Chapter 43

Zea handled the bargaining. Luke, on her orders, just stayed back and kept his mouth shut. The pawnbroker squinted at him a few times, but didn’t say anything about it. When it was all said and done, he stashed the bundle away and dropped nine silver coins into Zea’s hand. She handed over three to Luke and stuck the rest in a little pouch she wore around her neck on a string.

“That doesn’t look like half,” he said.

“It’s half minus the cost of your new boots,” she shot back. “Just give him a minute.”

The pawnbroker came back with a pair of low-cut boots that came up to Luke’s ankles. There were cracks in the leather, but they were still solid enough to last for a little while. More importantly, they were about the same size as the one’s he’d traded away.

Luke slipped into them, did a quick lap around the room, and nodded at the broker. They weren’t as good as the boots he’d traded in, but if Zea was to be believed, he’d be a lot less conspicuous. At least, he’d be less likely to get targeted by church enforcers. There was nothing he could do about his level. Anyone with any decent amount of perception was going to pick him out of a crowd.

“Come on,” she said.

Once they were back on the street, Zea led him a few blocks over before he said, “Where are we going?”

“I said I’d show you where to make money, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess you did. What kind of money are we talking about anyway, and what would I be doing?”

“Big strong guy like you, the best place is the fight clubs.”

“I thought you didn’t talk about those kinds of places,” Luke said with a smirk.

“What? No, why wouldn’t I? They’re not a secret. If no one knew about them, there’d be no money in it.”

Luke groaned. If ever there was anything to drive home he was in a new world, that was it right there. Forget the monsters and the levels and all of that crap; the fact that not one single person would ever get any pop culture reference he made, ever, was the real kicker. It really drove home how much he missed his old life. That, and indoor plumbing. And toilet paper. God he missed toilet paper.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s a joke from where I’m from.”

“Weird foreigner humor. You should probably just let me do the talking when we get there.”

“Hold on there. I didn’t agree to this.”

Zea spun in place and jabbed a finger at him. “You got anything useful besides combat skills?”

“I, er, [Leatherworking] and [Woodcarving]?”

“They’d better be at least rank 3, and even then, you’re going to need raw materials and buyers before you make any money.”

“[Leatherworking] is rank 2. [Woodcarving] is 1,” Luke admitted.

Zea nodded along. “That’s my point. You’re good for fighting, not good at much else.”

“I feel like I should be offended.”

Zea shrugged and made a point of looking Luke over. “Do what you want. This is how you get money quick.”

“How much does it cost to sail across the ocean anyway?” Luke asked.

“Why would you want to?”

Luke just gave her a look, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. I don’t know. Fifty gold? Sixty? A hundred?”

There was no getting around it. He needed money, and he was going to be in Valtira for a while trying to get that much. Then again, Zea sounded more like she was guessing than like she actually knew. Maybe it would be less, significantly less. Unless she was off by a ton though, he didn’t have near enough.

“Fuck me. Fine. Fight clubs. Which way?”

“Come on, foreigner. Let’s go make some money!”

Luke had the sneaking suspicion that talking him into fighting was what Zea was after all along, but he had to admit that so far she’d been an excellent source of assistance. He followed her down the street as she navigated towards the seedier side of the city. The walls got dirtier, the streets got narrower, and it started to smell like shit and dead fish.

He half expected a street gang to jump out from around the corner and try to mug him, but either the city wasn’t as dangerous as he’d expected, or Zea was weaving through trouble spots. Considering the irregular twists and turns their route took, he had his suspicions that it was the latter. Before he could ask her about it, she stopped in front of a grimy door and pounded on it three times.

A moment later, someone pounded from the other side, and she hit it twice more. The door swung open to reveal a fat man in a grease stained shirt with a mop of unruly black hair on his head. “What?” he asked.

“Got a fighter for you,” Zea said, jerking a thumb at Luke. “Goes by Aldrick. I’m managing him.”

“Your fighters are shit,” the fat man told her.

“This one’s different. Just feel the XP coming off him.”

Fatty gave Luke a once over, shrugged, and said, “Doesn’t mean shit. So he stupidly piled on a bunch of XP. Doesn’t mean his build is any good.”

“So? Put him through an audition and then set the odds to favor the house.”

“I-” Luke started to say, but Zea cut him off.

“I got this. You just wait.”

Fatty snickered. “You’re a mouthy one, you know that?”

“Fuck you,” she said. “You want him or not? I can always take him over to Faye’s.”

“Screw her. Bring him in, we’ll give him the once-over. If he’s a flop, we can at least use him for an opener.”

“Deal.” Zea turned to Luke. “You need to fight a private match so they can get a feel for how to bill you, who to match you up against, so on. The better you show, the more money we make, so don’t sandbag, got it?”

