Behold, my new house! It has two floors and a sizable garden that seems to be a rarity in the surrounding area. In the garden, there are well-taken care of trees, grass, and flowers. The house itself is made from wood and big grayish bricks and it's on a hill that overlooks the city, so the view is amazing, and the person who designed the house took that into consideration.

There are multiple large balconies and terraces that offer a comfortable view of the city while still allowing some privacy from the neighbors.

The street the house is on is made of cobblestones, and even the surrounding houses seem to be similarly well-designed.

So, yup, the house is mine and I don't care that Sophie used her mumbo jumbo to get a better price for my bracelet that paid for all of it.

Maybe I can just train and experiment here while asking for rent from Group 4 which seems to plan to play on the guild and go out for hunting. I won't only freeload but I will also make some money, which are mana stones here, and buy myself some good stuff.

Currently, I'm sitting on the large balcony of my room, and in my hands are papers Hadwin and Tess left for me, all with some basic information they were able to gather.

Most of the info is useless as I don't want to deal with this kind of stuff. As always, I will leave it to Haddy and Tess and if they need any help they can ask me anytime.

I'm like a parasite exploiting my extroverted group members who take care of boring stuff.

Good!

So yeah, there are guilds, there are houses that give quests to those guilds. Stuff like, "Kill twenty giant hedgehogs that started to block trading roads" or, "Bring me a live specimen of a giant ant."

Some of them pay much better than others and the payments sometimes are items, but most of the time they are Mana stones.

The stronger you are, the more dangerous quests you can take.

Exactly like in games, and that makes me curious. This kind of system isn't that bad, so did it come into existence naturally or is it something that the system set up for us, people from Earth? It could be both, and the system is also collaborating with these quests.

One piece of information that I found interesting is that the moment you accept a quest from the adventure guild, the system gives you the same quest and the reward is a few shards. The system, being as greedy as it is, doesn't offer that many shards, but it might change if they rank up and are able to take more dangerous quests.

Angry Kittens have a lot to do. I'm also amazed by what they were able to achieve in just 9 or so days. Sure, they had the cheat code called "a lot of money" and "mind-blender missy", but they were able to collect a lot of information.

Monsters around the city, maps, information on Calamities, details on the city and lynthari, some powerful individuals in the city, information about shops, auctions, blacksmiths, and enchanters. All this stuff. The amount of information is staggering and it all sounds so interesting.

From what I understood, the main difficulty of this floor, which makes it Hell difficulty, is to actually kill one of the Calamities.

How the heck do you kill millions of bus-sized ants? How do you kill the Fallen Hero which is creepy armor using the body of a Champion as a battery? How do you deal with a giant sentient tree that wiped out an entire capital?

Hell difficulty is different here. It's not an imminent danger, just finishing the task is extremely difficult. Plus, with my theory that you can spend an entire five years on a single floor if the floor quest allows it, it is nearly confirmed, and looking at the luxury and somewhat peaceful atmosphere of the city, this floor doesn't seem like that bad of a choice.

Obviously, I won't have that. If the rest of Group 4 really wants, they can stay here, but I will just take a few months to get my rapidly growing power under control, practice my skill, and then I will look to deal with one of the Calamities.

Hmm, the Fallen Hero seems like a good choice. And nope, it's not only because of the Valorplate. Damn, that's a cool name.

Anyway, a lot of stuff to do. When Sophie gets back, we can talk about selling the coordinates. Then I need to check my new skills, especially [Mana Domain], which seems to be the best thing I got from my Primary class.

Then I need to experiment with [Resonance] a bit more. I think I am underusing the skill.

Another goal is to turn [Mana Infusion] into [Infusion], but who knows how long that will take?

Then there are my Constructs that need a bit of upgrading.

Another round of Active Tempering after I get used to my mana a bit more.

I need to test out my sub-class more and the passive it gave me to see if there are any effects I might have missed.

Oh, and then there is my new epic passive [Mana Reservoir]. The passive just creates another Mana Pool outside of my body and who knows where and in what dimension. That reservoir only starts slowly filling when my mana is maxed out, but the advantage is that it doesn't strain my body at all.

At first, I was disappointed and thought that the epic passive might not live up to its name, but it doesn't seem that bad. Already plenty of time has passed since the Reservoir started filling, and it's nearly as big as my current mana pool inside of my body. That's like doubling up my mana for single use. Sure, it will fill super slowly and only when my mana is topped up, but it will allow for some huge burst of mana when it's topped.

