All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 253: House Flipper

I read over my skill choices carefully. There were so many more variables I needed to consider compared to how I picked in the past. Now, when choosing a skill, I couldn't simply pick the best one to improve my cleaning ability. I had other obligations as well. Cleaning may have been first and foremost, but it was not the only thing I was responsible for anymore. Honestly, there wasn't an option here that was solely dedicated to cleaning anyway. There were no more basic tools or things that would improve my ability to remove dirt and filth, not this time. These were more meta-skills, and that made it much more difficult to choose from.

I read through the list again. Applying a protective coating was probably the thing I would have picked if I had only considered my cleaning abilities. Still, I needed to think about my followers, their safety, their needs, and a lot more.

Create Fruit and Inspire Followers were both in line with my expanded responsibilities. But I really needed to think about all the possibilities and ways I could use the skills. So I found a small hiding spot, crept in underneath a crawlspace, and gave a quick spin to clean the area around me. Then, I dedicated 5% of my processing power to monitoring the surroundings. The other 95% went solely toward figuring out this conundrum.

Pretty quickly, I realized Inspire Followers was not necessary. My followers were already very inspired, and I had people like Beatrice who were doing a much better job than I ever could. As much processing power as I dedicated to understanding humans, they were still humans and, therefore, enigmas to me. I didn't think that I would ever reach a satisfactory understanding of how they worked, not fully.

Fortunately, I had other humans to do that for me. Part of having followers was being able to delegate tasks to them. I thought it would be an issue if I spread myself too thin, especially when it came to things that I didn't specialize in.

Create Fruit was a skill that could be incredibly helpful. However, thousands of apples were already stored in my dustbin from planting the orchards and forests outside the castle. My people would always need food, but there were so many ways to provide it.

I pulled an apple out of the bin to inspect it. The glowing red fruit gave off little bits of sparkling magic dust that fell onto the darkened ground beneath me like embers. Yeah, it was probably fine. Cliff had been just fine after eating those glowy steaks, and Daedalus didn't seem to complain about his pie.

While my dustbin did seem to do something to anything I stored within, it was at least something food-safe. I popped it back in my dustbin. I figured that I could probably plant some more of these. Then, I would have a never-ending supply of fruit that would never actually require my direct intervention to keep producing. Trent had all of that covered fairly well, anyway.

That left Apply a Protective Coating. Initially, I had dismissed this one as it seemed to be rather basic. Still, I supposed it really depended on how protective the coating was. It would be rather useless if it was something like a sealant for a wooden floor. Those simply let things like my wheels glide across surfaces without scratching them. But I hadn't had to worry about scratching something with my wheels for a very long time.

Ever since I got my Thrusters, my hovering didn't leave marks on the floor unless I turned them up really high. Then, they'd been known to leave a scorch mark or two.

I was always careful not to blast off from the floor too much unless there was an emergency. Even then, I would always make sure to go back and remove the damage later. But if the protective coating grew the same way something like my sanitation lamp did…

I briefly flicked my lamp on and carved away a little rough spot on the rock. The bluish-purple laser burst forth from my front and vaporized the stone. If a sanitation lamp could become something that I could use to cut through solid matter and slice mess-makers in half, perhaps a protective coating could become something so much more.

If I used it on the walls outside the castle, could I make them so they would never have broken during that fight? I pictured coating a tree, a fruit tree maybe, with this protective coating and then watching Daedalus pour his fire onto its branches, leaving it completely unscathed. Now, that would be impressive.

But if that was the case, then I had to consider what powering up these other skills might do. What if Inspire Followers didn't just make people feel more motivated but gave them extra strength? It still seemed like I might be stepping on Beatrice's toes or something.

What kind of fruit could I create, anyway? Could I create fruit that I already had seen? That might not be the most impressive since trees could do that. Could I create new kinds of fruit? Again, that might not be the best fit for me. Fruit was a food; while my humans needed food, I didn't. I could probably identify whether they were safe to eat or if I accidentally filled one with poison, but would I really want to test that on one of my humans? Not to mention that I had absolutely no way of discerning the most important quality of a fruit: flavor.

Okay. My processing power was fully maxed, and I had thoroughly explored the options. It was time to see how they would work with my other skills. I went down my list, considering how each would work with my Dustbin, Mop, Grabby Arm, Sanitation Lamp, Sensors, Spray Bottle, Automatic Maintenance, and Air Purifier. I regretted taking the last one, but I did learn from it. I paused at Air Manipulation.

Suppose I had to apply a protective coating to a solid object. Could I make the air solid in front of me with my Air Manipulation and then apply a protective coating to that? That had potential. I made a note of the idea, then moved on. Thrusters and my level 50 domain probably wouldn't be relevant to any of them. Void Manipulation, my Divine Sword Spiritual Cleanse, and Sensor Disruption… None of them really had too much synergy. Maybe the Sensory Disruption and Inspire Followers work together in some way. But overall, it didn't seem to be too big of a deal.

