[Chapter 139. Overworked]

Searanox’s gauntlet shimmered with a soft, blue haze as two Corpse Lanterns materialized in his heavy grip. He extended them toward the four women, the flickering cyan light from the lanterns casting long, distorted shadows across the cracked pavement and their anxious faces.

"Take them," he said, his voice flat and filtered through the quite air. "Consider them your tangible reward for today’s educational field trip. In this time, a light source is just as valuable as bread."

Lana stepped forward, her movements cautious. Her fingers were hesitant as they brushed against the cold, unnervingly smooth metal of the lanterns. As she took them from him, the cyan glow intensified, illuminating her pale features and the dark circles under her eyes. She gripped the handles tightly, her gaze fixed on the unnatural, dancing flame within.

"Thanks," she murmured, the light reflecting in her pupils. "These... these will help. It gets dark in the dungeons and at night."

Without another word or a backward glance, Searanox turned away, his heavy boots crunching rhythmically on the debris-strewn pavement of the square. "You’re free until morning," he called out over his shoulder. "I’ll retrieve you at dawn. Try not to get into trouble."

He was already moving down the street, his silhouette receding into the gathering twilight as the city's ruins began to swallow the last of the sun. The four women huddled together behind him, examining the lanterns in Lana’s shaking hands. The cyan light, while useful, was unforgiving. It revealed the gruesome truth of the lanterns' construction—human finger bones had been meticulously fused into the metal frame to serve as structural supports, their tips and joints still preserved in ghastly, mummified detail.

"Ewww!" Sarah’s shriek pierced the quiet evening air, echoing off the hollow buildings. "There are fingers in there! Actual, real fingers! Why would he give us this?"

Searanox, now several blocks away, ignored the distant scream. He had already claimed a modest, relatively intact building adjacent to the hotel for his own use. The entire structure was technically unnecessary for a single man—a small house with four walls and a roof—but he needed the space to think, away from the constant, pleading eyes of the refugees.

Inside the quiet place, he settled onto a sturdy, bed. He didn't bother turning on a light; his Dampier eyes were perfectly capable to see in the dark. He sat there in the darkness, the day’s events replaying in his mind like a frantic, high-speed recording. Two dungeons cleared. An entire city effectively seized and reorganized. A core group of survivors leveled up to a functional baseline. Tons of meat provided to a starving populace. Agriculture and gardening initiatives set in motion.

Finally, there were no interruptions. No one was asking him for food, no one was screaming in terror, and Iris was off tending to her own requirements. He could finish his thoughts, letting them flow through his mental checklist without the usual disturbances of the Integration.

In this rare moment of relative tranquility, he remembered something he had overlooked in the chaos of the city’s transition. After clearing the Revenant Lord, he had been granted a specific System Boon. He hadn't had the luxury of time to examine it properly until now.

With a flick of his eyes, he pulled the notification window from the edge of his peripheral vision. The glowing blue light filled his vision.

He mentally confirmed the acceptance, and another window bloomed into existence before him.

Searanox stared at the notification for several long seconds, his mind immediately running the numbers. On the surface, a reduction of one point seemed minor, almost negligible given his current power level. However, when he factored in the scale of his operations—summoning dozens of drones and maintaining them over long durations—the efficiency gain was massive. It wasn't just about the initial cast; it was about the cumulative energy saved over a day of grinding.

He dismissed the window and began flicking through the other notifications he had set aside. There was a one-time item duplication voucher and a Grand Labyrinth Core.

The duplication voucher was straightforward enough, but its ultimate utility felt limited for his current needs. He needed solutions for thousands, not a double of a single item. The Labyrinth Core was different. It sat not in his inventory— none inactive, cold, and untouchable. Iris had previously explained that labyrinths were essentially larger, more complex versions of dungeons that would begin appearing in the later stages of the Integration. Beyond that, even she knew very little.

`The System doesn't hand out useless items at this stage.` He mused. `There’s a purpose for this core. I just haven't reached the point where I can trigger it.`

He pushed those windows aside and focused his attention on his primary storage ring, calling up the inventory list.

He pulled the Gear Voucher (Lv. 30) from the ring’s dimensional space, holding the black metal, ticket between his fingers. He focused his intent on it, attempting to activate the item. A sharp, red flash of denial pulsed through his vision, accompanied by a harsh buzzing sound.

"Can't use items above my current level," he muttered to the empty, shadowed room. The limitation wasn't entirely surprising, but it was a frustrating reminder of the System’s rigid hierarchy. It was just another rule he would have to navigate.

