CHAPTER 68 PROPOSITION
I focused back on David while keeping an eye on my health. I doubted anything would come of this, [Healing Blossom] was absurdly powerful for a heal if you could just stay within its area.
“Interesting,” David said, pulling my attention back to him.
“Ya’ know, I think just about anyone else would’ve killed her without even bothering to find out who actually did it.”
I scoffed, “I’m not a cold-blooded murderer. I’m not interested in massacring innocent civilians or going on rampages through cities and towns due to perceived wrongs. I’d rather directly target the source of my problems. If she’s not the source then it would be a waste of time and effort to kill her.” I replied.
“Well, how you handle your business is no problem of mine.” He said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.
I narrowed my eyes at him slightly. You’re the one who perpetuated this, you fuck. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t necessarily interested in confronting him about that.
I let out a slight sigh.
“Well… Anyways, what were we talking about again?” I asked, trying to get our conversation back on track.
“We were pretty much done, the only thing left was another proposition I wanted to send your way. See how interested you might be.”
I raised an eyebrow slightly, “Okay, let’s hear it then.”
“So this one is optional, no pressure on your side to do it. I managed Fist while he did this simply because he wasn’t smart enough to handle it himself. Cage matches.”
I frowned, “Like full-contact bloodsport cage matches, the to the death kind?” I asked.
David nodded with a hungry smile, “Absolutely. The cell-block leaders will hold matches for their entertainment. Fist used to compete for our block, although there’s not exactly a limit on who’s allowed to fight. I had to manage him, because otherwise he would accept a fight against someone he wouldn’t be able to beat. I think in your case though this could potentially work out really well. You’re early tier two, that will make people underestimate you. You could quickly pull fast ones over people. They wouldn’t expect you to be nearly as fast as you are currently, they also wouldn’t be expecting the healing you have. So waddya think? Interested?”
I leaned back in my chair with a grunt. To the death. If I failed even once I’d die. I’d practically be guaranteed to fight people higher tier than me, which could be fatal in one on ones. But at the same time, this would be an excellent way to gain levels and grow stronger, slowly reaching my goal.
“You’d get a lot of extra money off of it including freedoms if you manage to win a lot. Fist didn’t compete often enough, but if you won a lot Lurks mentioned several times to Fist, or rather myself, that there were perks for winning for her.”
I nodded slowly, “I might be interested, I need to know more before I agree though. What are the rules, people that fight, average levels, any outliers in terms of strength like myself, and what exactly would be rewards for winning a match on average. On top of that, what are you expecting in return for managing this? I’m assuming you plan on managing my fights since you’re the one that brought it up to me.”
David’s smile grew a little more at that, he felt he had me in. Which he pretty much did. But I wasn’t going to voice that for him.
“Easily answered. Each fighter is allowed one weapon. It can be one you own or have made yourself. Mos-”
“One we own?” I interjected, my eyes immediately sharpening and fixing him with an intense look.
“Uhhh, yeah?” He said with a confused look.
“How far are they willing to go to enforce that and accommodate their fighters?” I asked.
“It has to be something within reason, but as long as it’s not too much effort they’ll do whatever they need? What is it? What are you not telling me?” He asked, slowly starting to get suspicious.
I smiled.
Oh, this was going to be glorious. Assuming Lurks didn’t just steal the weapon from me, and assuming she was willing to go through the effort of actually fetching it for me.
“I was picked up from Verdanst, while I was there they confiscated all my weapons including my sword. I wasn’t supposed to be moved from Verdanst because I was under investigation for something pretty serious, but for whatever reason I got moved here. If they’re willing to bring my sword back to me, I’m willing to fight practically no questions asked.”
David sat back in his chair still giving me a suspicious look, “No questions asked? How good is this sword? Given that you’re tier two, normally I wouldn’t put much stock in what you say or your weaponry, but given that you killed Fist pretty easily with your bare hands I’m not instantly disregarding you. What is this weapon?”
I gave him a smirk, “It’s a wooden sword named ‘The Blade of the Warden’ last I had it was in the eastern guardhouse, it’s more than likely still there. Get me that weapon straight to my hands and I’ll win any fight in the fights. Assuming they’re within one tier. I, unfortunately, am not quite at the level of being able to create something on par with it to replace it yet, so without it I'm down a lot of my combat strength.”