So I will wait a bit longer before complaining or being happy. It might allow me to get a bit more mana than my current mana pool.

And then there are also Mana Stones I would like to experiment with. I already started on the floor before, but I plan to create constructs inside of the stones or maybe on the items. That's also something I started trying to do with the Crown of the Last King. If I'm right, this is how enchanting should work, and I might be able to get something out of it.

Bored after all the planning, I send a pulse of my mana through the house and notice that Biscuit, alone in the room, is about to leave the area.

Huh? Alone?

I hide my presence and keep mana inside of my body and under the Mantle and send only the tiniest mana thread to track him, something I'm sure he won't notice. Well, not yet, I can't underestimate our future corgi overlord.

As he exits the house, I watch him from the balcony.

Biscuit slowly walks on his short legs, wobbling from side to side. The burrito-like doggo seems to have a plan.

My curiosity peaks, and I just watch him as he reaches the wall around the garden and expect him to create his creepy mana arms to climb over, but instead, Biscuit uses the new thing he learned. Like a blimp, he starts slowly hovering, and then at a very slow speed, he floats higher and higher. It takes a few dozen seconds just to reach the top of the wall, move over it, and then a similar length for the doggo to land.

With Biscuit's mana arms, it would take like a second, yet he seems proud. He looks around and then, with a cute wobbly stride, he heads into the city.

And I follow him.

Biscuit confidently walks between the people and he totally ignores them. Only once in a while does he sniff in the direction of merchants selling some food, yet, amazingly, he even ignores that.

He doesn't hurry, and it takes quite a long time for him to reach what looks like the poorer parts of the city. Then, the doggo walks into one of the darker alleys between two tall houses.

"The fuck is that?" an angry voice says from inside the alley, and the man tries to kick him.

Instead of the kick landing, at a dizzying speed, one of Biscuit's purple mana tentacles appears and hits the man, throwing him against the wall.

The man slides down and groans with pain. Biscuit then ignores him and continues to pass through the alley.

I carefully follow him, and when I get inside the alley, far behind Biscuit so he doesn't notice me, I stop in front of the man.

"Fuck, was that a shitty animal. Hey, you, stop looking around so creepily and help me," he says to me.

After looking at him for a moment I stomp on his shin, breaking his leg with an audible crack. The leg he tried to kick Biscuit with.

I ignore the man's painful cries and continue to follow him.

After a few more minutes, Biscuit stops and looks around. When he doesn't see anyone close by, he starts hovering again. The corgi-shaped blimp slowly floats right up, and after what feels like a minute, Biscuit reaches the roof of one of the houses and continues his wobbly walk on the roof.

Where is he going?

It doesn't take long for me to get my answer: It's food, obviously.

Dang it, Biscuit.

He reaches an older, big house that has a few smaller buildings nearby, and each of these small, barely room-sized buildings keeps spewing smoke from the chimney. Looking a bit longer, I identify them as smokehouses. Observing a bit more and watching people open and close them, I realize they are smoking deer meat.

Most likely, it's something similar to what I gave Biscuit, which made him pick me over Isabella's amazingly smelling, expensive-as-heck meat that I still want to try myself. But I've known Biscuit for a long time. His favorite snack seems to be deer meat, similar to the one we smoked on the first floor.

It's almost cute that the small animal prefers this kind of meat, most likely because of some fond memories from the first floor. It was at that moment he ate the meat of the deer monster that he started being different from a normal dog.

I watch as he spends a few more minutes floating toward one of the smokehouses. Biscuit then uses his mana arms to open it and grabs a few pieces of dried deer jerky with the same arms. The cute little doggo drools while doing so.

Then he creates another tiny mana arm that reaches into his clothes, the ones Isabella put on him, and pulls out a small piece of glass. It's similar to the mana stones they use as the currency here.

He must have seen people buying stuff with mana stones and wanted to do the same, not realizing that there's a big difference between a normal piece of glass and a mana stone.

Biscuit places the piece of glass in front of the smokehouse after closing it and then leaves the way he came.

I don't follow him this time and just take the longer way to get back to the house on the hill.

When I get back to my room, I find a few pieces of dried deer meat on the table next to my bed. Just from a glance, I realize it's more than half of the meat Biscuit was able to get today.

It's a sort of welcome gift, something that he considers extremely precious, yet he still wanted to share with me.

For a long time, I just sit there and stare at it.