He dismissed the high-level voucher and retrieved the Item Voucher (Lv. 15). This time, a sprawling menu materialized before him, listing hundreds of items ranging from industrial tools to miscellaneous survival equipment. He saw everything from heavy-duty farming implements to complex alchemical apparatuses. The list seemed to scroll endlessly, filled with things that would be useful in a functioning society but felt like distractions in the current chaos.

"Useless," he grunted, his eyes scanning the text at high speed. Then, one entry near the bottom caught his eye: Tanning Kit.

He selected it without hesitation. The voucher dissolved into golden sparks, replaced instantly by a substantial wooden crate reinforced with rusted metal corners that thumped heavily onto the office floor.

Searanox pried the lid open. Inside, he found neat rows of specialized knives with curved, wicked blades, several glass bottles filled with pungent, dark liquids, and various wooden tools whose specific purposes he could only guess at. There was no instruction manual—just the raw implements of the trade. He shoved the crate into a corner with his boot.

"Someone else can figure out how to use it," he said to the ceiling. "Spending a System voucher on a manual labor kit... what a waste of potential."

The hours began to blur together as he sat in the dark. Before he could even register the passage of time, his internal clock alerted him that it was time for his routine forest runs. The process had become mechanical, a repetitive cycle that required very little of his conscious attention. He moved out into the night, his drones clearing the low-level dungeons with surgical precision. Carcasses were processed, meat was stored, and the unusable excess was discarded inside the dungeons.

The only change to the routine was the addition of an extra cargo drone. This one wasn't carrying meat; it was laden with thick, raw animal hides, adding to the ten tons of meat he had already harvested during the night.

When the sun finally began to peek over the horizon, Searanox returned to the city. He descended into the hotel’s basement, his heavy boots echoing off the damp concrete walls. The large room where he had stored the previous day’s meat was slightly cooler than the upper floors, but it was far from a proper refrigerator. He ran a gauntleted hand along the stone wall. It was cool, yes, but not cold. There was no air circulation, no moisture control—nothing that would allow fifteen tons of raw meat to sit for more than a day or two without turning into a biological hazard.

He had reached a logistical breaking point. He could no longer simply dismiss his drones and go about his business. Eight of his primary drones hovered silently near the basement door, their dimensional storage holds filled to the absolute brim.

He checked his Tech Points. They were ticking down at a rate of two per minute just to maintain the active summons. He did the math quickly. He had exactly nine hours before his energy reserves ran dry and the drones simply vanished, dropping all their contents to the ground.

"Nine hours," he muttered to the empty room, the sound of his own voice strange in his ears. A humorless, jagged laugh escaped him. "As if I have nine hours of peace."

In reality, he had less than three. Between the travel time, the dungeon clears, and the constant management of the city’s survivors, his schedule was packed. The morning light filtering through the grimy, high-set basement windows told him he was already behind. The scheduled swamp clear for the core group was in sixty minutes.

`Sleep.` He thought. `When was the last time I actually slept?`

"This isn't sustainable," he said, the words hanging in the cool, stagnant air. "I'm essentially running a five-hour cycle just to keep thirty thousand people from starving to death slightly more slowly than they were yesterday."

He took the basement stairs two at a time, emerging into the lobby and heading toward what had once been the hotel’s administrative offices. Samantha and Rayan were already there, hunched over a scarred wooden table littered with hand-drawn maps and lists of names. Their heads were close together in deep discussion, but they looked up instantly when he kicked the door open. Both of them looked like they were one bad day away from a total collapse.

"I have another twenty tons of meat to distribute, and it needs to happen immediately," he said, cutting straight through any potential pleasantries. "And find me someone who knows how to process pelts. I brought back hides. Ring whatever bell you need to ring, find whoever had a hobby in leatherworking—I don't care. I can't keep this much in storage indefinitely."

Their eyes widened in near-perfect unison. "Twenty tons!?" Rayan’s voice cracked, coming out as a high-pitched squeak. "Searanox, we haven't even finished handing out the haul from last night!"

"Make it happen. And get the core group ready for the swamp clear. We leave in one hour." Searanox turned on his heel to leave.

"Wait! Where did you even get that much?" Rayan called after him, his voice desperate. "Is there a warehouse we missed?"

Searanox paused at the door, half-turning to look at them. The glow in his eyes seemed more intense in the early morning light. "I don't find warehouses, Rayan. I hunt. I kill hundreds of beasts every few hours. I strip them of everything useful so you people don't have to resort to cannibalism."

He gestured toward the table of paperwork.

"Have those fields outside ready for planting by tomorrow. I know crops take time to grow, but the sooner we get seeds in the ground, the sooner I can stop being a full-time butcher. And get the level-fives out there hunting on their own. They need to start pulling their own weight."

His hand rested on the doorknob, the metal creaking under his grip. "Don't ask me how long I can keep this pace up. Because the answer is: not long."