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Room 20…

  Room 20… (203 days ter.)

  Opening her eyes, Nox mentally added one number to the count of days she’d been in this world. It now stood at 597. If one took into account that days here were 25 hours long, while those back on Earth were 24 hours, then she’d been here for 622 Earth days. To the girl from back then who’d spent her time doing school work, hanging out with her friends, and spending as much time as she could with computers, it was an inconceivable amount of time.

  Sighing, Nox pushed aside her bnket, and with a yawn she managed to get herself up into a sitting position from which she eyed the night sky. Dominating the sky as the sole object in it was a white, glittery moon. If she had to guess, this moon was simply ice, though whether or not it was a solid ball of ice she had no way of knowing. The girl shivered. It was now well into fall and the weather was chilly. Cupping her hand she blew into them, pondering what to do when winter finally arrived. Here it would st for 350 days, and on top of the cold there would be ice and snow to cope with. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Folding up the rge, thick, and very expensive bnket that’d cost her 10 silvers, Nox scowled as she pondered what the cost had done to her finances. Still, with Verdant paying her way in the dungeon, her finances were not being devastated as badly as they’d been before… but she still counted every copper, and 10 silvers was 1000 coppers, which was a lot of coppers to count.

  Nox vigorously shook her head. Aside from her clothes, the bnket was her first material possession in this world… and it was worth it. It kept her warm at night, and it was rge enough for her to fold in two so that she could y one-half on the ground to sleep on, and cover herself with the other half. It made life much better, and besides being needed, agonizing over the cost did nothing but make her miserable.

  Standing, she headed over to where Si stood and took the piece of bread she was handed. Sure, it was rat bread, and she loathed it, but it filled her stomach.

  “Luck,” Si told the girl the same as she did each day. Yet, despite the repetition, the words never seemed to sound false. In the woman’s tone there was true warmth that ensured the wish always sounded sincere.

  Nox nodded and fled the alley, walking fast as she made her way to the sewers. As she descended downwards, she idly considered why people didn’t live here during the fall and winter months. Being beneath the ground where the surface variations in temperature didn’t have much impact, it was warmer.

  Still, warmer or not, she paused only to grab a satchel which she tied around her waist. Then, wrinkling her nose, she opened the fp and shuddered. It was her ward against those who would otherwise harass her, and was simply a bag of very odorous shit. A while back she’d used some brown dye to stain her clothes in spots, and occasionally even dabbed some in her hair. It gave the appearance of her being covered, or at least heavily smeared with what she carried in the satchel. As for the satchel, it just completed the ruse. It kept people clear of her—aside from the few fools who were egged on by their companions—and it made her life bearable. Albeit her nose often compined otherwise.

  That done, she made her way to the dungeon where the waiting masses gave her evil gres, but otherwise stayed at least a few meters from her. One day slipped into the next, and with the dungeon again accessible she and Ginger quickly stepped into it. Immediately, face pale and on the border of retching and throwing up her breakfast, Nox frantically closed the fp on the satchel and pced it in a corner before hurtling herself away from it. That this was now a part of her life... She really had no words to express how she felt. The shame of it, and the visceral rage at what she was forced to do... It tore at her.

  “Here,” Ginger stated in an impatient tone and tossed Nox a spear. She then took out the three caltrops the girl had asked her to make when they’d started on room 20. Each caltrop was simply four spikes made of some tough wood the beastkin girl had brought from the forest and tied together.

  Frowning, Nox took the spear. It was something she’d started to use at Verdant’s insistence, and she was really, really gd to have a weapon—but she could never stop worrying about the cost.

  “Okay,” Ginger said before impatiently rushing through the inner doorway, and into the room where the monsters of floor 20 y in wait for her.

  Nox, sighing, followed, and gulped when a cyclops turned to charge her as soon as she entered the room. Whereas room 10 had been a boss room with one cyclops, room 20 was a boss room with two cyclops. Waiting with terror writ across her face, Nox—not quite faking being frozen in fright—jerked her spear up at the st second. Hurtling at her the cyclops impaled its midriff on the spear whose butt rested against a stone wall. The creature shrieked in outrage, and while it was distracted, Nox tossed a caltrop under its right foot. The creature tumbled backwards.

  Gncing towards Ginger, Nox noted with relief that the girl was effortlessly tearing through the second cyclops. Like her the beastkin girl had used a caltrop to hinder its movements, and she was now busy running circles around it, all the while evading swings from its club, while delivering strikes to its back. The overwhelmed creature died in seconds. The beastkin girl then rushed over to attack the one Nox had briefly inconvenienced, but not seriously wounded.

