"Fucking heavens," Vespera said, hush-screaming. "So not only do the Great Races use any other race, monster or sentient, as slaves. But they consume them to gain classes, fattening them like pigs so that they may get better choices? This is insane!"
She had all the right to be angry, of course. At least she wasn't shouting, although I could feel eyes on us as we walked towards where we were supposed to do the debris cleanup job.
"That's not all," I said.
Her eyes lit up. "Right! Why did you have to buy that drunkard a drink? We are already in debt!"
Elyra was amused by her antics, although I could feel that she too was wondering about the money aspect. And, even though she was doing a good job of hiding it, the revelation of the true purpose of slavery had left her rather unsettled and angry. She was just better at hiding it than Vespera.
"Because we need allies, just in case. We already have eyes on us everywhere we go, we need to build a foundation."
"To heavens with the—" she began, only to pause when she realized that yes, people were shooting glances at us. Then a tremor shook the ceiling of the lithos block, and everyone's attention went there. "Alright," she whispered. "So what? We are strange. Do we really need an ally like Buck?"
"You never know what paying three copper bits to let an alcoholic have his fix can do for you down the line. Trust me. Ale is cheap enough, we can afford it."
"Sol," Elyra said. "What is the other thing you wanted to mention?"
"Class tiers," I said. "I almost slipped up when I asked Buck about them, but we got good info."
"Right…" she said. "And our class does not have a tier."
"Good change of topic back there," Vespera said with a smirk. "You really are good."
We kept talking about this and that, speculating about classes and making plans to buy healing supplies before our next tour outside, until we finally reached one of the checkpoints between city blocks. We crossed over, and for a moment we were surrounded by nothing but thick stone and the booming sound of battle outside.
"Unsettling," Vespera muttered. "All this stone feels more like a tomb than protection."
Then we were on the other side. This neighborhood was brighter than the other, with less smoke hanging by the ceiling. Instead of torches, glowing crystals lit the narrow roads, and there were even sparse trees. Their canopies were anemic due to the low light, but they gave a semblance of normalcy.
"The job site should be around here," I said, taking a turn in a back alley. "There."
The alley was a dead end, opening into a field of debris from a collapsed house. People were still tearing down a couple of remaining walls, being careful not to kick up too much dust. I saw a person casting what looked like air magic, controlling the currents to make sure the demolition didn't make all the air in the city block unbreathable, while another mage applied water to achieve the same effect. Most of the other people were using all sorts of powers to demolish the bricks and stones, in a strange mismatch of magical effects.
Most of them were not professionals, nor were they used to working together, and it showed.
Finally, a burly dwarf approached us. "You are the Waste-to-Resource specialist?"
I nodded, handing him the guild sheet. The dwarf took it and read it through. "Right. First time doing a job in the city?"
"Ah, actually," I said, deciding to play the part rather than hiding the fact that I was new. "First time doing a job at all."
The dwarf didn't lose composure. He gave the girls a cursory scan with his eyes, nodding to himself. "Just got some slaves, and then the tide hit, eh? Talk about bad timing. For you, that is. For me? Tides mean a lot of cheap help, hehe."
His laugh was cut short by something that bothered him a great deal. "Hey you two!" he yelled, waving his short arms around like a madman. "What the hells—lad," he said, turning to me. "I need to go handle those guild buffs. I swear most of the workers are uncivilized bastards. I trust you ain't one of them, are you lad? If this your first job, then you better do it properly and build a good reputation."
Despite his stern words, his face was relaxed. He even had a hint of a smile.
"Of course," I said with a nod. "Just tell me what needs to be done."
"See all this rubble? Basic pay is if you take it all to the dump. There's a cart by the road, and you can use the wheelbarrows. But you're a specialist, are you not? Anything you can convert, salvage, transmutate or otherwise sell, you get to keep a 10% cut. Gotta go before those idiots turn the construction site into a battlefield. Funny people but… lad. Don't become like them. Keep to your own, behave and make me happy, and you might get yourself a lot more jobs in the near future."
