Chapter 174

The shop was full of display cases, each one showing off various cheeses. There were familiar shades of white, yellow, orange, sometime solid or with holes, and then there were more exotic colors like green and red. A wedge of something like looked like a purple brick took center stage on the counter the shopkeeper stood behind.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Luke asked. “I don’t smell anything but… well, cheese.”

“This is the place our new friend told us to go to,” Zea said. “Whether he was lying remains to be seen.”

The shopkeeper, an older man whose hair had lost most of its silverly luster and was considerably thinner than average, said something Luke didn’t understand, frowned, and said, “Standard?”

“Standard,” Luke replied.

“Should’a known. You don’t look like you grew up around here.”

“Hah. Yeah, it’s weird to think of myself as the strange and exotic one, but here I am anyway.”

“I bet all the girls are batting their eyelashes at you,” the shopkeeper said.

“No…?”

“Yes they do,” Zea said.

“They- what?”

“You’re just too oblivious to notice.”

“I am not,” Luke objected.

“You are,” Zea told him. “It’s cute that you don’t see it, but a girl basically has to throw herself in your lap and start rooting around under your clothes before you get the message.”

“I… but, and you said, I was trying to respect, and then…”

Luke cut himself off with a heavy sigh, deliberately turned away from Zea to face the now laughing shopkeeper, and said, “Anyway, I was hoping to get your advice on how to spend some money.”

“I recommend buying cheese,” the man said, a hint of laughter still in his voice.

“Mmm. Our budget is four gold and six coppers,” Luke said, throwing out the number they’d been instructed to use.

“Ah. Big spenders. You could get a lot of cheddar for that much, but maybe you’d like to see some of the expensive stuff I keep in the back?” the shopkeeper asked, his friendly demeanor gone in an instant.

“Yeah, maybe we should,” Luke said. “Lead the way?”

“Right through here,” the shopkeeper told him.

Luke tossed an [Analyze] on the man, just as a matter of habit. Nothing came back suspicious, though the man did have a great deal of skills at rank 3, more than his relatively low level would account for. That wasn’t all that unusual for the older people Luke had looked at, though in this case what was unusual was how old the shopkeeper was to begin with. Luke hadn’t seen a lot of people over fifty years old on the eastern continent.

Or maybe he had, and they all just aged really gracefully. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’d ever seen.

The storeroom had very little in the way of actual product in it, which made sense to Luke when he considered how primitive Aros’s ideas on refrigeration were. Most of the space was taken up by a small office in one corner, some storage racks in another, and a set of cellar doors in the back. A drop bar prevented them from being opened from below, but it wasn’t locked into place and the shopkeeper lifted it out of the way.

“Head down the stairs, follow the tunnel until you get to the main arena. Don’t try to start shit or the guards will put you down,” he said, all traces of pleasantness now gone from him. “Don’t come back up this way. This is an entrance only. Exits are elsewhere. Understand?”

“Got it,” Luke said. Zea just nodded.

They started down the stairs and the door closed behind them. There were no lights of any kind, which wasn’t a problem for Luke, but made him wonder how people who didn’t have a high perception were supposed to navigate. Even if the tunnel went in a straight line, it would still be awkward to grope his way along blindly.

The sound of the drop bar falling into place came from behind him, causing Luke to snort. “As if that dinky little piece of wood could stop me,” he muttered.

He felt the presence of XP well before he saw it, and not a small amount either. There were dozens of sources ahead, maybe as many as a hundred. Most of them were relatively weak, as low as level 10 in one particular case, but there were a handful above level 30. “Time to turn [XP Mask] back on,” Luke said.

“Hopefully these people aren’t as observant as that Jigon-Sai captain,” Zea said.

Their plan was simple, but it relied on people not knowing Luke’s level. Most people didn’t pay close enough attention to see that Luke didn’t present any XP at all while using his skill and just assumed he was extremely weak. Every now and then he got a weird look when someone made a connection between his age and apparent lack of XP, but it had never been a big deal prior to reaching the eastern continent.

It probably wouldn’t matter now either, except that the demons had taught people to be wary. Their hope was that a bunch of people gambling on monster fights wouldn’t have any first-hand experience with dealing with a levelless demon. The disguise only needed to hold long enough to locate whoever owned the arena and arrange a meeting.

They rounded a bend in the tunnel and found a well-lit cavern in front of them. Two guards flanked the entrance, both above level 30 and with a stat spread and skill selection that told Luke if it came to a fight, both would go in for an immediate grapple and try to keep him pinned down. They looked close enough in appearance and age that Luke had them pinned as siblings, possibly even fraternal twins.

They turned to look at Luke and Zea in unison. “New money,” one said.

“Looks like it,” the other agreed.

“Better tell them the rules.”

