Ellake
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Chapter 131 - What a Weapon
🕑 Added 2024-09-10 20:00:04 +0000 UTCKiri strolled arm in arm with Coralie, admiring the nightlife of the merchants district. They had enjoyed a beautiful dinner at a restaurant Coralie had suggested and were now heading towards their next destination. She just hoped that everything would be okay with Nate and that he wasn’t planning a nightly foray. Her Soul Tether was telling her he was at the Den of Desire. That was two weeks in a row on the same day. She was wondering what he was up to, but as long as he went straight back to the University after he was done painting or whatever he was doing at the Den, then all would be well. Her thoughts were cut short as her girlfriend piped up.
“You’re still not going to tell me what the surprise is?” asked Coralie, the little blonde pouting up at her.
“By the Gods, how impatient can you be? We’re on our way there now!” teased Kiri with a smile.
Coralie harrumphed but by now Kiri knew it was all just an act. Her girlfriend liked the attention. She was trying not to…what was the word Nate had used, psychanalyse or something? It sounded weird because it had been in his own language, but he had explained the meaning well enough. So she was trying not to think too deeply about the reasons that Coralie might have such a desire for the attention of a peer. Especially a female peer. But it was hard not to notice when the dangerous little Ice Mage dropped the occasional comments about her Mother. It seemed that attention was the last thing that her Guild Prefect Mother had been willing to give her.
Certainly she had gotten other things. Access to the methods for better Achievements, Stat Orbs, Skills purchased for her by her Mother. But a mother’s love was apparently not on that list. It was such a stark comparison with Kiri’s own family and made her miss her parents terribly. It was exciting and fun to be out in the world, making her own way. But she did miss the moments spent with her Father, when he would train her or take her on hunts with him in Firth Forest. Teaching her to recognise the tracks of various animals or how to find some herbs. How to move unseen on the ground, even though she knew he had preferred to make his way through the canopy. Then there was her Mother.
The woman knew her better than she had ever known herself. It had been a bit of a surprise to her Father when she had told them that she liked women and that they probably weren’t getting grandkids so they should consider having a second child. Her Mother hadn’t even blinked. Just flashed her trademark knowing smile and asked her if she had her eye on anyone in particular. Not that that had ended well. The object of her infatuation had been Mirabelle, a merchant's daughter who travelled with her father around the various frontier towns. They came by every few months and stayed a week. Until she didn’t.
Mirabelle’s father had told her that she had married the owner of a tavern a few towns over. No goodbye and worse, Mirabelle and the tavern owner had been courting even while she was stealing kisses with her every visit. The pit in her stomach had been endless and she had cried herself to sleep for many nights before her Mother pulled her out of her spiral. It had been her Mother who had helped mend those wounds and she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have a mother who cared so little.
Glancing back at Coralie she smiled at her girlfriend, “You brought your coin and mana gems right?”
“I did. We’re not going gambling, are we? You know the chances of winning are abysmal without Skills to influence the outcomes?” commented Coralie.
“Not gambling,” said Kiri, adding with a mumble, “at least not tonight.”
“What was that?”
“I’ll tell you later. We’re here!” Kiri replied excitedly, waving her arms in front of them.
“The Auction House?” Coralie asked as the pair looked over the large edifice.
The building was one of the few, even in the merchants district that exceeded four stories, standing at a total of six floors. As Kiri understood it, the top two floors were mostly offices and for private showings. The lower four functioned as a multi-leveled auditorium, with two floors set aside for an almost excessive amount of seating. The middle two floors of the building housed the various private boxes.
The uncertainty on Coralie’s face was understandable. The first time Kiri had come to the Auction House she had been forced to engage with the staff on the first two floors and the noise, fervour and smell of the participants was reason enough to view this as a poor date idea. But it wasn’t the first two levels they were going to, she thought with a smile as they approached the door and she showed off a token. The guard at the door ushered the pair to the side where one of the ushers waited.
“The booth is ready for you, Miss Beaufoy. If you and your companion would follow me?” greeted the young man, before guiding the pair inside the building and immediately up a set of stairs past the guards who kept anyone from following them.
“A booth?” whispered Coralie. “How did you get a booth? I’ve only been in one twice, when Mother brought me along to see how the Guild sold what it didn’t need while acquiring resources for its members. Even then, she used the Guild’s booth!”
Kiri couldn’t help but grin. It seemed her surprise was paying off.
“It was part of a deal I made with them for selling an Epic item through them,” answered Kiri.
