Harold set the empty tankard down on the bar and motioned to the tavern owner to get him another beer. “So, he was the one making things difficult for me from the start? Who could’ve guessed that the head of one of the Big Three would have such an interest in a mortal alchemist living in the Gutter?” The tavern owner stopped briefly in front of Harold to switch the old tankard with a new, filled one. Harold didn’t acknowledge the man’s service other than by placing down some money for payment and taking a long swig of his new drink. The man didn’t seem to care about the lack of thanks at all. He simply slid the coins into a pocket of his apron and moved on to serving the next patron.
After making it back to town, Harold insisted upon hearing the entire tale of how his life on the first floor had been destroyed. Over drinks to soften the blow, of course, and without their usual audience of their spirit beasts and constructs. There was a dingy bar in one of the seedier areas of Centra that accepted hard currency and didn’t check for guild membership upon entry, which is where they now found themselves. Everyone else had headed back to their usual lodgings to wait for them.
Harold set his drink down a little too hard–spilling a few drops of beer onto the bartop–and let out a bitter laugh. “If it’s any consolation, I would’ve done the same thing in your position. Perhaps not the ‘making an abomination of alchemy’ part, but doing what was necessary to look out for myself? I mean… that’s how I’ve always operated anyway.” He took another drink before he looked irritatedly into the now-empty-again tankard and cursed. “How much of this swill do I have to choke down before I get drunk? I bet it’s because of my increased Resilience. Oh!” His eyes lit up momentarily in excitement. He pulled out a small pad of paper and charcoal pencil set from his robes and scribbled down something at the bottom of a list that already took up half of the first page.
At the top of the page were the words ‘MONEY MAKERS’ in all capital letters and underlined. Beneath the line were various items–some crossed out–like ‘literally addictive pastries’, ‘rapid hair growth tincture’, and his newest addition ‘alchemically enhanced alcohol’. When he finished jotting the note down he put everything back in his robes and picked their original conversation back up as if this tangent never happened.
“I’d say that you owed me for the cauldron you destroyed–it was a family heirloom that’d been passed down for generations–but considering how you’ve kept me alive all this time and we’re going to keep working together, I’m willing to call us even.”
“You’ve decided to ascend, then?”
He got the tavern owner’s attention again for another refill. “For now. I don’t know how high I’ll climb, but I’m certainly not stopping in this backwater.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “Centra is at least three times as large as Yivesh was, you know?”
“And that was a backwater too, if you ask me! It’s all about mindset. Small minded cities. Small minded people…”
The tavern owner took Harold’s tankard away, but didn’t give him one of the full ones expertly balanced atop a serving tray he carried.
“Hey!” Harold protested angrily.
The owner scowled back at him. “Git yer ‘swill’ elsewhere in this ‘ere ‘backwater’.”
Harold stood with a huff, his Low Bronze aura flaring briefly in aggravation. Caught off guard, the mortal owner stumbled slightly and spilled the tray of full tankards on some unsuspecting Copper-ranked patrons sitting nearby. Their auras began flaring in response, which caused a chain reaction of cultivators flexing their killing intent on one another as everyone became unsure if someone was picking a fight with them or not. Sensing that this could quickly get out of hand and become quite the bar fight, Samantha took it upon herself to get things under control. Being the strongest cultivator in the establishment by at least two ranks, a brief pulse of her Low Silver aura was enough to serve as a warning. Immediately, everyone who was getting riled up returned to eating, drinking, or cleaning up.
She grabbed Harold by the upper arm and started pulling him towards the door. “Come on.”
He yanked his arm from her grasp in indignation before smoothing down his robes. He turned back to the owner and looked like he was about to say something scathing at first, but to her surprise, bit back his words at the last moment. He seemed to struggle with himself for a handful of seconds before heading for the door and leaving without saying anything more.
Samantha followed and quickly caught up to him. “Well that could’ve gone–”
“Better.” Harold finished her sentence for her. “I know.”
She shrugged. “I was actually going to say ‘worse’. Credit where credit is due, the ‘old Harold’ probably would’ve stubbornly continued to antagonize the owner.”
That caused Harold to chuckle. “And I would’ve felt justified too.” He let out a sigh. “Next time I’ll wait until after I leave a tavern to insult the drinks. That mortal had better hearing than I thought.”
