Chapter 54: Determination
[Edited by: Queen, Bunny, Deathbrick, Arthur300000, and ArchmageNaoki]
“This is it, the den of merchants.” My driver said as he turned the truck to the large circular building’s parking lot. The building was more imposing up close, but with beastkin families walking around with lots of children, it feels more like a department store.
My feet touched solid concrete as I climbed down from the military truck. I offer my hand to Cocoa to help her get down, but she ignored me and slid down herself. Is she troubled about being short?
My lower abdominal pain had vanished a while ago, but it was replaced by a heavy feeling in my stomach. A feeling which I know well. It’s called worry.
"Thank you so much my ladyship for escorting us." Ms. Merchant-Leader approached me and handed me a small bag of cookies.
"Thank you." Yay! Sweets~ "I didn't do much though." Mmm, my reserve of sweets dwindled since the long walk yesterday.
"The result is what’s important, my ladyship. We arrived safe and sound thanks to you. If you have time, feel free to enjoy our headquarter’s shopping mall. I believe we have everything to satisfy you, for the best price." She smiled, wolf-like, no it’s panther-like and then walked away. Other merchants also waved at me as some of them were unloading their trucks while others were following their leader. A certain group of merchants was also gossiping with each other.
"Damn, I should have carried some sweets."
"Kuuu, why didn’t she smile like that when I gave her my vegetables."
"I think I want to change my merchandise."
... Anyways, visiting the merchant HQ is part of my plan. During my 'feminine pain' period, I concocted a scheme with Skynet to tackle two glaring problems. Well, calling it a scheme might be too much because, in the end, it is just a flimsy plan.
The first problem was the combat potential of my platoon. I proposed to Skynet that I might lend some of my equipment to them, but she said it would be a bad decision.
[From my point of view, they are just civilians forced to serve in the military with lower than minimum training. It would be just like giving a weapon to a child if you do that. Moreover, their trustworthiness has yet to be proved. If they just run away in different directions when you sleep, how will you track all of them down?] Skynet stated her cold and calculative logic, but I don't know how to argue with that. In my past life, I saw a lot of people on television changing after they received a sudden fortune. In the end, we concluded that I would just wait and see. If there were any outstanding individuals, I would lend them my equipment.
The second problem is more difficult to resolve and could be a life changing decision. It's related to the corpse of the giant that almost killed me yesterday. Right now, it occupied 20 cubic meters of my storage device space. From Skynet’s research, it was a mutated second class monster. That means it was a unique monster which rivals a low tier first class monster in strength, and that translates to trouble in selling it.
[It's a big deal mistress, but it is also not unheard of. Each year there are several kill reports on this type of monster by a joined effort of A rank adventurer teams or an S rank adventurer.] Well, I'm neither of those, and I don't want to imagine what would happen if a high school girl suddenly appears with such a corpse on her.
At first, I thought I could cut it into smaller pieces and sell them separately one piece at a time as "I just bought these from a wandering merchant, but I don't want them anymore." , but from what I saw when I fought it, cutting its skin would be troublesome if not impossible. The next thing I thought of was the black market, but Skynet told me that is too risky.
[There are a lot of cases of people going missing when dealing with them, mistress.] So, it's like that. When you show too much wealth to those outlaws, you could end up at the bottom of ocean striped of all worldly possessions and your chastity.
Letting it rot inside my hair clip is also not an option, we are talking about a hundred thousand panties here, and because of its size the status of it in my item management menu shows: [Error 48: Unable to preserve, the item is too large].
I also thought about asking my brother and sister to help distribute the 'fame'. However, my brother replied to my email quickly with the following.
From: Aunos Velvori <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Trouble, need help.
Date: 94754.16 3:14 PM
To: Kuro Velvori <[email protected]>
Dear Kuro,
I'm glad that you are safe and sound. We really wish to help you, but you need to understand the situation, Kuro. Right now, you can sell any monster corpses you acquire because of your [Stranded] status. However, if you involve us, the school’s rules dictate that all the monster bodies obtained during the field assignment belong to them which means you will lose the valuable corpse for nothing.
I will contact you again if I come up with a solution. Good luck.
Love always,
Aunos Velvori
Thanks for nothing, Aunos. So in conclusion, Skynet and I agreed to just sell it to a well-established merchant and hope they have enough influence to prevent it from becoming a big deal. To follow this plan the merchant HQ seems to be my best bet. At least if something went wrong, it is still far away from my hometown so it shouldn't affect my life much, I hope.
“You are all dismissed. We meet back here in one hour.” I told my platoon before walking towards one of the HQ's entrances that seem to be a part of its shopping mall.
Most of them just sit down here and there and work on their new project which involved their newly acquired meat, innards, and bones that were left from lunch. Some of them are following me to the shopping mall, giraffe girl and Cocoa for example.
