TS6 - Chapter 9

Kat glanced up from the table where Dorrik was inspecting the goods that he’d ordered.  The marketplace was bustled around them.

She rolled her eyes.  Maybe bustle was too strong of a word.  There were about six vendors and twice that many shoppers, and in all honesty the vendors were more brokers than anything.  There just weren’t that many people on the eighteenth floor.  It didn’t really make sense for the merchants to carry much more than standard consumables such as scrolls, potions, oils, enchanted food, enspelled candles, or mana tokens.  If you wanted something more specific, custom orders were the only real option.

That meant paying someone extra to either journey up or down to a residential floor in order to commission the goods.  Kat had felt that their team was earning more marks than they would ever be able to spend going from silver dungeon to silver dungeon, but the minute they started investigating upgrading their gear, she’d realized the error of their ways.

Every merchant charged between ten and twenty percent to make the journey for a piece of equipment, and even if they already had access to the floor in question, most crafters had already signed exclusivity contracts with specific brokers.

Things got even worse if their team couldn’t source the material needed for the equipment.  Technically, they could pay extra to have the crafter purchase the relevant ores or monster parts on the market, but that meant shelling out almost twice as much as it would ordinarily cost for the three of them to hunt down the materials on their own.

It was a horrifying racket, and one that threatened to drain their team treasury completely.  There was a reason that most teams didn’t climb quickly, and it was beginning to surprise her less and less to find out that a lot of climbers stalled out somewhere between level eight and level twenty.  Spending the time and money in order to mitigate the risk of raiding the highest difficulty of dungeons was an almost insurmountable challenge.  

Already, Kat could feel their equipment slowly starting to fall behind the curve.  By pooling their money, the three of them had been able to buy a new set of armor for Kaleek.  Considering the damage to his previous set and how often the desoph ended up in the line of fire, it was the right choice, but Kat’s knives were, pun intended, struggling to cut it.

Now, Dorrik was haggling over the last elements of their stay on the eighteenth floor, enchanted face masks that would let the three of them operate safely in liquids as well as the consumables that they would need to face the floor guardian.  It seemed like only yesterday that they’d first started challenging silver tier dungeons, but now here they were, almost a month and a half in and ready to ascend yet again.

“Set that down,” Dorrik remarked without turning around, his gaze still locked on what appeared to be three raccoon-like creatures in a trenchcoat that were trying to drag every last mark out of their team.

Kat glanced to the side and rolled her eyes as Kaleek hastily put a brightly colored handaxe back onto the table.  It looked enchanted in some way, but it was humming with mana the same way that the desoph warrior’s slick new black breastplate was.  More than anything, it looked like a bauble or a conversation piece rather than a primary weapon, but they were low enough on funds that they couldn’t take chances with potentially breaking it.  Not if they were planning on ascending anytime soon.

“Seventy five marks,” Dorrik finished.  “Twenty five a mask and that’s my final offer.  I know exactly how cheap the enchantments are as well as the fact that the enchantment will fade within the next two weeks.  You are making a good profit from this exchange.”

The raccoon things chittered between themselves and the middle one reached up with a hand, licking it before rapidly smoothing the fur over its eye.  A couple seconds later, the one on top responded.

“We will accept eighty five.  The enchanter we were using has increased their skill level and they are now charging more.  The change isn’t that great for a low level enchantment such as this, but it costs more for us to reserve their time so all prices must go up.”

Dorrik crossed both sets of arms in front of his chest, his head angling downward as his crest went flat against the back of his head.

“Really?”  He asked.  “You are aware that I can use psi energy to detect lies, correct?  Still, I don’t want to spend this entire sleep cycle arguing with the three of you.  If you include three oils of acid resistance, I will pay ninety marks.  If you cannot supply the masks, I am sure I can find a vendor who will.  They are hardly rare items given the location of the nearest floor guardian.”

Once again, the raccoons chittered at each other.  After almost a half a minute of arguing, the top creature cut off its companions with a shrill whistle.  Once the merchant quieted down, it switched back into a language that Kat could understand.

“Acceptable.  Please transfer the marks now.  If you ever come back to the eighteenth floor please meet with us again.  We have cousins on the nineteenth through twenty first floors.  If you have an opportunity, please patronize their businesses as well.”

“Of course,” Dorrik replied, reaching out to touch the small furry paw of the middle raccoon.  “You are a shrewd negotiator, but your deals have always been fair.  I would be happy to continue patronizing your family.”

The creatures chittered happily as the bottommost one produced a stack of cloth masks and three glass vials from underneath the table and passed them up to the one standing above it.  Tiny paws darted back and forth and in an eyeblink, the goods they’d purchased were sitting on the table in front of Dorrik.  He nodded once at the merchant, taking his new possessions and the three of them turned and began walking out of the adventurer’s hall.

