I spent a good half hour guiding Alya into buying the potions, elixirs and fruits that would give her a great stat boost, the achievements that she would get would make her a menace, in the end I ended up lending her close to twenty thousand more points, for getting another extra set of fruits, she made the calculation and said that she needed them to cross the five hundred barrier in all her stats, mainly because she had less achievements that boosted her overall stats, but more that were focused on dealing damage and surviving, with effects more specific than a simple stat increase.
I could see the appeal in that, I had a couple too, and they were pretty powerful, but I would never scoff at more stats.
While we shopped I started looking around the place, actually it was a really beautiful shop, dark lacquered wood covered the floor and halfway up the walls, beautiful abstract motifs were carved into it, while dark purple curtains obscured the windows.
The thing that stood out more though, were the myriad of objects around the place, all neatly set on shelves, stands or behind glass. I saw weapons of any kind, armors, tools, jewelry and hats, there was such a vast assortment of items that I lost myself looking around, then I realized that the building shouldn’t be so large as to allow this space inside, it meant it was similar to my satchel, just… building-sized.
I would have to take the time to explore it later.
For now, we got everything we needed and more, I got a great deal of normal weapons too, those would become the new bearers of the cursed items Alya brought, and ultimately I wanted to feed them to my pet snake, actually, I would have to check on them soon. Then I got something else for her, she was totally out of money despite her fighting a great number of mosquitoes and the boss, and the points from Vix, but that was the problem in this tutorial, you couldn’t have enough; and her greatsword broke in the Scorpion fight, so I got a present for her, cursed of course, but I would take it off later. And the curse would come in handy for me too.
With that we exited the shop and made for going back, but halfway there I felt a presence around us, it wasn’t the first time I felt it, it came in and out of range, it reminded me of Quinn, but it was easier to notice.
We were being followed, Adrian was already planning something I see, I didn’t show any sign that I noticed, actually I had nothing to hide for now, I just went to the shop to help Alya get what she needed, nothing suspicious in that, so we would return to the tavern and there I could easily block them from spying on us further, I had the perfect tool for that: the stylo that gave access to my manor.
I heard a ding as we walked back, I would have to open up my notifications sooner or later, but first I wanted to talk with Miflin to understand if my aura problem would come back if I gained another bunch of stats.
I steered the conversation with Alya towards the guild and our future plans, all things unrelated directly to me, I would have to deal with the spy sooner or later, but actually that gave me an idea…
I had the perfect spy in my team too…
It was time to give Quinn the same boost as Alya, the others too, but he would come first, and with him, the thing I needed most: information.
When we returned to the tavern I felt the presence disappear, entering it we found it half empty now, most of the people went directly to bed, understandable after two days of forced march under the constant threat of monsters, actually now that I think about it, the monster population should have been reduced after the first King died, I should ask Adrian that too, the list of questions was only getting longer.
What surprised me though were the multitude of drunk people sitting together all around, the smell of ale and wine was strong in the air, or maybe it was because my perception was pretty high, but still, I couldn’t help but notice that Rhea was sitting by herself now, nursing a drink, while a group of my crafters stood a bit on the side together with people I didn’t know but were part of Adrian’s group for sure, I noticed the side looks they were giving her, and I didn’t like it one bit. I made a mental note of those who were there, my memory was exceptional with how high my intelligence stat was, I wouldn’t forget.
“Elias! The man I wanted to see! Come come, I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things.” Adrian’s voice was slightly slurred, as if he was drunk, not something I was inclined to believe, for someone with more stats than me, it should be quite difficult, if he didn’t avoid raising constitution and vitality, but that would be quite hard to know, actually it gave me another idea… later though.
“Only if you get me whatever you’re having!” I replied.
“Ha! That’s the spirit!” Shouted a big black man beside him, even sitting down he was clearly a mountain of a man, not only tall for sure, but extremely thick in both muscle and fat, hairy too, his bare arms looked like a gorilla’s, but his face was cleanly shaved, along with his head.
“Give me just a second.”
Without waiting for an answer I went to Rhea, she looked at me with sadness, but now it wasn’t the time to show weakness or throw a pity party.
I bent down near her and whispered into her ear: “Love, go to the room with Alya and wait for me, I’d take just a moment, then we would talk, but staying here like this is not the solution, we need to act if we don’t want him to destroy our group from the inside, he already started playing games.”
She looked at me, surprised, then gave a look at the room, there was no one in our group that wasn’t mingling with his own people, while in a normal situation I would say it was a good thing, here it wasn’t for sure.
“Dammit,” she whispered, “ok, yea you’re right, it’s just that… never mind, I’ll tell you later.”
With that she got up and took Alya’s hand, “Let’s go, from your face you have things to tell me, so we can have a girl talk while we wait.”
Alya looked wistfully at the drinks being brought to Adrian’s table but didn’t resist Rhea’s pull, allowing herself to get dragged up the stairs leading to our temporary accommodations.
I went to Adrian’s table and a couple of people made space for me, so I sat between a lanky guy and the woman I saw in the crowd before, the one that wasn’t part of his main group.
“Hey, pleasure to meet you all, I’m-”
“Elias Mercer! Best lawyer in New York, renowned philanthropist and Curse Mage extraordinaire! This guy here my friend is the nastiest motherfucker you will ever fight! There’s no winning even if you win, only pain!” Adrian finished with a laugh then raised his glass for a toast, a man from the other side of the table slid a glass of some kind of red drink to me, definitely not wine, and definitely magical given the sparks that came out of it.
“Then I propose a toast! To my new old friend! And the many to come!”
Friend, we would see about that…