“What would you have me answer?” Naska asked.

  Vulrak hummed as he thought over her question.

  “Introductions would be a good start. I know your names. But I’d prefer you state them, alongside your classes.”

  “Naska Argyle, Accountant.”

  My eyes widened at how plainly she’d said that. I’d imagined Naska would have some impressive sounding class like [Shadowfoot] or [Spellsword], to think she was a… financier of some kind? I think? I wasn’t really sure what accountants did, just that it involved money.

  If Vulrak was surprised, his eyes didn’t say it. They burned yellow as he looked down on her.

  “It takes courage to admit such a thing here. Why not tell me a lie?”

  Maybe it was a lie. Maybe she pretended to have a non-combat class to appear weaker than she was? I wasn’t sure.

  “I imagine you possess an identify skill, and that you asking me is simply a test of honesty.”

  She was unwavering as she spoke. Vulrak chuckled at her words, his voice booming and deep.

  “I do have an identify skill, though it doesn’t inform me of others’ classes. Your honesty is appreciated regardless.”

  Maybe Naska knew that. It was impossible to tell with her. She might’ve admitted to a weakness out of a desire to seem trustworthy, or she might be constructing an elaborate lie.

  “And you,” Vulrak said, pointing in my direction. “Your name?”

  “Adam Tallow,” I said, my voice more solid than I’d expected. “Unclassed.”

  That drew more of a reaction. Vulrak leaned further forwards, as if he were studying me.

  “You came to this rift of your own accord, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. I’d never had anyone ask me that. I felt strangely perceived.

  He flashed teeth at my response. I wasn’t sure if it was a smile or anger.

  “I am Vulrak. I have no other names. My class is Warlord, and I uphold the law in this place.”

  “Not the adults?” I asked, more confused than anything.

  “We are left to self-govern. There are rules against theft, rules against attacking staff, rules against missing quota and rules against leaving, but as for what we do to each other… there are only the laws we make and uphold.”

  There was a rumble in his voice as he spoke; it was as if he might burst into a roar at any moment. His muscles, even untensed, were so defined they outlined his entire figure. This was a dangerous person, however civil he might seem.

  “There is also,” he continued, “a law against unsanctioned merging between groups. I control who is and isn’t allowed to establish a major faction here.”

  “And you let Selsor do that?” I asked him.

  Naska gave me a look. Even now, her expression muted, I could imagine that she was imploring me to shut the hell up.

  “Selsor?” Vulrak growled. “I do not personally enjoy him, but there is such a thing as legacy. When I put these laws in place, groups that were already over a certain member count were exempted, assuming they paid their workers an agreed minimum. Selsor stayed within those parameters.”

  “I see,” I said plainly, trying my best to sound neutral.

  “Do not misunderstand me. I do not enjoy the existence of factions,” Vulrak stated. “By my choice, this mine would consist of a single group, and there would be no in-fighting, but my group is not strong enough to force that. The powers above prefer things this way. Adversity and struggle are a powerful means of control.”

  “You think they keep things this way on purpose?” I asked him.

  “I do. The fragile order I maintain does little to change the reality of this place, but it prevents outright slavery, all-out conflict, and endless murder.

  “That is why I do not permit the merging of smaller groups. If my position were to be challenged, if I were overthrown, all of my laws could be unwritten. They are backed by nothing but my own strength.”

  “We are not merging,” Naska spoke, perhaps faster than she should have. “Adam and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement. He and his group are allowed limited access to our territory. In exchange, we take forty percent of their harvest. There are no further agreements. He is not my subordinate. I would not call him or his workers to fight for me.”

  “His workers?” Vulrak asked, eyes flashing towards me. “You have assumed leadership over Toar’s group?”

  “On an unofficial basis,” I explained to the lion, trying to ignore his teeth as I spoke. “He was recently injured. It’s difficult to know when he will awaken, or how quickly he’ll recover. I’m trying my best to be of use in the meantime.”

  “As a thirteen year old boy with no class?” Vulrak asked.

  “I don’t let that define my potential.”

  He laughed at that. At least, it looked like a laugh. It sounded more like a roar.

  “Nor should you. You’re young, and your path is unset. You could be anything.”

  He blinked, and the mirth immediately evaporated.

  He stared at me.

  “Do you corroborate Naska’s claims?”

  I understood the word with context. I said ‘yes’.

  “Do you recognise that if your two groups were to merge without my blessing, the consequences would be severe?”

