Ren wiped his fingers clean on his already-doomed sweatpants and leaned back against the creaky dorm chair, a faint hum of joy in his chest. The moment he logged out, he’d made a beeline for the stash in the fridge—his precious wedge of Blue Cheese Lite. He unwrapped it with the reverence of a priest handling sacred relics.
“Cheese, cheese, cheese,” he sang, half-muffled with a mouthful. “I love cheese. Cheese is life. Cheese is hope.”
From across the room, Choi looked up from organizing laundry and squinted. “You okay, man?”
“Better than okay,” Ren mumbled, holding the wedge up like Simba in The Lion King. “This, my friend, is the taste of first clear money.”
Simms gave him a slow thumbs-up from the couch. “Dude’s not even high. He’s just high on dairy.”
Ren ignored them. He’d already handed off the helmet earlier, and now it was his off-shift—precious, relaxing, cheese-powered off-shift. But even while savoring the funk of synthetic cow bliss, his eyes drifted back to the chart he’d set up on the wall: a rotating chart showing Auction House listings, crafting queues, and potion prices.
Kanuka wandered in from work, still reeking of smoke and BBQ. He sniffed the air suspiciously. “Smells like someone’s rich.”
“Nope,” Ren said with a grin. “Smells like someone has cheeeeeeessse.”
Kanuka flopped down on the nearest bunk. “I swear to god, if you start making stinky cheese farts, I’m joining another dormitory.”
But Ren was already half-dancing as he stuffed the last bite of blue-veined glory into his mouth. He wiped his hands, leaned forward, and tapped the wall screen.
Auction House prices were trending upward again.
Perfect.
“Alright,” he said to no one in particular. “Cheese break’s over. Time to cook something a little more magical.”
The Scrap Rats weren’t ready for what was coming next. But Ren was. Powered by dairy. Driven by potions.
And absolutely refusing to take the helmet shift until he licked his fingers clean.
Ren hated what was coming up next. Hated it more than empty cheese wrappers and potion failures combined.
But it had to be done.
His pathetic, embarrassing Level 4 status was dragging behind like a broken wagon wheel, and the truth was undeniable: if he didn’t start catching up, he’d get left behind. All the elite classes unlocked at Level 10, and while he’d been swimming in alchemical glory, the rest of the world—including his own Scrap Rats—were slowly climbing up the ladder.
So Ren did something he absolutely despised.
He signed up for a grind shift.
He groaned as he slid into the helmet like it was an execution hood and spawned into Towerbound, still sore from the last brew marathon. But this wasn’t going to be a relaxing session of potion-making and cheese dreaming. No, this was combat. Actual leveling.
Ren.
In combat.
The horror.
Technically, Towerbound allowed power leveling—just like how the Prosperous Guild was dragging Victor’s pampered ass through level after level. But Towerbound had its own evil countermeasure: as soon as any monster appeared grey to any member of the party, it nuked the EXP for everyone by 50%. Didn’t matter if the rest saw it as white or orange. Once one guy out-leveled it, it became a complete sinkhole.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
That meant if your party had a Level 10 and a Level 4 together, your EXP gains got gutted like a festival pig. So even power leveling had to stay within a tight 1-2 level margin.
Ren, being Level 4, was the biggest problem child of the group.
The rest of the Scrap Rats were already floating comfortably around Level 6. Not strong enough to join the dungeon elite, but definitely ahead of the bell curve. Meanwhile, Ren had been hiding behind potion racks and gold stacks. He hadn’t picked up a staff for real combat in days.
So now, he had to suffer.
Two straight hours of backline horror.
The group chose to grind Shadow Wolves—partially because they were plentiful, partially because they knew how to handle them, and partially because most of them had earned the Wolfbane title, giving them bonus damage and aggro to those specific mobs.
Including Ren.
Which meant the wolves hated him.
“Oh god, not again!” he screeched, ducking behind a rock as a third Shadow Wolf lunged for his robes. “I swear this one’s faster than the last!”
“Maybe because you smell like fear and herbs,” Tanner called back, laughing as he spun a dagger through one wolf’s flank.
