Glenn blinked, before rubbing his eyes confusedly.
"You...I did what?" He asked with a lost expression. Maron looked at his Blumar arm, then at Glenn, then back at the arm. He drew a deep breath before hissing through his teeth.
"...What does it look like? I'm...My body is half-Blumar and half-flesh, for Plutus' sake!" The merchant exploded, his face red with anger. The head was Maron's less affected part, retaining most of its human features, with only the diamond eye being out of place. The merchant closed and opened his fist, looking at it with a half-terrified and half-marveled expression.
"But it sure is better than having no limbs at all..." Maron's whispered, before rubbing his forehead.
'...Is it me or did he get better? Was his psychosis treated alongside his missing arm and leg?' Diamanes asked curiously inside his host's mind, making the latter's eyebrow rise. Wait, if that was true, there might be something he could do to improve his situation.
The corner of Glenn's lips rose slightly, and he rubbed the back of his head with a loud sigh, obviously wanting the merchant to focus back on him. Maron stopped playing with his Blumar arm and looked at Glenn with a complicated look.
"...What do you—" Maron suddenly frowned, and looked at his surroundings, frowning at the quarry's white marble.
"Wait, but—why are we here?" The merchant rubbed his chin, confused. Glenn almost chuckled at Maron's shamelessness but restrained himself. The poor guy just got out of another traumatizing experience, he couldn't just blame him for his mind trying to cope. He certainly could profit from it, though. There were some injustices he needed to fix. The young man patted Maron on the shoulder, bearing a friendly smile.
"Don't worry, Monsieur Maron. I'll call Lefeivre and Reed over and we'll take stock together, alright?"
Maron nodded slowly, before glancing down. His face suddenly became frighteningly pale and he covered his genitals with shy hands. He looked up at Glenn desperately.
"Fixer! I'll pay you ten golds for your clothes, so give them to me!" Maron blurted out, holding a hand out pitifully. Glenn glanced down at the hand, before sighing sadly.
"I apologize, Monsieur Maron, but my clothes are Soulbound. I can't just lend them to you..." apologized the young man, before a thoughtful frown decorated his face, "...Wait, maybe I can give you the tie...?"
Sahro sneered beside him, before moving his head away innocently when Maron glared at him. Reed rushed past them with a long brown cape, covering Maron with it.
"Here, Monsieur Maron. Let's get you back to camp, alright?" The mercenary leader said gently, helping the still stumbling merchant to walk. Glenn waited for them to leave before exploding in laughter.
"Hahaha, did you see his face?! Haha, this feels great after all the blackmail!" Glenn giggled happily. Sahro shook his head with a wide grin.
"At least he isn't dead. That still means we have our gigantic debt to pay back, though..." The Black Heir trailed off, his thumb rasping against the top of his sword's pommel. Javier, still as silent and emotionless as always, was sharpening an arrowhead. His movements brusquely stopped when he heard Sahro and a strange light passed through his eyes. Glenn passed his tongue over his lips, before smacking them loudly.
"Oh, don't worry. I'm pretty sure we repaid all of our debts with all of these stunts, didn't we?" The young man said with a wicked tone, grinning nefariously. Sahro felt a shiver run down his spine, Glenn's smile filling him with a bizarre sense of dread. This dread disappeared as soon as Glenn took a step forward, flinching and cursing at his broken foot.
"Ah, fuck! Damn it, I swear I'm going to hire some kind of personal Onnea priest!" Glenn blurted out, staring angrily at his foot. His left hand filled with Nitrogen as he prepared to apply yet another layer of ice on the already blue foot when Javier grabbed his arm from behind. The Pale Son shook his head and kneeled in front of Glenn, looking at the foot for a few seconds. Glenn raised an eyebrow, puzzled, and opened his mouth to question the silent hunter.
The only sound that managed to escape from his vocal cords was the painful scream of his foot getting smashed to a pulp. Javier had suddenly elbowed the foot evilly, crushing it even further. Glenn's eyes widened madly from the pain, Mana surging around him as he prepared to reduce Javier into a pile of ash. The Pale Son stood up, turning around and leaving without much care.
"You—!" The young man began casting Gravity Manipulation to try and crush Javier like he had done with his foot when he suddenly put his foot down on the ground and it didn't hurt. The shock was so grand Glenn let go of the Mana, letting it dispel into the void.
"...The fuck?" Glenn crouched, massaging his foot. It simply felt...normal, not broken. Javier had somehow managed to fix his foot by elbowing it. Sahro glanced down while rubbing his chin, curiosity nestled in his eyes.
"...Aren't healing powers exclusive to Onnea's priests, though? I never thought Javier was one of her believers..." He said as he stared at Javier's back, the Pale Son leaving the scene for some unknown purpose. Glenn shook the shock of the previous pain off, breathing in and out slowly. The young man shook his head, biting down on his lip.