  “I do.”

  I didn’t want to fight this guy. I didn’t want to cause problems between us. Even if I’d been considering a merger, this interaction had put me right off of the idea.

  “I want reports of your groups’ continued involvement with one another, including any other arrangements or deals the two of you may come to. Come to me twice a month with details.”

  “Understood,” Naska said.

  I simply nodded. I was okay with that. I didn’t like the idea that Vulrak might veto some arrangement or other, deciding that our two groups were too connected, but if this was the alternative to getting executed, I was all for it.

  “There’s one more matter,” Vulrak stated.

  I immediately grew worried. My attempted murder of Toar?

  “Selsor was recently deposed by his own workers,” Vulrak stated. “Apparently, he still lives. I don’t have the details, only that he recently visited your camp,” he motioned towards me. “Could you shed light on this for me?”

  I explained everything. The attack. His claiming of Maisie. The bet. My finger.

  Naska’s eyes widened as I spoke, hearing all of this for the first time.

  Vulrak looked increasingly agitated as time went on. By the time I’d finished explaining, I thought he might attack me.

  “Bastard…”

  Was he calling me a bastard?

  What did I do if he lost his temper? I don’t think [Flame Body] was going to do much to protect me from a lion eating my face.

  “He got what he deserved,” Vulrak finally concluded. “Do not repeat those words. I am supposed to appear neutral.”

  I released a tense breath. I honestly thought he was angry at me for a moment there. It was really hard to tell with him.

  “I am sorry for the hardship that came upon your group. I will assign my best healer to attend to your wounded. Though I’m afraid he isn’t adept enough to regrow severed limbs.”

  “What about re-attach?” I asked, a little hopeful. Truthfully, the phantom sense was quickly starting to become noticeable. I’d like my finger back sooner if possible.

  “You would have to ask him,” Vulrak said.

  With that, he leaned back in his chair, and with a wave of his hand, the pair of us were dismissed.

  ***

  “Accountant, huh?”

  “It wasn’t exactly my first choice,” Naska admitted.

  “You got a bunch of options you didn’t want, too?” I asked her.

  We were walking back after concluding our meeting with Vulrak. A couple of adult guards eyed us as we left camp, though neither said a word to us.

  “Not precisely,” Naska said. She was quiet for a moment. “I was given another option that I preferred. I was heavily encouraged to take Accountant instead.”

  I didn’t really know what to say to that. I might have gotten shitty choices, but I’d at least gotten to reject mine. There was no one hovering over my shoulder, forcing or pressuring me into a life choice I didn’t want.

  “I envy how free you are,” Naska said.

  “You call this freedom?” I asked her, not even bothering to motion at our environment.

  “We both chose to come here. Me because I wished to continue fostering the skills that I cared about, and you for your own reasons. I was free in that sense. Perhaps you were, also.”

  She peered at me. “But you can become anything, just as Vulrak said. I am an Accountant.”

  My head tilted as I looked her over, her swords and her leather armour and her regal horns. “You don’t look like one of those. You look like a fighter.”

  “I’m trying to be one,” Naska said. “But my skill growth is slower. My attempts to evolve skills often fail. Classes outline the path one must travel in order to become an expert. They are guiding hands in your purported fate. My path shows me how to more effectively keep books and commit to spending resources. Useful skills, but I learn nothing of might and magic.”

  “Well… have you considered hiring a tutor? Like how we pay Eric?”

  “And reveal my lack of talent in the process?” Naska asked. “I am not weak, but still weaker than many assume of a demon. Most, if not all of my brothers could crush me in combat. Then there’s my father… his magic is so potent it can reverse death itself.”

  “Seriously?” I paled at the idea. “You’re saying he can bring someone back from the dead?”

  “I only saw it once,” Naska said. “He was sparring with one of my eldest brothers and put a spear through his heart. He was able to reverse the damage within minutes.”

  I’d always assumed that revival spells were a myth. Sure, the upper limits of magic were said to be astounding, but to be able to wield power like that…

  “Just who is your father?” I asked, my eyes wide.

  “An extremely important man,” Naska replied. “Too important to notice my absence, though it’s only been eight months.”

  “Damn. Maybe being an orphan isn’t so bad,” I chuckled.

  “Perhaps not. Moving back to my point…”

  “Oh!” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah. Continue.”

  “I have a skilled swordsman and an evocation mage under my employ. You’ve met the latter, his name is Palo.”