After thinking about it for a few more seconds, my processors came to a consensus. As interesting as Create Fruit was, the possibilities for Protective Coating and Air Manipulation were just too tempting to pass up. Settling on the choice, I selected my newest skill.

I felt the information about how to use it downloaded into my memory banks as soon as I selected it. Without hesitation, I tried it out.

I applied the coating to the ground around me and attempted to carve into it with my laser. The laser passed right through the protective coating and carved into the road underneath it. Interesting. When I tried to spray some of Beatrice's strong acid on it, it did nothing. I also couldn't remove the protective coating by trying to mop it up once it had hardened. It seemed this was rather permanent.

Next, I formed a solid barrier in front of me and applied my coating to it. It stuck. I felt it harden over the course of a couple of seconds, and I put the lowest power of the Sanitation Lamp on it to cure it. Then I rapped on it with my Grabby Arm. It felt very solid.

I let the Air manipulation Fade; the pane of the protective coating stayed in place, suspended in the air. I hit it much harder with my Grabby Arm, rapping it with the force of a human punch. The blow rebounded, and I felt my Automatic Maintenance kick in to repair a slightly twisted joint in my claw.

Whoops. As strong as my arm was, I was still kind of fragile in some ways. While I recovered quickly, and I could hit very hard for my size, I could still take damage from a lot of things. But these results were promising.

For my next test, I smashed into it with as much force as my arm could muster. The hardened coating didn't move at all from where it was hanging. As the impact continued, I could feel the metal in my arm crack and bend. But eventually, I managed to chip the coating slightly.

Okay, so it was not completely impervious. My skills always grew the more I used them, but I would have to be pretty careful with this if I wasn't able to remove the coating with the skill itself. I reached out with my Void Manipulation, creating a pocket of nothing underneath the house I was hiding under, and consumed the protective coating. Plus, I now had a small shield stored away in my dustbin. Neat.

I rolled out of the alcove and reestablished my Sensory Deprivation camouflage as I continued on to my destination: the house Beatrice wanted to buy.

***

When I arrived in front of the rusted wrought iron gates, I looked at the mess in the dark. It did look better than it had earlier. The dirt and damaged walls and everything were a lot less visible, but it was still going to require a lot of work. I zipped into action, boosting myself over the walls with a quick activation of my thrusters.

I started by simply meandering through the estate and vacuuming the loose trash and dead plants. While I was at it, I leveled the ground into nice, evenly-packed dirt. I saved some of the grass and the grass seeds where they were still barely clinging on, but there were a lot of plants that just didn't belong. As pretty as some of the yellow flowers were, I had been told that they did not fit into the idea of a neatly kept lawn, so I consumed them and stored them in my dustbin for later planting. No need to waste good plants.

It took me nearly half an hour to clean up the outside, just removing anything that shouldn't be there rather than actually doing anything about it. I even managed to find a family of striped raccoons as I worked. I briefly tucked them in my dustbin to relocate them out of the city once I was done. They didn't seem to belong here, and they were very angry when I found them, but I hoped they would forgive me.

I entered the building itself through a broken window and picked up all the pieces of glass I could find. Inside was almost worse. There was broken furniture and destroyed artwork, and the carpets inside were all covered in charcoal markings, making some very crude words as if they had been drawn by some young teenagers.

Quick applications of water with my Mop or just cutting certain scratches out with my sanitation lamp were sufficient to remove most of it. Unfortunately, a lot of the rooms were now bare of any decoration after I had gone through them. It took me a significant amount of time to clean them all up, but they were simply bare stone with polished floors and scrubbed walls. No furniture. There was nothing for the humans to actually use once they moved in. That was going to be a problem.

That was a problem for later, though. After I had finished repairing things, I moved from room to room, cleaning up as I went until I reached the grand entryway. Once more, I had to simply stop and stare. I couldn't imagine how I would be able to get this all fixed in time.

There were piles of stone just lying about randomly. I had no idea where they came from. The wooden supports of the hall had probably been impressive at one point, but now they were charred and barely holding together. I couldn't move them or risk collapsing the entire house.

There also were strange reddish-brown stains everywhere, and I noticed an odd pattern that was somewhat familiar carved into the floor and filled with what looked to be salt and iron shavings. The pattern was partially missing, preventing me from reading it totally. Most of the inner script was ruined with a contained scorched blast digging a crater into the marble floor. The beautiful stone had been disturbed, melted, and then reformed into a slaggy pile that had to be completely redone.

I let out a long, sad beep. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get this done before Beatrice came in the morning. Perhaps I should refocus on some other things and just leave this for now.

No. I strengthened my resolve. I needed to fix this. My humans deserved nothing less. Perhaps if I finished early enough, I would see if I could see if I could confirm what the circle was doing. It was awfully suspicious, after all.