Sometimes People Are Petty and Stupid

Loran's eyes slowly opened. The inside of the hut was dimly lit, what with the morning light only able to enter through the small gaps between the doorframe and the leather curtain. The air was pleasantly cool and the furs of the makeshift bed were warm from having been slept in. He could hear people shouting angrily and causing some kind of commotion outside, but that didn't matter to him. After the events of the last few weeks, Loran wanted nothing more than to have a lazy day in bed. So he pulled one of the furs over his head, mumbled something that sounded like it came from a two-month-old baby, and let himself drift back to sleep.

...

...

...

"I CALL DIBS!"

With a sudden shout, a player barreled through the curtain, shouting at the top of his lungs and diving for Loran.

'These motherfuckers...'

Loran was more than capable of sensing this with his eyes closed, and so without missing a beat, he raised his leg so that it caught the diving player right in the face. With his momentum suddenly halted, the player was awkwardly thrown to the ground, clutching his nose and venting his frustrations with a string of colorful curse words.

Loran, now fully awake and thoroughly annoyed, sat up and climbed out of bed. "It's too early for this shit..." he grumbled.

"Oh, of fucking course it's you," the injured player said.

Loran looked down to see that it was Bates who disturbed his peaceful morning.

"Sorry about that, but to be fair you're the one who jumped at me." Loran offered a hand and Bates begrudgingly took it. Loran then noticed that Bates' nose was bleeding, and a little crooked. "Oh shit, you-um, want some help with that?"

"I got it," Bates said curtly. He straightened out his nose with a pained grunt, then, much to Loran's surprise, he used a spell to heal it.

"When did you learn magic?"

"On the way to the basin," he said as he rubbed his nose, looking to see if he missed anything. "I'm not that interested in magic but having it on hand for a little first aid seemed like a good idea."

"And you didn't even learn Mana Sense," Loran said, impressed.

"Did you really just Analyse me for that?"

Loran's eyes widened. "Shit, sorry. My new Skill is messing with my sensory Skills. That was basically automatic."

"Sure," he said skeptically. "But yeah, I didn't get Mana Sense. Doesn't feel like I need it."

"Can you cast while fighting?"

"No. But I'm usually just using it outside of combat, so it's fine."

Loran shrugged. "Alright, but paying 1 AP to cast easier seems pretty good."

"Yeah yeah. I'll think about it when Levels are less expensive."

"I mean technically-"

Bates ignored Loran and walked out of the hut. Loran followed but paused as he witnessed the commotion outside. At least two dozen players were gathered around the bridge and seemed to be arguing over something. They were all shouting loudly, a few seemed ready to start fighting. Many of them were pointing in different directions, and when Loran looked around he could see more players arguing in front of various huts.

"Did I miss something?" Loran asked Bates, following him toward the crowd.

"You wouldn't know since you apparently claimed a hut last night," Bates said with a glare. "But basically there aren't enough huts for everyone in the village yet, and now that everyone has noticed how nice they are..."

Loran nodded in understanding. The players had been making do with extremely basic wooden shelters, which were barely above tents in terms of quality, and left everyone without a sense of privacy. Sleeping was rough for anyone who wasn't using multiple pelts for bedding, and even though it had only rained a handful of times since the start of the game, sleeping on wet fur once was one time too many. On top of that, since the Workshop was processing Iron Ant Carapaces for crafting, the fumes were spreading to the surrounding area. They may have minimized the effects to not poison anyone, but they couldn't stop the entire area from smelling like burning garbage.

Compared to the shelters, the huts were like a dream come true. Even if it was minimal, they each had room to stand and move around in and had actual walls to let you feel like you weren't surrounded by other people 24/7. The roofs were able to repel rain with greater reliability than the basic shelters and also kept the insides at a more consistent temperature. On top of all that, Alan had designed the beds that were now in many of the huts, making them infinitely more comfortable.

Simply put, the huts had become the height of luxury in the village, and everyone wanted one.

"They said that the last few huts will be finished by tomorrow, and there will be a hundred in total. A bunch of the players that stayed behind have already moved in, so there are about three dozen that are unoccupied."

"Wow, I really got lucky last night."

"Can you not rub it in?"

"I wasn't trying to. I'm just saying it would have been really awkward to get kicked out in the middle of the night," Loran said honestly. "Still, I'm a little surprised there are thirty huts available. More people stayed behind than that right?"

"Most of the crafters are still on the other side of the river, I guess they want to stay close to the Workshop. I think Alan and the other builders are staying over there too."

"Makes sense. With all that unoccupied space, they can make their own homes, maybe some that are nicer than these." Loran began moving around the crowd, trying to cross the bridge. "Good luck on getting one!"

"...Thanks."

Loran was able to pass the crowd with ease, the other players were too busy arguing with each other to even notice him.

Walking through the village, it was easy to see just how abandoned the place had become. With most of the players moving across the river, numerous shelters had either been torn down or had collapsed, creating new pathways as well as random piles of scrap wood. With fewer obstacles in the way, Loran quickly arrived at the Workshop and was a little stunned by the state of it.