‘A wooden sword…’ David mouthed, looking almost incredulous. In the end though he didn’t argue about it and just let out a sigh.
“Whatever, I guess I’ll see what this is about when it gets here. I’ll bring it up to Lurks when I get the chance, she should have it here by the end of the day considering Verdanst is pretty close. Assuming she brings it at all, she’s refused a few things before, so I won’t make any promises. But this should be one of the things she agrees on.”
I nodded, leaning back in my chair once again.
“So what should I expect in terms of rewards for winning? Is it just money? How much would I get and what exactly would I be able to purchase? There’s a lot I’m just not understanding here.”
“Money is one part, you also can take one thing from your opponents whenever you defeat them. So you could accumulate a nice little armory to work with going forward.”
“Accumulate an armory, will they allow me to manage my own weapons? Or are they going to be holding on to them for me and allow me to choose from what I’ve won.”
David smirked a little before pulling out his dagger again.
“You think they don’t know that I have this? How do you think I got it? Nothing slips by Lurks without her knowing. Certainly nothing makes it past the commander.” With another flick of his wrist the dagger disappeared again.
Even with my speed I still couldn’t see where it went, it looked like it just disappeared into thin air.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Alright then, that sounds like it’d be dangerous for them but that’s their problem I guess.”
“Pretty much,” David said with a shrug, “as for actually spending the money, that’s where I’d come in. I can grab things you might want from outside our residence, it’s a nice little circle we got going. If you win, you get money, you give money to me in exchange for goods and services, the stuff presumably helps you win more, you get more money, you buy more, etc. Pretty neat don’t you think?”
He wasn’t wrong, this could work out very well for me, if I could easily get a hold of a lot of money and start buying stuff I needed going forward. I could start buying the things I need to escape this place.
I nodded slowly, my mind pretty much made up at this point.
“Alright. I’ll do it. When can I expect to get some information on the people that participate in these cage matches?”
“Perfect! I knew you’d be interested, you seem like a smart man… er, elf? Whatever, as for the info I can have someone bring you a list of all the fighters, after our shift.”
Ah. This was going to be awkward.
My face must’ve given something away because David’s eyes narrowed, “Why are you making that face? Wait… Can you not read?”
I let out a sigh, “I can read, just not your language. I haven’t exactly had time to learn yet, I was planning to learn in Verdanst and then I got arrested the second I stepped foot in the town.”
He let out a long suffered sigh and massaged his temple, “Fine, I can give you an overall run-down of who and what to expect before each fight with enough time for you to prepare counter-measures you might need. The only important person you need to be concerned about is the current ‘champion’. And in all honesty I would recommend you just never accept a fight from him. He’s a tier four from one of the day blocks. Hasn’t lost a single fight for obvious reasons, has killed something like 155 opponents and counting? No one has challenged him in a while though, so I don’t really expect that to change much going forward.”
I nodded, that was sound advice and the exact kind of thing I was looking for.
“That’s good to know, you should also provide me with people you think I should avoid and why. I’m not interested in getting myself killed just to earn a little bit of money.”
“You and me both, there’s a reason I don’t fight anymore. I got what I wanted and stopped.”
“Right. Well, is there anything else I should be aware of?”
“Eh, not really, just keep an eye on your back. Some people think you’re an easy target, and that crowd is just going to keep growing as you fight in the matches, so don’t let your guard down. I would also recommend trying to get the fatigue resistance skill. It’ll help with the exhaustion from being drained of stamina all the time. Oh, and on nights you fight you won’t be expected to work out in the gorge, so there’s that as well to maybe pique your interest in fighting more.”
Huh, that’s pretty nice. The more I heard about the things here the more I realized they didn’t treated us purely like slaves, and more like prisoners like how it was on Earth. Except in this case the person actually in charge of the prison facility wasn’t the man with the largest gang. Which had always rubbed me the wrong way about Earth’s prison system.
We really just allowed them to push prison guards around simply because we had to treat them humanely. They just weren’t being punished harshly enough in my mind if they felt like they could get away with killing people and only being stuck in solitary confinement for however long they did that.
I shook my head, I didn’t need to be going on tangents in my mind currently.
‘Ping’ [Rest] Has leveled up 2 > 3
Nice.
