Eyries (bandit merchant).

Now that a Buntu-jin has gotten involved it’s only a matter of time before the whole operation is blown and all hell reigns down on us. The though is obsessively on his mind as he maintains professional kissary bowing his head low. If we're lucky they'll send the faceless against us, at least they won't play around with us first.

Eyries steals a glance at the dangerous woman browsing their wares with a flock of her hanger-ons trailing closely as they browse the exclusive selection. Making sure to keep his feeling from showing on his body he smiles a charming smile at a potential buyer as he signals a slave to attend the him.

I can't believe the boss was stupid enough to get involved with those battle zealots bantu-jin involved. I need to get rid of all the surplus material we’ve been holding to keep the market propped before the boss has us cut our losses and flee Valeria.

Things weren't gonna last as lucrative for long anyways. With the greedy Prides no longer selling exclusively to us the market for chi-free mature products is not what it used to be, [tch], we've made a killing though.

''These material would be ravishing draped around this Ladyships' person,'' I indicate the long fur upon a scuplture as lush as though still worn by the owner.

The potential buyer gazes at the skins and furs with interest, the hanger-ons whispering away with stars in their eyes as they touch this and that. The powerhow that is Lady Takashi tilts her head examing the fur but saying nothing.

"This, this is a rare creature found nowhere in the whole of Valeria. The creature native to a small isle on a dungeon world, Gaya they call it, free of outside chi, everything there is fresh and everyhting here is fresh. The fur would look exquisite around your neck to make an elegant but powerful sacred-dress."

"So this is part of the chi free merchandise I’ve been hearing about?" one of the hanger-ons asks giving me the opening for why everything here costs as much as it does.

"Oh yes, all of this material is a blank slate chargeable with any type of chi without rejection or dilution. All these pieces are so chi absorbent in fact that they’ve been kept under isolation arrays for their traveling to reach your prestigious self."

"How many more coats do you have?"

"Oh very few very few mistress. These for instant are from a breed of serpent-like people in a unique hunting ground, the Kushies, vitious things not easily trapped. This particular Kushie variant can grow to over 5m in length and weigh over 5 stone at adulthood, adapted at working mana illusions in defence. The gown you could make with these can have a long train shimmering behind you, illuminated under any light. Of course any optical technique arrays a skilled craftsman placed would be boosted by the material's own nature."

"Curious creatures indeed, could you capture some alive for me?" the Ladyship speaks to me for the first time touching the shimmaring scales.

I bow low hiding the smile creeping along my cheeks.

"This one is only a humble merchant that knows nothing of adventuring into dungeon world’s, but with the right price I’m something could be arranged," double business is always excellent and a live specimen is 10x more expensive I could name my price in crystals.

I knew getting some living merchandise would come in handy.

*

Zero

The area around the Bantu Pride portal is lousy with beings, powerful cultivators local to Valeria using the portal entrance as a giant factory right under the noses of the Hawu family, a small village has popped up. It’s amusing to see the scramble for Gaian resources really, even the usually fearful Prides have fallen to greed and opened their land as a market place to random cultivators. I never thought i'd see the day the territorial beastmen allowed so many humans, weaselkin, bearkin, ratkin and ghouls into their territory.

My passage draws some attention, the Pride members immediately recognising what I am with the rich coat of fur across my shoulders made from the skin of one of their elder members. They bristtle but hide they're eyes from mine as I survey all around me, we know who is prey amongst us.

My three guides don’t slow when challenged as I instructed, many people stopping to gawk at me and my minor procession. Many more making themselves scares with anything of interest that can be grabbed on their way of these lands, the smart ones.

Though the quantity of material that has been gathered here is staggering this is clearly a rumbled together black market of sorts. Guarded by hundreds of pride members but run by the few humanoid cultivators I spot around the place, none below the 3rd Continent my array bangle tells me. But I’m hoping the Bantu-jin reputation will get me across before anyone thinks to challenge me.

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Arg, hope is for fools.

Four pride members with stripes of age and power remiscent of my fur coat walk forward to intercept my three guides.

I don’t slow even when the three bare their necks and start explaining themselves I walk passed my man Napa half-naked and intimidating in a decorated loincloth a step behind.

A proper Bantu-jin with the backing of it’s family would do whatever it liked without stopping for anyone. Anyways a proper Bantu-jin wouldn't really need family backing for the rubble around here.

"Lord Bantu-jin," the lion by the shimmering portal starts to say but I ignore it, hopping through the shimmering membrane without a backward glance.

[Voo], I take an easy clean breath of the much lighter air on this strange chi starved world.

The air is light, the gravity is light, the material is delicate and beautiful. I’m surprised to immediately feel the pull of my claimed territory with a wistful longing to deepen the claim.

Shaking myself from the feeling I look around at the piled corpses, trembling native beasts and people tied together for slaughter and gawking lion pride beastkin paused in whatever they were doing. Gazing at me like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar, I almost grin.

Taking out the array flags I shatter theground sting one deep right in front of the portal.

