A New Kind Of Grind

"[Levitation]," I cast, and a group of barrels rose up through the square hole in the ship's deck. The wooden grating that normally covered the hole, keeping shit from falling into the cargo hold, was slid back into place, and I set the barrels down on top of it, sighing as I dismissed the spell.

From there, the other longshoremen loaded this batch of barrels onto their own hand-trucks, and wheeled them across the deck, down the gangplank, and onto the dock, where a cart was being loaded up with barrels. Another group, who'd finished loading the previous batch of barrels, came back up onto the ship, and the wooden grating was slid back for me to repeat the process.

"Roxy!" an old, burly alpha shouted as she clambered aboard the ship. "Oh, how it warms this old woman's heart to see you- how are things going here, Roxy?"

"Pretty well, Captain," I said. Jessica Ironwood, the foreman of the dockworker company I worked for, had once been a sailing captain from Arnhold, a land just across the Black Sea from Dorn, the kingdom I found myself living in. And while she wasn't a captain anymore, well... She was a nice old lady, and I wasn't above calling my boss 'Captain' to curry favor. "We've got a good rhythm going, and at this rate... Hrm... Hey, Cass, how long do you think it'll take to empty out this ship?"

Cass, who was down in the cargo hold, hefting barrels around like pillows, called back up, "Another ten batches of barrels!"

"It'll be emptied out in a half hour," I said.

"Ah, so fast!" Jessica declared.

"It's a small ship," I said with a shrug. "Remember that one Dornish freighter we tried to unload? The one that was built, what, three years ago? Took all fucking day. Eventually the captain changed her mind about using longshoremen and just got the ship's Wizard to teleport everything into a warehouse."

"Aye, fair is fair," Jessica agreed, nodding. "The times certainly are changing, aren't they? It used to be you could tell a ship was an ex-delver's baby from its resilience to pirates, but now, delvers are branching out even further, leveling up Miner and Blacksmith to high levels, until you see them building whole ships out of Titan's Steel, making them bigger and better than they ever could be from just wood alone."

"I do wonder just what the hell they expect to accomplish with those ships," I mused. "The class levels needed to make one of those are also plenty capable of making anything you'd want to transport in one of them, and without having to buy it from merchants."

"They probably don't know either," Cass said, leaning on a barrel. "Ex-delvers, if they've gotten to a high enough level, pretty much can't interact with the world the same way regular people can. I mean, I only hit Level 5 before quitting, and I already have to keep reminding myself that the others aren't slackers, they're just underleveled compared to me."

"Aye, I tolerate no slackers in my company," Jessica said. "Still, facts remain that you two are my most valuable employees."

"Considering that neither of us was good enough for the Delver's Guild, I can only assume you meant that as a vicious insult to the others," I said. "Barrels up. [Levitate]."

"Bah, hang the Delver's Guild," Jessica said dismissively. "The two of you are sterling stevedores, and I will hear no slander against you. Keep at it, lasses; as soon as this ship is empty, we can collect our pay and go home."

The core unit of currency in Dorn was the Dornish Crown, also known as the gold piece, or simply gold in the context of 'twelve gold.' It subdivided out into twenty Dornish Swords, a silver coin with a sword on it- a different sword depending on which year it was minted in- which were also called silver pieces or just silver, and one silver divided into fifty Dornish Pennies, a copper coin that was small, yet still worth enough to actually buy things, while also nicely dividing a gold piece into a thousand smaller units of currency.

The longshoremen of Jessica Ironwood's company were comparatively well-paid, and took home about a silver piece each day of work- of which they got five out of every week, and for a four week month, amounted to a full gold piece. This was enough to feed themselves and a few dependents, pay rent for somewhere to live, and survive making some... perhaps financially unwise decisions.

"God, I wish I could stop eating these," a longshoreman muttered with a mouth full of thick-cut french fries.

"You want us to take 'em away from you?" I asked.

"I'd kill you if you tried," the longshoreman threatened.

Which we were doing right now, down at the Rusty Anchor, one of the many taverns right by the docks, which made a killing off of parting dockworkers and sailors from their money in exchange for deliciously greasy food. They'd had roasted potato slices on the menu for a while, but all it had taken was a single special order from me to put fries on the menu; they'd gotten very popular very quickly.

"The spice mix on these is amazing," Cass added. She, much like myself, was an alpha, but unlike myself, she actually lived up to the 'muscular' part of the stereotype, and walked around in a sleeveless undershirt for apparent fear that people wouldn't recognize her if she didn't have her shoulders and biceps exposed at all times. "They don't even need any sauce."

In recognition of Cass and I being, apparently, of particular value to the boss, we were paid a fair bit more than standard, pulling in two silver pieces every day. For two gold a month, I could easily afford my own apartment where I didn't have to milk the fucking cowgirls twice a day, but... well, between rent and food, I'd be losing a significant chunk of my income, and so it'd take twice as long for me to save up for bigger purchases.

