But for a Slime

Joe's return home was actually with a bit of exuberance, jaunty and confident and led to a satisfied afternoon. He spent it with Garnedell practicing and training him before being joined, once again, by 'slime guy' for the evening wash. Seeing how much washing Joe was needing to do, he almost considered building a small wash house, but then realized the effort would cost him significant time, and settled for continuing his outdoor bathing until he had achieved his minimum stats. He only had a year to set himself up, and he wasn't looking forward to the coming winter where he would need to continue his hunt.

The two bade farewell to their fellow bather and returned to the inn for the evening, enjoying another excellent meal and a very slow language exchange which was now beginning to leave Joe a bit exasperated. The language was alien to a degree that frustrated him. I am on an alien world… I just need to be glad I can communicate at all! Joe sent the boy to bed, but chose to take an evening stroll through village. He was a bit too wired, although he was only out for a few moments before he felt the pull of sleep, and Joe gratefully returned to his bed to sleep.

The next morning had them up again, but they stopped by the blacksmith to pick up the boy's spoon spear. They returned to the forest shortly after to repeat the entire day. Bartender hit level five, the boy killed another six or so slimes on their return home with his new spoon spear which he wielded quite adroitly, and Joe changed to another new job when he returned. He was a bit surprised to find bartenders had a bonus to wisdom and strength, not quite understanding why that was, but shrugged the whole thing off. Little made sense here, and he was now at the point of just accepting what he found and trying to exploit it for his gain as much as possible. His new job was chef, and he really didn't spend any thought on it before returning home to complete the evening as usual: training Garnedell, bathing with 'slime guy,' and retiring for dinner and repose at the inn.

The next four days seemed to blur into each other, each one repeating almost identically with only the change of jobs being the marked difference. He made his way through five levels of chef, day laborer, inn keeper, and reeve. He thought little of it, and powered his way through. He had to pay the priest another time for another set of changes by this time, and decided to bring another skin of wine to grease the priest's irritable attitude. Each afternoon was spent in training with Garnedell and each evening was spent bathing with 'slime guy' and the boy, as usual. By now, 'slime guy' seemed completely capable of bathing himself without any help or advice from Garnedell, and the three were able to spend the time lounging in the spring with some companionable silence, although Joe found the silence annoying. He had tried to break it up with a conversation of his own, but the other two didn't seem to share his verbosity and soon he found himself joining them in their somber quiet.

The four jobs, chef, day laborer, inn keeper, and reeve, didn't add anything unusual, although he did gain a bit of the needed intelligence from chef and reeve, both giving two points towards IQ instead of the common one. Inn keeper did surprise him with giving just a little more luck, but other than that, none of the new jobs seemed notable in the least. Joe dutifully took notes of each of the jobs, marking down the basic stats he gained from each one so he could plan for his future growth and was careful to check for any job skills that may come, but was once again completely disappointed by absolutely nothing. How can I be disappointed by nothing.

Their hunting for his reeve job came to an end, and Joe called Garnedell back to him as they returned back to the road, once again letting Garnedell practice killing a few slimes. Maybe he'll be able to do the whole thing by himself now. Even staking the slime to the ground? Joe considered, but decided to let it pass. He didn't want to put the boy in danger, and the slimes really seemed to jump pretty fast and hard. Joe wasn't certain Garnedell would be able to react in enough time.

On their return back to the village, Joe glanced over the stats for each of the four jobs he had just gained in the last four days, using his notebook to check. He had to extrapolate for the first three, being able to know their current level five values simply by multiply what he had written down in his notebook. Things weren't so bad… but it wasn't so… great either. He was plowing quickly through the jobs, but all of these jobs were…poor at best. He really needed to find something a bit more advanced, or he would be trudging his way through a depressing round after round of meaningless jobs.