"I saved some money to buy new equipment." Giraffe girl answered my curious glance and quickly walked forward. I never saw her fight, but my sixth sense tells me that she's dependable.
"Skynet, why doesn’t anyone build rectangular buildings?" I asked a random question to distract myself from the predicament.
"It's law, mistress. It was a decree from grand emperor Tyriel XI the Fabulous, third son of Tyriel VI who conquered all known territories a thousand years ago. "We have too much land and too few people. Henceforth, all people young to decrepit should express their creativity freely, unbound by any geometric efficiency or rationale." is what he said. Then he established the ‘Square building tax’ to 500% of the construction cost. Yet, no one has bothered to change this law since then."
"Is that guy for real?" I always thought the Emperor thing would be like a warlord figure, who would have thought that one could be this extravagant. As expected of a fantasy world, huh?
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"My second tail said that your world also has similar figures, the swan king for example." Who’s the swan king? I’ve never heard of him. My imagination runs wild and imagines a king in some country garbed in a fluffy dress made of swan feathers and dancing cabaret. However, my imagination was interrupted at the front door of the mall as a tiger-man in security uniform barred my path.
"My ladyship, please put away all your weapons." He said. Oops, sorry, wait, how did he know that I have my weapons holstered? He shouldn't notice it since I'm wearing my cloak to blend in.
[It's the X-ray vision spell, mistress.] What!? There is a spell like that!? I want to learn it, for you know... reasons. I order Skynet to purchase a copy of the spell for me from the internet. I will study it extensively later.
Others had already gone inside ahead of me by the time I finished the inspection. Only Cocoa was still waiting patiently while leisurely moving her tails to and fro. The scent of food and sweets floods out in waves as the shopping mall’s customers enter and exit.
As I thought, arrays of shops awaited me inside with delicious looking merchandise. Most people here are dressed in casual clothes. They seem to leisurely drift from one fancy boutique to another, on the contrary, the few who are dressed in combat gear or with empty holsters seem to walk with a destination in mind.
"Mama, I want ice-cream~" A well dressed little kangaroo girl walking with her mother and three siblings says, then she starts pulling her mom along to a shop. Hmm, ice-cream, how nostalgic. So, I go to the same shop and pull Cocoa along.
I don't have enough time to sit down and enjoy it like those four kangaroo girls, so I began tiptoeing in front of the long rows of cooled ice-cream bins behind the glass counter to pick the right flavor to take away. Cocoa also wants one, but because of her short stature, she pulled a menu from the side shelf instead. Seeing that made me want to lift her up, but if I did that, I’m sure she would get mad at me.
Still, I can't decide. There are far too many strange tastes here, ‘Deep Ocean Kraken’ for example. I would need an entire month to try it all. Luckily, a kind deerkin shopkeeper lets us taste a sample of each flavor in tiny disposable wooden spoons.
"I want ‘Bloody Mary on a Lavender Field’ and ‘Magic Potion Number 99’ in a waffle cone." I ordered the strangest-named-ice-cream in my life while Cocoa picked a triple scoop of Ham, Bacon, and Cheese flavor. What a voracious girl. She is an adult though.
The ice cream cost three gems per scoop but it’s worth every... gem. It has a refreshing scent and taste that becomes pure bliss in my mouth. I licked it happily as I walked clockwise along the circular pathway to the more serious area.
Adventurer zone, the sign said. From what I saw, it's a group of shops that relates to combat and adventuring. All kinds of magic devices are neatly separated on different shelves and there are also specialized zones such as register stations and appraisal counters. The atmosphere is more lively than the human department store I visited. Several staff members are lined up waiting to assist their potential customers. Maybe because the average wage here is cheap they can afford to hire a lot of staff.
"Hello~ I'm Nyatalie, your attendant today. I will help you with anything nya~" A beautiful catkin with red hair and moderate boobs dressed in a skimpy uniform approached me. Oh wow, my first time seeing an authentic catkin with 'nya' in her speech. Ahh, my dream has come true, I want to take her home.
"You know she fakes her accent, right?" Cocoa blew my dream to smithereens with just a soft whisper from her moistened lips. Then she turns away and giggles. Damn you, second tail. I bet you know what I'm thinking.
"Uhm, I want to register devices and sell some monster corpses." I regain my composure and state my business. I need to show her my wealth first, so she won't turn me back when I want to sell something in secret.
"Alright, this way miss, we charge two gems a minute, but I will do anything for you nya~" They charge a bit more than outside it seems.
I followed her to a registration room and placed my palm on the terminal to input my energy pattern, then I showed her my ID card and handed over nine storage devices, six cheap weapons, one broken blade and a half decent one that I got yesterday. Oh, there is also a high-grade saber that I got from a magic forest thug. Then I told her to sell the broken blade and all non-magical devices as I dove onto a cozy looking sofa.
