Epsilon Twilight
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15. Pills
🕑 Added 2025-01-08 21:56:32 +0000 UTCWith nothing more left to do in the bank, Aloe and Xochipilli followed the newspaper boy's directions to the shop selling pills. The shop ended up being in one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city center, that was to say: not really poor, but not quite extravagant either.
As Aloe pushed the door to the shop open, a bell greeted them. She was forced to close her parasol as the door was a little too small, she even had to arch her back forward a bit to not hit the frame – a new experience for her as she had always been small for everything – which irked her a bit.
They were instantly assaulted by a stale smell laden with wooden and herbal fragrances. Even if it was her senses that were enhanced, Xochipilli suffered far worse as he furled his nose.
"You can go outside if the smell is too much for you," she told him with a hand on his shoulder.
"No," he swayed his head. "I can handle it."
Xochipilli put on a strong façade, but she could see his suffering in his eyes. Those pathetic attempts at portraying strength were so cute that Aloe couldn't help but find them endearing.
Soon they were greeted by a female clerk with blonde hair yet olive skin, but before the woman could finish uttering her first word, Aloe detected something within her. Vitality, lots of it. Well, for a normal person. She isn't quite on the three digits but close enough to the line of diminishing returns. Once a cultivator reached the one hundred mansworth milestone, stances scaled even worse than reaching the ten mansworth milestone.
"Ah, clients!" She voiced out joyously. "What brings such a fair lady to my humble shop? Would it be our new stock of charm pills? Ninety-nine apiece, you won't find them cheaper anywhere else on Selen!" The cultivator had a predatory smile, but one of casual greed instead of that of a sultanzade.
Aloe knew she should carefully think how to interact with an obvious cultivator, and a decently strong one unlike the slaver, but what piqued her curiosity more was another thing.
"Why ninety-nine?" The vegetable human pondered.
"Excuse me?" The clerk's smile collapsed and was substituted by confusion.
"The price of the pills," Aloe clarified. "Why ninety-nine drupnars?"
"Well, charm pills boost one's beauty without the need to practice Nurture and they are hard to produce so the price…"
"No, no," she interjected. "I understand that there are costs of production. What I am asking is because such an uneven number when you could just up it to one hundred and have a round one that could be paid with a single bill?"
It was already surprising enough that she had managed to get a grain of information from such a random question. The pills boost individual Nurture stances, eh?
"I…" The reaction on the woman's face made the question worth it already as she portrayed the truest of confusions on it. "The market?" She wasn't even sure of the answer. "People react better at prices that are smaller and that factor is even more pronounced as the price goes from three digits to two digits, making customers more likely to buy… Wait, why am I answering this to you?"
Aloe shrugged. "I was curious."
"Right…" The cultivator squinted her eyes and slowly nodded. "Anyhow… are you here to do business or just satiate your curiosity?"
"Both, but I can guess you are more interested in the former," the dressed woman grabbed the child next to her and pushed him in front of the counter. "I wanted to awaken this child's vitality and I'm aware that there's a pill to help the process."
"I mean, there is but…" Aloe could already tell there was more than one question in the cultivator's head from the looks in her eyes. "The Nurture Awakening pill is a bit expensive, are you sure you want to waste on a…"
"Be careful with your choice of words," the vegetable human interrupted the human woman as she swayed her parasol around.
"…young child?" She finished her sentence.
"Why shouldn't I?" Aloe acted innocently at the question.
"Well, there are more ways to awaken one's Nurture, especially when the target…" The cultivator looked at Aloe's emerald eyes and stopped talking. "Though I'm no one to go against a customer's wishes."
"How costly is this Nurture Awaking pill?"
"The dose depends on the body weight for this specific pill, and considering the child is a bit… thin of build, I'd say… two hundred drupnars?"
"Only?" Aloe was shocked by the cheap price.
"…Yes?" The clerk somehow managed to teach Aloe new shapes of bewilderment with the expressive visage of hers.
"But the charm pills are half that amount, and according to the advertisement, they must be taken each month. A one-time purchase is far more manageable. Why should it be considered expensive?"
"People normally don't buy the pill, for starters," the cultivator explained. "And secondly, you can't put a price on the beauty of a lady. Being able to passively be more beautiful and enticing without working for it is priceless!"
Harsh words for someone who is putting a price on beauty. Aloe didn't voice her thoughts, but she didn't buy the sales pitch. Especially because those pills would be useless for her. Or would they? It would be moronic to discard it before trying them. These pills don't seem to be like anything I know of.
"Does this awakening pill take effect as soon as consumed?"
"It does take a few minutes to kick in, but yes," the clerk nodded. "Once the foreign vitality settles on the body, the child should be able to sense it, even if at pathetic degrees. It's only the kickstart, after all, the hard work needs to be done by him. Or other pills, if you are open to it…"
"Subtle," Aloe snickered, and the cultivator unapologetically shrugged as if to say 'Had to try'. "Get me the pill for the child and whilst it kicks in, I'll glaze over your stock."
"One hot order of Nurture Awakening incoming~" The blonde clerk jokingly said as she went to the back store.
Aloe turned to face Xochipilli and knelt in front of him. "You will need to take that pill. Would you be able to do that?" He wordlessly nodded. "Good boy."
"Here's the pill and a glass of water," the cultivator came back a minute later.