With that, he ran away to shout orders and curses to some of the workers still attempting to tear down the far walls. From what I could hear, the dwarf was having the time of his life yelling at them. I thought he would be pissed that the workers had turned the job into a dick-measuring contest where they showed off their destruction capabilities, rather than respecting the regulations, but he was more amused than anything. He let them sort things out between them, even organizing some sort of contest, and only after did he force them to fix all the damage they caused. Genius.
"So that's how you handle workers… I dislike them more and more," Vespera said. "He's right. Don't turn into them or I'll smack some sense into you."
"Pff," I waved her off. "You are more likely to turn into them than I am."
She elbowed me. "Yo, wanna throw hands?"
"See?"
Before the situation could degenerate into more banter, Elyra put a stop to it. "Enough of that," she said. "Sol, how do you wish to proceed? There is a lot of rubble. I do not think we can get it all moved in a day."
The base pay was a silver, so even if we managed, it barely went to cover our daily interest on the loan we took. But we had not come here to do a basic job. Like the dwarf said, I was a specialist.
"You two sit down and make yourselves comfortable. I'll handle it."
They wanted to argue, but I didn't let them. So what if people looked at us? It was inevitable, and I wasn't going to have the girls do the work while I sat and watched, like some of the other guild workers. I commandeered a wheelbarrow and began to sort through all the rubble. It was surprisingly easy, [Heavy Load Bearing] immediately coming to the rescue and making the job three times easier.
"Are you sure you don't need help, Sol?" Elyra asked.
"Nope," I said. "I'm quite experienced in moving rubble, as you know. I spent quite a lot of time practicing when I decided to save two beauties from being buried alive for all eternity."
She blushed and looked away while Vespera was quite busy glaring at the other workers any time they tried to as much as glance in our direction. Through the bond, I could feel the sadistic pleasure she felt any time they got yelled at by the dwarf in charge of the building site. Since I was getting quite hot and sweaty, I decided to throw my shirt at her as a prank.
That made people turn in our direction with a veritable variety of looks on their faces.
"Hey!" she snapped at me.
She balled the shirt up, made a motion to throw it, but then caught herself. Her mouth contorted, her fangs showing through for a moment while Elyra laughed her ass off to the side.
"She stopped when she saw the dwarf look in our direction!" the angel woman said between giggles. "Vespera! Scared into silence by a—ow!"
My shirt landed square on her face. When she pulled it off, her face was contorted in righteous anger, but then the anger turned to mischief as she stared right at the demon woman who had thrown it at her. Not breaking eye contact, she brought the shirt to her nose and… sniffed it.
She moaned. "Mm, smells like Sol."
"It's sweaty!" Vespera snapped. "And dirty!"
Elyra sniffed it again. "But it is soooo good…"
The demon tried to resist, but her resolve crumbled quickly. "Give it back!" she demanded. "It's not fair!"
"What? You threw it at me, demon. It is only fair."
"No it's not. I wanna sniff it too!"
There, now the girls were busy bantering with each other. After a while, Elyra finally threw the shirt at Vespera and the demon got her sniff.
"Elyra! You twisted angel! You purified it!"
I laughed and turned back to my work. Before long, I had the first pile of material to transmute with my [Matter Reclamation] skill. I hadn't tested it much, and didn't know its limits, but I figured that the better the starting point, the more value it could extract from whatever it consumed. It had done a wonderful job with the mutated bear monster and, while it failed to do anything to the slime cores, I had high hopes.
Going by the name—matter reclamation—it felt rather suited for this kind of job anyway.
"Maybe we can even try to share our mana!" Vespera chimed in. "Didn't Elyra say she felt something last time, with the slimes? Perhaps we can figure out what went wrong?"
"Sure we can," the angel in question replied. "We can start by Sol casting normally and you paying attention? Last time you didn't even feel the tug on your mana pool. How can you expect to help if you aren't even aware that you can?"
Vespera glared at her. "Sol is right, you are a feisty cat. Worry not, little angel, I'm paying a lot of attention. Especially at Sol's glistening, sweaty back. Look at those rippling muscles."
She licked her lips, and I decided to ignore her. Walking towards the pile of stuff, I prepared to cast the skill, when a voice startled me.
"You're a weird trio," it said, right over my ear.