"Hey, Roxy," Katie said, approaching our table with a serving platter laden with drinks. "Can I get another picture of myself?"

"Sure," I said, pulling my phone from my inventory.

One of the most notable changes lately was the creation, by high-level and very bored Mystic Artificers, of a magitech internet, along with numerous magitech devices for accessing it. The phone in my hand represented a whole month of saving up, and that month I spent without the internet had been...

...actually not all that bad, but the same was true of working as a longshoreman: more survivable than I'd feared, but ultimately still not fun or something I wanted to keep doing.

"Smile," I added, taking a picture.

One of the features in this phone that was new and an exciting selling point, despite both Akane and Haruna informing me that pretty much any Wizard 5/Mystic Artificer 5 could've done it, was its ability to print paper copies of pretty much anything. Reports, books, or in this case...

"Here you go, kid," I said, handing the printed picture over to Katie. "Enjoy."

"Thank you!" she said, nodding so aggressively it became a bow, and then turning around and ambling off.

"Wow, you are not biting," Cass murmured once Katie was out of earshot.

"What do you mean?" I asked, frowning.

"Most alphas would've at least looked when an omega gives 'em a look down their shirt like that," Cass said. "And then there's the way she walked straight away from you, walking like that?" Cass snorted. "C'mon. You can't tell me you didn't notice the way that ass was moving."

"Oh, huh," I said.

"Oh, huh, she says," Cass said. "C'mon, Roxy, I've known you for three months, now, and I haven't seen you get excited over anyone."

"I live with a beta exemplar," I said simply.

"...That'd do it," Cass admitted.

"Well, a lot of 'em, actually," I continued. "It's just that only one of 'em is awakened, and the rest are just unawakened cowgirls that I'm responsible for milking first thing every morning."

"Yeah, I bet that helps with your morning wood," the third person at our table- whose name I was a little bothered I couldn't remember, but fuck if I was going to say so now- chimed in.

"It never goes to waste," I said sagely. "Anyhow. I did tell my roommates I'd be a little late getting back, but I do need to get going soon, or else I'm gonna get yelled at for not doing my chores."

"Aw, c'mon, Rox," the third person whined. "Stay a little longer."

"Sorry," I said. "The cowgirls need to be milked twice a day."

"...Now that's just unfair, that is," she muttered.

I'd already paid for my own basket of fries and pickled salad- some acidity was really nice for cutting through the salt and the grease- and so I didn't have anything else that needed doing before I could just get up and walk off.

"Ugh," I muttered, at the end of my walk home. "I swear... next thing I'm commissioning from Haruna is a fucking bicycle..."

"I'm afraid I don't know what a bicycle is," Haruna said dryly, startling me. "But as for your previous commission, Usagi is almost finished with it. Do you have the coin to pay for it?"

"Just made the last bit of silver today," I said. "Anyhow, a bicycle is a small two-wheeled vehicle that a person sits on, and propels forward by turning a pair of cranks with foot pedals on the end, which then goes through a gear, a chain, and another gear to turn the back wheel. I can draw you a more detailed diagram, but despite not needing magic to function, I get the feeling something that complicated is going to cost a lot of your time, and therefore a lot of my gold."

"Only you can decide if it's worth it," Haruna said sagely.

"It'd involve you needing to develop the tooling to make strong, lightweight wheels," I said. "Which, depending on if you can sell those wheels to a cartwright, could actually be a decent income stream for you... but we're getting ahead of ourselves. I need to go milk the cowgirls."

"You do," Haruna said, returning her attention to the loom she was weaving at. The fabric she was weaving was fairly narrow, a little less than a foot and a half, which was what was most comfortable for her to make with her loom. The idea of teaching her how to build a better loom that'd weave on its own entered my mind, and then left it; I had cowgirls to milk, after all.

I opened the door, beheld a very naked Akane Sakurai riding a cowgirl's dick, and then closed the door, trying very hard to not remember the precise ways her tits bounced as she rode- goddammit.

"Ah, Akane's fucking a cowgirl in there?" Haruna asked.

"Is that... normal?" I asked.

"Perfectly so," Haruna said. "Unawakened monstergirls are social animals, and one of their bonding mechanisms is casual sex. They'll try to solicit it from humans sometimes, although often, it'll be the human who solicits, and the monstergirl accepting."

"...I see," I said quietly.

"That's what the ear tag colors are for," Haruna added. "Red means they're Akane's, while yellow means they belong to Usagi and I. If you do intend to partake, you'll have to ask Akane to share her cowgirls with you; the yellow ones simply have too many humans to take care of as it is."

"I'll... consider that," I said. "You know. After I can look Akane in the eye again."

"I keep telling her to bring the cowgirl to her room before fucking it, but she never listens," Haruna complained. "Anyway, go study. I'll let you know when she's done."