparing the draw-weight to the cost, it's just not worth it."
"Oh, I hear some prefer it for lack of strain, less burn in the arms lets them fire longer."
Adam snorted. "The burn means your meat is working. Making it muscle-powered just means more of a workout. Besides, I'm already going to have to pay out the ass for the bolts. Paying out the ass for a fancier but not better gun? Not worth it. Maybe once I can get a passive revenue stream up and can afford to waste valis."
The kids were nodding along. "That's just about how it is, when your bolts cost five cores to replace, you start hoping they don't break for a while." Girlkid responded with a click of her tongue. "The balcony garden just doesn't grow enough to afford more than a couple bolts a season, not when you're competing with Demeter and her huge tracts."
Adam nodded decisively. "Lizards are better on a per kill basis, but the fuckers refuse to show up and fill my pockets at a decent pace. It's a hassle."
"Not to mention paying for armor upkeep, the fucking goblins and their grubby little claws. Even chainmail can't handle it for too long. Nothing lasts more than a month." Blondkid griped, tugging at the armor he was currently wearing, the aforementioned chainmail coat that covered the majority of his body. "Then you take home pennies at the end of the day and eat leftovers again to save for rent."
Adam decided that he liked these kids much better than the japbrats. They had actual reasonable concerns instead of gushing about random bullshit all the time.
-
"Noticed it that time?" Adam asked as he tossed another frog corpse back for the Support Squad to handle. He hadn't quite managed to get the time-saving trick figured out on them yet, not having a good angle thanks to how low to the ground they were. He had to go through the throat to do it, which required the tongue to be extended and to be right next to them, it really wasn't worth the hassle.
They had teeth, he noticed. What kind of frogs have teeth? Did all frogs have teeth and he just never noticed?
Adam belatedly realized that he had never actually seen a frog before coming here, so it was entirely possible that all frogs had teeth and no one told him.
"Yeah! It got louder in one ear than the other when they got close. I don't think I would've noticed it if you didn't point it out." Scrappy responded, pulling his sword out of a shade and doing his best to kick it over to the SS. "I knew they were quiet from Eina-san's quick lesson, but I didn't know they messed up the sound around them too."
"Keep an ear out for it and they shouldn't be capable of sneaking up on you." Adam advised, turning his attention towards the SS. "Sound off, any injuries?"
"None!"
"None!"
"None!"
The three halfmeats called out in near-unison, hefting their bags again as he was speaking. They had managed to keep up with their pace so far, and he and scrappy were moving through the floor at a much more appreciable rate now. Instead of three or five minutes of ripping cores out of corpses after each fight, it was about ten-seconds of sound-off and waiting before moving onto the next section of the dungeon.
"You three are worth every goddamn enny thus far." Adam rumbled out, performing one last check on their flanks before starting to move along. Feet echoing in the halls and mixing with the sounds of frogs croaking in the distance.
"Adam! Blasphemy!" Scrappy complained briefly, before turning back to face the SS. "He's right though! I didn't know supporters were so convenient!"
"Heh!" Halflead replied with a proud chuckle. "Pleased to hear the flattery. Gotta say, you two are damn good for rookies. Mr. Smasher over there is moving like a veteran level two and you're managing to keep up anyways. Think we came across some new rising stars, whaddya think Susanna, Finlay?"
"I think we came across a lunatic and his baby brother." Halfchain replied with a grouch and a grin. "Still, we're making more today than we have in weeks, and the shift's not even over yet, so no complaints here."
"Tall and blond, you looking for long-term employees or is this a one-time contract?" Halfred asked him more directly, eyes firmly on the long term payouts.
"We're already making more today than we have in the past week, ignoring the pass parade. Yes." Adam bluntly answered, senses sharp for the next monster on their way through the tunnels.
"Pass Parade?" Halflead asked with a careful tone.
Scrappy excitedly chimed in. "Ah, we got hit by a pass parade maybe… yesterday or the day before? It was tough, but Adam-san knew exactly how to deal with it. We earned seventeen-thousand that day, it was great!"
"How'd ya deal with it?" Halfchain asked.
Adam, the leading expert in murder, decided to answer. "Tactical retreat back into an already-exhausted stretch of dungeon with a relatively narrow hallway. They were forced to approach from one angle and without being able to surround us effectively. After that it was merely a test of endurance."
"And with your fists and the boy's fancy sword, they probably went down in one hit each… I can see it." Halflead responded with a musing tone. "Wouldn't be easy, but I could see it."
"That's fucking absurd that's what it is. They teach you how to do that in the army?" Halfchain sounded disbelieving.
Adam snorted. "I did it against fuckers with weapons back in the army days. Doing it against a bunch of meatbags without arms or armor? Wasn't a challenge, it just took a while."
"If we get hit by one, don't mind if I cash in on my 'overwhelmed by monsters' clause, alright?" Halfchain responded. "I got a vested interest in not dying down here."
"Speak for yerself, yellowbelly. Seventeen-hundred valis is better than what we normally make in two or three days." Halfred responded. "I'm showing up again tomorrow."
"I'd show up again, it's just-"
Adam cut the halfmeat off, snapping his arm to the side and flexing at the wrist. A bolt crashed into the face of a shade about to leap at him. The corpse collapsed and rolled twice, colliding with Adam's feet. Hefting it up, he kicked it over to the SS, who snapped into action.
The corpse hit the ground, Halfred and Halfchain took defensive positions around Halflead, who had his knife out before the corpse had landed. A quick stab, then a flex and an open torso. The core was ripped out and tossed in the bag on his back, and Halflead stood ready to move along once more, tossing the bolt back to Adam as he rose. The other halfmeats returning to a more ready 'traveling' positioning immediately.
Adam caught the bolt. Seven seconds to remove the core.
He grinned and reloaded. Halflead grinned back, and hefted the half-full bag.
"You're really good at that!" Scrappy showed his appreciation for the craft.
"You hire professionals for a reason, kid." Adam answered, starting to walk once more.
Floor Five was no big issue, in the end.