“I feel like Mercer might scold you if he heard you say that.”
“Ha! He’d probably make me go back and apologize. I can practically hear him nagging me now. ‘That kind of behavior is what loses us potential customers, Harold. Go and make things right!’.” He shook his head. “The worst part about it is that he’s so rarely wrong about that sort of thing.”
“Well, if Mercer asks me about it, I’ll second your assessment on the quality of the drinks. I’d even venture that calling it ‘swill’ was a touch generous…”
The two of them continued chatting amicably as they walked back to the inn they were staying at. All things considered, Samantha thought that Harold had taken the news rather well. For her part, she felt as though a great weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. The guilt she’d quietly been carrying around in the back of her mind all these years was finally releasing its hold on her.
When they arrived back at the inn everyone got together and discussed what their next steps as a group would be. Due to the ever-increasing difficulty of trading anything in town, most agreed that there wasn’t much point in lingering. At the very least they should start moving towards Gateway, even if they didn’t plan to ascend immediately. Samantha still had to decide how to deal with the Braxands remaining in Gateway, and wanted to observe them for a time before approaching the burgeoning settlement either way. Now that their family head was slain, she wanted to see who–if anyone–would rise to take up the mantle of forming Gateway. If they looked like they could pose an issue in the future for others on the floor, she’d take it upon herself to ensure that they never did.
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Surprisingly, out of everyone, Silas was the one who requested they stay a bit longer on the floor if possible. According to him, he wasn’t far from ranking up. He wanted the opportunity to hunt for spirit pearls to try and advance before ascending. He wasn’t sure if he could manage the feat in three months, but he didn’t believe it would take him too long so long as he found suitably powerful prey. This suggestion also inspired Sandy to request additional time to hunt, who–rather than seeking specifically to advance–expressed how she missed hunting itself. Even Mercer got on board with the idea in short order, since hunting would allow them to gather spirit beast materials to trade on the next floor. Seeing no real reason to reject the proposal, and no good reason to stay in Centra, they all agreed to set out in the morning.
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“Traveling on foot everywhere is much worse than I remembered,” Harold griped.
Rather than get irritated by the complaint, Samantha grunted her agreement. It was worse than she remembered. She was sure Mercer would’ve joined in the commiserations too… but he was almost always too tired or out of breath to speak clearly. She had asked the portly man on multiple occasions if he’d rather be de-summoned until they made camp at the end of the day, but he always declined. ‘Who will keep Harold in line if I’m not here?’, he joked.
They currently were trekking back through the Great Gulfs in the general direction of Gateway. Silas and Sandy were ranging far ahead hunting for other spirit beasts while the three–sometimes four, when Tobias was active–of them followed at a leisurely pace. They figured out very quickly that any usage of [Rift Walk] would spook spirit beasts for miles around–which, upon reflection, was probably why they hadn’t run into much trouble on their initial journey to Centra from the Delvers Outpost. Once they started hiking through the forests on foot, hunting successes began to follow.
“Got something!” Silas informed the group with [Liaison].
“Sandy curious: is small tasty? Or big tasty?”
“It’s for you. I’m already directing it your way.”
“Yay! Sandy hide now. Sandy surprise!”
Sandy was more interested in the weak, easily picked off prey, whereas Silas was searching for high-ranked creatures that could fuel his advancement. Being Rank 6 - Mid himself, Silas would need similarly or higher ranked pearls to make any significant progress in his advancement. This usually worked out well for both of them since if either of them encountered a beast the other would be interested in, they could inform the other.
Since Tobias wasn’t active at the moment and couldn’t carry her while she projected, she called for a brief pause.
As if waiting for this moment all his life, Mercer slumped against the nearest tree and slid down into a seated position in the blink of an eye. “What…” Mercer sucked in a wheezing breath. “...is it… this time?”
Finding a suitable place to sit for a few minutes, Samantha entered the lotus position and activated [Spectral Projection]. She followed the binding thread to Silas’s location, and it wasn’t too hard to see what was fleeing from him. He flew overhead through the maze of trees, letting the occasional [Antler Shot] loose towards a dog-like spirit beast. By aiming towards one side or the other, Silas was steadily steering it towards the area where Sandy lay in wait. This was a strategy they’d only recently developed together, but they were becoming more and more proficient with it every day.
