Our first employer was neither a lord nor a merchant. It was the Undertaker from the village of Heim. A man who smelled of formalin and cheap wine.

  "They dig," he complained, nervously fingering a button on his greasy camisole. "Every night. I bury them, they dig them up. The relatives are complaining. They are angering the Old Gods, oh, how they are angering them... The dead must lie still, otherwise misfortune comes to the house."

  "Who are 'they'?" asked the Sergeant. "Grave robbers? Competitors?"

  "Beasts," whispered the Undertaker, looking around. "They eat everything. The shrouds too."

  Gunther, who had been bored until this moment, perked up.

  "They eat shrouds? That is textile damage. What is the payment?"

  "Two hundred and fifty crowns. And whatever you find in the pockets... of those they haven't eaten yet."

  "Accepted," nodded the Captain. "We take the night shift."

  The cemetery welcomed us with dampness and the kind of silence found only in places where clients are not prone to filing complaints. Fog hugged the ground, hiding the unearthed graves.

  "Atmospheric," Jem noted, kicking a skull. "Dark, moody, like a sketch on old parchment."

  "Shut up," hissed the Sergeant. "Listen. Smell."

  Ahead, in the fog, a sound emerged. Slurping. Wet, rhythmic, disgusting.

  We came upon a fresh burial. Three creatures were hunched over the dug-up pit. Gray, hairless, with disproportionately large maws. Ghouls. Scavengers.

  They were busy: one was pulling a dead man's arm out of the earth. On the hand, in the moonlight, a ring gleamed dully.

  "Attention!" Gunther screamed in a whisper. "They are destroying assets! The one on the left is chewing a boot! That is leather! Stop him!"

  The Ghouls raised their heads. There was no hatred in their beady eyes. Only surprise. We were competitors. We had come for their food. Or were we the food? Their primitive AI tried to solve this dilemma.

  "Form up!" barked the Sergeant. "Adler, Knut — hold the front! Do not let them near the corpses!"

  The fight began. The Ghouls didn't growl. They squealed like pigs at a slaughterhouse.

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  The first one lunged at Adler. Our one-eyed "Senior Distraction Manager" flinched. He wasn't used to an enemy that tried not to strike, but to bite off a piece of the texture.

  Adler hid behind his shield, whining in terror. The beast sank its teeth into the wood, leaving deep gouges.

  "Help!" Knut yelled, poking blindly with his pitchfork, eyes squeezed shut. "It's eating the pitchfork! It's chewing iron, the bastard! Let go!"

  Jem, standing behind the Captain, commented on the proceedings with frightening calm:

  "This is Tier-1. Minor nuisance. Low HP, low damage. But watch..." he pointed to the third ghoul, who was ignoring us and continuing to devour the corpse from the grave. "Mechanic: 'Feast'. If he finishes eating, he triggers a Level-Up."

  The third ghoul, swallowing a chunk of flesh (along with a piece of the caftan, to Gunther's horror), began to change. His muscles swelled, his jaw cracked and widened. He grew before our eyes, like dough on yeast.

  "Holy saints!" Knut backed away, nearly dropping his weapon. "It's growing! Demon! Look, he's going to burst!"

  "Unauthorized merger of assets!" Gunther howled, ignoring the personnel panic. "He capitalized the corpse! Now his value has increased!"

  "Real-time evolution," Jem whistled appreciatively. "One more evolution and he can swallow a man whole."

  "Kill the big one!" commanded the Captain.

  The Sergeant, Knut, and Adler ganged up on the "grown" one.

  This was not a battle of heroes. It was a brawl in village mud. Knut shrieked, trying to pull his pitchfork from the beast's ribs. Adler, shaking all over, bashed his shield against the snout just to drive the nightmare away from himself. The Sergeant worked his spear silently, like a sewing needle, methodically lowering the monster's health bar.

  The beast fell, spewing black ichor. Knut jumped back, shaking himself off in disgust:

  "Pfeh, filth! It got in my eyes! It stings!"

  "Don't ruin the hide!" Gunther screeched. "Trophies! Hit the eye!"

  When the last ghoul went quiet (having received a dagger in the ear from the Captain), silence returned to the cemetery. The only sound was the heavy breathing of Knut, who was crossing himself with a trembling hand.

  "Inventory check," Gunther began immediately, stepping over the monster's corpse.

  He walked up to the open grave and looked sadly at the half-eaten dead man.

  "The boot is ruined. The beast chewed the leather. A loss. But the caftan..." he gingerly pulled the fabric from the maw. "Can be washed. The hole in the back — we'll call it 'ventilation' and sell at a discount."

  Jem, meanwhile, was using a knife to gouge fangs from the mouth of another dead ghoul.

  "Loot: 'Ghoul Tooth' — 2 units. Crafting ingredient. And..." he cut off a slab of gray flesh. "'Strange Meat'. 10 kg."

  "Meat?" Knut turned green, nearly vomiting right onto the Sergeant's boots. "You... you intend to eat that? It's a man-eater! It ate a person! What a sin!"

  "Technically, it is recycled biomass," Jem noted philosophically, weighing the chunk in his hand. "If cooked with garlic and pepper, the stats are like chicken. Just stringy. And tastes a bit like soil. But it's free."

  Gunther looked at the piece of gray meat, then at his ledger. Then at the hungry, terror-filled eyes of Knut and Adler.

  "Provisions are provisions," he delivered the verdict. "Log it as 'Category: Preserved Provisions'. Budget savings on nutrition — 100%. We do not waste calories."

  We returned to the village as victors.

  Knut walked trying to stay as far away as possible from the sack of meat, muttering prayers.

  Adler just limped, glad that today he wasn't the one eaten.

  Gunther smiled, wrapping a ring extracted from the monster's stomach in a rag. The balance sheet was positive once again.