Moving quickly with Blinks I plant another and another in synchronous pattern kicking up dirt with each pole-flag planted.

A big Bantu Pride member comes forward, lips peeled back to show impressive teeth dripping with saliva.

I give Napa the rest of the flags as my wrist array tells me this is a being at the peak of the 1st Continent, a worthy test subject for the objects I have in my possession.

It comes within my domain and I pull the air out creating a reverse bubble.

I Blink into the air as it launched at me in attack, bombarding it with rock spikes shooting sharp and fast from the ground only to break like shattering ice ineffectively on it’s body and swipes of its claws.

It breaks itself through like a cow in a pottery shop.

I open the ground under its feet 3m deep pinning it with cone shaped spikes from every angle as it drops. It breaks them apart easily but is blinded by the dust.

[HHRRRR], it’s roar shatters the spikes to scattering dust.

I stab into it’s back through the heart with a glistering weapon that punctures in and out the other side easily with my strength behind it.

The lion beastkin man swipes behind it going for my neck, I dodge around and under it. Pulling it down with it’s own momentum while stabbing with another sword through it’s chest.

Unfazed it crowds me trapping me within the confines of my own tunnel, but this is my mana domain and my opponent has no techniques.

I sink into the wall behind me even as it slashes with claws digging deep into the rocks and soil easily with each slash, not finding me.

Appearing above with a Blink I stab a glistering sword into it’s collar down into it’s torso blood spraying wildly upward. I dodge it’s overhead grab, Blink as it’s speed nearly leaves me decapitated, stabbing another sword into it’s abdomen pulling sideways.

Guts splatter on the ground red, dark and stinking horridly.

It’s eyes gaze at me hard, red rimmed with seething loathing palpable in it’s bellowing aura like bitter sweat in my mouth.

"Why is it-," it coughs dark blood, "Bantu-jin-, that you play with me as you do?"

Through it’s heart, through it’s lungs, through it’s diaphragm it has some of my shiny new swords sticking out. It’s hurt as I expected it to be but it’s nowhere near dead as far as I can tell so it thinks I'm playing with my food.

"Just stay like that until I’m done testing the limits of these new toys." I’m surprised you even have air with which to question me.

I stab it with a dagger in the eye snapping it’s head back, I run a spear through it’s back when it tries to swipe at me. I run a blade across it’s throat as it tries to roar scraping against it’s vertebrae blood spraying red and hot out the slit as I tilt the head back.

I stab it in the head but the weapons can’t penetrate deep into the bone, soft tissue and muscle easily overcome with any and all the weapons I try but none killing it. Cultivators are tougher than is reasonable, if I could just get the techniques in the weapons to work I bet he'd already be dead instead of looking like a horror.

The lion becomes a bloody pin-cushion in a 3m deep cylindrical hole, alive, but neutralize in the most brutal fashion. It's body folding in on itself the more trauma I inflict, I cut elbow and shoulder tendons opening it's torso for easy access.

I can’t activate any of the techniques in the weapons no matter how I channel manna into them. They do damage to cultivators body even without chi techniques at least, but this is becoming a bloody chore.

I stab at vital organs, ravaging it’s body to bloody meaty tatters but none of these are killing blows.

Eventually it stops twitching, blood stops flowing, life fades from it’s one remaining eye. Horror remains written on it’s fur face, it died slower than I hoped but it died none the less.

I Blink up, Napa standing in the clearing gazing at the naked natives living and dead tied together with cords about their necks.

"The Pride lions?"

He shrugs, "they all left whilst you were curving up that one."

He points at the bloody mess left within the hole. I burry it with a wave of my hand, checking the flags set around the shimmering portal in space.

"All the flags set?"

He grunts whilst nodding his affirmative.

I gaze at the cowering horrified wretches bound together with a thin cord but unable to get free. I'm not interested in them per se, but could they be of use?

"Tell me Napa, what happens when you activate a chi bombarding array at a portal fuelled by mana?"

Napa shrugs his meaty shoulders before looking around the abandoned campsite looking for loot. Disinterested in anything to do with manna. Cultivators are such meat heads.

"I don’t know either, but let’s find out." I fly upward to get a better view.

The portal is in a clearing in the middle of a quiet forest stretching in all directions. I spot some natives running that must have gotten away during the scaffle, otherwise no life larger than a small bird for kilometres around.

I active the array, a sun dawns white on the ground engulfing the entire clearing.

[BOOM][BOOM][BOOM]

[VVSs-], a vacuum pulls everything dimishing quickly into the size of a coin and all gone a moment later.

No sign of the ground or the portal remains. Nothing but a deep trench 10m at it's deepest and about 50m across.

The idiot Napa picks himself up slowly dusting dirt from his loincloth. Idiot was too close.

"Catch me some of the locals, let’s see if I can get some useful answers out of them."

He grunts angrily then starts running into the forest.

Let’s see if I can at least figure out who rules these lands and plan my next steps from there.