  Nox sighed, wondering how bad it would be when they got to room 30 where they would face 3 cyclops, or room 40 where it would be 4. The beastkin girl really needed a partner who knew how to fight.

  Ding!

  You have cleared room 20 a total of 20/20 times!

  You have killed a mini-boss. (Triple Rewards)

  Base Reward: 30 experience.

  Additional Reward: 6 experience.

  Room 20 Completion Award Generation!

  Base Reward: 150 experience.

  Additional Reward: 31 experience.

  Rolling chest… 165

  Bonus chest… 34

  Final chest…199

  With a predatory glint to her eyes, Ginger rush for the pin chest that rested atop a simple stone pilr in the middle of the room—both having appeared in a fsh of familiar blue light. Seconds ter she tossed a small bag of coins towards Nox who knew that with the chest being numbered 199, there would be 1990 coppers in the bag. She slipped it inside her tunic, then checked her Blessing.

  Worldly Prostitute

  Name: Nox Walker

  Race: Human

  Level: 3/100

  Subrace: Pneswalker

  Exp: 1201/2000

  Str: 103

  Con: 106

  Int: 109

  Wis: 109

  Cha: 106

  Luc: 106

  Mana: 109/109

  Stamina: 72/106

  Regen: 1.09 Per Hour

  Regen: 1.06 Per Hour

  Refusing to sigh at how slow progress was, she turned her attention back to Ginger who was grinning ecstatically while examining a pair of blue and green boots that looked a lot like joggers.

  “Nice,” the beastkin girl mused happily, and remove her much cruder boots to wear the new footwear. “They have iron in the toes to help if I need to kick anything,” she expined to Nox who nodded.

  They left the inner chamber of the dungeon and Nox, with a grimace, picked up the satchel. Wanting to break down and weep, the pale-faced girl again opened the fp.

  “You’re going to keep carrying that around,” Ginger asked, her tone heavy with distaste.

  “Yes,” Nox adamantly stated.

  “You know you would level your Blessing faster if you worked at the brothel each day after we cleared a dungeon room,” the beastkin girl stated.

  Nox gred.

  “Just saying,” Ginger said in protest as she turned away from the gre. “Half of you humans become prostitutes anyway. So what’s the big deal?”

  Shrugging, Nox had to admit the girl had a point. Humans did seem to like sex, and from what she could tell, around one in twenty of the people in the town were prostitutes. A common saying she’d heard several times since she’d fallen into this world went: ‘A brothel for pleasure, a wife/husband for love.’ Prostitutes did, after all, have Blessing granted skills for pleasure.

  The girl shuddered.

  “Are you ready for tomorrow,” she asked the beastkin girl, deciding to change the subject.

  Ginger nodded. “Room 1 was 6 slimes. Room 11 was 7 slimes. So room 21 will probably be 8 slimes, right?”

  “Yeah,” Nox replied. “It seems the dungeon will increase the number of monsters you need to face by 1 for every 10 rooms. Maybe. It’s infuriating how aside from the cyclops the monsters each group needs to face is different. And how the rules differ is annoying. For some groups it increases the numbers. For other groups it makes the same six monsters stronger.”

  “Thanks to my lucky strike skill, slimes are easy now,” Ginger stated.

  “Good.”

  They stepped out of the dungeon and parted ways with Nox heading to the alley where Ci was. Taking a spear, she descended into the sewers. She figured it was a bright side to her day job, as she called it, that it was in a pce that was warm in the colder months, and cooler in the hot months. The pay of 1 copper per 10 rat corpses was pretty atrocious though.

  Aiming herself towards the marketpce, she started to walk, killing as she went. From there she took a path that took her to beneath the brothels. People only dropped so much coinage in a day, and she figured the sewers beneath the marketpce was now dried up. But here, where alcohol often came into py, she’d found the pickings if not great, then at least okay. She activated her worldly skill, wishing not for the first time that it was innate, and that it was active permanently. But she also figured if she was to wish for anything, it should be a way home. So she wished for that too.

  Sighing, refusing to think about what a gss of ice-cold grape soda would be like as she gulped it down with a bowl of potato chips, all the while listening to the hum of her precious computers in the school’s computer b, the girl walked, searching for both rats and lost coins. Sure, she'd looked for a better job, but given the way she reeked, it seemed the only pce for her were the sewers.

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