“You said you were a battle cleric,” Bran added, swinging his sword.
“I am!” Ren yelped. “In spirit!”
Despite the mayhem, the team was having a blast. Ren’s panicked shrieks echoed across the zone, mixing with wolf howls and the occasional sarcastic cheer from Mira, who had taken to casting lightning spells in the shape of smiley faces.
Series the bolts looked like little cheerful emojis. Because she loved the idea of shaping the spell. Ren had given her tips on how to tweak them in free play mode.
Did they do more damage? Nope. Did it make her giggle? Yup.
Still, the Wolfbane title helped. Their kills were quick, efficient, and frequent. Ren even managed to toss a few heals in when he wasn’t running for his life. Bit by bit, his EXP bar ticked upward. Slowly. Painfully.
“Right after this,” Ren panted, clutching a mana potion, “I’ll go back to crafting. I miss crafting. Crafting never bites you in the ass.”
“Crafting doesn’t make you manly,” Torrin muttered, dragging a wolf corpse for harvesting.
“Neither does screaming like a schoolgirl,” Silk added helpfully. He had been having a blast doing thiefy things like, flashy diving rolls and shooting off his hand crossbow.
“Hey!” Ren shouted, leaping away from another lunging wolf. “This schoolgirl is contributing!”
By the end of the two hours, his robes were torn, his voice hoarse, and his mental state barely holding together.
But his EXP bar?
Still sad and lonely.
At the end of his two-hour shift, Ren was more than a little annoyed.
He pulled up his status window, blinked, then squinted harder—like maybe his vision was the problem, not the disappointing number glaring back at him.
Level 4.45.
Half a damn level.
Seriously? He’d been hoping that grinding alongside a full team of Level 6 players would rocket him forward. But no. The EXP system had decided to throw him a wet sock instead of progress. A sad trombone noise of a shift. Wahhhh wahhh.
The worst part? The last-hit bonus.
In Towerbound, whoever landed the killing blow got 50% of the EXP. It was a brutal system that heavily favored damage dealers. And clerics? Clerics were not damage dealers.
Technically, yes—Ren could have walked up and bonked a Shadow Wolf with his sad little staff when it was limping and bleeding out, snagging that sweet EXP chunk like a loot goblin. Technically.
Did he?
Nope.
There was a lot more shrieking, dodging, sprinting behind rocks, and yelling, “IT’S STILL CHASING ME!” than any sort of strategic kill securing.
With everyone in the group sitting just a bit too high, even the color-coded “white name” wolves were on the verge of slipping into gray—and that meant barely any EXP gains for him.
“At this rate,” Ren muttered, “I’ll hit Level 10 sometime in the next election cycle.”
The rest of the Scrap Rats were already packing up, cleaning weapons, munching rations. Nobody said anything mean—out loud—but Ren could see the relief on their faces when he finally waved them off.
“Guys,” he said, sighing, “it’s been fun teaming up with you, but I think we need a new plan. I’m heading back to the lab.”
“Alright!” someone said—too fast, too cheerfully.
“Cool, cool,” another added, already pulling up a map for the next zone.
To be fair, none of them were mad. Everyone knew he was crucial. The potions he brewed were keeping the guild afloat. Ren hitting Level 10 was going to unlock his elite class and take their economy game to the next level. But babysitting a squishy cleric who spent most of the fight shrieking and sprinting from wolves?
Not fun.
The wolves weren’t even scary anymore. Just tedious.
Still, loyalty meant they’d done it. And now that it was over, no one was sad to see Ren jog off back to his happy place.
He wasn’t sulking. Not really. Okay—maybe a little.
But he had a new plan. A better one.
He would return to the lab. The fun, reagent-stained, bubbling-alembic-smelling, absolutely perfect lab. He would push his potion-making into the next gear. He wouldn’t just make money.
He’d make progress.
Back to bubbling flasks, to singing terrible songs while grinding ingredients, to lining up bottles like soldiers.
Back to being in control.
Shadow Wolves could bite him. Figuratively. And literally.
He was going home.