"Shit...No way this guy is believing in Onnea..." Glenn's eyebrows creased, his arms spread open in confusion, "...And what's this bullshit, you just need to believe in a god to get their powers?"
Sahro looked at Glenn with a mildly surprised gaze, before shrugging.
"Uh, well, I never had the chance to ask a priest for how divine powers work..." He smiled wryly, raising his hands helplessly. Glenn scratched the back of his head, his nose creased.
"I mean, if that's how it works, I'll just say I believe in every god or something..." Glenn mumbled as he shook his head dejectedly. He glanced at Sahro, suddenly curious.
"The Black Heirs don't have a god?" He asked, crossing his arms together. Sahro shook his head, a dark expression covering his face.
"...No, we're god-less. I think Giselle told you about what happened when we accidentally met self-called gods, right?" The Black Heir clenched his fist, staring at the starry sky with silent wrath. Glenn mentally cursed himself, before nodding slowly.
'Yeah, it's probably better to not dig into that particular subject,' Diamanes commented, his host only able to agree with him.
Silently, the two proceeded to head back to camp. A few minutes later, they joined Maron, Lefeivre, and Reed around a warm campfire. Maron was adorning a tunic covered in intricate silver linings gleaming gently under the moonlight. He was carefully probing the fire with his Blumar hand, amazed as the flames failed to do anything to him. Reed was anxiously watching the merchant play around, tapping his legs restlessly.
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"Monsieur–!" The mercenary bit down on his fist as Maron grabbed a burning coal with his bare hands, throwing it up and down into the air.
"You seem to be having quite a bit of fun, Monsieur Maron," Glenn smiled, sitting in front of the merchant. Maron glared up, dropping the coal back into the fire.
"Lefeivre and Reed filled me in on everything while we were waiting for you," The merchant winced, making his neck crackle loudly. Glenn raised an eyebrow.
"...So how much do you remember?" He carefully asked, clasping his fingers together. The young man leaned forward, his face illuminated by the dancing flames of the fire camp. Maron sighed, rubbing the back of his head.
"...Pretty much nothing. The last thing I can recall is the despair of seeing Palancar burn, but even that remains blurry..." The merchant joined his hands together, his fingers spread evenly.
"Somehow, it feels like I had some kind of heavy blanket covering my eyes and ears. Like a dream..." Maron's head leaned against his hands, his eyes lost in thought. Glenn repressed a snark and tossed another small log into the fire. The wood crackled, embers flying into the air.
"...And do you remember about our debts? And when I say ours, I mean Javier, Josh, Sahro, and I," Glenn inquired, his eyes lost in the flames' movements. Maron's serious face suddenly flushed red, the merchant appearing quite shameful.
"...I'm sorry about that. Lefeivre told me about your 'debts'. I don't know which screw came loose in my head, but I'm sure glad it tightened on its own," He blurted out as he picked a burning piece of wood inside the fire, seizing it with his Blumar arm.
"Truly, Palancar was a considerable gamble for my company's current finances, but it was the only way for me to step up my game. Possessing an exclusive production is the golden key to the massive door that leads to the Bourgeoisie and above," The merchant snuffed the branch's flames out, using it to draw into the ground.
"I needed a plan B, which was the Blumar quarries. I'll be honest, I wanted to make use of your exceptional skills to make a fortune out of both Palancar and the Blumar quarry, but the matter with that evil god's spawn back then seemed to have corrupted my mind," explained the merchant, his gaze sharp and his words concise. Glenn remarked on the sudden sharpness in Maron's eyes, noting it. He was nothing like how he was before his🗿transformation, his previous calculative and calm mind back.
'If his mind is back, then that means negotiation is possible...Alright, let's get some guaranteed reward out of this mess...' The young man thought as he showed a peerlessly white smile.
"Well, the contract stated the objectives very clearly: as Fixers, we needed to escort the convoy to Palancar, guard the village, then escort the convoy back to King's Rise," Glenn calmly began as he began playing with his Mana, creating a microscopic Blackhole that swallowed the fire's light. Maron's eyes shone but he didn't say anything, contenting himself with listening to the powerful Fixer. Sahro was sitting cross-legged against a nearby carriage, slowly sharpening his curved sword. Not the easiest task with a single arm, but the Black Heir seemed to adapt well to his condition, not struggling whatsoever in the task he had just undertaken.
"Thankfully, the outward journey was all but eventful. It was only when we arrived in Palancar that everything went down the drain," Glenn's eyes were lost in the lightless Blackhole.
"We had to destroy an entire village, all that to make sure we could bring out all of the villagers from their shitty ceremony. We then fought the Mother's minions and her fucking Son, who, by the way, killed every single of Josh's teammates. Sahro lost his arm, which will probably never get healed, unless he's willing to go back into that strange laboratory and have it replaced with Blumar," Glenn spat, before glancing up at Sahro.
