Chương 12: Scamming scammers

Puggy was ecstatic to see Bork again when we got back to the shed. It was more my shed, in my humble opinion, seeing as I was exiled from the main house. The Bonedog clacked his jaws happily and was still running loops around the boy's legs. I was just grateful he wasn't trying to steal my shin bones.

"Just do the damn yoga, kid. It's too late to improve your body, you've already gotten your class, but the mind-body interaction will help you a lot when we move on to cleansing and strengthening your mana channels."

"But—""Bork, I'm here to help. I hadn't realised you were going to be a teenager, but that isn't entirely a bad thing. You're young enough to learn to do things properly. Give it three years, and you'll be a member of the bloody faculty at the Academy if you listen to me." He crossed his arms, his necromancer robes swaying as his face took on an expression that I was already mentally referring to as "an arse". Puckered, wrinkly and likely to emit something foul into the world.

"Why is it not entirely a bad thing?" he demanded. Of course, the kid had picked up on that. Oops.

"I just meant that it's not great that you aren't already further along your path. You've got a damn verse to save, kid. Hopefully, you still being young means we've got some time before shit goes sideways." I summoned a celebratory cigar for the successful save.

"Mum says you shouldn't smoke around me."

"I bet. I'm gonna go smoke elsewhere then. Thanks for the new cloak, but I really do need the money we got from the cannibal."

"You gave it to me!"

"Call it a loan? I'm going to use it to make more money anyway."

"How long before you pay it back?" he asked.

"What's all this, kid? You get an allowance that's as much as most people have to live on. It's not like you're short of cash. Gotta hot date tomorrow night or something?"

"What are you going to do with it?" He blushed bright red but had brought his tone back to something approaching polite.

"Buy some stuff. It will depend on what's available, but I'm going to be looking for ritual reagents, mostly. Things I can teach you to use to make you stronger and get you on that Darklands outing."

"For real?"

"Yes. It's not like I can spend it on liquor, is it?" I waved a bony hand up and down my body.

"That's true… Alright, but I want it paid back in one week." I carefully avoided asking "or you'll do what, exactly?" Avariciousness was another villainous trait I could work with, as was enforcing the repayment of debts. Between greed and vanity, I'd make a decent villain out of the boy. I opened the pouch he gave me and counted it quickly before stowing the money in a pocket on the inside of the cloak: five silver, ninety-eight copper. It was a modest fortune.

IMPS always used the stupid metal-tiered currency system. It had earned the "interdimensional memetic" part of its name.

"Thanks, kid. Now go practice your yoga, and if you see any level-up notifications for your minions, ignore them. Let me do the builds. I can explain my choices to you when I get back, so you know for the future."

"But I want to get some levels as well," he whinged.

"You shouldn't run too fast ahead of your classmates. I mean, what's more impressive: a level eight nailing an intermediate enchantment or a level twelve doing the same thing?" I put a hand on his shoulder.

"You'll be power levelling soon enough, kid. Once I'm strong enough, I can take you places where you can jump levels really quickly without any danger."

"Really?" There was that greed, mixed with a hunger for power and respect. It was also possible it was simply the natural need of any teenager to earn status within the weird, enforced social hierarchy that any school creates. Schools were a lot like prisons in that regard.

"Yes. Now you go do the stretches, and I'll go make you rich." The shovels wouldn't be needed this evening, so I was travelling light. Harket Street was as heavily patrolled as ever, with the sun having dropped behind the horizon. My disguise wasn't so far out of the ordinary that it drew unnecessary attention. Worlds that had abandoned massive cloaks as acceptable outdoor wear were always disappointing, and this was not one of those hellish places.

There could be no epic moments where the wind snatches at the cloak, and it flares out behind you to punctuate a cutting remark or to presage a big fight. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. As a result of IMPS' love of the dramatic, cloaks were commonplace outside of creche verses, where new souls got to live without magic. Clipper Street wasn't too far from the noble district. It lay in the city's middle-class section.

Nadrack was like an onion, layers built around a core. The poor and the miserable lived at the edges, and the denizens were generally richer the closer they were to the Golden Circle, the location of the palace, the major guilds and the Academy. Merchants weren't loathed here, as they were in many societies, and due to the efforts of some of them to improve their station, Nadrack had implemented strict rules regarding families joining the nobility.

You couldn't buy your way in, even though half the current noble houses had once done exactly that. The heart of the merchant district was Clipper Street. It had all the perks of the nicer parts of town but was a lot more welcoming. No neighbourhood patrols or homeowner's association thugs on every corner. There were plenty of guards about, but they were watching for pickpockets and thieves, who were usually more of the urchin-type than a six-foot-tall, heavily cloaked skeleton.