“No fighting outside the pits. All bets are final. What happens down here, stays down here. If you recognize someone you met at the arena out in the city, no, you didn’t. Don’t approach them or give any indication that you know that person. Understand?”

“Yes,” Zea said.

Luke nodded, but said nothing. They’d already agreed that when they got to the monster arena itself, she’d take the lead. Despite having a stronger grasp on the language, they both knew that Zea would do a better job hammering out a deal with the arena master. Anything and everything they did now could influence how that negotiation played out, so his job was to stand close by and be quiet.

“Go on in,” the left guard said.

“Where do I go to talk to someone about signing up to fight?” Zea asked as she stepped into the cavern.

Luke followed along behind her and got his first good look at the cavern. It was illuminated by lanterns strung up on chains, about twenty of them or so spaced evenly apart. Upon closer inspection, the light wasn’t great, but anyone with a perception over 7 or 8 would be able to see just fine. Since that was most people, it made sense not to waste the extra effort on brightening the place even further.

The center of the cavern held an enormous pit about two hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep. Concentric rings of bleachers had been carved into the stone around it, except for the north and south ends, where metal gates of some sort had been installed. Those had some sort of private boxes over top either side. The whole thing reminded Luke a lot of a coliseum, except without the sand.

The rest of the cavern was full of interesting sights as well. What looked like street vendor stands lined one wall with a scattering of tables in front of them. Luke had to stop himself from laughing out loud when he realized it was essentially a miniature food court. Past that was an unattended cage attached to the stone that had its sole window shuttered. The only way in or out of the cage was through a door carved into the wall.

The cavern wasn’t particularly crowded, but it wasn’t empty either. Considering there was no fight scheduled for another two hours, at least according to the giant painted sign near what Luke assumed was the betting cage, it kind of surprised him just how many people were there. It wasn’t just guards either; there were plenty of low level people who’d apparently shown up for no other reason than to spend some money. Perhaps they had some meetings about other illicit businesses and the arena was a good place to avoid the prying eyes of legitimate authorities.

“Hey, quit staring and let’s go,” Zea said. She grabbed his arm and guided him towards the north wall.

There was a door-shaped hole carved into the stone with what looked like the bars from a prison cell fitted into it and a woman standing on the far side. She looked Luke and Zea over as they approached, then said, “What do you want?”

“Looking to sign up for a fight or two,” Zea said.

“Both of you together? You sure? Your boyfriend would get turned to paste.”

“Can we speak to whoever organizes that?” Zea asked, ignoring the woman’s commentary.

She shrugged and said, “Wait here,” before disappearing down the tunnel.

“You think they’ll go for it?” Luke asked after a minute of silence.

“Probably. It’ll be good money for them. Good for us too.”

A few minutes later, the woman showed back up with an incredibly fat man in tow. “Which one?” he asked.

“They didn’t say,” the woman told him.

“Hnngh. Girl’s alright, probably draw a decent crowd for being non-human. Guy’s a loser. Not interested.”

“Could we speak somewhere private?” Zea asked. “We’ve got a proposition for you. I think it’ll make both of us a lot of money.”

“I fucking doubt it, but sure. Let ‘em through.”

The woman opened the bars, and Luke took a second to [Analyze]her before stepping through. Level 32, well-rounded stats and a focus on bare-knuckle brawling and cats, for some reason. She had three different skills devoted to cats, including one really weird one called [Cat Milker] that Luke was almost afraid to look up in the skill store. He immediately regretted it.

“What’s wrong?” Zea asked, noting the look on his face.

“She’s got a skill for, uh… collecting fluids from cats for breeding purposes.”

Through some monumental effort of will, Zea stopped herself from turning to look at the woman walking behind them now. “She doesn’t speak Thalian, right?”

“Nobody here speaks Thalian,” Luke told her.

“Well, just ignore it then. Not our business what she does on her nights off. What about the big guy? Tell me he doesn’t have anything better than [Bartering] rank 1.”

“Rank 2, and also [Swindler] at rank 3.”

“Going to be a hard round of negotiations,” Zea said, looking perversely pleased by the prospect. “What’s his name?”

“Gotayi.”

“Everyone’s got weird fucking names here.”

“Hey, whatever you two are mumbling in that barbaric excuse for a language, knock it off,” Gotayi said. “Speak a civilized tongue or stay silent.”

“Oh, and he’s kind of a prick, huh?” Zea added.

Luke just nodded.

Gotayi led them about a hundred feet down the tunnel before stopping at a door and opening it with a key. “Alright, come on in. Tell me what scam you want to pull here and I’ll tell you if it’s worth the time.”

“How do you know it’s a scam?” Zea asked.

“Your boy there obviously isn’t level 1 and you think you’re going to make a lot of money somehow, so, go on, tell me the play.”

Zea took a breath and said, “Well, you’re not wrong, but let’s go inside first? Don’t want to risk anyone overhearing it.”