Up - Outrun - Chapter 102

I collapsed onto my bed with my med-kit, my arms practically dead from hauling up all the shit I klepped from the Neo-Jokers. I took a moment, finally deactivating Cold-Blooded as I curled up in bed under the warmth of my blankets. As I lay under the bulk of blankets, I wrapped my hands in bandages. The wounds ached and throbbed, but there was no point doing anything more since I'd be healed as soon as I fell asleep.

Once I got rewarmed up enough, I stood up and returned to my newfound loot after putting away my med-kit. First things first, I emptied the explosives from my pockets and hid them alongside the fifty cal I yoinked from the nomads. It would seriously suck to go kablam because I tripped.

Then I set the spools of wire up next to my printer and put a new one in. Mission accomplished, I guess. The spools were the main reason I went back to Ruby's BBQ in the first place.

The statue found a nice home in my bedroom. I still got the warm tingle as I touched it, but I’d have to worry about that some other time. More accurately, I'd have to take it to Carone some other time.

The armor went next to my workshop. I had some plans for it but now wasn’t the time. I would like to integrate the armor into something I could use at some point, but that was a future development that would take quite a bit of time.

The blackmail files I hid by taping them up under my table. A pretty shit hiding spot all things considered, but there weren’t too many good spots remaining. I'd have to give them a proper look through later to see who I had dirt on now.

I dumped the gun parts out of my bag alongside the rest of my scrap. I didn’t really have too many plans for them at the moment, but I’m sure I could think up something at some point. If not, I'm sure I could use them for something else.

That just left five ounces of gold. I pocketed them for now as I gazed around my apartment. It was quickly being filled up with stuff, to the point that only a few more heists would run me out of the room. That, and anyone walking in here would immediately see all kinds of illegal goods. 

Finding a stash location immediately jumped up to the top of my list, closely followed by finishing the gig, and then getting a car. Oh, and I needed to fix that katana for Torren, which I had yet to even look at. I was probably forgetting about a dozen other things I need to do, but they would pop up eventually.

As I set my bag down and looked around my loot, a new notification popped into my vision.

「Request - Precious - Complete

• Crow’s Wheel of Wares」

「Use now?」

I hesitated a moment, taking the time to go lay down on my bed, and psyched myself up before mentally agreeing.

---

My vision slowly faded back in, darkness surrounding me as my eyes barely picked out shapes hidden in it. The darkness faded slightly thanks to a dim red glow bringing enough light so I could start picking up details in the nearly pitch-black space.

Dark fog covered the graveyard I found myself in as a chill blew across my skin. The place looked mostly the same as the last time I was in this desolate space, and yet the graves and items hidden in the dark fog had changed slightly. Their orientation had shifted as if I was on a different hill entirely. 

And yet, everything else was the same. The same dread-inducing fog surrounded the hill billowing out as if to hide some monstrous entity. The same tree bleeding liquid ruby sat in the middle of the hill, a mote of the beautiful substance oozing around at its base. The same black grass covered patches of the graveyard. The same crimson moon hung in the sky as an creepy beacon of the space.

Crows cried from out in the distance, their haunting wails feeling ominous as they echoed across the fog. I stood there, in the dim light of the crimson moon, for what felt like an hour before something changed. 

The dark fog converged, much the same as last time, but this time it wasn’t only just the Wheel of Wares that was revealed. All around me, on the tips of the graves and the bars of falling apart metal fences, little blips of shadowy fog compressed into avian shapes.

At the same time as the Wheel of Wares appeared, the compressed fog blew back, revealing hundreds if not thousands of dark forms watching me. Outside of their shadowy forms, all I could make out were the glowing red eyes of the crows and their mocking cries as they watched me.

I turned away, feeling the chills of dread as I looked at the wheel. It appeared in all its dark glory. The nearly pitch black, withered wood creaked as the Wheel of Wares came to a rest on a dark patch of grass. The same liquidized ruby that covered the tree seemed to bleed out of the wood, forming into words in a language I couldn’t read.

Insight warned me of the thousands of gazes, and yet there was one in particular that locked up my body as I started towards the wheel. Ever so slowly, I shifted my gaze up past the withered wood of the tree, peering up through its branches. 

The same massive form of a crow, resting on the tree as if it were a throne, covered the entire top side of the tree. Most of its form was obscured by the dark fog and withered branches, but what I could see looked like liquid darkness acting as feathers for the massive creature. Its eight, ruby-red eyes held a calculative glow as they peered down at me.

I didn’t dare continue inspecting the creature as I shifted my gaze back to the wheel. I wasn’t sure the last time, but now I knew it was truly the eidolon. Crow watched me, in his dark majesty, as I inched towards the wheel. Truly a stressful thought.

I tried to not let his frightening gaze get to me as I stretched a hand towards the wheel. As it approached the wheel, my fingernails chipped off, fading into the dark fog as if they never existed in the first place. My flesh soon followed, flowing off my pristine white bones. It didn’t hurt, but the sight was revolting enough for bile to rise to the back of my throat as I wrapped my skeletal hand around the dark wood of the wheel.

A cold, electric tingle coursed through me as my bones met the wood, feeling absolutely disgusting as I put pressure on my arm. My white bones creaked and groaned as I started to spin the wheel, sending little shocks of wrongness up my arm.