  “The calico cat?”

  “Yes. I watch them train under the guise of instruction and glean methods from them. Though I’ve realised such interference could hinder their development, so I keep it to a minimum.”

  I blinked a couple of times at how brazen she was. “I’m surprised you’re telling me all this…”

  “You aren’t stupid,” Naska stated. “You realise that you need our arrangement to keep your group afloat. You’re also aware that while trustworthy, I am a Tier 2 combatant who is far more powerful than you. You would not share my secrets lightly.”

  Naska said all of that with confidence. It was true. If I told others about Naska’s predicament, her terminating our arrangement was the least of my worries—she could destroy me.

  Even still…

  “What if I decided to barter the information to the new leader of Selsor’s group? Offered to shed light on your weaknesses for a more favourable arrangement? Does that not worry you?”

  “If I were gone, what would stop that same group from destroying you as well?” Naska asked me.

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  “We have not merged groups,” Naska said, still walking as calmly as ever. “Vulrak has forbidden that. But, if my group were to come under attack, and you were made aware of it, I would expect you to help me in its defence. As you should expect the same from my own group.”

  “You didn’t help me when Selsor attacked,” I pointed out.

  “I had no way to be aware of it. If you’d sent a messenger, we would have responded with a full show of force.”

  “This was never a part of our arrangement before,” I said to her.

  “Well, if it preserves the integrity of our partnership, then it should be. At least in a defensive capacity.”

  I blinked as she outstretched her hand, looking to shake on it.

  Was I happy with this?

  Naska had made it clear in the past that she had avoided making her group larger to avoid needless conflict. She’d just outlined that such an agreement would only involve defending our respective camps and territories.

  It also bound me to not share her secrets. That said, this was weighted heavily in favour of my own group. Naska’s was twice the size, and she alone was more powerful than anyone in my group save possibly Marcois.

  I didn’t really need to think about it. I took her hand and accepted, making a deal that would hopefully ensure our partnership was long and fruitful.

  “You impress me,” Naska said once I pulled my hand away.

  “How so?”

  “You managed to turn that into a negotiation. I’m not even sure if you meant to.”

  “I’m not sure either,” I admitted. “I think I just think a lot.”

  “I’m aware,” Naska stated. “I knew that I’d need to reveal my class upon meeting Vulrak with you. I thought you might draw the conclusions that you did. I imagined we might use such a conversation to strengthen our partnership.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “So… you were expecting this entire conversation?” I asked her, stopping dead as she spoke.

  She paused alongside me.

  “Naturally. I was hoping you’d take the opportunity to inquire about us training one another, too, but I might have overestimated your deductive skills.”

  I stared at her as she spoke. Was I being played?

  She’d imparted a secret to me that I couldn’t share. She’d strengthened the bond between our groups. She was pushing towards a mutual tutorship arrangement now, and making me feel silly for having not come up with it first.

  Come to think of it… had she even needed me to come along and meet Vulrak?

  Or had I just been there to engineer this conversation happening?

  She was good at this. Maybe better than I was.

  For a moment, I thought I caught a smirk on her face.

  “...alright. I don’t really know what use I’m going to be to you, but…”

  “You’ll be plenty of use,” Naska said, stirring back into motion as she spoke. “We’ll focus on training your swordsmanship first, and then, once you’ve developed, you can show me everything you’ve picked up along the way.”

  My head tilted as I watched her. “You know my skills are hard capped at level ten, right?”

  She looked back at me, white hair swaying.

  “You’re a bad liar. Whatever limitations afflict most Unclassed, you have a way around them. I can recognise a compound skill when I see one.”

  She dared me to challenge her verdict. I didn’t bother insulting her with a half-baked lie.

  I followed after her, silently thanking the fact that Naska wasn’t an enemy. Vulrak aside, she was about the most formidable person I’d met.

  Besides, I wasn’t going to argue with free training.

  ***

  Me and Naska agreed to start my weapon practice tomorrow evening, after which I decided to catch up with my group. Maisie asked me what happened, and I explained to her about the meeting with Vulrak and the specifics of why we weren’t allowed to merge with another group, even if we wanted to.

  “Yeah, the same three groups have been in charge for as long as I’ve been here,” Maisie said. “Though that’s less than two years. I’ve got no idea what things used to be like before Vulrak.”

  “I dunno,” Jackal said. “He’s been around more than three.”

