Do not feed the animals!

Silas always laughed when he saw such signs, and the meme-worthy captions and pictures people added to the images. He laughed at the idiots who ignored such signs and fed the wild animals, thinking themselves brave and adventurous. He once watched a two hour video of nothing but idiots running away from wild animals considered safe only by the fools in question.

He made a mental note to summon a portable printer, just to print himself a sign later.

Silas shouldn't have fed the rats.

Not that he fed them, exactly, but he shouldn't have left food out. It wasn't hygienic. His Inventory kept warm food warm and cold food cold, so there was no good reason to leave food out.

Not that he could have stopped the rats from taking their prizes, either. For all his magical capabilities, combat wasn't really his thing. …Not yet.

Did he want combat to be his thing?

Not really. He wanted to be left alone with his laptop and creature comforts.

But with a sea of rats on his literal doorstep, combat might need to become his thing.

As for what else he had? He had mana. Lots, in fact.

The mana around his cell had grown dense enough for him to notice it this morning. Already his new skill Mana Sense rose to level 9, where it sat.

There was something about that, something about the skills which he didn't understand, as no matter what he tried his other skills refused to make the jump from 19 to 20. Thinking back, some skills had stalled for a bit at level 9 as well. Maybe the experience required for skills to cross some threshold every ten levels was just—

Rats.

They didn't say anything—of course they didn't. They all stood there, silent, a sea of vermin watching him with their big black eyes, staring as if they could see into his soul.

And, because of course they did, they had brought back two empty pizza boxes and shoved them through the bars into his cell, as if he would even touch the defiled cardboard for the brief contact required to banish them to his Inventory.

What eats rats? Snakes? He needed to summon a batch of— Probably not the way to go.

Nor did continuing to feed them seem like a good idea. He could teach them to— No, he didn't think teaching them to cook would help. First he'd need to find some French rats to teach him how to cook, and just thinking about the necessary hijinks he'd have to go through to reach a level of skill the French rats would find acceptable exhausted him.

Although… Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he tried something just a bit stupid, first?

He'd need a way to talk to the locals sooner or later. Might as well work on that now.

Could he scam the system again? Of course he could, from the right angle.

Holding up a hand for the rats, telling them to wait, he sat down with his laptop and fired up one of his favorite games.

In the Watcher series, the player controlled Gerald of River, the White Fox, to run around and kill monsters with swords and magic and potions. The games were great, but everyone who spoke Polish said the games were better in their original Polish. Silas made the change in the settings. He needed to play the game in Polish.

He needed to understand the intent of the game's original creators, not that of the underpaid team who translated the game into English. He had some Japanese and Russian games too, games he really needed to understand in their original language to properly enjoy. Likely the locals played games too, of some sort. He would need to be able to communicate with them too, with everyone he might come across. Heck, he needed to be able to communicate with the rats, because they might have games he could play, too.

He pushed hard on Gaming Necessities with his intent until the message appeared.

Skill Gained: Universal Translator! +1 XP!

With a grin he turned back to his laptop. He was going to play the The Watcher in Polish!

An annoying series of squeaks forced Silas to pause his game. The piercing noises bypassed his earbuds like he wasn't even wearing them, the meaning behind the squeaks understood as if he grew up speaking with rats.

"Hold, you peppermint brains! If the Source wants to ignore us, he ignores us. I don't want to see another tail out of formation!"

Silas saved his game after checking his messages. Eighteen skill ups and another level, for only… He'd been playing for six hours? No wonder he was hungry. Pizza time.

He turned to the waiting horde of rats. No way to know who was giving those orders. Yet there was something. Some of the rats felt a bit…denser?

Skill Mana Sense reached Level 10! +1 XP!

Yup. Denser mana in the bigger rats.

Also, he crossed the nine to ten threshold after figuring out a facet of how to use the skill. Yet he didn't think that was what held back all his skills sitting at 19. He had an idea to try later, maybe.

First, rats.

He found the biggest one, in size and mana density, standing right at the front.

"I don't run a charity. Bring me—" Saying 'valuables' might get him items the rats valued. What did he knew held value in this world? "Gold coins. One box of pizza per gold coin. And keep the boxes. I don't want your trash."

The rat too big to fit inside a bread box blinked once. "Five per gold."

It wanted to bargain? "One per five gold. Or do you have someone else willing to sell you food?"

After a pause, the rat big enough to eat a newborn puppy whole replied, "One per one is fair."

Silas nodded. "Bet your whiskers it is."

Skill Gained: Bargaining! +1 XP!

"We have other coins," it added as a non sequitur.

"I have other food," Silas replied in kind, keeping a straight face.

"Coins for food?" asked the oversized rat.

"I'm not going to do this all day, every day. I have better things to do than make food for rats, so you need to make it worth my while."

"Platinum for cheese?" offered the rat after a lengthy pause.

The other rats all squeaked in excitement. "Cheese!" "Cheese!" "Cheese, where cheese?" "Cheese please!" "Me cheese!" "Yes please!" "Ma? What's platinum? Is it tasty?"

That…seemed like a fair deal to Silas. "Sure. What kind do you want?"

After the crowd was dispersed, the hallway cleaned of rat leavings from overly-excited rats, negotiations had resumed. Apparently the concept of different types of cheese was new, to rats at least.

Ten large wheels of cheese, sealed in wax, traded for ten platinum coins every morning. Silas would make as many varieties as he could, until asked otherwise. This required him to make notes on what types of cheese he made every day, including what markings he came up with to distinguish the wax wrappers, as the color-blind rats couldn't read.