“What’s next?”  Kaleek asked.  “I would say that we should hit a restaurant and have something to eat, but the three of us are almost broke now and it’s too far of a walk to make it to the floor guardian in time before we wake up.  Maybe we should wander out into the desert and make a sandcastle?”

“We shall head out into the desert,” Dorrik agreed, “but I do not think a sand castle is the right choice.  We are low on money, and we have new skills.  It would benefit us to spend some time killing lower level monsters to raise our experience levels and to try and earn back some of the marks we have just spent on gear upgrades.”

“Ugh,” Kaleek said with a shudder.  “I hate fighting in the sand.  Worse, I knew that silver tier skills leveled slower, but knowing it and experiencing it is an entirely different thing.  It’s like the tower barely even registers when we kill ordinary monsters.  It takes a couple dozen before we manage to reach one percent progress, and an elite is hardly any better.  Still, at least Kat is around to spray us down after we’re done.  I don’t know that I could stand another night full of sand in my fur.”

As Kaleek complained, Kat opened up her status sheet.

Kaleek was right.  The third level of skills was barely moving.  Kat’s knife abilities were improving a bit, but that was mostly because she was using them against silver tier dungeon bosses.

Honestly?  Dungeons were really the only place where silver ranked powers made any progress.  That would probably change once the three of them hit higher levels and started fighting more powerful creatures in between cities, but until then most of her growth was limited to her attributes.

On that front, Kat’s growth was extraordinary.  She hadn’t gotten any direct modifications to her hit points, mana, or stamina, but gaining almost two attributes per level was significantly better.  Her resource pools might not have grown as much as they could, but Kat could feel herself moving faster, hitting harder, and casting spells more efficiently.  More importantly, the second her ‘Dodge’ rank had hit ‘average,’ something fundamental changed about her reflexes.

The title had always bothered her.  Kat had been able to move like a mongoose on amphetamines for months and months now, but the tower had always rated her abilities as ‘poor’ or ‘below average.’  It felt like a slight, but as soon as the average of her Agility and Reaction attributes hit 40, time seemed to slow down every time an attack entered the radius of her gravity aura.

She’d had similar reactions in the past and chalked them up to adrenaline or whatever the tower based equivalent was, but Kat had never been able to control or rely upon those bursts of clarity.  Now, her perception cut the speed of incoming weapons and spells by half.  It didn’t actually speed her movements up, but that extra time was more than enough for her to use her absurd agility to dodge or deflect most ordinary attacks.

Overall, it was hard for her to be upset with the improvements.  Kat’s only concern was with Mr. Jackson.  The man was still at large, and as best she understood, he was a higher level than her.  She didn’t know how many silver dungeons he’d managed to clear, but if the eighteenth level had been this good to her, the nineteenth through the twenty second had likely turned him into a superhuman, even if there was a mix of iron and wood tier dungeons mixed into his avatar’s build.

She dismissed the status and turned her attention back to her surroundings.  They were already at the edge of town, queuing up to exit the stone gates that protected the small village.

“Question,” she said, nodding toward Dorrik.  “The merchant we just bought the masks from.  Was it one creature or three?  I couldn’t understand it when it was talking to itself, and usually the tower is pretty good about translating alien speech.  I honestly don’t think I’ve actually heard anyone saying something I couldn’t understand outside the last residential area where I’m pretty sure I heard a couple of people speaking in code.”

Dorrik pursed his lips.  Scales tightening around his eyes as he thought over how to respond.

“Scholars are unsure,” he replied.  “The Bansato are very coy with the answer to that question.  No one has been able to translate the language each triad uses to talk to itself, and other triads cannot understand them.  Biologists have not been able to differentiate between the chitters, whistles and squeaks that they use so the most common theory is that they use some sort of limited telepathy and the noises are incidental.  The elements of each triad each present as having different personalities, but it is unclear if this is different from the competing impulses that make up the personalities of most other races.”

“The elements are clearly separate,” Dorrik continued.  “They eat and sleep on their own.  Interestingly enough, each triad can reproduce on their own.  Bansato have three sexes, one of each present in every triad.  More traditionally, they will interact with one more other triads in order to share genetic material.  Despite this, there isn’t any definitive evidence that the elements have above animal intelligence when operating independently.  They exhibit cleverness, but in much the same way as a domesticated pet.  It is my personal theory that they are a gestalt intelligence, like some of the insectoid hives.  Although they can operate independently, they are only truly sapient as-”

“Booooring,” Kaleek grumbled.  “I don’t really care if the Bansato are one person or three.  They collectively haggle like Charjinne with the only food supply during a famine.”

“Kaleek,” Dorrik chided.  “You know that’s a hurtful stereotype about the Charjinne.”

“And have you ever come out on the good end of a trade with one?”  Kaleek shot back.  “Nothing wrong with being a shrewd negotiator.  It’s just a hassle to deal with.  I’d much rather hunt monsters.  Speaking of which, where do you want to go first?  Farming elites would mean spending half of our night traveling out there, but there is a sand fish nursery nearby.  If you don’t want to deal with them, some of the other teams were talking about a couple dust lion prides, but none of them were blurting out the exact location.”

