As soon as Roge’s claws touched the screen, he could feel a bit of power running through them. He wanted to grab part of his species, an intrinsic part of his body, and he knew it was theoretically possible. Just like when he tried to grab skills before, though, he felt a bit of resistance and the touch of white hot sand for just a moment. ‘I know I wasn’t supposed to push…’ he thought, calming his breathing as he eased back. ‘Maybe I just need to give it time to process? Or… maybe clue in the system on what I’m trying to do, and not just the screen?’

  He shifted his focus then, closing his eyes and pushing it towards his core. He knew that there was a connection to the overall system, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to update his [Status] with the starry messages. He just needed to send the equivalent of an update request. Even though he couldn’t feel out the connection, he still tried to broadcast his intent anyway, requesting the ability to [Extract] from the screen he was touching. For a few seconds, he thought he’d gotten a message through, but when he opened his eyes, he sighed when nothing had changed. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t push my luck-‘

  Roge flinched as sudden pain rushed through his body, causing him to drop the item that had suddenly appeared in his claw. Gasping for breath and wondering what happened, he first pulled up his resources to make sure nothing went too wrong.

  He winced, just then noticing that both Lore and Proton had rushed up to him with worry, Roge waving at them and saying, “I’m fine. Not too much damage.” He then grabbed the rock that had landed on the ground, the stone looking like it had ice running through it in strips. “Let’s see what I got…”

  “ So that… actually worked. Thanks Lore,” Roge said, giving the wolf a small smile.

  “ No problem,” they replied, giggling as they tried to look over the descriptions before Roge dismissed the screens. Absorbing their messages took just an instant, so the wolf hadn’t had much time to read it.

  “ Now let’s see what happens when I add it to…” Roge mumbled, frowning as he looked through his animals. “Who should I add it to first?”

  “ I would suggest adding it to the fairy felines Master,” Proton stated, looking over the list of animals as well. “It’s a good test, and if it works, your wagon will be upgraded by a lot.”

  Roge frowned, looking over his effects and feeling the weight increase on his shoulders. “Doesn’t this feel a little… cheap though?” he asked, frowning at the bitter taste in his mouth. “I mean… I’m only supposed to be in the crimson range for levels, and yet I’m getting a bunch of things that make me feel like I should wait until I’m higher leveled.”

  “ How do you think the other dragons manage things so well?” Proton asked, adjusting his sleeves and giving Roge a smirk. “While most of the ruling dragons are around level ten or fifteen, the amount of power they gain from their hoards makes them significantly more powerful than others at their level. While yes, you’re able to do so much more with your unique skills and classes, you’re actually right in the middle in terms of power due to your low level. You just have many more options than most, whereas most dragon specialize.”

  “ That… makes me feel a bit better…” Roge mumbled, pulling up the fairy cat screen and taking a deep breath before hesitating once more. “You sure…?”

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  “ If I may?” Lore cut in, giving the dragon kobold a small smile. “You’re not even close to the power of some of the demons I’ve met, sir. Especially since most of them invest power in their combat skills only. Having a lot of utility like you do isn’t that huge, and I think you’re doing fine.”

  Roge took another calming breath, frowning as he remembered he was still in the fox’s cage due to the smell. To get things over with, he quickly shoved the geode into the screen, gasping as the buff he had with them skyrocketed.

  “ That’s… interesting…” Roge muttered, looking over the various options with a frown. “What… exactly am I supposed to do with all of these?”

  “ Maybe it’s trying to give you places to sell items?” Proton asked, Roge’s eyes widening as his head snapped to look at the butler. “You have been complaining about the number of items in your inventory. Maybe this is trying to fulfill that need by giving you the tools to make and sell off products?”

  “ Oooo! I call dibs on the drink bar!” Lore cried, out, Roge sighing as he finally started leading them out of the building.

  “ I don’t know. It seems like it might be a good idea… but I don’t exactly want to have to juggle all of those stalls.”

  “ Well, isn’t that what your treasures are for?” the wolf asked, earning them a glare from the dragon kobold. “What? I’d love to man a bar and sell drinks! Especially since it’d let me interact with so many people.”

  “ Alton is very interested in painting and tattoos,” Proton muttered, Roge turning his glare to the kobold. “It’s true Master. Maybe talk it through with your treasures. See how they feel about it.”

