The jingle of coins in JP's pouch was a sound he hadn't heard since his old life back on Earth. For a moment, standing outside the adventurer's guild, he allowed himself to smile.
"Ten silver," he whispered. "My first paycheck in another world as an adventurer hunting monsters.... and it's F****NG awesome."
He chuckled...
Instead of spending it all on ale or a soft bed, JP turned toward the market square. His priorities were clear: survive first, tinker second.
The market was already alive. Merchants shouted their wares—iron pots, bundles of rope, hunting knives, bolts of cloth. Farmers bartered loudly over grain prices.
JP wove through the stalls, making careful purchases:
Sturdy tent – 4 silver
Wool blanket – 1 silver
Coarse rope, hooks, and a cooking pot – 2 silver
Leather scraps and copper wiring from a blacksmith's offcuts – 1 silver
Charcoal and resin for alchemy fuel – 1 silver
When he left, his coin pouch was lighter, but his backpack was fuller than ever.
By afternoon, JP was back outside the village, pitching his new tent along the same irrigation ditch where he had fought the boars.
It wasn't much—rough canvas and rope—but when he crawled inside and wrapped the wool blanket around his shoulders, he felt a wave of relief.
Finally… something better than sleeping in the dirt.
But JP wasn't done. He pulled out his tools and began tinkering with the scraps. His idea was simple, born from electrician instincts and alchemy's promise: make the camp itself dangerous to monsters.
He braided copper wire into loops, wrapping them around sharpened stakes of wood. Resin was smeared across the tips, and emberstone dust sprinkled inside. With a twist of his lamp's mana lens, he fed a flicker of energy into the design.
The result was a ring of Alchemy-Pulse Stakes—makeshift "deterrent posts" that hummed faintly when charged.
He drove them into the ground around his camp, creating a circle no larger than a small yard. The air shimmered faintly between them, a warning to anything with a predator's nose.
Testing the system, JP tossed a stick into the circle. The posts buzzed sharply, a quick crackle of sparks dancing across the resin tips before fading.
He grinned. "Primitive electric fence. Not much, but it should scare off curious beasts."
As the sun dipped and the night came alive with howls and insect songs, JP sat by his small fire, staring at the glowing stakes around his tent.
For the first time since waking in this world, he felt secure at night.
His hands flexed, aching but steady. "Yeah… I can build a life here. One invention at a time."
In the shadows beyond the deterrent circle, unseen eyes lingered. Not wolves this time.
A silver glint. Watching. Judging.
And then gone.