“Epic item? Your Tournament reward? You sold it?!?!” hissed Coralie, eyes wide. “Why would you do that? Do you know how hard it is to get one of those? Even I have only one and Mother has refused to tell me what she had to do to acquire it for me!”
Kiri debated answering her. Should she tell her the truth? Probably. She was going to figure it out anyway when she saw what Kiri was bidding on. The Auction House had been keeping an eye out for some particular item types for her and had sent a message to the University that something that met her needs was finally on the cards. She supposed that meant there was no point hiding what she was doing then.
“I needed the coin and mana to buy a gift for Nate.”
Coralie looked confused, “Why not just choose something from the Guild stores then? You had access to the Rare and Epic Vault. Surely there was something in there?”
The usher had been politely ignoring their quiet conversation and approaching a door, opened it for them, holding out a hand to guide the pair into the small booth. It was on the third level and had enough room to comfortably seat four.
“I’ll be your server and assistant tonight. So let me quickly go over the rules for the Auction and how to make use of the facilities,” explained the officious young man. “In front of you, you will see the primary bidding tool.”
It looked like a gameboard, with small cubes of wood in neat piles on the side. Each cube had a number on it.
“As you can see, we use an anonymous bidding system for our booth users. You merely need to slot your bid, using the numerical values on the cubes, into the slot here and it will be registered by our system. In addition, if you place this marker,” he indicated a circular piece of wood that looked enchanted, “onto here, it will notify me that you wish to be served. Use this if you wish refreshments, which are on the house, or if you have any questions for me. Finally, all bids are final and we do not tolerate threats or violence, against the Auction House, the staff, or fellow bidders. Were there any questions?”
Kiri and Coralie shook their heads and the usher took their drink orders, with Coralie also ordering some dessert, before the man took his leave.
“Back to my question!” Coralie stated the moment the door was closed. “Why not get him something from the Guild vaults?”
“Because they only had weapons and I didn’t see any Skills that fit what I was looking for,” explained Kiri.
“What?” Coralie asked in confusion.
“You’ve seen what he is like. If it wasn’t for his desire to keep progressing, he’d spend all day painting!” Kiri explained.
“That is true…” admitted Coralie. “Still, selling an Epic item? You know that it’s unlikely to be enough to buy a comparable Epic item right? What’s the Auction House cut?”
“Fifteen percent,” grouched Kiri. That had stung more than she was willing to admit.
“So the plan is to buy him a Rare item as a gift?”
Kiri shook her head, “No. I have enough to get him an Epic item.”
“How? Are you spending your own earnings as well? How did you even make enough to make up the difference?!” Coralie asked, throwing her hands in the air dramatically. It was amusing to Kiri as this was the most lively she had seen her girlfriend. Outside of the bedroom, that was.
“I err, fought in The Pit and bet on myself,” Kiri explained.
Coralie stared at her wide-eyed, “You did what?!?! That place is dangerous, Kiri!”
Her girlfriend instantly started looking her over for wounds, exploring with both her hands and her eyes. She wasn’t going to find any though, thought Kiri. Soul Imbuement was a Legendary Skill and while it cost her a lot of soul energy, as long as she had enough, every wound vanished. She was beginning to wonder if it might even stop her ageing.
“I’m fine. Really,” said Kiri, gripping Coralie’s upper arms gently to calm her down.
Coralie took a few deep breaths, before looking back up at her, “You’re a dangerous and mysterious woman.”
“I thought that’s what you liked about me?” Kiri quipped, trying to lighten the mood.
“It is,” answered Coralie with a blush. “Just, don’t be too rash, alright?”
Kiri nodded agreeably, knowing that what Coralie considered rash and what she did were vastly different. Her girlfriend was working with incomplete information though, so she would just leave it as it was.
A knock at the door put their conversation to rest as their drinks and Coralie’s dessert arrived. Some fruit and cream mixture. Kiri thought it smelled good and was considering ordering her own when the auction finally began. The pair discussed the various pieces as they came out. There were Common and Uncommon Stat and Skill Orbs, likely taken from wild beasts and monsters rather than Dungeons. Then various products likely produced within the Capital itself. A special set of alchemical potions meant to grant the user resistance to various elements. Weapons, shields, armour and clothing, all combining multiple disciplines. Blacksmithing and enchanting were the most common, but some of the clothing had been alchemically treated before it was woven. Still, so far, nothing had been particularly impressive. Coralie did pick up a potion that was supposed to enhance the imbibers control over ice for an hour or so.