Sheepishly, Xochipilli accepted both items and without so much as hesitating, he downed the pill.
"Alright, that's the kid taken care of," Aloe said. "Now, tell me what you have in stock."
"First, I have pills for any of the eight stances," the dressed woman interjected by raising her hand. "Yes?"
"Eight?"
"For all purposes, the flowing stance does not factor in such counts," the clerk explained as if this wasn't the first time that she had been asked that question, which made Aloe far more comfortable with her question-making. "Prices range a bit, Agility's the cheapest at only nineteen drupnars, and the more expensive ones are Charm and Regeneration at ninety-nine." Aloe raised her hand again. "Why are you even raising your hand? We are not in a classroom."
She looked at her hand. "Oh, sorry. I didn't notice I was doing it. Anyhow, why is the regeneration pill as expensive as the charm one if 'beauty is priceless'?"
"For many reasons," the cultivator groaned at Aloe's antics. "Unlike the strength or defense pill that only some select workers would benefit from, the regeneration pill is quite popular. With one pill a month, you will recover twice as fast from your exhaustion and also heal a bit faster. The former is quite more important for more people."
The way the clerk talked, and the way she used her words, raised some questions.
"How many pills can you take?" Aloe asked the question that had been pestering since the beginning.
"In what sense? The same type?" The vegetable human nodded. "Only one, woman. How do you not even know that?"
"I've trained in more… traditional ways of Nurture." It wasn't a lie.
"Traditional ways, eh?" The young cultivator – at least compared to her – looked her up and down. "So you have never taken a pill?"
"Can't say I have," Aloe swayed her head. She wouldn't classify her Cure Grass pellets as the same as these pills. "I would have taught little Xochipilli here my ways, but they are too dangerous a child."
"I know that there are some schools of cultivation here and there, specifically the imperial ones, but I'm not crazy enough to ask about yours." The clerk seemed to misinterpret her for an imperial bigshot – which she had been at one point to an extent – and Aloe accepted that role as it was useful. "Anyhow, these pills are crap to normal cultivators. These are only meant for common folk or rich people with no Nurture foundation. They can only be taken one of each stance for a total of eight as they provide the base stance equivalent of one Haya. You might already guess why the 'flowing pill' doesn't exist after knowing that."
Aloe nodded. From her words, she guessed that pills provided a temporal activation of the stance, some sort of internal infusion with a deadline.
"One question, though, what do you mean by 'haya'?"
"Haya? Like the vitality unit?" Aloe deadpanned at the lacking explanation. "You really don't… bah!" The cultivator grunted and almost slammed the desk but at the last moment she feinted and grabbed a pill. "Here a charm pill. It holds one Haya, the standard vitality unit."
Unconsciously, Aloe almost switched to the acuity internal infusion but then remembered that changing stances would shift the shape of her body, and she would prefer if her clothes didn't drop to the ground because she suddenly lost her plentiful rack. She focused back on the charm pill. It was vaguely pink and when examining it under her vitality sense, it had one mansworth.
"Oh!" Aloe groaned in realization. "A mansworth!"
"A what now?" The young woman looked at her as if she had a kitten.
"Mansworth, that's the name… we gave to the standard unit of vitality." As the clerk's expression progressively weirded out more, Aloe refrained from elaborating. Mostly out of shame. "Yes, Haya is quite the better term. The Asayn word for 'life'."
"So that's where it comes from, huh." The cultivator mussed.
"You didn't know?"
"I don't speak Asayn," she shrugged. "Where were we at? Ah, yes, the pills. These pills aren't meant for cultivators. Even if you can take eight of them, that doesn't mean your vitality reserves will become eight Haya massive overnight. You instead would have eight independent reserves of one Haya for each stance."
"That's quite…" Aloe reserved herself from finishing that thought.
"Pathetic?" The cultivator read her thoughts and snickered. "It should be, otherwise Nurture as a whole wouldn't mean anything if you could just take pills to godhood. Besides, taking more than two stance pills a month is not recommended as you would be diluting your vitality. Wielding all eight stances would be as if you weren't none at all, after all."
"Makes sense," she nodded. "But aren't there any pills for cultivators?"
The clerk crossed her arms and squinted at her. "How traditional were you exactly?"
Aloe took a deep breath and sighed, enacting the paper of a fair lady disillusioned with her school of cultivation. "Too much, too much. Would you believe me if I told you that my methods are almost three centuries old?"
"Ouch," the blond woman was taken aback by the whiplash and nodded in sympathy. "So what are you, a little monk who has escaped a strict school and now wants to see the world by herself?"
"You… are not fully wrong," Aloe left it there. It seemed more realistic to feign innocence and embarrassment than to come up with answers.
"But to answer your question," the clerk continued, "yes, there are cultivator pills. These can be classified into two categories: Haya pills and 'flowing' pills."
As Aloe was about to open her mouth to ask for further elaboration, a voice next to her exploded.
"I can shee it!" Xochipilli expressed enthusiastically and jumped on the spot with brimming joy, a hint of her accent filtering through. "I can see vitality!" She was about to congratulate the boy, but then he looked at her and uttered words filled with dread. "Where is yours, Aloe?"
Comments
Epsilon Twilight
Oops. Fixed!
The3rd
Infinite sweets and goodness are here 🍨🍦🍪💖🍫🍬🍭🍮🍯🍰🍩🎂♾️ "but then he looked at him" *her.
