For the following month, Roger and Issac was slowly but surely chipping down the population of the fire hounds in the surrounding area.

The only time they took a break was when Issac's wife forced him to log off, to spend time with his family. There were a few close calls, during the past month, sometimes unexpectedly the fire hounds sent much larger groups, then expected, it nearly overwhelmed Roger if it wasn't for Issac's specialty arrows. 

Roger could have ran away with Issac's warning during the time but, over the past month Roger had gotten way to smug about killing these fire hounds.

"Roger there is a group of 20 fire hounds headed your way!" Shouted Issac over the intercom.

"I will be fine, it is just 20."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." 

But it wasn't just Roger, unconsciously Issac thought they could have handled it as well, with no problem. Except when the time actually came. Roger was being overwhelmed.  

Roger nearly got broken down. 

Roger only managed to escape the situation, by relying on all the different specialty arrows that he had brought for Issac.

"I am being overwhelmed! Fire as many area of control arrows as you can!" During the fight Roger was visually panic, same went for Issac as that he knew if Roger went down so would him. 

"Get on the ground now!" Shouted Issac. 

From his storage orbs he quickly took out one expensive arrow at a time, and fired it almost instantly. In a quick succession he shot smokescreens, poisonous fog arrows, and arrow rains. Thereby covering the whole area where Roger was.

Roger immediately knew what Issac meant when he was told to get on the ground. 

He had he body as flat to the ground as possible. While using the hand that he had his shield on, casted the energy shield upwards in front of him. Roger knew the Fire hounds couldn't break through the shield in a  such short amount of time. 

As the group of hounds were trying to smash Roger's shield, Issac's arrows arrived, not knowing that specialty arrows were available to Issac. The hounds were caught off guard. 

Many of the hounds actually managed to dodge the specialty arrows this time, but Issac wasn't aiming for the hounds this time around. As the arrows touched the ground they immediately exploded into a huge fog of clouds.   

First the smokescreen caused visible confusion, to the hounds. The poison started choking them as well. To weaken them even further, while they already couldn't see and breathe the many scatter arrow shots caused them to bleed.

"Woof..." 

When the hounds clearly sounded weaken Roger got up.

He told Issac. "You can stop firing now, I can take it from here."

Thanks, to his mechanical body that allows him to thermal image sensing, he could obviously tell where the hounds were.  

Though damaged to an extreme degree, he still managed to kill them 1 by 1.

"That was a close call, you were almost sent to the scrapyard buddy." 

"I know! Even though I made so much money, and could have rebuilt my body from scratch, I would have wasted over a month having my body being rebuilt, while waiting in line."

The other close shave was when a nearby mountain sudden exploded! Magma flowed down from the mouth of a newly born volcano. Volcanic rocks were flying everywhere!  

"Get to higher grounds! Don't try to out run the lava that is currently flowing from the mouth of the volcano!" 

The party didn't know what was going to happen to them. The packs fire hounds that day had long scattered in all directions. But to them this was a common occurrence, they knew all the good hiding places. 

The party was just praying that they wouldn't get struck by a stray rock.

Lucky for them the eruption stopped after an hour worth of time.

"That was a close shave." Said Roger, but as soon as he said that the volcano shot another burst of lava rocks towards the party's direction.

"Ah! You jinx it!" Said Issac as he was crouching down.

"I'm sorry!"

They suddenly a rock came dangerously close to Roger and the party. It smashed right into the mountain they were on. But lucky, they were only shook off their feet when the rock hit. 

After waiting for a couple of minutes, it was only then did the group calmed down. 

"This is a Grade E orange danger zone alright." Said Roger.

"There are just some times that simply aren't within our control." Shrug Issac.

"Considering the state of the area, I doubt the fire hounds will be back for a few days."

"Ah, dammit!"  

Suddenly one of the members shouted, guys come here! The group met up at the location where the rock hit the mountain. At the location what they saw was a giant fire gem stone! 

Everyone managed to get a full share! 

Ah, that makes up for everything, thought Roger.

The group was then dismissed for several days.

...

One day as the 2 were grinding, Issac suddenly said that he was going on a family vacation. It was something his family would do once a year.

"Yo, my family and I are going on vacation want to come with."

"Nah, I am good, go have fun. You make money to spend money right?"

"While I am at it, besides the two upgrades, I have gotten after the eruption, I can get 4 more making it a total of 6! Not just 6 basic upgrades but 6 custom ones! It should all be done right when I come back from vacation."

Roger was starting to have a little regret in his decision when he decided on having a 2nd energy storage conversion core.

"Ugh, even though I have 4 upgrades already, I can only get 3 custom upgrades with the money I saved up, you are already starting to catch up! The cost to my upgrades are insane they are growing exponentially. But I want custom upgrades, otherwise it doesn't seem to be worth it."

"Unless you want to start all over, which in knowing you. Is something you would not do." 

"Yea, you are right."

"See you in about a week, later buddy." 

"Bye"

Roger was suddenly left with a small void in his heart, after Issac left. He didn't want to go back to hunting monsters one by one.

Since he didn't feel like doing anything currently, he decided to get his next 3 upgrades as well, by then he would have reached a whole new level in what he can do.

Roger decided to get 2 more full body custom upgrades and one concentrated custom upgrade, but not in the same areas that have already been touched upon. 

The 1st of the 3 he choose was maximizing impact resistance against physical and elemental attacks. What is impact resistance or damage? Well, whenever an attack lands on one's self, one doesn't only get damage on the outside, but internally as well. For a human that could be internal bleed, shifting, of the organs, or even broken bones. 

By maximizing impact resistance for a mechanical body, the internals of the body wouldn't get disrupted as easily. It would cushion the core of the body from any physical blow by distributing it to the whole body instead of one area. For elemental attacks instead of energy base attacks being concentrated and causing the internals to either melt from a fire attack from overheating, or shutting down from being frozen or electrocuted, some of the energy gets converted back for his own use instead, to maintain basic operations. So it would take a longer time for an elemental attack to get through.

The 2nd upgrade roger decided upon, was material strengthening. Material strengthening like the name suggested is increasing the quality of the materials a basic grade E mechanical body is made from. Roger planned on choosing a material at the peak of Grade E to recast his outward body. This would strengthen his overall performance, be it in defense, offense and mobility. Though, it wouldn't be as strong as a concentrated offensive upgrade, defense, or as quick as a sudden boost with speed upgrades.

The final upgrade he has chosen for this round is self recovery, Roger wasn't aiming at another full body upgrade for his 7th upgrade but a concentrated one. In times when Roger couldn't just sit and relax to repair himself slowly, he wanted the ability to concentrate all of his recovery ability in one spot where he would need it to be repaired asap. He decided on his upgrade purely for emergency use. If his arm gets torn off for some reason, he would like the ability to grab back his torn off arm put it back in place, and focus all of his recovery rate in that one spot.

Roger can do this because he had two cores, by focusing the energy of 1 entire core on 1 task, he would be able to repair a wounded area, several times faster, while still being able to maintain basic functionality.   

After finalizing his upgrade choices. Roger headed back to the Continental Ark Ship upgrading area.

On his way back, there were ads everywhere advertising Earth's first tournament on the Ark Ship that was coming up in a few weeks. It was a very basic player vs player tournament hosted by a small committee that anyone could join.     

"Looks interesting." Roger smirked before logging off.