Ray

Ray's head buzzed with ideas as he sat there. The Satyrs could set up portals in homes, and transport things. The rebellion and Aunty Ariana could grow the crops, with his groups providing the potion.

What just remained was negotiating it out with the Dean. Ray had a feeling he was getting tired of the demands Ray kept making, so he'd have to make it an attractive offer. Well, next up was meeting the Satyrs, perhaps Ray could figure something out.

A knock sounded on the door, making Ray jump.

"Oh, that must be Nora, she told me that she would be coming by." Marcus said.

"Nora who?" Ray asked, confused, he didn't remember any Noras…

"The Shadow Princess, she told us to just call her Nora. I think she wants to meet you. After all, you've been spending a lot of time with her lately…" Marcus said, winking for some strange reason. Ray was confused, what was going on?

The two of them had been spending a lot of time together, but it had more to do with their shared experience than anything else. What was up with the Nora stuff? But whatever, now that she was here, they might as well talk about the Satyrs.

'Nora' peaked in when no one responded, her eyes narrowed. "Am I interrupting something?" she asked, looking pointedly at the fact that neither of them had bothered to reply.

"Not at all, though Ray seems to have some ideas. I am sure you two will love talking about it." Marcus said in a funny voice, making Ray more suspicious that something was up.

"Ok…" Nora said, looking at Marcus weirdly as he stepped out.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" she asked.

"Marcus just told me about the Xnarthan's tactic, now what do you say to a deal where we can provide a potion that can increase the production of crops? The Satyrs could teleport it, and Aunty Ariana and you guys can grow the crops." Ray suggested.

Nora paused, surprised by his words." I suppose we could do so…we have our reserves, but they won't last forever. Can you get the potion?"

"I haven't actually asked the Dean if he has one yet…but I am pretty sure he does." Ray said, sheepishly, "Ma recommended I give up on the combat potion for now, it will have limited immediate effect as it is. But if I need to get this, then I need your help with something."

"I expected that, what do you want?" Nora asked, folding her hands.

"The Dean wants some information on Deep Earth herbs and Oceiana herbs from the Satyrs." Ray said.

"Just that?" Nora asked, her brows furrowing in puzzlement. What? Why was him making a nice deal so unexpected?

"Well, we do expect you to pay us for the potions, we need to eat too, you know." Ray said.

"I do hope you will limit the prices…" she said. Ray just stared at her as if she were dumb. Did he look like he was going to scam her? Just because he was good at negotiating did not mean that he was going to take advantage of people!

"Ok, is that it?" Nora asked.

"Yes, do you have anything else?" Ray asked.

"I dunno, I was thinking we could get a few cookies, and I don't know, just talk. I don't get to just talk often" she said.

"Oh, uh, yeah sure. What do you want to talk about?" Ray asked, nervous now. Just talking seemed intimidating somehow, what was he supposed to talk about?

"Hmm, did you know that the gangs are falling in place fast?" Nora said, perking Ray up.

"Oh? Are so many of them surrendering?" he asked.

"Not to the guard, no, but we are a different matter altogether. The gangs are losing a lot of their support and monopoly in the Commoner's district now that the System is making power so easy to get. Mother won't say it, but we may be due for a mass recruitment soon." she said.

Ray rested his hands on the table, leaning forward. "Now that is interesting, the Dean is rushing a potion too…"

The two of them talked for a couple of hours. 'Just talked' would be a misnomer, their lives were too abnormal for small talk. But there was something about just talking about their day that appealed to Ray. The fact that they were discussing the future of Afrieal was just a minor consequence, little more.

In the end, it was time for the Sha-right, Nora, to go. Ray, of course, didn't have much to do with his day. Just sit around doing little more than think of things. Ray hated thinking lately, it brought back memories of…things, things he'd rather forget.

Wait, had he fed Norman yet? Ray had been feeding the cat battle potions these past few days, but there hadn't been a noticeable change. Perhaps it had been something about that place that had allowed Norrelius to act? Or was it something else?

The cat was sitting on the bakery platform staring out the window while one pay lazily ate cookies out of a bowl. The rest of the bakery was a rush of people, few were buying, likely due to the taxes, but there was a lot of talking going on.

"I don't know if I should be happy or sad that we've become the new headquarters of whatever this is." Rena said as she skipped through the crowd with a plate full of pastries in her hand.

"What is this?" Ray said, levitating a few plates off the platform towards Rena.

"A refuge? The big scary rebellion guards out there are good for scaring the Xnarthan away. Or at least people think so. Now we're the meeting place for every group that wants to call the Emperor a bastard." Rena said, taking the plates into her hands.

"Why not just levitate the plates?" Ray asked.

Rena scoffed. "Do you see this crowd? I would run out of mana in an hour."

"What happened to our staff anyway, I thought you and Marcus were supposed to be managing things, not running them." Ray asked, floating the plates to her.

Rena rolled her eyes. "Do you see that crowd there?" she pointed to a rather large crowd of people. The crowd was centered around a table, clearly something was going on. Ray wasn't very interested for once.

"Two hand wrestlers came in to compete and a bunch of gamblers joined in, apparently our entire staff has a gambling skill just from joining the bakery." Rena said.

"And they've decided to take the gamble of playing during work?" Ray said, raising an eyebrow.

"No, they took their free days, after having worked most of it. I couldn’t exactly refuse that one, we did promise to be flexible. I was going to just not count it, but I am seriously reconsidering that now. " Rena said, finally giving up and levitating stuff.

Ray helped her, levitating stuff close to her. How did she know where to send things anyway? Ray shook his head, going behind the counter and conjuring some brown and metal glitter, Alchemic apparatus appeared before him within seconds.

A little trick he'd learned was that glass was just Earth, and thus could be conjured with brown glitter if you concentrated really hard.

After that, he took out some herbs and got to work. Rena needed his help, but he could just make potions while levitating plates to her. The beaker filled with water and then neutral mana as the herbs floated in the air. Ray crushed one, cutting the other in stripes. The battle potion wasn't particularly hard to make, just irritating to source, with the Xnarthan keeping a sharp eye on who was buying what was essentially a combat potion.

The powdered ingredient mixed in as Ray arranged the strips in a vague, sharp shape, and then added mana to it. The stripes lit up, a star shaped formation appearing in the water as the potion mixed. A few seconds later, it was ready. Ray would try multiple potions if he didn't have to levitate plates to Rena. Well, you couldn't have everything.

The potion making continued as Ray made potions, attracting a small crowd. But it also wasn't so interesting to look at that people flocked to it like the hand wrestlers. Just a few lights here and there, not at all exciting when the potions just succeeded. Ray was just too experienced to fail at this point. The hand wrestlers' match ended, prompting a clearing out of the bakery.

The employees left sheepishly, not looking very guilty with their fresh new Tiers. Just how much had they cheated? Ray just shook his head as he levitated the dirty dishes into the sink and conjured blue glitter. The dishes were done in five minutes.

Rena, on the other hand, was frowning as she looked at a book.

"What happened?" Ray asked.

"The potions aren't selling. The cheap ones are, but the more expensive ones that we use to make our living aren't selling at all." Rena asked.

"Well, that's probably just the Xnarthan's taxes acting up. I have a plan for that." he consoled, not really worried. The Xnarthan were smart and ruthless, he'd give them that, but he could still counter them.

"No, you don't understand. The potions I am talking about are the combat potions, the ones used by all those fancy recruits in the army. In fact, I don't remember seeing any army brats today, there are usually a dozen of them just hanging around." Rena said. Ray paused, now thinking of a much more likely solution.

The Xnarthan had acted again. What had they done this time?