That meant he still needed to get levels.
Not even that first kill that he lost his GODDAMN FOOT to get had netted him a level, and he needed to get twenty of them before he got a class. A class which, according to Acorn –he’d bothered to learn the boss fairy’s name – should provide him with a boost in power and the ability to specialize.
Specialization meant the ability to choose a focus that leaned away from foot-based combat arts like swordplay, archery, javelin throwing…pretty much anything that required muscle power had been compromised by lacking a foot.
He needed twenty levels, and he needed them fast, or else he was limping duck.
Which was why he’d decided to industrialize.
“Alright, pick up the pace,” Jeb said as he clomped back and forth along the defined edge of the Safe Zone, where a horde of fairies were using magic to dig a pit trap for Kruskers, tiny beads of sweat beading on their tiny brows as they concentrated on moving dirt with spade-like projections of Myst.
“Only closers get M&M’s. Are you a closer Leaf-Wind?”
“Yes sir, M&M lord!” Leaf-wind shouted, redoubling his efforts, flinging more dirt up and out.
“That’s right,” Jeb said with a nod. He’d taken the arguably unethical approach of paying the fairy with the most productivity an M&M at the end of each shift, leaving the others to stare on jealously, balling up their fists with impotent rage.
Unethical, but cost effective.
He’d heard about employers giving large bonuses to the top performing earners as a way of paying a relatively small amount while squeezing extra free labor out of their entire workforce by making them compete.
Too bad fairies don’t have unions.
“Wait, isn’t he just paying us one M&M for all of us to work as hard as we can?” one of the fairies asked. “Don’t we, on average, earn a tiny, tiny fraction of an M&M per shift?”
Oh, crap!
“Kid, I like you,” Jeb said, approaching the fairy. “What’s your name?”
“Smartass, M&M-Lord.”
“Listen Smartass. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You make a good point, but you failed to point out that…” Jeb said, holding up a delicious chocolate confection. “One of you could have the whole thing!”
“My pile’s the biggest!” One of the fairies said, standing proudly on a pile of dirt almost as tall as Jeb’s waist.
“Not if I have anything to say about it!” another shouted, throwing himself into digging, throwing shovelful after shovelful of dirt onto his own pile.
Good old capitalism.
Jeb turned his gaze back on the fairy giving him the stink-eye.
“Smartass, smartass, babe, your talents are wasted digging,” He said, taking the fairy over to the other side of the safe zone to negotiate.
It was there that he introduced Smartass to the sweet, sweet world of bribes and croney capitalism. All in exchange for being the voice of reason for the other fairies, keeping them competing against each other and not bothering thinking about difficult things like average payout and employee compensation.
I feel pretty bad about all this. If the fairies are anything to go by, humans are going to tear Pharos a new asshole.
Once his rule over the little folk was assured – he had enough M&Ms to last a month, conservatively – he applied himself to learning how to use his new magical powers more effectively, copying what the Fairies were doing and creating a phantom spade to literally shovel the dirt up and out with his mind.
After a little bit of experimentation, he found it was more efficient to seep the orange glowing magic evenly into the ground, freeze it in place, then yank it out in a great big chunk of earth, rather than use the magic like a shovel.
After a day, he was moving earth faster than the fairies, hollowing out chunks of ground about two feet deep and one in diameter, and growing.
Breath Myst in, Burn it, siphon the glowing corona around the star out, careful not to take from the star itself. He needed to keep growing the orb inside him, until the amount that he siphoned off of it without damaging its glow was substantial enough to be practically useful.
But when is that day coming? Because my time here is dwindling.
Between him and the fairies, it only took two days to get the holes dug, one more day to carve the wooden stakes and put them in the traps, and only a couple more hours to cover the holes reasonably well. A human might be able to tell something was up, but a krusker in the heat of a charge wouldn’t notice anything…hopefully.
Only gonna get one shot at this.
“Alright, next mission, people,” Jeb said, clapping his hands together. “Whosoever leads the most kruskers into the pit traps gets….a candy bar!” Jeb pulled a Snickers out of his pocket. It was the tiny sized one that comes as a side to the mac and cheese, but it was absolutely gigantic compared to a single M&M.
“It’s mine!”
“No, I shall be the one to obtain it!”
The fairies scattered in every direction, and in a matter of minutes, Jeb was confident he’d have the experience coming to him rather than having to risk life and limb to get it.
All he had to do was wait for them to fall into the hole, then stab them from above until they stopped moving. If he understood the way Fate or experience worked in this system, he’d be one the fast track to making up for a week and a half of lost time.
Doing things the smart way
