Chương 137: 135 - Spring Cleaning

Alexandra sat on the carpet, flipping through her journal as she waited for Willow and Kam to wake up.

"Are you sure you want to move out?" Zeynep asked. The woman was watching over the fire crackling in her oven, preparing breakfast.

"It's nothing against you. I just want a place to call my own."

"Then save up to buy a house instead of looking for a rental." Zeynep placed fresh dough into the oven.

"It's not quite yours if you're renting." Alexandra pouted.

"It's the most I ever had. It's still better than freeloading at someone else's place. I've been doing that for too long."

"Fine. Just know that you three are welcome here anytime."

"Thank you, Zeynep." Alexandra focused her attention back on her journal. Daily quests summary: Six Quests Completed -> +60 exp, +1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 CON, +2 INT, +1 PER, New Skill Quest: Accounting Daily Quest Streak: 105 -> 111 She wasn't exactly thrilled with her newest skill quest, but she had to admit it could prove useful for her plan to open an adventurer guild. Still, completing it would be time-consuming, and not something she needed right away.

Accounting: Perform a thousand calculations (3/1, 000) The good news was that she could do the calculations whenever she wanted. She just had to live her life normally, and she would eventually get the skill. Tracking 3 -> 4 Light 7 -> 8 She then focused on today's daily.

Quest Journal Daily Reset: 06: 00 | Streak: 111 Days | 10% All Stats, 10% Skill experience Next Milestone: 250 Days Daily Quests: Juggle with five items for five minutes (0/1) Alexandra wasn't too sure how to approach this one other than sheer repetition. She stood up, borrowed a few small apples from Zeynep, and got to work. She started with two. Two was easy. She'd never juggled before, but it would take more than two measly apples to stop her. Three took longer.

The first two throws and catches went well, but she didn't understand how to keep going. Her mind froze when she caught the last one. She was getting lost, stopping mid-action. Holding that pattern for five minutes was going to be difficult. Still, the good news was that her high dexterity made it hard for her to actually miss. She was catching the apples. It was just a matter of focus. With that in mind, she added another apple. Then, when she noticed it wasn't harder, a fifth.

Five apples went up fine, and she could still catch them, though she needed to throw harder, allowing for a longer airtime. She tried again. And again. Each time, the same thing happened. She'd get three or four rotations in, feel good about it, and the moment she thought I'm doing it, her hands stopped listening to her. An apple would hang in the air a beat too long before she remembered to catch it. Another would stay in her hand for a second, breaking her rhythm. She was forgetting to keep going.

Alexandra picked the apples up, checked for bruises, and stood there a moment before starting over. This time, instead of watching her hands, she started counting out loud. One, two, three, four, five, one, two. She matched each number to a throw. No thinking about whether she was doing it right. Just the count. The apples flew in an arc over her head. She lost track of how long she'd been going, but the number in her head kept cycling.

"What are you doing?" Willow's question threw her for a loop, and her sequence collapsed. Alexandra sighed.

"What?" Willow asked.

"Oh, that was your daily?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry." Alexandra summoned her journal and shook her head.

"No worries. It looks like I got it."

"You've been juggling nonstop for fifteen minutes," Kam, who was sitting behind her, said. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Oh…" She really lost track of time.

"Well, it worked." Juggle with five items for five minutes (1/1) -> Quest Completed: +10 exp, +1 DEX Daily Quest Streak: 111 -> 112 Alexandra coughed when she saw how the others were looking at her.

"Well, are you ready to head out?"

"Where to?" Willow asked.

"To find a house. Zeynep has agreed to help us." * The house they settled on was a narrow two-story building, a five-minute walk away from the town gate. Mostly made out of wood, it had a polished stone base and was adjacent to the walls that surrounded Balrum. It was small. A single room downstairs that had to serve as kitchen, a ladder leading up to a loft where three beds had been shoved against the slanted ceiling. The furniture was old, but it had the merit of being there.

There was a table with four mismatched chairs, a stone oven, and shelves already lined with dusty plates.

"We really could stay with Zeynep," Willow said, passing a finger on the dust-covered table with a grimace.

"You could," Zeynep said.

"I really don't mind. Renting in Balrum isn't cheap. Most people here own. This is a whole haul of elemental sources down the drain."

"Look, I'm taking the house," Alexandra said.

