Flustered by his words, the manor owner spoke rapidly to one of his subordinates and they brought a tray carrying multiple Storage Rings to Sage before he left, handing them over with a smile, “Forgive us, Sir. We forgot about the interest. Please take the extra as our compensation for making you wait so long.”
Sage took the Storage Rings and then nodded, giving the manor owner a smile, “Thank you for your prompt payment. The Dream Dealer looks forward to receiving your future business.”
Without any further words, he turned and left, not wanting to suffer through any of the boot-licking that he’d used on other people in the past himself. Everyone loved to receive compliments, but there was also a line for where those compliments and honest admiration became disgusting. The only difference was where that line was. For the most arrogant and narcissistic it took quite a bit to gross them out, while others that were constantly surrounded by sycophants could be annoyed by even the most simple compliments and courtesies. With all his experience in the field, and thousands of years not having to do it, Sage no longer had any desire to suffer through more.
Moving on from this first job, Sage continued to climb the levels of the Tianxia Capital. Since he’d already made a deal with Zhenyan, he was just going to have to try and do it to the best of his ability. Like most distasteful tasks, he would prefer to get it done as soon as possible and then try to forget it ever happened. Unfortunately, even if he wanted to rush, the size of the capital and the rules that prevented him from rushing around at full speed meant his climbing rate was limited. Level after level, he continued upwards till Zhenyan told him to stop again on the 5,343rd level.
The terrain on this floor was different from most of the others as it was not something he would have considered to be ‘beautiful’ in the way that many of the others were. Even the rocky deserts and icy peaks from other floors were things that he knew many people found to be beautiful back on Earth even if most people wouldn’t want to live in them. Around the outside of this level there was level ground connecting the ramps up and down to the other levels, but the whole center of the level was covered in swamps and marshlands. Hundreds of miles of hot and humid smelly swamps. He was curious if the Tianxia Capital was built with every possible terrain or if they were modeled after the preferences of the master of each level.
Whatever the case, he did not enjoy this place that was wild enough for him to be surrounded by large flies and mosquitoes as he sat on a flat bottomed boat. Behind him, a hunch backed elderly man used a pole to push their skiff around the thick roots of twisted and gnarled trees. Here, the buildings were placed on stilts and clustered together around boardwalk style areas. Unsurprisingly, this level was far less populated than most of the others, seeming more like a collection of smaller towns rather than a huge city spanning hundreds of miles. The address that he was directed to was actually in a strange place. He entered an area of the level that was much darker and gloomier than the rest of it. The trees were more crooked and sparse than before, and the number of rotting corpses and skeletons in the mud seemed to multiply. This gloomy zone was located beneath one of the huge ramps leading up to the next level which blocked out direct light from the source at the center of the level.
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The skiff he was on stopped at the edge of a bog-like pile of grass. The murky waterways became a field of waterlogged vegetation which the skiff could no longer traverse. Worse yet, the old man wanted nothing to do with this place and refused to wait for Sage to return. For his own part, Sage had to traverse the spongy ground, avoiding the puddles between them. These tufts of muddy grass soaked him from the knee down. Some of them were firm and he could hop upon it like a rock, while others were sponges that he sunk down into. He had to take a sort of indirect path to avoid the many scattered puddles because he had no idea how deep they were. With this sort of bog they might contain just a few inches of water or deep enough to cover him from head to toe.
After wasting a few minutes to travel a few hundred yards, he finally reached the small hill where a ‘spooky’ manor was placed. He couldn’t help making the connection, given the dark swamp it was located in and the somewhat rundown and tilted state of the building in front of him. If this was a ghost story it fit the stereotypical look of a haunted victorian style house, but since he was here in the Tianxia Capital, it was actually more of just a person with an unusual sense of style that didn’t take care of their home.
Then again, maybe this place is truly haunted. I’ve run into more than a few Ghosts and Spirits before after all.
The building was much larger than it looked to be from afar, and from the outer dimensions it could cover a hundred thousand square feet and from the windows on the outside had at least five floors. The doors of the building were extremely wide and squat, with two sets of overly wide double doors. He wasn’t sure if he should go up to the left set or the right set and weirdly these ten foot tall doors were fifteen feet wide each. The doors were a bit taller than normal, yet this front entryway spanned more than sixty feet across. Weirder still, each of the four wide doors had at least a dozen knockers mounted on the front of them. These knockers were in the shape of Demonic Beast heads and each of the fifty one of them had a different monster upon it. In each of their mouths or noses hung a ring, crescent, or pendulum, each with their own unique design as well.
Someone had spent way too much time designing this entrance. Without any clue on which one to use, Sage picked out the one he felt was the most interesting: the head of a six horned rhino-like beast with a tiny monkey hanging from its horn. The monkey’s long tail curled around in a circle and met up with one of its arms to form the ring for the knocker. There was a furious look on the rhino’s face and a very mischievous glare in the monkey's eyes which he found entertaining.
Sage lifted the little monkey and smacked its body up against the door, causing a muffled boom to resound into the building behind it. After a few long moments of waiting, there was finally the sound of shuffling coming from within and the huge door he was standing in front of finally swung open. On the other side of the door there was a tall and extremely thin man with spindly limbs and garbed in a sort of black suit. This outfit was similar to the stereotypical butler from Earth, except without the white gloves and shirt. The front of the man’s coat was more in the style of a kimono and his gloves were more like black mittens. Sage had no idea what to make of the fellow that just stood there in front of the garage-like doorway without saying a word.
The huge door swung slowly, opening up to a cavernous hallway painted entirely black on the walls, ceiling and floor. The man in front of him was just standing in the open pathway, not even holding the huge door, simply staring at Sage with a set of small beady eyes. Annoyed by the silent man, Sage took the initiative, “I am here on behalf of the Dream Dealer.”
With this declaration, the man’s eyes narrowed. Sage then held up the token he got from Guan Zhenyan and those narrow eyes tripled in size, seeming to rise almost to his scalp. Finally getting a response out of the man, Sage walked in confidently not waiting for the man to make a decision.