Finally, after what felt like an interminable wait but had likely only been an hour, they started to move onto the closing offerings. The Epics.
“The next item is something of a curiosity. Useful to crafters, but better suited to artists, it comes to us from across the ocean,” announced the host, as a large paintbrush was placed on a pillow on the stage. “While it may not look like much, this paintbrush comes with two very interesting and useful enchantments. Firstly, this paintbrush contains a delineated spatial storage that will let the artist keep their paints separated while storing them all inside. It has enough containers to store exactly one hundred different paints at three litres each. These can be drawn on with a trickle of mana and will let the artist ‘dip’ the paintbrush without even having to move their hand. Amazing no?
“But of course, that alone would not make this an Epic offering. No. No. It is the other enchantment that makes this a truly remarkable find. For you see, the secondary Enchantment is a Mana Imbuement enchantment. This paintbrush will take the excess mana it receives, and funnel it into the paints stored within. We have verifiable proof that this does in fact, over time, raise the quality of the paints stored within. So, who among you thinks a painting made with rare, or even better, epic quality paint, is worth a bid? Starting price is a thousand gold coins or its equivalent in mana at standard exchange rates!”
Kiri immediately bid to match the starting price, only to see the price jump to twelve hundred gold coins. When she had sold her Reinforced Manerium Blade she had managed to get fourteen hundred gold coins for it. Minus the Auction House’s cut, she had been left with just under twelve hundred. However, her betting on herself at The Pit had turned five hundred gold coins, a small fortune as far as she was concerned, into two thousand four hundred gold coins. She’d been forced to leave a hundred with Cutter, both for organising her fight and for keeping the bookies from trying to murder her. That meant she had around three thousand and one hundred gold coins to spend on this event, and damn the Gods, she intended to spend it all if she had to!
The price jumped to thirteen hundred, then fifteen hundred. Trying to get ahead of the bidding war she bid eighteen hundred. It held there for ten seconds before it jumped to two thousand and she grit her teeth. She needed to make them understand she would not be beat. This item was perfect for her best friend. A small way for her to show her gratitude for all he had done for her and given her. The Skill Enhancement Orbs alone were bordering on priceless. She quickly responded by increasing the bid to twenty five hundred.
“Twenty five hundred! Going once, going twice, and sold!” exclaimed the Auctioneer.
Kiri grinned from ear to ear. She had finally managed to get a present for Nate. It only had taken two months she thought, wryly.
As it was delivered she checked on his Soul Tether and sighed in a put upon way. Why did he have to choose tonight to go and engage in some of his…what did he call it again? Graffiti. And why oh why did he choose to do it so close to the docks?
*************
Exiting the Den of Desire, Nate grinned. Another evening well spent. Some merchant had asked for a painting of him with one of the escorts draped over him as the pair drank and ate in the common room. It was a weird request as far as he was concerned, but the man had been very generous in what he paid considering it was just a painting. Fifty gold for an hour's work and he had made his manerium delivery.
Heading down the street towards an alley he moved to avoid a group of rowdy men and women who looked like they had just left an inn, arms draped all over each other and laughing. He smiled in amusement until he sensed his connection to Frick back at the University severed as the mana surrounding him started to vanish. Through his sphere of awareness he could feel as the mana deadzone continued to creep towards him from all sides. Immediately he tried to activate True Teleportation to escape but without the ability to extend his mana beyond the deadzone he couldn’t forge the link required. Even as he looked for an escape he saw two of the men from the group of revellers were already rushing him and he was forced to use True Teleportation at a far shorter range moving only a couple of metres.
Ignoring the mens shouts of annoyance he threw his own mana against the deadzone which continued to get closer and closer to him. He sensed his own mana being dispersed as it touched the deadzone and he was forced to teleport again to avoid the launched fist of one of his attackers, his available zone for movement decreasing by the second.
“Don’t kill him! We need him alive!” yelled one of the men in the back.
With his mind working quickly Nate noticed that two of the women in front of him were staring at him intently, not moving. Convinced they were the source of the mana deadzone he reached into his spatial storage, lamenting his real tools weren’t yet finished, and extracted a bar of metal. It was one of his test pieces, only Rare quality but with an affinity for metal. Activating Conceptual Automation he used Conceptual Intent to send it after the two women. The result was a golemoid looking construct with the colouring of an oil spill and red dust charging at the two women. He had been concerned that when the construct entered the mana deadzone that it would disperse. Instead it kept going and he had to wonder if it was because the material contained the mana. He was distracted from the results of his construct creation when he sensed an assault against his Soul Barrier, the engraving on his soul automatically drawing on his Mana Reserve to reinforce itself.