“I vote we go after the sand fish,” Kat interjected.  “They aren’t that difficult due to the range on my gravity aura.  Hiding under the sand doesn’t mean all that much when you’re so much less dense than your surroundings that your movements manifest as a ripple to my senses.  Once you know where they are, it’s pretty simple for one of you two to just stab them.”

“Decent payout in marks,” Kaleek grunted.  “They can’t be turned into that great of crafting materials though.  Dustlion pelts and bile glands each sell for almost as much as the mark value of a sand fish on its own.  It's hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure we get more skill experience from fighting them too.”

The line in front of them moved, six aliens that looked like geckos with shimmering nonfunctional wings jogged out into the desert.  At the gate, the tower created guards checked over the final team in front of Kat and her companions.

“But we don’t know where the dustlions are,” Dorrik said evenly.  “They are a slightly riskier fight.  Well within our abilities so I do not object on safety grounds, but we have limited time due to waiting for the Bansato to arrive for our transaction.  I do not want to spend the remaining half of our sleep cycle searching for monsters only to wake up empty handed.  If we target the sand fish, we know exactly where to find them.  The rewards are less, but we can rest assured that we will earn some marks tonight.

The corner of the lokkel’s mouth curved in a half-smile as his crest twitched playfully.

“Maybe even enough marks for the three of us to afford a celebratory dinner when we reach the nineteenth floor,” Dorrik finished.

That earned a happy slap on the shoulder from Kaleek.

“See?” The desoph asked, nodding toward Kat.  “Dorrik knows what I’m talking about.  He might spend ninety percent of his time being all business, but he knows that sometimes you just have to relax and cut loose.  Preferably with a decent amount of food and an indecent amount of alcohol.”

“That reminds me,” Kaleek continued.  “My vacation got approved and I booked a flight that will take me by Earth.  It cost a little extra, but I was able to get them to ship my skiff as well so I’ll be able to slip off the starliner and visit the two of you in person without anyone being the wiser.”

Dorrik glanced at him, squinting, before shaking his head.

“That sounds absurdly illegal Kaleek,” the lokkel said carefully.  “I know that by all appearances, Earth’s quarantine is coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean that it’s actually over.  Violating a law one week before it lapses is just as illegal as violating it at any other time.  I do not expect the Consensus courts to be lenient on you simply because you claim that you are only visiting Earth as part of your vacation.”

“How bad can it be?”  Kat asked.  “The stallesp are only receiving a fine for actively interfering in our development, and even then they somehow haven’t had to pay it yet.  If I beat Mr. Jackson and ascend before him, can I just void whatever punishment Kaleek would’ve had?”

Dorrik clenched his jaw, eyes closing for a fraction of a second before he responded.

“Yes.”  He said, voice clipped.  “If you are the ruler of Earth, you have the power to exempt individuals from Consensus punishments that are associated with violations against Earth or its people.  Technically, early contact in violation of quarantine would count.”

“I wish the two of you would not,” he continued, crossing his arms sternly.  “This is a provision that the lokkel have tried to alter for centuries because the stallesp have taken advantage of it to break the law and then excuse their violations in exchange for minor trade concessions.  Violating this very same principal would be… incredibly hypocritical of Clan Ahn.”

“But Clan Ahn wouldn’t be doing anything,” Kat replied innocently.  “You could issue a condemnation of Kaleek if you ever saw him.  Of course, there’s nothing to stop him from spending most of his time with me.  I’m sure he’d love to go swimming in the Great Lakes.”

“Exactly,” Kaleek said cheerfully.  “No offense Dorrik, but Kat’s more fun anyway.  Don’t worry though, I’ll make sure to bring that scale polish you wanted.  I’m close enough that I can probably make it before Jaalin arrives and we’re going to want you to look your best for the lady.”

Dorrik’s crest stiffened, and Kat swore that the lokkel managed to blush, something that should be impossible for a giant lizard with black scales.

“How will we explain the polish?” He asked quietly, defeat creeping into his voice.  “It’s a fairly niche brand that uses some exotic synthetic chemicals that aren’t present on Earth.  There’s no way that humans would have been able to create it on their own.”

“We can just say that our salvage teams found some in the crashed cruiser’s hold,” Kat replied.  “The stallesp can’t really contest it because their position is that the ship went rogue at some point.  Everyone knows that they were backing them the whole time, but they’ll have to pretend that they didn’t know what the cruiser’s crew was up to, and that gives us an opportunity to ‘find’ things without them being able to say otherwise.  After all, for all the stallesp know the ship went rogue as part of a plot to smuggle goods to and from Earth.”

Dorrik opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.  Instead, he just sighed, his crest slumping against the back of his head in resignation.

“Fine,” he said.  “As long as you bring plenty of scale polish.  If you’re going to bribe me, we should at least make the quantity impressive.”

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