The Insider System

Chapter 116: The Grind Pt.2

Lake had just finished the twentieth set of ingredients which meant he was halfway to being done but he was having a hard time pouring the powder into the canisters they were slowly filling because they were almost at the top, and he didn't want to spill any onto the floor. Turning to ask if they should start to fill new canisters he saw the servant was walking over with some completed powder.

Lake saw them start to screw the tops on the canister, and put them on a scale before writing the weight on each of them and pulling out a new set of canisters. This made it so he didn't need to ask anything so he got back to work. He guessed they would carry these up stairs at a set time later, and they weren't supposed to do it whenever they finished a set of canisters.

Getting back to work Lake just passed the last half of work by working. Total the 40 sets probably took 5 hours. Lake could see why the guild didn't force the members of the spire to do such tedious work and let them conduct whatever form of research they wished.

If they forced someone like Millie to waste five hours a day there was no way she would have been able to push her food to such an extreme, and it might have also made her too busy to ever even have the idea in the first place. It also made Lake wonder if Lucas had understood what he had meant when he said he wanted to do something for the guild.

Lake had wanted an interesting and possibly dangerous mission that he could do that might have him outside the guild. In Lake's mind he was going to be assassinating some evil general or something, but instead he was in a small poisonous room with a mean person who hated him.

It really felt like his talent was being wasted but he understood he was working his way into the Master Lab. Lake had been inside once before and it had been a great show of Alchemy and what it could do if you were to push it to its highest point. Spending time there would probably be the most fun he could have while he was stuck inside.

"Hey I'm done with what I was told to do. Do you want me to continue to work, or should I leave?" The answer would tell Lake if the servant liked to work alone, or if they preferred help. Lake didn't get an answer at all though so he didn't really learn anything. He was going to ask a bunch of times until he got an answer but decided to just sit down.

If the person told him to get to work that would mean they wanted him to help and if they never said anything he would get to sit down. It would also annoy them if they wanted him to leave. They had asked him to help carry the ingredients up later, but he was pretty sure they just wanted help because they were so old, and would have to make multiple trips to get nine canisters upstairs.

Lake knew that even if you had high stats you started to decline as you got older just like in the world he came from, and by the looks of it there was no way they weren't over eighty. This made him think there was a chance that the servant couldn't hear him very well. Some of their other behavior had been rude but if they couldn't hear him half the time it would make them a classic grumpy old man.

Lake could probably get them to talk to him if he was just careful of what he said. Right when Lake was walking over to start a conversation he stopped himself. He realized he was obsessing over this old man for no reason. It had to be because he had gotten accustomed to people being nice to him so now that someone was being mean he wanted their affection.

It was an embarrassing thing to realize about yourself; that you wanted someone's attention just because you couldn't handle some old idiot not liking you. Lake went and sat back down. He knew he was only focusing on this old person's behavior so much because he had nothing to do and his obsession didn't have some deep meaning.

He would Like to know their name though so he could look into them later after he left. Lake was pretty sure this person was probably Master Nancom's servant, so he could probably use that to get their name. Lake stopped himself again because he realized he was still doing it. This was getting weird, it was like there was something about this old guy that was making him fixate on them.

What made him think this was that he usually didn't care about anyone enough to give them more than a few minutes of his time but he had been thinking about this old guy for most of the last five hours. It made sense to Lake that this old guy would have a skill that made people see him differently because Lake had a skill like this called Mean Mug.

It meant so far he had figured out that this old guy was rude, couldn't hear very well, and most likely had a skill Like Mean Mug that affected how people saw him, oh and that he probably served Nancom. This was everything he would need to find out this guy's name later. He could probably ask Lucas right after this.

There was probably something like employee files that Lucas had access to that Lake could get his hands on. Lake realized he was doing it again and there was no reason he should want to know this guy's name so bad. Lake didn't think this was anything he needed to be afraid of but still decided to leave, so he could get his mind straight.

On his way out he couldn't help but think how a skill that did this to people could help with a job. It was most likely something to do with Charisma, but it didn't make Lake like the guy, just want to find out more about him. It was like the skill made people think the old guy was some form of mysterious figure.

Lake guessed it might have been true at one point in the guy's life, but he didn't think the old guy had much going on any more. Lake thought that might be what it was that the old guy had been some awesome person in the past who had gotten a skill that made him more enigmatic for whatever reason.

The only thing with this explanation was Lake couldn't really see how this could ever be a positive thing. For example if you were a spy you wouldn't want people to have the instinct to look into you out of nowhere. Was it possible that there were negative skills because it sounded ridiculous.

Imagine you were grinding Exp for weeks to max out your job only to gain a skill that completely ruined your ability to ever work in that field ever again. There was no way that could be the case meaning it was probably something to do with a curse maybe. Lake knew there were all sorts of curses from the way people talked about them, but he didn't understand why someone would make a curse that did something like that instead of killing the target.

Lake guessed there were probably people that didn't like to kill people so they used nonlethal curses to weaken their enemies instead of killing them. Lake stopped thinking about this to see if he would be able to know that he was out of the room. Sitting down on the stairs once he saw the effect wore off as soon as he was away from the old man Lake decided he could just wait here to help carry the canisters upstairs.

This would allow him to still enter the Master Lab while not only being able to think about that old guy. This experience had been odd and had also been hard to notice. The worst part was Lake didn't understand how you were supposed to defend against things that messed with your mind directly like that. He bet the only reason he noticed at all was his high Intelligence so maybe that was how you defended against mind altering attacks. That made sense to Lake, but he still felt like he should make an effort to learn more about mind control and curses the next time he was in the library.

After a while Lake saw the old guy step out of the room with a canister in his hands. Lake jumped up and stretched out his hands like he was saying let me take that for you but when the old servant just walked past him Lake walked in and grabbed another of the full ones. Lake wasn't sure if he was supposed to bring any of these up right now but there was no way for him to ask with the old guy already on the way upstairs.