Coming up to a small clearing in the forest, a burrow-like hole near some shrubbery proved a promising escape route for the dog-like beast. Underground, Silas’s aerial attacks would prove little threat. As it rushed towards the hole, ‘salvation’ nearly within reach, the dirt around the opening exploded outwards as Sandy jumped towards her unsuspecting prey. Her forelegs extended outwards like a horrible net, and her eyes glistened with predatory excitement as she descended upon the beast. The creature hardly had time to process the terrifying sight before Sandy seized it with the hooked tarsal claws at the ends of her legs and latched onto it with her pincer-like mandibles.
“Sandy CATCH!” she yelled in triumph. Just as Samantha was about to report back to Mercer, Sandy added, “Sandy little hungry. Sandy sorry round not-Harold!” She then proceeded to tear into the poor creature, and Samantha knew from experience it would be wholly devoured before long.
When she stood and brushed herself off, she simply looked at Mercer and shook her head. Mercer groaned, which earned a laugh from Harold.
“She just ate… a few… hours ago!” Mercer protested.
“Oh, let her have this!” Harold teased. “Consider it a payment for carrying you around all the time.”
“If you want to talk with her about it yourself I can give you a [Liaison] connection?” Samantha offered, doing her best to keep a straight face. She’d pay good money to see Mercer try to reason with the simple-minded spider.
He shook his head. “No, no. You’ll be able to summon Tobias again soon. It’s too much of a hassle to keep disconnecting and reconnecting the art.”
With only up to five connections, the most strategic [Liaison] threads for combat connected herself to Tobias, Tobias to Silas, herself to Harold, herself to Sandy, and Silas to Sandy. When Tobias wasn’t summoned the bonds were a lot more flexible, but Mercer wasn’t fond of only intermittently being able to participate in the mental conversations. He found the transition between ‘hearing everyone’ and ‘hearing no one’ to be too jarring, so he preferred to only be included in [Liaison] when absolutely necessary.
“At least Silas leaves most of his… kills untouched,” Mercer commented. He was finally starting to catch his breath. “By the way… how much longer are we hiking for today? Not that I’m… complaining or anything…”
Samantha glanced upwards through the canopy of leaves and observed the gentle, green-tinted light filtering through to the forest floor. They had a few hours of daylight left, but they weren’t in a particular hurry. Here was as good a place to camp as any. “We can stop here, unless anyone is opposed?”
Mercer eagerly shook his head ‘no’ while Harold shrugged.
Checking Tobias’s qi reserves, he was only 37 qi from being topped off. After she invested the required qi she summoned him so that he could spend time with everyone and participate in camp activities.
“What’d I miss?” he asked once his body finished manifesting. He scanned the surroundings for danger at first, but upon finding none settled into a relaxed, leisurely stance. Catching sight of an exhausted Mercer, a laugh escaped him. “Rough day?”
Mercer pushed himself up from the ground with a huff. “By your standards, probably no.”
“Buuuut…?” Tobias prompted, giving Mercer an invitation to share his woes.
“Well, it’s just…!”
Mercer filled Tobias in on the day’s goings-on while everyone set up the tents and bed rolls. Tobias, good listener that he was, ‘ooh’-ed and ‘mhmm’-ed at all of the appropriate places to encourage Mercer to continue. This was a sort of ‘daily tradition’ that neither man seemed to grow tired of. Sometimes, Samantha wondered if there were other reasons why Mercer insisted on remaining active all the time, apart from keeping Harold from devolving into his worst self. Seeing how dutifully he retold the day’s events to Tobias, she thought Mercer might have taken it upon himself to serve as a ‘witness’ of sorts to his fellow construct who, unlike himself, could only stay active for a portion of the day. It warmed her heart and troubled her at the same time. Mercer wouldn’t be able to serve as Tobias’s eyes forever, and she didn’t know if she’d have the time to fill that role consistently after they parted ways. She could only hope that one day she’d have a large enough qi pool and regeneration to summon Tobias back-to-back so that he wouldn’t miss out on so much.
As they were finishing readying the camp, a flash of excitement shot through her binding thread.
“Everyone, come this way! I’ve finally found worthy prey!”