The crafters had left a designated area for storage and had made it larger in preparation for the raid, but while the area may have started out neat and organized it was currently a complete mess. A small mountain of mangled Iron Ant parts occupied the space, at least 15 feet wide and easily 10 feet tall. The dull grey and rusted browns of the biologically processed metal dominated the mound, with various bits of mostly intact carapace scattered throughout it. There was also a bunch of other items mixed in like food and clothing.

Several crafters were sorting through the mess, organizing the pieces into three separate piles. The largest was random bits of scrap iron, the second was filled with the blades harvested from Iron Ant Warriors, and the two smallest piles were composed of intact carapaces and junk items.

"This place is a mess..." Loran muttered as he approached one of the crafters, whose name he vaguely recalled being Syrus. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say you guys don't want me to just dump my inventory onto the pile?"

"I mean, at this point it won't make much of a difference, but if you could organize that shit yourself it would be appreciated."

Loran nodded, having gotten the answer he more or less expected. "Why did they also give you guys the random crap?"

"Someone figured out that you can pretty much eject your entire inventory with a thought," Syrus sighed. "As if sorting through the iron wasn't enough..."

Loran sat down near the organized piles and began pulling items out of his inventory one by one. Because he had helped Yang with dismantling the Iron Ant Guardians his inventory was almost full of pure iron scrap, but there was a decent amount of other items mixed in. For a while Loran just sat and worked, letting his mind wander as the conversations of those around him became background noise, but it only took a few minutes for his patience to start running thin. Aside from the fact that this was just tedious work overall, it was also slightly painful since a lot of the scrap in his inventory had sharp edges to it. After cutting his hand open for the thirteenth time, Loran decided he had had enough.

'I don't want to just dump all this crap on them, but this is just too annoying.'

Frustrated, Loran walked over to the central pile, ready to eject all the Iron Ant parts.

"Done already?" Syrus asked.

"Sorry but yeah. I'll make sure to take my stuff before I go."

Syrus sighed. "Well, it's more than most of them did..."

Loran turned his attention back to his inventory. He wasn't entirely sure how to eject the items from it, but he had a few guesses. First, he repositioned it so that it was pointing toward the pile.

'Probably safe to assume that the items will still come out from this side. Now I guess I think about the inventory emptying.'

Loran imagined the many items in his inventory falling out of it, and some started to do so when a thought occurred to him. The way he was about to empty his inventory was basically the same as when he learned he could essentially shower by letting water drain out of it.

'I was able to do that without losing all the other stuff in my inventory, so can't I just...'

Stopping the items from falling out, he walked over to the pile of carapaces.

"Hey wait stop tha-"

One of the other crafters started to shout at him, assuming he was about to mess up their organization, but stopped when he realized that only pieces of carapace were being added to the pile. After a few seconds, the items stopped falling.

"Alright, that was easy."

"I swear," one of the crafters was rubbing her temples. "I am going to strangle all those people who just dumped their crap here when they could have done this so easily!"

"To be fair, I only just figured this out myself," Loran said as he added a dozen Warrior Blades to the pile. "Uh... So I have a lot more scrap iron. Probably twice the size of that pile, do you want me to put it somewhere else or...?"

"Nah, you can put it here."

"Alright."

Unlike dropping the blades and the carapace pieces, which only took a few seconds, unloading the scrap iron took significantly longer. As he waited for the metal to fall out he glanced at the pile of parts again.

'It really is a lot, and the longer these guys are stuck sorting this out the less time they have to repair our gear...' Helping them seemed like a good idea, but he could only do so much, and he really needed to start training with [EXTREME PERCEPTION]. It would take a long time for him to get used to his senses flickering in and out, the three weeks they had before the next raid might not be enough. He had tried to practice on the way back to the village, but he didn't have anything to actually focus on while he did it.

"Something to focus on..." he muttered as the last few pieces fell out of his inventory. WIth a new idea forming, Loran sat down with the crafters again and summoned up some mana.

"If you're going to practice magic can you do it somewhere else? We had enough problems with a few guys trying to help us with their fire magic before the raid." Several of the crafters shivered as they remembered how much of their equipment needed to be repaired after that incident.

"I'm not exactly practicing magic, and I promise it won't be as bad as that."

Loran took a few minutes to shape and solidify the mana, sometimes using [EXTREME PERCEPTION] for a little extra boost, but soon enough he had created a fairly articulate magical hand. It obviously took a bit more concentration to control properly than an inanimate mana construct, but it was still relatively easy.

Closing his eyes, Loran reached out with his magic hand and grabbed a random item from the top of the pile. He couldn't exactly feel through the hand, but his heightened senses were able to get an idea of what the item was without needing to look at it, so he dropped it in what he thought was the correct pile. "Did I get it right?"

"Uh...yeah," Syrus said, both impressed and a little confused by the strange display of magic.

"Perfect." Loran smiled and quickly grabbed another item from the pile while putting together another magic hand. 'Well…time to start training.'