Episode 7: The Most Important Meal

Arson ate so much food that he wondered how he hadn’t gotten sick. He stopped by Jade’s house after the sun had fully risen. He would have come back sooner, but the star-filled sunrise provided both him and his enemies with more energy than Arson was able to overcome easily.

It was very hard for him to continue to focus, cast, and move while mana thrummed through him. And he couldn’t keep down the enemies that seemed to be able to regenerate from far more damage than normal during this sunrise.

Arson merely watched his stat counter stop at 899 with a sigh and a sip of his tea. He knew he was not going to be able to unlock armor in a single night no matter how hard he tried.

He contemplated trying to put more stats into Weapon since he already had it unlocked, but didn’t think more fire power was the answer. It would take time to learn a new ability and would also change the flow of combat before he even knew the basics.

No, Arson decided to find some form of martial training before he put any more points into Weapon. Maybe I should ask Troy? He nodded to himself in confirmation and almost rose to his feet before realizing that neither he nor Jade had exchanged a single word that evening.

He’d simply come in. Sat down in a hurry to eat under the weight of a million questions and thoughts.

“Feelin’ better?” said the woman as Arson looked at her.

“Much better, thanks,” responded Arson. He took another sip and asked the first question he had after another moment of thought.

“How dangerous is the dump at night?”

“Very. Just depends on where you’re located.”

He hadn’t expected a straightforward answer, but the woman hadn’t even stopped eating to speak. Just gave him the flat truth, a feature of her character he hoped he could come to depend on.

“Can you give me any advice on where the best areas are for someone new to Cultivation?”

“Stay in the green area until you’ve unlocked all your attributes or whatever you Cultivators call them, then train in the blue areas, never go into the red zones at night, and stay far from the hole.” Jade pointed at a map of both the dump and junkyard on the wall. It was color coded by both mana core pattern drop rate, dungeon portal spawn rate, and monster spawn density.

It took Arson a while to understand the honeycomb pattern all the different colors created. Jade had to specify a few odd details he couldn’t explain himself. All before Jade ended up handing him a watch that she again pulled from thin air.

“This is a basic hollow watch, and I’ll trade it for the mana core in your pocket. The watch contains a spacial inventory and a map. I’ve coded details of the areas I have searched, and it will update further if you explore areas I have not, just make sure to turn off the AI functions if they turn on for any reason.” Arson frowned as he took the mana core from his pocket. He didn’t like that she knew he had it, but it wasn’t like he was going to keep it anyway.

“Spacial inventory?”

“Man, you really are an orphan, huh? It’s a backpack, but you only have access to the inside and the bag’s opening. Think of an item in the bag’s space and it will pop into your hand, want to put something in the bag, and all you have to do is think it, kid. Simple as that,” said Jade. Arson looked at the watch in alarm. He’d seen many rich people come and adopt children from the orphanage, and none pulled things out of spacial inventories. Arson took the watch like it was the greatest gift he’d ever received, even though he’d technically bought it. Jade only rolled her eyes as he put it on slowly.

Arson smiled as the watch changed to fit him. Then it further shifted from a matte black to match the frozen particle sheen of his crown.

He hadn’t shown the woman his crown yet and only had it out as he worked when it became unbearable not to, as he never knew when Jade would come to check on him.

It wasn’t that it was unbearable to not have his crown out, but it seemed to cast a slight for over his mind—as if he needed glasses and could see clearly again when the piece of his soul was manifested once more.

“That white-gold suits you young man, you look rather refined.

“Thank you,” said Arson.

“Are you headed back to the orphanage?”

“Nope, back to work, I plan on leaving in the afternoon to help a friend, but after that I’ll be back for another night on the hunt. Thanks again Jade, your food was fantastic.” Arson ran up, hugged the lady, and was out the door before she could even wipe the shock from her face.

Once outside, Arson looked at the makeshift sled. It had taken him an hour and a half to make out of random trash from the dump that morning, and began to take his treasures off the sled.

Clothes, shoes, Cultivation manuals and more was stacked neatly only to disappear by the second into his new watch.

He opened the map on the watch, and the device projected a hologram of the area, above the screen in real time, in satellite precision levels of detail.

“Wow, this is sparking useful.”

Arson didn’t know why, but he wanted to explore the unexplored areas around the dump on the map. They appealed to him far more than any other areas, but Arson had to complete his work for the day before he could even start to think about the new spaces he’d yet to see.

He made his way back to the hole at the southern perimeter and was surprised to realize the hole wasn’t at the center of the dump as he originally assumed.

“Sparks this place is huge.” There were 10 more holes of equal or larger sizes spread throughout the rest of the map Arson had access to.