He also learned the values for the local coinage, made simple for the fact each coin had its value stamped on one side. Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, each one in line worth a hundred times more than the previous. Each coin also had a "big" version worth ten times the regular one. An iron coin was worth one "throne," the local version of a dollar, or more functionally like the Japanese yen.

Indeed, this meant he was going to be paid a Big Platinum every morning, worth 1,000,000,000 thrones.

…He was probably, most definitely, overcharging the rats for a few wheels of cheese. The big rat even seemed aware it was paying well over market value, but it also didn't care. Rats couldn't eat coins, of which they had apparently gathered quite the hoard over the years. A lost coin here, a forgotten coin there, and soon enough you were multi-billionaires, or so the unusually large rat claimed. In any case, it seemed all the good places to eat disappeared recently. Quite the problem for the city's rat population.

Silas hoped the city hadn't been wiped out or something. Then again, he did like the peace and quiet down here in his cell—the other prisoners seemed awfully quiet lately, for some reason.

At Silas's insistence, he received his first cheese payment up front to prove the rats had the coinage, in the form of 9 Platinum, 9 Big Gold, 9 Gold, 9 Big Silver, 9 Silver, 9 Big Copper, 9 Copper, 9 Big Iron, and 10 Iron coins, with first his cheese delivery happening tomorrow morning. After, he wouldn't care what form the rats' payment took, as long as it was money he could spend. …Not that he had anything he needed to buy, but better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. He also insisted on the payment involving no more than double the number of coins he received today. For all he knew they might try to drag a billion iron coins into his cell.

The coins of each type stacked into a single Inventory slot, which was handy. Newly created items did the same, now, but they hadn't when he first started out. Either the skill changed as Inventory had improved, or his conjuring skills became more consistent. Opened or partially eaten items, however, required their own slots. Too unique, he guessed. Even the empty cans and bottles. Still, he had his Inventory level of rows and his Will value of columns, or 19 by 17, meaning…323 slots, currently.

With the rats finally gone, after purchasing five of his unwanted pizzas with less than ideal toppings from his Inventory for the price of a measly five gold coins, Silas figured he would spend the rest of the day summoning at least five days' worth of cheese wheels so he wouldn't have to bother dealing with this every morning.

He focused on the idea of a wheel of mild cheddar cheese sealed in basic red wax with a black five pointed star on each side.

…When nothing happened he pushed harder, trying to utilize all 17 points of his Will.

…He needed the cheese, because… Because he was playing a game with the rats! Money for cheese was such a fun game!

…Not even he believed that…

…He needed cheese to sell, so he could spend more time gaming and less time working!

He could feel his skill accept the idea, the barrier preventing him from using his skill disappearing as if it was never there.

+1 Will!

A wheel of wax-covered cheese appeared before a grinning Silas. He had done it!

He took a few minutes to summon a few more wheels of cheddar since they stacked. Even if the rats didn't prefer cheddar, which he highly doubted, it was one of his favorites.

How many types of cheese could he come up with, anyhow?

Cheddar—mild, medium, sharp, extra sharp, white, sharp white, extra sharp white, longhorn, rat trap(!), aged, aged white, and probably more. Colby. Colby Jack. Monterrey Jack. Swiss—baby and regular. Mozzarella. Parmesan. Romano. Asiago. Gouda. Blue. Gorgonzola. Limburger. Feta. …And so many more.

With a sigh he stopped and opened up a spreadsheet. Might as well make a list he could sort in various ways and come up with some sort of pattern system for the wax casings. …What a pain.

He considered the star shape he used on the cheddar wheel. If he assigned each number a symbol, that would be easier for him to keep track of. He could just number his efforts and convert the numbers to symbols for the rats to read.

0, a circle, ○. 1, a vertical bar, |. 2, a plus sign, +. 3, a triangle, △. 4, a square, ☐. 5, a five pointed star, ☆. 6, a club, ♧. 7, a heart, ♡. 8, a diamond, ♢. 9, a spade, ♤.

…He felt like he might just as well teach them numbers or add sixteen more symbols, define each a letter, or just go all out and teach the rats to read at this point, but whatever. He wasn't going to teach them the meaning of the symbols, just use them to label his products. That way when they told him they wanted more of the 'heart triangle' cheese, he could refer back to his 73rd batch and make another. This was a perfectly reasonable and normal thing to do when selling a variety of cheeses to rats, he decided, trying to not overthink it.

He set up a spreadsheet tab with a few columns and a little script to help him convert any string of numbers into the symbols for him. Preparing to convert infinitely long numbers might have been overkill, but it was easier to come up with something future-proof than it would be to need to update the spreadsheet later on. That would be a real pain.

After listing out every cheese he could think of, he pulled up his collection of ebooks. He'd developed quite the archive over the years, liking the idea of having as much knowledge as possible at his fingertips. Surely one of the books contained a list of cheeses? He probably wouldn't be able to summon something he'd never tasted, but it couldn't hurt to try.

[Status] Silas Aegis Dircks 11y 3s 15d 22h L9 (128/165 XP) H: 11/11 (15/day rest) S: 11/11 (15/min rest) M: 16/16 (-3) (19% eff.) AP: 9 STR: 08 WIL: 17 AGI: 10 WIT: 17 END: 11 SPI: 19 VIT: 15 AFF: 19 PER: 14 CHA: 09 SP: 8 Gaming 19 Gaming Necessities 19 Interface 19 Inventory 19 Mana Magnet 19 Universal Translator 19 Mana Sense 10 Bargaining 4