Cocoa's eyes gleamed as she saw the high-grade saber. She tried it out as the shopping mall attendant registered the other stuff.
"This saber’s power is over nine thousand!" She exclaimed... Cocoa, please don't copy the speech from your second tail. That will just tell me how old he is. Still, she gleefully tested out the blade and proclaimed that it's a perfect weapon to use while riding on a vehicle or on horseback alongside a firearm. Her tails were wagging happily as she moved around fighting imaginary monsters while using the triple-scoop-ice-cream, now only two scoops, as an imaginary firearm. Her ears and tails drooped cutely as she looked at a wasted scoop on the ground. Is it ham or bacon? I don't know.
"Please register that blade to her." I tried to cheer her up, but she looked at me in incredulously instead.
"Well, you seem to like it." I shrugged and imagined Cocoa riding on my shoulders as we run through a group of enemies like a two headed four armed deity. Impossible, my boobs would get in the way...
"Still... it’s too much." She said. "Actually, I can only fire five bullets at best with that gun." Her ears and tails dropped even further.
Oh, it's about her Magicka pool, huh? I forgot that people don't have the same Magicka pool size as me... maybe it's related to boob size since it's filled with hopes and dreams after all.
"Hmm, how about this. I will lend these clips and monster cores to you, but you have to pay me back for the cores you use." I show her three spare clips of my old gun loaded with small black monster cores. Actually, I was supposed to give them to her in the first place, but because of I never use them, I forgot to...
"Uhm, can I have green cores instead? I don't think I can possibly afford the black cores." Cocoa talks in a tiny voice. Oh, that’s how she plans to save money? A green core is five times cheaper than black one, but it holds one-third the energy of its black counterpart.
"Alright, here you are." I handed her a big bag of cores that I got from uncle Zeno. "Borrow as much as you want from this and please sort its content for me." I dumped another annoying task on her. There are also cores that I got from yesterday, but the content management menu from my hair clip said that some of them are still under cleaning process.
I remembered the bag weight, so the worst thing she can do is embezzle a couple of small core. She can also replace them with a lower grade one, but I doubt Cocoa would do something that elaborate. However, she still hit me with the 'you trust people too easily' speech again. That’s just unfair...
"Here you are my ladyship, 228 gems from miscellaneous items sale, and with 36 gems deducted from the room rent, you’re left with 192 gems in total. Nya~" She gave me a coupon and said that I could turn this coupon for gemstones at the front desk.
As we walked to the monster corpse selling area, I noticed Ms. Nyatalee glancing jealously at Cocoa a few times. My plan of gaining her attention went smoothly. Still, the stuff I just registered is as expected, very low quality, they were labeled as "Economic grade." The half decent one is only in the high-end student grade. Also, the saber I gave Cocoa is of Adventurer grade, the latest model. Those people I took this saber from must’ve been filthy rich.
"Just drop the monster corpses behind the line, nya. We will take care the rest." My catkin attendant announced as we arrived in a very spacious cold-room. As expected of the merchant headquarter, it's a lot larger than Mr. Wurst’s butchery.
The process would surely be messy, so I had to quickly eat the last of my waffle cone and wipe my hands before beginning. Hmm, yummy. Cocoa on the other hand just nonchalantly licked her last scoop like normal as I started taking monster corpses out one by one. This girl sure has a lot of gore resistance.
Because I want to make an impression, I pull out all the monster corpses I have except one. Three actually, I reserve two delicious bears for cooking. Still, it's enough to cause my catkin attendant to look at the small mountain with a gaping mouth. She even has to call her coworker over to help with sorting things out and evaluating the price.
"Uhm, can you help me with something?" Seeing that I’ve made a big enough of an impression, I pull my catkin attendant away from the hubbub of activity.
"Y-yes milady anything for you." ... She just forgot her fake accent.
"I also need to sell a monster corpse discretely. Can you arrange someone with enough authority for me?" I ask and hope that her mind won’t short circuit yet. It looks like she's busy calculating the commission she would get.
"R-right away, milady. Right away." She did an awkward salute and ran out of the room.
"You want to sell something big, huh?" Cocoa caught onto my plan.
"Yeah, sorry for not consulting with you earlier. You see, I don't want anyone in the caravan to hear about it." I whispered back.
"It's alright, I understand. I will also help you with the negotiation." She looks at me with determination. A cute kind of determination though.
[I will also give my full support, mistress.] Skynet reassured.
A few minutes later, my catkin attendant comes back lead by an old woman in a white gown and a glittering headdress. She looks strict and grumpy, but at least she tried to smile at me, though it looked rather strained.
Honestly, I'm scared of what's going to happen. In my past life, I tended to fail when things counted. So I inhaled deeply before walking towards her. Not a good decision though, the room is filled with the rusty scent of blood and monster innards.
However, I still forced my feet to move forward. This time, I’ve to do it right. I'm not alone anymore.