  “ I’m not running a goddamn circus here…” Roge grumbled, shaking his head as his brain tried to come up with ideas on how to design various carnival games with magic. ‘Let’s not go down that road…’ He already got the feeling that the effect was referencing some type of magical marketplace in fairy myths, but he hadn’t done much reading on that kind of thing before the world had changed. He quickly escorted his two acquaintances out into the streets, heading directly to the league building and tried to distract them from the idea.

  ~~~

  Roge sighed as they reached the league building, having had no success in convincing Proton to let him add different scale colors to the kobolds. The reasoning to not to do was sound, as even though Roge’s health had soon reached full, adding more buffs to him might lead to an overload if they weren’t careful. Especially since they were planning on doing multiple quests in the area while they were there.

  At the very least, Roge was able to puzzle out why the improved effect used so many different resources. Anything that required hand-eye coordination used flex, so it made sense that it tried to fit to the right resource. Anything he didn’t have something for, like the market stall presumably liking allure, doubled the cost and used mana. ‘Maybe I need to get all of the resource types after all…’

  Using his radar for the people connected to his hoard, Roge soon found his party members, Marge, Hops, and Sean all looking over the quest listings board that was off to one side in the main entryway. “Find anything good?” Roge asked, taking a cursory glance of all of the papers as well.

  “ Maybe…” Sean muttered, tapping on one particular paper.

  “… Are you joking?” Roge asked, a chuckle escaping his maw before he could stop it. “There’s a high likelihood of the disturbance being that lava settlement due to the smoke smell. I’d literally boil if that place is too hot…”

  “ But aren’t you planning on getting heatproof scales?” Sean asked, looking a tad confused.

  “ Well yeah, but we haven’t been able to find anything this far north. We’d have to either go to Centerville, or even more south.” It still rankled the dragon kobold that they hadn’t found anyone with a fire-based scale color, especially since it left a slot open on one of his skills.

  “ There’s a couple of material quests we could do,” Hops added in, moving over to show the list he’d written down in his book. “You have all of these, so knocking out a few quests with them would be worth it in the long run.”

  “ Why…?” Roge muttered, thinking back to his entrance exam and not remembering any benefit to taking easy quests.

  “ Oh right! You never stuck around long enough to learn about the rankings,” Sean exclaimed, rummaging around in his inventory before pulling out a small, pocket-sized book. “We’re currently listed at…” he trailed off, flipping through it before finding the right section. “Grade D.” The lion flinched at that, frowning as he flipped to another page. “Seems we haven’t been earning a lot of points in the past month, so we got downgraded.”

  “ Do the grades… do anything? And how high do they go?” Roge asked.

  “ From F to A,” Hops replied, sighing as he looked over Sean’s shoulder. “It doesn’t mean much, but the main thing we care about is the tax on completed quests. If you’re not very high on the grading system, it means you’re not doing much for the guild. So they take a greater tax out of your earnings. The more quests you take on that are worth a lot of points, the more money you make per quest.”

  “ That… makes too much sense. Have I really been taking you guys away from questing that much?” Roge felt a pang of guilt at the thought, before Marge lightly tapped the dragon kobold on the back of the head.

  “ No, silly. We took a couple week vacation before all of this happened. The drake quest is probably the only reason why we’re not grade F at the moment.” Marge gave Hops and Sean a hard look, the two not meeting her gaze. “I kept saying we needed to cut our vacation short, but Hops kept saying he needed more research time and Sean kept going out on too many dates.”

  Roge blinked *hard* at that statement, the dragon kobold slowly turning to look at the now aghast lion. “Wait… dates?” he asked slowly.

  “ Well yeah. He-“ Marge abruptly stopped talking as she noticed the look on Roge’s face, turning an angry gaze to Sean. “I thought we told you to tell him this morning.”

  “ We got distracted by the townsfolk…” Sean muttered, running his claws through his mane. “I was going to tell him later.”

  “ So… who exactly are you dating?” Roge asked, frustration brewing in his stomach.

  “ Well… I uh…” Sean stuttered, looking to Hops for help. The elf just sighed and gave Sean a frustrated look before turning to Roge.

  “ He was dating you before your memory loss.”

  Roge felt his scales heat up massively in that moment, several things he’d noticed over time suddenly clicking into place. “Oh.” His body then suddenly turned into a doppelganger doll right in front of the group, the dragon kobold hiding away in his hoard.

  ~~~

  “ Well, you better go after him,” Marge grumbled, giving the lion the stink eye as she stored Roge’s body in her inventory. “And if you two haven’t figured something out before coming out, I will be fixing this the hard way.” Sean just nodded, his body turning into another doll that Marge quickly stashed away.

  “ Wait… memory loss?” Lore asked, their ears pinning back into their head.

  “ You might not know this, but people who get [Static Mind] usually lose all their memories,” Hops explained, giving the fushia wolf a pat on the shoulder. “Roge is doing better than most due to one of his classes giving him knowledge from another world.”

  “ Wait wait wait. Start from the beginning?” Lore requested, Marge and Hops taking pity on them and guiding them to the bar area of the league building.

  “ I swear, if this messes up my time table,” Proton muttered, looking at the notice board and giving it a huff. Without a word, he left the building and started heading down the main market fairway, heading towards a fancy, out of place office building. “Now to get Master signed up with the right permits to sell his products. No need to waste the time we have today.”