"It only took a day to gather the rent for a month. Besides, I'm not forcing you to stay with me. We don't have to live together if you don't like it." Willow exhaled.

"No, Alexandra. It's fine. We came here with you. I just think we could give it some more time. Find a better place." She gestured at the filth covering the walls.

"It's gross."

"It is," Kam said. Alexandra shrugged.

"It's cleaner than my old apartment." Willow, Kam, and Zeynep looked at her.

"I mean…" Alexandra started. Nobody said anything. Instead, Willow drew a face in the dust covering the table.

"It's not really what I meant." Alexandra coughed.

"How about this: I'll clean the whole place by myself."

"Okay," Kam said.

"Great." Willow smiled.

"We'll see you tonight then!" With that, they were out the door, leaving her alone. Alexandra stared at the door for a minute.

"Fuck." After a short trip to the market to buy supplies, Alexandra rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a rag. She started with the table, working through the dust in even strokes, rinsing the rag in a bucket when it turned gray, wringing it out, and going back over the same boards until the water ran off clear. She moved to the shelves next, took each plate down, wiped it front and back, and stacked them in a neater order than they'd been in before. The oven she scraped free of old ash.

The windows she went over with a dry cloth first, then a damp one, watching the light change as the grime came off. By the time she straightened up, her back ached. The room looked, to her eye, like a different room. She wiped her hands on her trousers and checked her journal, already planning to share her success with the others. Cleaning: Clean your home to perfection (0/1) She stared at the number for a long moment, certain it would update if she just waited. It didn't.

"What?" She looked around the room again, slower this time, hunting for what the quest could possibly still want. The table was clean. The shelves were clean. She got down and checked the floor near the door. Clean, or clean enough. She checked behind the oven and found a thin gray film she'd missed, wiped it away, and checked the tracker. Cleaning: Clean your home to perfection (0/1)"Okay, system, you wanna play like that." She dumped the bucket, refilled it from the nearest public well, and started over.

The room looked good enough to her already, but she wasn't going to let a quest go incomplete. Daily or not. This time she got down at eye level with the table and checked for streaks. She found three. She cleaned all three. She held each plate up to the window and turned it, hunting for the dust that had beaten her the first time, and found it clinging in a thin ring near the rim of two of them. She wiped the shelves, then wiped again with a dry cloth, then again, and another time to be sure.

The floor she attacked with a brush, working it into the gaps between boards where years of grit had packed in and gone unnoticed under her first pass. The ladder to the second floor. The beds. She hadn't even considered the beds part of the job until she remembered they would be sleeping in one, and something about that thought made her flip the mattress and beat it against the doorframe until the dust stopped coming. She only caught track of time when the light filtering through the windows turned golden.

Cleaning: Clean your home to perfection (1/1) Cleaning – Common: Improves your efficiency when cleaning and allows you to detect filth with more accuracy. Each level increases cleaning efficiency and filth perception. Alexandra sat back on her heels and looked around. Perfection It was this moment that the others chose to come back. The door opened.

"We brought—" Willow stopped in the doorway, Kam behind her with a sack of vegetables.

"Oh." Kam set the sack down without looking away from the room.

"Good."

"You bet," Alexandra said, still sitting on the floor. Willow ran a finger along the table, checked it, checked it again.

"There's no dust."

"No shit."

"I wasn't expecting such a thorough job when you told us about your place."

"I didn't have a quest at my old place." Willow crouched down until she was eye level with Alexandra.

"You're doing this every week."

"No."

"Every week," Kam agreed, already heading for the ladder to claim a bed.

"No."

"Think of your new skill. Cleaning isn't going to level itself up. And the contribution points," Willow added.

"Right," Alexandra said, grabbing her journal.

"Contribution points. You need them too, right? Let me draft you a contract."

"No, it's fine," Willow said.

"We wouldn't want to take advantage—" Alexandra held a finger in front of her mouth.

"In fact, I should make sure never to level Cleaning, so you can profit from it forever."

"Actually," Kam said, head poking out of the opening in the ceiling.

"You should take it to level nine. This way we'll get more points out of it." Alexandra looked up.

"Ugh, no. The level one training quest will be easier."

"We can only do one quest of the same type every day." Willow patted her on the back.

"He's right. We'll keep you on cleaning duty until you reach level nine." Letting her journal dissipate, Alexandra exhaled.

"Fine. You win this time."