Surrounded by Five Beast Lords novel Chapter 40

Chapter 40

The joy Dora felt right now wan’t just happiness. What washed over her was the kind of relief that only comes after one has waited so long, so desperately, that the waiting itself had become a weight all its own.

She sorted everything by category and stored it all inside her stasis space.

Then she got to work selecting her best specimens. She picked out the plumpest peanut pods with the richest color and cracked them open with careful fingers, peeling the shells away while keeping each seed coat perfectly intact.

She chose potato tubers that were just the right size, with healthy, clearly visible bud eyes.

From the sweet potato vines, she cut the thickest sections, focusing on the growth nodes that looked most promising.

Using her consciousness, she cleared a new planting area on the open ground beside the essence spring. The new plot was three times as wide as the original.

She pressed the peanut seeds into the soil, buried the potato tubers at the proper depth, and stuck the sweet potato vine cuttings into the earth. Then she guided the essence of spring water in a steady flow across the entire plot.

What happened next was almost visible to the naked eye. The seeds, tubers, and vine cuttings drank in the water and the strange energy the essence spring carried, taking root almost immediately. Green life pulsed through them in a matter of seconds.

Dora surveyed her expanded garden and gave a satisfied nod, then let her gaze drift to the empty patch of ground that still remained. What should go there next? she wondered.

She sectioned off a small plot and retrieved the tomato and cucumber seeds she’d saved from earlier meals, pulling them out of her stasis space. She dropped them into the soil and gave them a generous soak of essence spring water.

The whole point was to find out whether the seeds she’d saved herself could actually take root here.

As she planted, her mind was already running the numbers/None of these crops existed anywhere else in the interstellar world.

That makes them rare, she thought. ‘If I grow enough seeds and seedlings to sell, I’ll never have to worry about starcoins again. The idea hit her like a shot of adrenaline.

That thought sent her straight to the Universal Spacetime Barter System.

She’d accumulated a decent pile of miscellaneous materials from the training zone that she had no personal use for

There were crystal bat carcasses left over after she’d extracted their crystal cores, a handful of minerals that carried barely any energy but had unusual shapes, and a small collection of crystal core fragments too chipped and small to be useful

She organized it all and posted the lot under the Trade Requests section, setting each listing to exchange for barter points of to swap directly for items she actually needed.

Within minutes, several small trades went through.

A few pieces of luaninescent mineral got her a packet of strawberry seeds. Some alien beast bones earned her a handful of other seasonings. The crystal core fragments converted into a modest sum of barter points.

Het account balance crept upward, and Dora’s mood climbed right along with it.

She’d been eyeing those fruits from Blue Planet in the system shop for a while now

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Chapter 10

thumnade

fe warnetonywad.cantaloupes looked absolutely gorgeous the kind that made one’s mouth water just scrolling past the

She’d cheeked fresh frug pricks on the Inter velia Net before, and everything ran absurdly expensive.

Most of it looked genetically modified too, oversized and almost neon in color, which raised the question of whether any of it actually tasted good

A single watermelon ran upward of ten thousand starcoins. A tiny box of strawberries, half a dozen, cost about the same. Fresh fruit was a straight-up luxury item, the kind no ordinary household would ever spring for.

She tapped the icon and pulled up the prices.

[Premium Sandy Watermelon: 80 Points]

[Honeydew Melon: 65 Points]

“That’s

‘s exactly what I have left, she thought, doing the math in her head.

The fruit would be for everyone tomorrow. They’d eat it together, save the seeds for planting. The whole thing was almost too perfect.

She kept browsing for a bit and stumbled across rose seeds.

Roses thrived in sandy soil if she remembered right, and what she had now was sandy soil enriched by the essence spring. That was more than enough to make them grow.

The thought snowballed instantly. She could plant a whole patch, brighten up the homestead, and use the petals for rose jam, rosewater, maybe even infused wine down the line.

But when she went to trade for more barter points, a notification she’d never seen before popped up on screen.

[Notice: Dear Dora, your current system level is ‘Beginner. You are limited to 1 item listing per day via ‘Post Request. Maximum weight per listing is 1,000 pounds. Please plan your trades accordingly. Upgrading your system level will unlock additional privileges.]

Dora stared at the screen.

“One listing a day? And a weight cap?” She ran the numbers in her head. So if I want more credits to buy the good stuff, I either jack up the value of each trade or figure out how to level up this system,’ she thought.

“Hold on. There are levels?” She let out a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “And it doesn’t even tell me how to upgrade. Great”

Her eyes

drifted to the rose seed icon, and she sighed, “Fine. Tomorrow, then.”

She whipped back around and tapped the lottery button. The lottery section lit up right away, showing one available draw.

“Nice. Let’s see what we’ve got.” She didn’t think twice. Her finger hit the button.

The screen flickered and cycled through icons before finally landing on one: [Instant Pasta five packs.]

“Instant pasta?” She tilted her head, then shrugged. “Could be worse. I practically lived off these things pulling late nights at the office in my last life, so honestly I’m kind of sick of them.”

She fucked them into her stasis space. “But the beast mates have never tried one. Solid grab-and-go breakfast before training” She kept scrolling and pulled up the lottery rules.

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Chapter 40.

90

fe Fules were-ple enough. Each completed trade earned one lottery draw, and if one banked ten draws and used them alle spice the odds of landing a jackpot climbed significantly.

Ten at a time it is, she decides. She would stack them up and see what kind of haul that pulled.

After all the tinkering. Dora eased her consciousness out of the system, thoroughly satisfied, and sank into a dreamless sleep

The next morning, the preset alarm on her neural device dragged her awake. She crawled out of her sleeping bag, pulled herself together, and pushed the tent flap open.

A thir, wash of dawn light spread across the horizon. The sandstorm had mellowed overnight into little more than a breeze.

The first thing that caught her eye was several metal crates arranged in a neat row beside the tent, like a basic shield generator, a prefab housing module, and a handful of other supplies.

Clive stood at the far edge of the homestead with his back to her, scanning the distant terrain.

He turned when he heard her step out.

Morning light grazed the hard angles of his jaw and cheekbones, laying a faint gold over features that gave nothing away. Those deep, cool eyes held steady, and Dora forgot to look somewhere else for a few seconds too long.

“You’re up.” His tone was flat, purely informational. “Supplies came in. The housing module can go up today.”

Dora walked over and eyed the crates. She nodded slowly. “That’s a lot of hardware. You really think we can knock it all out today?”

Clive gave a single nod, and that was that. Dora turned on her heel and headed for the makeshift cooking station, poking at the row of buttons as she figured out how to get breakfast going.

Clive walked over without a word. “Need a hand?”

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