During his walk to the hole he’d read up on the area through the notes left in the watch by Jade, and found the notes to be a thrill to read rather than a bore. They even included small pictures of landmarks to use to help navigate more easily.

Arson worked his three hour shift, and then began his mana core hunt. With his memory it was easy to climb a trash heap and find where he’d been the previous night.

He wanted to prove his theory about the heaps that had the largest concentration of enemies around them. He believed that those would be the heaps he could most likely find mana cores in, but the only way to prove it was to check.

He found himself once more high up and lucky for him, he could now tell why the dump looked the way it did. Before he wondered why trash was dumped by air drop and why only a handful of people ever worked here at a time.

Now he understood that the dump of Maelstrom city was a battlefield, and that only made him excited to reach the junkyard. He also wondered if the area had a different Keeper.

He supposed he only knew two land Keepers, Almarine and Jade, but maybe Jade owned the junkyard too. The lands touched each other, and the job was technically posted for both areas.

Arson decided he’d just ask about it later and followed the path on the map before he realized another thing about the dump.

There were designated paths through all the heaps, but no one kept the paths clean. Except for the groups of monsters that roamed through the dump in what must have been some sort of patrol patterns.

“Monsters run through, and kick trash aside, leaving the dump less cluttered, that’s hilarious,” said Arson. Not aware of how close to the truth of things he actually was.

Arson managed to find 3 mana cores in a single heap over the next few hours. He found them by obliterating of the heap itself.

It took him far longer to accomplish as his mana wasn’t being constantly replenished through the secondary features of conductive waters. No mana to drain, no mana to gain.

He was excited to confirm if it would work on the flesh of a real fang and claw monster, but wasn’t going to rush into anything.

He packed up the few new items he needed to present his plan to Jade and anyone else he could get to help him. His watch made things easy to store and even noted it was at 13% of its maximum capacity. He was truly interested in how the spacial enchant worked and added it to a list of things he was working on.

7.Clean the dump, and fix the junkyard.

Arson waved at Jade as he ran by and made his way back into town. Luscious green, surrounded the dump and junkyard, and was weaved seamlessly into the sand rock jungle that was Maelstrom city. It took him hours to make it back in time, but he did and had to make his first meeting quick before he met up with Troy.

He ran into the orphanage, and made his way to the girls’ quarters.

“Hey, has anyone seen Jasmine? I gotta catch her before—“ said Arson before a groan came down the hall at him.

“What do you want, brat? Make it quick. It’s my bath time!” Arson smiled and rushed down the hall to find exactly who he was looking for.

“Hey Jasmine, if we could make money doing all the laundry you all do ourselves, would you come work for me?”

Arson took in the bewildered expression of the black-haired, blue-eyed teen in front of him in her towel and turned around.

“Sorry, just excited and have a few plans that could make us eat a lot better around here.”

“What do you mean, brat? Let it out or I’m leaving for my soak.” Arson smiled and pulled what he thought to be an old dirty jacket.

When he turned around with what seemed to be a brand new black leather jacket, he froze and so did jasmine.

“Kid, did you steal a jacket and now you’re trying to get me to wash it for you before you sell it or… something? Because let me tell you, a few washes ain’t going to make that look even a day old, baby boy.”

His mind raced and Arson could only stare at the coat. It had holes, been shredded, and it was slightly discolored when he’d found it. But now, it appeared as perfect refined leather. He took a moment to think before he responded to Jasmine’s frustration.

“Well, I have to rethink my plans after a recent development, but what if I secured a place, plenty of cleaning equipment, I supply the cleaning supplies, and pay you far above the orphan salary, could you gather a few of your people and run a laundry for me?”

“How much above the orphan pay? I already make 5k credits a day, if you can’t beat that, I don’t want anything to do with it,” said Jasmine as she tried to brush pass Arson, only for him to let her pass as he responded.

“I’ll give you 5k for materials, 25k as a bonus for you to gather people and pay you 10k a shift if you can manage to take any of your larger contacts from the city as you leave, offer them the same level of quality, but we will only charge 95% of what they are currently paying?” Jasmine froze.

“Yeah right, kid, pay up front then,” said Jasmine with a playful wave of her flatscreen. Arson flicked through his watch, and shot the digital invoice he’d worked out on his walk back and the girl froze in the doorway. She took an awkward step back and slowly closed the door.

“You aren’t stealing the equipment, are you?”

“No.”

“We aren’t going to cross any legal lines, all legal work?”

“The laundry will be one-hundred percent legitimate.”

She looked at him and smiled. He smiled back and knew that he had a lot of work to do if her smile meant what he thought it did.

“So are you in?” Jasmine looked at her handheld flatscreen and then back to Arson.

“As soon as you finalize the payment.”