[Payment received: 66 points]

[EXP 6, Current EXP: 216/10,000]

Whoa, that was a huge jump of a gap until the next upgrade. Well, she knew it was eventually get harder. She'd been on such a roll the last couple of days, now it would probably slow down the number and rewards and things. At least she felt more prepared now to combat anything that came her way within the bounds of the supermarket at least.

Stiles laid back, her arms behind her head as she pondered her next steps. She could just enjoy what she had, but she knew that wouldn't last. Despite no longer having ADHD in this new body, she still had the desire to be kept busy that was just part of her personality.

Her customer base here was slowly running out of crystals, also since they were nearby they didn't need as much stuff. She needed to expand her clientele. She could just wait for the promised promotion Derek had promised, but that could take forever. No, she needed to go to a base in person. Remembering one of the things she unlocked with Level 3 she went to the store and looked at the "Temporary Ability Card".

[Effect: Grants the user a temporary ability for 24 hours. During this time, the user can stack additional ability cards (up to 3 in total).]

The strength of each ability depended on three factors: card's star level, user's physical condition, and their understand of the ability.

As she was Level 3 not all the abilities were unlocked and only 1-star ability cards were available. Oddly enough the ability she had gotten the first time she absorbed a crystal, Healing, was not available.

Checking her stats, it was still Level: 1 and the EXP bar was at 0 which made sense she hadn't used it at all.

Deciding to get some more EXP the cheat way she absorbed a Level-1 crystal core, making the EXP go up one point.

--

Going downstairs she found Ms Nguyen, "Can I test my healing ability on your injuries?"

The woman looked at her with respect and nodded.

Focusing on healing the wounds on the woman's face, a light came from Stiles's hand a lit up Ms Nguyen's features.

But the wounds hadn't healed, Stiles frowned. "It didn't do anything."

"I think it helped with the pain." Seeing Stiles frown lighten slightly, "It takes a lot of crystal cores to upgrade an ability I've had more than 10 and it hasn't done anything with mine." She could barely make a liter of water a day, back when she was surviving on her own.

Stiles sighed, "These ruffians that hurt you..."

Ms Nguyen looked worried, "I should have told you but..." She shook her head, "I should have warned you. 2 men and 2 women who used to live at Fireseed Base but for some reason they've come back to this area. They've killed a lot of people and are ruthless. One of the women has a Poison Mist ability so you need to be extra careful. They love killing and stealing from others."

Stiles eyes narrowed, she didn't like they'd hurt someone under her protection. Sure Ms Nguyen wasn't under her protection when it had happened but she still didn't like it.

Looking at the wounds Stiles pursed her lips, they needed to be disinfected which made her realize she didn't have any such thing in her non-food necessities shelf. Quickly she bought some Betadine and Cotton Swabs from the Store.

"Go ahead and grab what you need to treat the wounds from the necessities aisle on the house."

Looking at the number of crystal cores in her inventory. She set aside five for hiring new people (Ms Nguyen had argued that 5 crystals was enough rather than 10).

17 remaining after that, without hesitation she absorbed 10 Level-1 crystals at once and watched as her healing abilities EXP went from 1 to 10.