I looked around for a likely shop, checking the signs and how busy they seemed to be. Pane In The Glass. The alembic on the sign told me this would be a place I could sell the excess powders I'd inherited from the previous owner of the Pouch of the Powders. It was quiet, which was a bonus for me because I did not want to rub elbows with other shoppers and risk having to explain the whole being an undead thing. The door swung open and caused a bell to ring as I stepped inside.

I kept my hood pulled forward and moved left to go down the aisles. Potions in neat sets of three sat on shelves of finely polished wood. Veriel's Bounty, Krathtic Conniption… These were all basic potions, but the apparent quality suggested the alchemist who ran this place knew what they were doing.

"You are joking, I take it?" The customer at the counter demanded angrily. I leaned down to examine a batch of Carnal Cornucopia, a potion I felt ought to be kept behind the counter. It induced a very specific set of hallucinations.

"It's all it's worth, Plicktit. I can't pay more," the shop owner replied.

"That's finest glowshroom! The going price is one silver per half kilogram!" IMPS also really liked the metric system. And on occasion imperial. Little things like consistency in units of measure were not high on its priority list.

"Fifty coppers," the shop owner replied.

"I can go higher if you take goods in trade." The heavy breathing told me that the customer was not happy.

"Fine, who can't use more potions of Hurkel's Healing? But I've got some bone dust as well, and I need currency for that." There was a pause as a pouch was set on the counter and the owner weighed out the contents. When he announced the weight and price, I assume the customer's blood pressure rose sharply, judging from the response.

"Twenty coppers."

"Twenty copper for three hundred grams of common bone dust is daylight robbery!"

"It's nighttime."

"You know what I meant!" Plicktit slapped the counter angrily as I watched from the corner of my eyesocket. I had forty kilos of common bone dust in my pouch. I ran the numbers in my head. If I sold it all, I'd be up two and a half thousand copper, or about twenty-six silver. The downside was that I needed bone dust for my own protection, as well as to enhance Bork's minions.

A compromise would be necessary, but if I could just dump twice as much money back into Bork's hands the next time I saw him, it might make him listen to me more in the future. Building his trust in me was almost certainly the best choice I could make, however annoying it might be.

"I'll give you twenty copper, two healing potions and one mana potion for the lot."

"Pane, you're a goddamn thief." The customer passed over his goods and accepted his small pile of coins and three potions in return.

"I'll not be back," he snarled as he headed for the door, bouncing off me without a word of apology on his way.

"You'll be back," Pane chuckled.

"You buying or what?" he snapped. As the only other person in the shop, it was fair to assume he was talking to me.

"Selling and buying, if you're agreeable. I could always go elsewhere if needed."

"You'll take goods in trade without crying about it?" Pane was short and broad. Just over five feet tall, but four feet wide. His clothes would pass among the nobility, frogging at the cuffs and embroidery down his torso in fancy colours told me he was both rich and liked to let people know about it. Pane Furkle Sous Alchemist Level 11 STR 6 AGI 8 MAG 21 ARM 8 A surprisingly high level. Someone must have wanted a pet alchemist, and then decided against Mr Pane.

"I will."

"What have you got?" I tilted my head back a little, and he saw my glowing eyes above the scarf hiding my eternally cackling face.

"You still ok trading?"

"Who's your master?"

"Bork the dork."

"Never heard of him." I unclipped the Instructor badge I'd received from Ungore and laid it down on the counter between us. He leaned down to peer at it, but not very far because his head was barely above the level of the wood anyway.

"This legit?" He poked the shield-shaped metal.

"Would you believe me either way? If it's fake and you report me, I'll be dead within hours. There's no benefit to forging one of those." He slid it back towards me and looked up.

"What've you got?"

"A hunger for a fair deal, despite my lack of a pulse." I took my badge and stuck it back to my chest beneath the cloak.

"I'm always fair." I did not believe him.

"Got some powders. Fifty grams apiece of Rot, Bulwark, Brittle and Rage."

"Rage is illegal." I glanced around theatrically.

"I won't tell anyone if you won't?"

"Hmmph. Forty copper for the lot."

"How much if I take three of those hessian sacks you've got back there and a Torch of Everflame? Oh, and I need a rucksack."

"You'd owe me ten coppers in that case. I've got a bag I can part with. Good leather."

"Common bone dust is a bit more valuable than you let Plicktit know, isn't it?"

"No idea what you mean." He narrowed his eyes.

"Well, it can be used in Firvulag's Fertility potions, a basic-level potion. Gardening enthusiasts and those trying to conceive will pay through the nose for that stuff."

"Never heard of it."

"Three parts common bone dust, one part gnarleroot powder, purified water as the medium. That's a big jar of gnarleroot powder you've got on your shelf over there. I'd say one potion of Firvulag's would go for sixty copper to the right customer.

It's a bit tricky, you need to introduce the ingredients in specific amounts at certain times, and the mana weaves are a bit more complicated than usual, but I could teach you the recipe, if you were willing to give me a little bump on the price of the bone dust I've got on hand."