Chapter 98: Competitions

Ren won in the end, which wasn’t really that big of a surprise. Ren was just much more level-headed and had a strategy in most of his moves, which was impressive considering he was so young.

He wondered how he grew up to grow up like that. He also had a certain bearing to him, whether it was in his words or how he ate, he was actually like a noble.

On the other hand, the actual noble was a bit more crass. Aaron obviously knew the rules and etiquette (he could surmise the etiquette by observing them) though but when he got emotional, he’d tend to forget.

For example, during meals, whenever Ren would make one comment that would trigger Aaron’s competitiveness (Finn had a vague inkling that Ren did it on purpose sometimes), Aaron would lose manners and talk with his mouth full.

Finn shook his head, just finding it all endearing. He looked at the boys with varying levels of injuries. Before breakfast, Ren and Aaron were at least relatively unharmed, and only Zachary was careless and often went outside the barrier.

Now, due to their bet, the other two also passed the barrier a lot. Their HP and Mana were probably less than half their full at this time.

“I don’t recommend you leaving the Inn in that state,” he said. “Why don’t you stay for another night?”

The nearest town was still probably two days away, after all. If they were to leave, they should have full stats.

“Well, the inn would regenerate you quickly. I’m sure you could tell already, even if you exhaust yourself completely with low HP, you should be okay within several hours.”

Well, according to them (he asked while they were eating), awakened levels generally recover around 20 HP per hour. Top that with the inn’s regeneration buff as well as the rooms’ and the essence food’s, then it could really be reduced to several hours.

They nodded. They had been wanting to discuss this, but they were wondering if it was a secret or something. After all, something like this was akin to temples and better than Healing Halls, which were extremely difficult to monopolize. Now… they just had to pay a few gold and get so many perks?!

While the three were reeling in the possibilities, Finn looked at the huge amount of meat in front of them. “So how are we handling all these?”

“We don’t really have a use for them, other than the cores. You can have the rest of them.”

He looked at them. “If you help me butcher these monsters on top of that, I can let you stay for free for a day.”

“What?” Aaron asked, while the other two looked at him.

They were more shocked about being able to stay for free, but Finn assumed that they were in a hurry to get back home and tried to convince them.

“You should’ve seen how amazing the barrier was, right?” he said. “How productive have you been? Let alone the cores you could gather, just think of the time you saved from going around and resting without much recovery.”

“How many cores would you get a day on average, when outside?”

It was Ren who explained the productivity of people hunting in the danger zone.

Core appeared in approximately 10% of the same type or rank monsters, and common adventurers or mercenaries could defeat 2 to 3 same-level monsters per hour of fighting (better ones could go over five). This included the breathing times and the times they had to hide and run.

The assumption here was that the person was working at least 25 of the 30-hour days. This was working in the wild and fighting almost nonstop with tense breaks and shallow sleep in between. It was extremely exhausting.

This meant that an average fighter would kill 50 to a hundred or so monsters of the same level a day, assuming they didn’t get injured or die, and they’d receive five to ten cores from that. If they had a good team, this could increase by a few cores per person.

This was outside the barrier, without the help of his inn.

Finn smiled. “Just this early morning, how many cores did you manage to get?”At the question, Ren and Aaron looked at each other again, no doubt to compete about this, too. They rushed to their respective monsters and started butchering them, they forced Zachary and the goblins to watch over them to avoid cheating (as if someone would add an extra core hidden in their pockets or something).

As expected, Aaron was a bit more crude in his butchering, splattering blood everywhere, while Ren’s was cleaner. Anyway, the place where cores were found would always be in the heart, so they didn’t take too long.

They fought for about 4 to 5 hours in total today, including the pre-breakfast session. This amount of time outside would’ve earned other people one or two, and more skilled ones (like them) three or four.

The two’s smiles widened the moment they passed that number early on, and then they felt smug when they announced their total scores.

Aaron smiled. “I got 14.”

Zed nodded, looking cool. “I got 15.”

“WHAT? No way—”

“Ahem,” Finn cleared his throat, pulling the two young men back to the conversation. “You see? Your productivity could almost match a day’s hard work for a few hours, and your HP is still high, too.”

The trio gulped. A day’s productivity in a few hours. Better yet: They were relaxed, unharmed, and full!

Mercenaries did not go to the danger zone often.

They just had more lucrative jobs in the safe zone and just bought some from the market when needed. When they did have to—sometimes for a job, sometimes to continue maintaining strength—they dreaded it. So much.

Who wouldn’t? It was literally torturing yourself!

But now…that wasn’t the case anymore!

Finn smiled. “So…can you stay for a while longer?”

“And…does anyone want to spar with me?”

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