“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind. In any case I’m going to go get something to eat then.”
“Not going to grow your own food? That thing you tossed at me before was pretty good actually. Some elvish food?”
“Not quite, also doing that is extremely mana intensive, and I don’t have infinite reserves to pull from yet. When I do, I might do that more often.”
“Is it a general skill you’re using to do that? If you work more at leveling it up it should just get easier to make stuff.”
“I… actually don’t have any skills to make anything, I’ve just been using raw mana combined with inherent knowledge from one of my… classes… you know when I say it out loud it makes a lot less sense how I’m doing this.”
“You’re using raw, unformed mana, to completely create something edible from nothing without a single skill enhancing the creation process or simplifying it in any way?” He asked incredulously.
“Uhhh. Yeah. Pretty much I guess.”
He stared at me for a moment.
“And you can’t read the most common language on the planet?”
I just crossed my arms not designing him with an answer on that.
“I’m not sure whether you’re a genius or an idiot. Get a skill for it you dumbass, when it levels it should make the process easier and more cost effective. You should eventually be able to just grow a whole tree of those things or whatever it is they grow on.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me before. I’ll start taking time to do that.”
Well, there was another thing to devote my time to training up and getting better at. I needed to train all of my general skills anyways, so what was one more in the process of things?
“Alright, get outta here. I’ll send somebody to you when I have more info.” He said in a way that was essentially a dismissal.
I just chose to ignore the tone and got up and walked off letting my armor melt off me.
The poison had worn off during our conversation and my mana had topped back up as well so I didn’t really have anything to worry about. Instead I was hungry, so I was going to go eat something and then work on training my skills a little bit before we had to go hit rocks for 12 hours.
Walking up to the cooking area I saw the same short lady working behind yelling at people, she whipped around fixing me with a glare, before her gaze softened slightly as she realized I wasn’t a target for her ire.
“Ah, it’s you. David’s newest friend. I don’t know how he keeps getting people to work under him, but that’s neither here nor there I guess. You didn’t throw up your last serving, you did good. Most people can’t stomach it the first time through. It gets easier though, especially with a skill or two. Or just by not being a bitch, take your pick.”
“I don’t work for him.” I replied.
She tilted her head slightly, “I saw you handing some of the people who owed him didn’t I?”
“That doesn’t mean I work for him though, does it?” I asked, giving her a slight smile.
“Are you being smart with me cunt?” She asked in return, her eyes narrowing as she rested a hand on the hilt of her knife.
“Not at all, no what I mean to say is this: I killed his right hand man, if he wants me to be his bitch he can get up off his throne and make me. I said as much to his face as well not too long ago. Given that both of us are still here you can imagine he agreed that he wasn’t interested in actually trying to enforce it. I work with him, but I’m certainly not working for him. As for why I’m working with him, it’s only because in this room, outside of you from what I can see, he’s the one with the most power. Politically, anyways. I’d be stupid not to try and align myself with him if our interests coincide.”
She stared at me a while longer before she pulled her hand back with a scoff.
“Guess you’re not as stupid as I initially took you for. Also didn’t take you to have the balls to say something like that to his face.” She nodded slowly before her face broke out into a toothy grin.
“I like you elf, what’s your name?”
“Alex.”
“Huh, elvish name?”
I just smiled instead of answering, simply because I didn’t know how to answer without directly lying. And lying always left a bad feeling in my stomach and didn’t seem like a particularly good idea when someone could potentially have a skill for rooting out people that are lying about stuff.
I’d just have to pretend to be the powerful mysterious person in the background that people wanted to know more about but the author refuses to tell us more, framing it as it would ruin the intrigue when the reality is simply because they forgot about them or don’t know how to work them into the story.
She just grunted, “Keep your secrets then, elf. But I know you’re hiding something now.”
I stared at her for a moment before bursting out laughing, causing her to stare at me in stunned silence.
“Why are you laughing, are you going mad?”
I wiped away a couple of tears from my eyes, “Sorry, sorry. It’s just... what you just said, It reminded me of something I heard someone say once upon a time and hearing you say that reminded me of something I enjoyed a lot from my home.”
She stared at me for a moment before shrugging and turning around, “Alright then. Wait just a moment and I’ll have your food ready for you in a few.”
I nodded, “Thank you.”