I spun the Wheel of Wares, snapping my arm back as the flesh and blood reformed around it, returning to normal. I rubbed a hand up and down my flesh and watched the wheel spin. It ticked like a clock counting down towards my death date. With every passing moment the red and black blurred together, I felt ice continuously drop further and further into my stomach till the ticking finally started to slow down.

The wheel stopped at one point, the red pin pointing at words I couldn’t understand. The interface popped up with a translation.

「Crow’s Wheel of Wares

• Crow’s Celestial Compass」

A compass? I guess it could be helpful- wait, no, this probably isn’t just any compass. Crow’s Canteen of Chaos wasn’t just a canteen, so maybe there was something special about it? Or maybe-

The cry of hundreds of crows drowned out my thoughts, sending echoing wails throughout my skull as if seeking to destroy it. The pure concussive force of the constant caws nearly drove me to my knees in pain, but thankfully it didn’t reach that point. The shadowy fog surrounded me, dragging me out of Crow’s dimension.

Light returned to my eyes, and I found myself lying on my bed just the same as when I left. A weight rested on my chest, revealing it to be a compass as I lifted my head and checked.

The compass was cylindrical. It was made from a deep, dark black metal, the metal shaped in such a way to look like feathers were wrapped around it. Bright red rubies slightly glowed on all four sides, the top, and the bottom of the piece.

I flicked the latch for the lid open, the top part of the compass opening by itself to reveal an intricate array of crystals and dark gears slowly twisting around themselves. They were dead silent. Glowing scarlet lines popped up above the compass face as if holograms, rapidly centering themselves so the thickest one pointed north.

「Crow’s Celestial Compass

The Celestial Compass has led many a wanderer both to Hallowed Havens and Hostile Harbors. A gift born of the celestial meeting between the corporeal and immaterial.

• Find a Hallowed Haven

• Find a Hostile Harbor

• Find a Dimensional Dissonance

• Generate a Dimensional Dissonant Dart

  • 3 charges

  • Regenerate 1 charge a week」

Oh? Flavor text? I might not play video games, but I can spot flavor text when I see it. Why didn’t the canteen have anything for it?

Anyway, the compass seemed interesting. I traced a finger down it, feeling the cool metal under my flesh. Hallowed Havens and Hostile Harbors were a bit of an odd choice of words, almost akin to pirate speech, to the point I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to test it. 

I mean, how Hallowed are we talking about? Like a holy grounds type deal or just a fancy way of saying a safe spot? A bigger issue was how Hostile? If I used it, would it lead me to a Sentinel hunting party? Or just a gang’s territory? And what the hell was a Dimensional Dissonance?

So many questions, and yet I couldn’t answer most of them even if I wanted to thanks to the recharge timer. It would be a waste to use a charge considering it would take a week to recharge. 

Hmm… maybe I could find a good spot for my stash with the Hallowed Haven side of the compass? I wasn’t so much worried about that function as I was about the others, at the least, so it might be worth trying.

I picked it up and waved my hand, channeling the same sensation of the canteen disappearing. Shadows enveloped my hand, shrouding it out of sight. By the time they cleared, the compass vanished. I played with it for a moment, summoning and banishing the thing repeatedly. Crow's rewards sure were convenient.

 I moved from my bed, got dressed in a far more comfortable outfit, used some makeup to slightly distort my face, and then headed out the door with the five ounces of gold in my pocket. It was time to make some actual money off my heist.

I found a gold to Rayn shop close to Sakura Street called Golden Rayn. Real classy name and their logo was even ‘classier’. I headed in, finding a woman in a skimpy golden outfit barely consisting of a sports bra, cut-up jacket, and booty shorts. “Welcome in, darlin’. What can I do for ya?”

I dropped an ounce of gold onto the desk. “You buying?”

The lady eyed me for a moment before leaning over and inspecting the golden disk. “Ninety-nine, huh? Not too often we got such high purity… you mind if I test it, darlin’?”

”Go right ahead.” I sighed and leaned back. No reason not to- well, there were reasons, but I figured I could sneak back and clean out the shop if she messed with me.

The lady picked it up and walked back into the store. A minute later she reappeared with the disk of gold. “Alright, looked legit. Twenty-five hundred good witcha’?”

I bit my lip hearing the price of a single ounce. Of course, I had looked it up on my way over, but seeing the numbers on a screen and hearing it in person were two different things. I should have looked around the vault for more of them. “Sure.” 

She matched my eye, my PA acting as the go-between for the sale as twenty-five hundred Rayn entered my account. Funny how easily I earned my month’s rent compared to the gig I was on. It was over double the amount of Rayn in just a single day. It felt… bittersweet?

I headed for the door, my hand brushing over the gold disks in my pocket. Part of me wanted to just sell all five of them now, but another part said to save them for a rainy day. Regardless though, I didn’t want to sell all five to Golden Rayn. I wasn’t sure how the Neo-Jokers would react, but if they scoured gold shops for five ounces popping up I didn’t want it to track back to me.

I headed for my bike, hesitating between selling the rest to different stores or keeping them. The Rayn would be nice, but it wasn’t enough to get the stuff I really wanted. It’s not like the gold price would drop if I held onto them either. Hmm… well, I could always sell them some other time.

I turned on my bike, feeling the soft hums of the engine, and headed back home.