“Yeah,” Luke said quietly. He gave Zea a searching look when she turned back to talk to Fatty again. Once again, he wondered just what a dwifkin was, and if there was any way for him to find out without it being suspicious that he’d even asked.

There were obviously lots of people who weren’t standard humans. That bobble-head person at the weapon store could talk too, and he still didn’t have a clue what they were. That was the problem with not knowing stuff: he didn’t know what it was common to not know and what would attract attention.

It was annoying, because Luke really wanted to know what Fatty meant when he’d said it was stupid to pile on XP. It seemed like everyone was a lower level than they could be, and he guessed it could be on purpose, but why was it stupid to raise his level? It was just another of those things that was driving him crazy, but he didn’t dare ask for clarification.

Zea finished up whatever her conversation was and poked Luke in the hip. “Huh? Oh, are you done now?” he asked.

“Hah. Barely even started, but come on. Let’s get you into a pit so you can show off a bit, that way I’ve got some negotiating leverage.”

Luke followed Zea and Fatty into the building. It was bigger than he’d expected, but only because someone had knocked out the wall between it and what he’d taken for a warehouse next to it. The front portion was a bar of some sort, and the other side, which was twice as big, was taken up by a twenty-foot wide pit. Bleachers circled it, four seats high, mostly empty right now.

“The real fights don’t start until the evening,” Fatty explained, noticing the unasked question on Luke’s face. “Hop down into that pit on the left side and I’ll go grab someone to trade punches with.”

There were no stairs or anything, but Luke didn’t have an issue with jumping the eight feet to the ground. It was kind of soft anyway, a bit spongier than solid ground should be. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, so he chalked it up to a purposeful design to cut down on injuries if someone took a bad fall. It was still solid enough that he didn’t think it would affect his footwork.

Zea sat on the edge of the pit and watched him. “What do you think?” she asked.

Luke shrugged. “It’s fine, I guess. Softer than I’m used to moving on, but it’s not a big deal. Got any advice on this? Should I drag it out, or drop them fast?”

Zea snorted. “If Sideon brings back who I’m thinking he will, you’re just going to want to try not to get your ass kicked too bad to walk away after.”

“Your confidence in me is touching,” Luke told her.

“I don’t know you that well.”

“Didn’t slow you down from trying to make money off me.”

“We’re both winning here. You badly need some direction, and I badly need more money.”

That was true enough, if he went by what she was wearing. She looked like a homeless orphan, but he was starting to suspect the outfit was more camouflage than because she couldn’t afford better. There was no way someone as smart and proactive as her was just scraping by, wearing clothes that came out of the garbage and hitting up foreigners for help.

“I’m just saying, you haven’t seen me fight yet,” he told her.

Zea looked over her shoulder at something Luke couldn’t see from where he was standing in the pit. “Figured,” she said. “You want some advice? Guard your nuts.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” Zea said. “You ever want to have kids, you’ll listen.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Then Fatty, or Sideon, Luke supposed, appeared next to Zea. “He ready?” he asked, nodding down at Luke.

“Ready as he’ll ever be,” Zea said.

They both snickered at that, an evil little laugh which Luke was not at all comfortable with. He was confused though; Fatty was supposed to bring out someone for him to spar with, and there was no one. Hopefully they weren’t expecting him to do shadow boxing or something, unless it was some sort of ploy to weaken Zea’s negotiating position.

Then a little boy he hadn’t noticed hopped down into the pit in front him. The kid was even shorter than Zea. He had long black hair that he’d tied back at the nape of his neck, wore heavy boots, and tight pants held in place with a metal-studded belt.

“This the guy?” the kid asked, raising his hands. “He looks like a pushover.”

“Um…”

“Oh great, one of those assholes. Think a dwifkin can’t fight just because we’re small. Gods help me, I love putting shitheads like you in your place.”

“What? No, that’s not it. I just… haven’t done this before.”

“Done what before?” the not-kid asked. “Fight? You’re in for a bad time, buddy. Don’t worry, I won’t break anything permanently.”

Luke was more confused than anything. The guy was maybe level 10, and that was being generous. The lower levels kind of all blurred together to his perception, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the not-kid’s actual level was as low as 7. Luke shot a glance over at Zea, who just smirked back at him.

“Remember what I told you,” she said.

“Uh… not really sure if… I mean, you know, what are the rules?”

“Rules?” the not-kid said. “Don’t kill each other. Try not to break anything too expensive to fix.”

“That’s it?”

“You talk too much,” Fatty said. “Kick his ass around the ring for a bit, Zammin.”

“Wait, wha-!”