The Insider System

Chapter 16: Open Ended Plan

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Lake didn't even bother looking up; he just dashed forward. The worst case scenario was he looked like someone who got scared easily. After getting far enough he looked back to see the other two had also moved away from the tree.

Looking up Lake saw some sort of shiny surface moving around in the tree. It seemed spherical but Lake couldn't wrap his mind around what he was seeing. "It's just a Var beetle." Said Kyle. Lake saw at some point they had both drawn their weapons but were now putting them away. Seeing this, Lake took it as this bug wasn't dangerous so he dropped his guard and walked over to the two of them. " What's a Var beetle, are they safe to be around?"

Kyle had a grossed out look on his face, so Lake assumed Kyle didn't like bugs. "As safe as any animal that size is, but yes they are considered to be non-aggressive the only thing annoying about them is during their mating season they start to eat every plant in sight, but that means the culling order will be sent out soon. Its a good way for young adventures to make some money, you see during their mating season their shells get harder. Hard enough to make armor each beetle is worth around 10 gold, and they don't even put up much of a fight you can think of it as free range armor."

This did sound like a good way to make money so Lake asked, "How much longer do you think it will be before the culling will start?" Kyle took too long to answer so Mary said " I'd say less than a week, seeing as this one has already started eating." This was good news for Lake. He wondered how much Exp they gave, if it was a lot this was a perfect situation for him. " Are you two going to come and hunt beetles?"

The two acted a little strange after Lake asked this but eventually Mary said "Kyle wants to but I think it's a bad idea if he gets hurt our income will plummet." The classic old man who tries to work like he's 20 still, and gets hurt routine. Lake tried to think of a way to use this to his advantage and it didn't take long for him to say, " I could go with Kyle and do all the heavy lifting if you'd like, this way he'll have backup in case he runs into a monster." Lake could tell Kyle was into the idea but it hadn't won over Mary. Lake needed to find a way to sweeten the deal without losing anything because the benefits he would gain from this were already questionable. " It's too bad, think of the efficiency we could achieve with all the tricks you've learned over the years. Oh, what if we ask Dan and Jeff with the three of us Kyle will just have to tell us what to do."

Lake had understood Dan and Jeff almost instantly. Dan was definitely in charge being the older one, so Jeff would do what he said and with Dan being so nice there's no way he would say no if Lake asked for his help. Not only would he be helping Kyle he would see it as a way to atone for upsetting Lake by asking about his past. And another reason to rope more people in was Lake was hoping to steal some kills he got X8 bonus Exp as a thief.

While he had no idea how kill stealing worked, he hoped that as long as he had nefarious intentions it would work. Lake saw his plan of roping in Jeff and Dan had won over Mary so he said, "Since Kyle's the leader he can get 40% Dan, Jeff, and I will take 20%. We can talk to them on the ride back to town."

Lake saw the possibility of lots of money win over Mary, and the best part was this deal was fair if Lake accounted for all the tricks he could learn from Kyle he would probably come out of this hunt with increased skill, and lots of levels which is what Lake actually wanted he didn't care about the money he was hoping to make money from stealing, not work. To be honest Lake wasn't sure if he should steal everything and run at the end it would be pretty easy because everyone would trust him.

The problem was he didn't want to end up on one of those wanted posters. But thinking of the Exp Lake wasn't sure he would be able to stop himself, he bet the final sum would ignite his greed. Lake usually only stole from people he didn't like, and so far almost everyone he had met had been nice. He knew it was because he was in a small town, he needed to go to a big city that's where all the dickheads were.