“His mind’s protected!” yelled another man from behind him but Nate didn’t have time to turn and see as the two men kept attacking him. He was starting to worry. He hadn’t thought anyone would be able to threaten him in the City, given the reaction of the common folk and even the wariness of the nobility on campus. Forced to use True Teleportation he tried to create distance and find a gap through which he could flee, but the men attacking him were fast and his True Teleportation skill under these restrictions didn’t move him far each time. Worse, the distance he could move continued to decrease as the deadzone continued to shrink, now barely five metres across. The deadzone felt different compared to Null’s aura, which seemed to cancel out any mana it came into contact with. This was closer to his Mana Exclusion runes, shoving mana away from a particular area.
“Protect the Suppressors! Wear him down!” shouted the tall man in the back again and Nate thanked his lucky stars that at least they seemed to want him alive.
He caught a glance of the man who was shouting duking it out with his metal construct, the sound of ringing metal filling the area as the mans fists left small dents in the metal frame of the conceptual creation. Teleporting again to avoid a tackle at his midsection he was going to yell for help when he saw that the Den of Desire bouncers were both down on the ground and bleeding, with two more men rushing in to join the fray against him!
The two thugs, or whatever they were, continued to miss him with their reaching hands, as his mind was perfectly capable of analysing their movements and his True Teleportation was able to activate quickly with such small alterations to his position. But he wasn’t gaining any distance as the group moved with him, and between the constant Skill use and his Soul Engraving, he was leaking mana like a sieve. He just hoped his Mana Reserve was enough to outlast these people as he frantically searched for a path of escape.
“I can’t keep up the mental, boss!” yelled the voice from behind him.
“Swap!” came the voice of the largest man.
That apparently was a signal for the tall man in the back as he pulled something out of his pocket. The next moment the man was rushing him. Nate felt a moment of panic and fear as the man got close and he felt space harden around him, resisting his True Teleportation. A second later a kick connected with his stomach, sending him sprawling in the dirt. He rolled over, puking blood onto the street. Glancing up he had time to see his metal construct breaking the arm of one of his assailants before the shadow of a descending fist blotted out his vision and he collapsed into the dirt unconscious.
Comments
Ellake
Ah...I just realised I don't think I ever posted my rewrite of this scene...
Arakasi
If he could use true teleportation, he should have been able to use barrier or some of his offensive runes.
Ellake
Is it? Let me give you my perspective so you can comment on what you disagree with. Nate has never lost. Never. He had to run once from Torian but other than that it's been nothing but victories. Now, that being said, he's also never been in the position this put him in. So lets go through all the factors. 1. He has never faced enemies with an Embodiment. Something which his University subjects have taught him is a force multiplier. 2. He cannot teleport if he cannot extend his mana beyond himself. The teleportations he is using are minute and the only thing he is doing is slightly repositioning his body to avoid attacks. 3. It's been a long time since he hasn't had his legendary crafted tools on hand. We know he's remaking them as we speak, but even with the Skill reducing the time, it's still weeks (previously, it was closer to months). 4. He has never been attacked in the middle of the street. 5. He has never been without Platinum protectors nearby. 6. He has never faced enemies with a decent idea of his full 'kit'. 7. Nate, up until now, has not been very paranoid EXCEPT about making sure people don't realise he can improve the tier of materials. There is nothing else he has a need to do be careful about. All of this culminates in a perfect storm. Enemies he didn't know he has with the preparation and means to capture him and him without the tools he would need to win/escape or his Platinum protectors nearby to whisk him out of danger. Now, from my perspective, none of that makes Nate stupid. It makes him not paranoid. Which is likely to change after this.
Enthernal
I have to say this is very disappointing. Sure, he may be up against stronger opponents, but he's been in similar situations twice before and supposedly fears this exact situation, yet has no plan in case it happens? Has not informed himself how such a kidnap attempt would go? No precautions, like not going out alone? No attempt to teleport before he's fully locked down? No attempt to attack or retaliate? No emergency plan/button with Kiri? This feels very forced and even worse, it's forced stupidity. This has made me drop stories before and I'd really encourage you to add at least some actual attempts at escape/retaliation to justify his course of action that lead up to this situation if you want to keep the story belief worthy.
