"Hurry up, Augustus, we don't have all day to wait for you to loot!"
'Instead of sitting around and waiting for me to finish, you could help!' is what Augustus wanted to say, but he only said it to himself. He cursed his dungeon party as he ran from corpse to corpse, grabbing the items in the loot chest that lay at their feet, while they sat around.
He was part of an up-and-coming dungeon group. Well, to say he was a member of the party was a stretch. They hired him because he was the cheapest support they could find. So realistically, he was a contractor that they kept around because it was easier and the cost was negligible.
This was his first support job, and he had severely undercut himself on price.
Augustus himself was an adventurer, but because his beginner awakening was, as he thought, quite useless; he was unwanted as a mainstay in any dungeon group.
The minor experience he had leached off the party's battles was pathetic. This now being his fifth run with this group, he had only just now reached a measly level three. Because leveling was an exponential curve with no end, he had a long road ahead of him if this was his means of experience gain.
As Augustus, who preferred to be called Aug, crouched down in front of the last corpse, a goblin, and grabbed the loot, he took a quick rest. In this dungeon, the battles were very one-sided, taking thirty seconds maximum. Conversely, the looting, because he was alone, took up to five minutes. This meant he had spent most of his time that day running, with very little rest in between.
But as soon as the group's resident asshole and tank, Frank, saw him resting, he kicked his ass, literally, with his steel boots. This caused him to cascade forward, landing headfirst into the dead goblin.
Aug looked up at Frank. Most of the party was laughing, but Frank found himself the funniest.
"Get up, you useless sack of shit, we are moving on."
Aug had a hard time taking this kind of bullying on the chin. If it were a fair fight, Aug would have beaten him into a fine paste and not looked back.
Aug was no small man; he was tall, much taller than average, muscular, tanned, had short crimson red hair, green eyes, and was remarkably handsome, but this meant shit.
Unfortunately for him, Frank had awakened his beginner class of [Iron Skin], making the theoretical fight very one-sided.
Aug, on the other hand, had awakened a class that no one, not even he, understood. His beginner class, [Corpse Collector].
This was not something he publicly spoke of, so the party had assumed he had a trash class. Naturally, he figured his class gave him the ability to gather loot faster, but he had yet to see any sort of advantage.
Aug was tired; it had been a long day of grinding, so he took a second to get up. When he got up, the goblin's corpse was gone. He tilted his head. Had he pushed it away? Aug shrugged and ran after the group.
A few hours later, the dungeon concluded, and Aug received his fee: a measly 100 steel coins, and in exchange he handed over the loot pack. The loot pack contained about ten silver coins' worth of loot, which was 1000 times what he had been paid. Unfortunately, because of the loot rules the leader could set on entry, people couldn't steal items in this dungeon. Otherwise, he might have pocketed something to make up for his terrible rate.
He put the coins into his personal inventory, sighing at how little he had got for all that work.
The party had planned for another day of grinding tomorrow in the F-ranked dungeon, [Goblin World]. This would be the sixth consecutive day of his week-long contract, and Aug was exhausted, but he needed the money. He had spent all of his funds on registering with the Adventurers' Guild and opening his market account.
Aug then drove home to his apartment, sore from his day's work. Although he owned a car and an apartment, he was not well-off at all. His parents had died last year in a dungeon and had left all their assets to him. If it hadn't been for that, he would have had nothing.
There were two routes in life you could take since the convergence. First was to be a normal citizen and keep the world running, or second, be an adventurer and keep the world safe. Both were essential, and Aug had always aspired to be an adventurer. He just got unlucky with his level 1 beginner class and had hoped his level 25 novice class would make him more useful.
When Aug got home, he changed and laid on his bed, already keen to sleep. Before he slept, he always looked at his status screen:
[Augustus Saturn]
[Level 2 - (1) Pending level up]
[Class: Corpse Collector (Beginner)]
[Abilities: Corpse Collection (Level 1)]
[Stats: Shield: 10/10. Mana: 10/10. Energy: 2/10.]
[Major Bonuses: Dexterity: 1, Strength: 1, Intellect: 0, Luck: 0, Speed: 0, Perception: 0]
[Minor Bonuses: None]
[Equipment: None]
Aug got excited for a second; he had forgotten he had levelled up. He accepted the level up and put his one skill point into intellect. All his stats also went up by five points, to fifteen.
The increase in intellect was not noticeable, as expected. When it is possible to get thousands of points, one point meant very little.
As he stared at his major bonuses, reality returned, and he realised how far he had to go to be even considered for a guild.
Aug closed his status screen and sighed. He opened his inventory and looked at the 255 steel coins or 2.55 bronze coins he had. Thankfully, that would be enough to eat for a few days.
His journey was to keep him eating, earn him a better life, and to avenge his parents' death; he needed to remember these things.
The personal inventory was much like a wallet or a bag; it carried all of your stuff. Aug looked for his phone in his inventory. It was the last thing he had put in, so this meant it should be at the top, but this time it wasn't.
The first item was a [goblin corpse].
Aug reeled with disgust. This must be a mistake. Dungeon instances prevented the removal of whole corpses, but this did not mean they were useless. Sometimes, if you plucked a feather from a dungeon bird, you would get a [Bird Feather] item, but the chances of this were negligible. You could spend hours picking every feather out without getting one item, so most adventurers did not bother.
Aug raced to his bathroom and stood in the bathtub. He did not want blood on his bed or in his bedroom from what he was about to do.
Aug winced, pulling the goblin's body out of his inventory. The goblin, a small, smelly, green creature mortally wounded by the party's swordsman, Alistair, was now slumped in his bathtub. The hole in its gut was dripping blood and seeping organs, its stench flowing downward towards the plughole.
He jumped out of the bathtub hysterically. He was not scared of dead bodies or goblins, but it was more that he now understood the actual meaning of his abilities and had disgusted himself slightly.
Aug closed the shower curtain and paced the bathroom for a few minutes, uncertain what to do. Should he just take the goblin back into his inventory and discreetly dump it tomorrow? In the end, a few minutes later, this was his decision.
Aug slowly opened the shower curtain and peered at the goblin. Suddenly, a blue outline appeared around the goblin, shocking Aug.
He shook his head and opened his status screen once again.
So dejected with his slow progress, he had neglected to notice two new skills he had received at level three.
[Corpse Scan (Level 1)] and [Corpse Processing (Level 1)].
Aug closed his screen and looked at the goblin once more, and his eyes lit up. Was this the break he needed?