"Hey, you're up for it or what?"
The Black Heir flipped him off silently, Glenn nodding expectedly in response.
"Yeah, not surprising," The young man's gaze turned back to Maron, "...After all, we left another evil existence back in that laboratory – because The Mother wasn't enough –, a laboratory we wouldn't even have known existed had a certain someone not forced us to make a detour by the fucking quarry, because we had debts to pay," The young man finished, before crushing the Blackhole in his hand, dispersing the Mana maintaining it. Maron flinched, pinching his lips bitterly.
"...Indeed, it seems like you worked beyond the contract's requirements," The merchant rubbed his hands together, frowning as rock and skin scraped together. He glanced at Lefeivre, nodding slightly. The foreman stood up, heading into a nearby tent. He soon came out with a small stack of paper, an ink bottle, and a feather under one arm, and a portable writing desk under the other. He quickly set the desk in front of his boss, tidying everything together neatly.
"Thank you, Lefeivre. I certainly need to give you and your men a raise..." The merchant muttered with a complicated look, before picking up the feather pen and a paper sheet. Glenn rested his head against his fist, watching silently. The merchant dipped the pen into the ink and began covering the paper with lines of perfect penmanship.
"I...Jules Maron, director of the Maron Company, hereby declares every contract signed between the first party: the Maron Company, and the second party: Fixers Javier, Josh, Sahro, and Glenn to be voided with the second party's agreement."
Sahro's head snapped up, the Black Heir standing up with his blade gleaming under the moonlight.
"...Are you trying to rip us off, merchant?" Sahro stepped toward Maron with a dark face, freezing when he realized Glenn hadn't moved an inch. Sahro clenched his teeth and joined the campfire, sitting next to his friend, his blade planted in the ground, ready to be used at any moment's notice. Maron continued to write, undisturbed, as if he hadn't heard anything.
"As compensation for the events of the Palancar Mission, I, Jules Maron, hereby declare that adequate compensation will be distributed between the second party, under the judgment of the Gold Church."
Glenn leaned forward, licking his lips in expectation.
"Additionally, the Maron Company will support wholeheartedly the second party in every way possible without threatening the company's safety, a condition which can be negligent under the judgment of the company's director, hence I."
Sahro frowned, his fingers wrapping around his blade's handle.
"...Is that it? Do we only get that? Glenn, we need to–" The Black Heir's burning gaze died down when Glenn gestured at him to sit back down. The young man had a face of stone, giving nothing away.
"Finally, the Maron Company will contribute to good relations between the second party and all groups over which the Maron Company has influence or with which it is allied. The second party's reputation must match its efforts, and Maron Company will stop at nothing to make this a reality."
Maron's pen scribbled against the paper, dipping in the ink as the merchant wrote restlessly. Lefeivre watched with wide-opened eyes, biting down on his fingernails nervously. Reed was waiting for his turn patiently, acknowledging each clause the merchant added.
Jules Maron, since Jules seemed to be his first name, signed the paper, before reading it over. Nodding at his work, Maron held the new contract over to Glenn, who picked it up slowly. The young man quickly read through the paper, seeing that the words on it were the same the merchant had pronounced aloud. Glenn drew a deep breath, before summoning his Fixer's dagger, pricking himself in the thumb.
"I, Glenn, accept the voiding of the previous contract, and accept the new contract." Glenn pushed his thumb against the paper, marking it with a bloody thumbprint. Without even looking, he handed it over to Sahro, who snorted before imitating him. Javier suddenly came out of the shadows, picking the contract up and marking it with his thumbprint. The Pale Son handed the paper back to Maron before disappearing back the way he came from.
A log into the fire crackled as it split in two, embers dancing above the fire. Glenn's head leaned back as the young man breathed out with relief.
Thankfully, there was no need for any negotiations whatsoever. Having the Maron's Company, a financial giant in the Fringe who will soon start to grow its influence in the Bourgeoisie, being on his side, was perhaps one of the greatest boons he could have hoped for. Alongside all the gold Maron would have to pay them, Glenn was sure to come out rich, influential, and most of all, famous. Reputation was the key to many doors in society, and no doubt having it spread would do him good.
Maybe he'll even reach Exan's ears with that...
'Keep dreaming,' Diamanes mocked sarcastically, breaking Glenn's illusion.
Maron carefully rolled the contract over and fitted it into a silver tube prepared to this effect. He handed the tube to Lefeivre, before crossing his fingers together.
"...As for Josh, I'll have him receive the proposition as soon as I reach King's Rise. Be sure that you'll have my help for anything, as I am in your eternal debts."
The merchant kneeled, bowing his head to the ground and covering his brows in mud.
Glenn looked down, smiling.
'Well, that's one thing done. Bourgeoisie, here I come!'