  I told the group that a healer was going to be coming and tending to each of us, which led to plenty of rejoicing. After that, we got through the rest of the day’s work, and following a decent haul, I turned in for the night.

  Well, by ‘turned in’, I mean I started the evening’s training.

  I got all of the essentials out of the way first. Throwing practice, running, [Flame Body] control, combat and pain tolerance training, and more testing of firing projectiles from my [Hoard].

  Nothing ranked up from today’s practice, but that was fine. I didn’t expect to improve a skill every day, and I hadn’t really innovated this time. Just repeated what I already knew how to do in an attempt to build muscle memory.

  Also, honestly, my head wasn’t fully in the game when it came to the other training. There was something else I was far more excited to do.

  Sitting down and opening my system menu, I decided to see what I could accomplish with my new evolution of [Hoard].

  First, I took stock of my inventory. What did I have available to me at the moment?

  Various rocks, for starters. Then there were the clothes I’d stuffed in there, including a piece of body armour that barely fit me. There were a couple of explosive crystals. Then there were the boxes, tubes, and containers I’d taken from the facility storage room, alongside a handful of strange metallic objects, like a drill bit, or tracks that apparently went on a vehicle.

  I had various crystals available. Six Spirit Stones, one partially used, three Power Stones, two Rush Stones, a single Control Stone, four Recovery Stones, and one Pyre Stone. I also had fourteen Unstable Mana Crystals at my disposal, not that I was very sure what to do with them.

  Then there were the various bits of ore and gems I’d stashed away. There was ariline, which reinforced gems and could be used as a magical conductor, then castelle—the same as the large green gem I’d given Maisie, castelle was mainly used to stabilise spellcasting, providing a focus for magicians when placed in a staff or piece of attire.

  Thurim was a valuable, durable metal, but I had hardly any of it. Likewise, I had small amounts of rankar, telstine, margrail, and vedor.

  I wasn’t that concerned with those; their main appeal lied in their value. I also had a fairly sizeable amount of opalite in my inventory, a translucent ore that owed its name to the manner by which light shone through it, producing a wonderful spectrum of colour similar to that of an opal.

  That said, it was metal, not crystal, and boasted an incredibly high sharpness, making it an ideal tool for cutting and refining other precious metals and stones.

  I wondered if it could be refined or added onto a weapon. I also questioned whether something like a Power or Rush Stone could have its addictive quality removed while still maintaining its positive effects, and what form such a version would even take.

  I had new options within my [Hoard]’s menu. Those consisted of a [Recipe] tab, which was currently blank, as well as a [Combine Items], [Deconstruct Item], and [Exchange Item] tab. This was alongside the previous, skill-related buttons that read [Combine Skill], [Evolve Skill], and [Remove Skill].

  I decided to test breaking down an item, beginning with something non-essential I wouldn’t miss.

  I picked one of the facility boxes from the left side of my storage, a large one that took up three slots. I grabbed it, then dragged it to the empty slot on the break down menu.

  [Break down item? You will receive (50%) of the item’s weight in steel.]

  I retained half of its base materials? Interesting. I went for it, and the box disappeared from my inventory. In its place were four bars of steel, weighing about a pound each.

  [High-Grade Steel: Bendable, flexible, resistant to corrosion, and high in tensile strength. Suitable for use in reinforcing objects, creating tools and weapons, creating durable alloys, and in various other applications. Can be combined with other materials.]

  Huh. That was interesting.

  I pulled one of the steel bars out of my [Hoard], and then another to compare.

  They were light and relatively small, but completely uniform. All four of them looked identical to one another, to the point that I couldn’t remotely differentiate them.

  I wondered how the quality of steel found in the average sword compared. I knew that my knife was made of high quality materials… what about my pickaxe?

  Come to think of it, I’d never stored my pickaxe before. I decided to check.

  [Standard Pickaxe: Constructed of moderate-grade steel and treated ash wood, weighing 6.5lbs, dimensions 2 feet and 11 inches x 2 inches, with a 10 inch by 1 1/2 inch blade. Durable for up to a year of continuous labour, will become worn and rust with continuous use. Approximate value: 3-4 silver.]

  Huh. Not the best in the world, then. But what if…

  I dragged a pound of high-grade steel and my standard pickaxe into the [Item Combination] column.

  Apparently, I’d have to pay a small material cost to make the combination, proportionate to the value of the items being combined.

  A single gold piece was enough. I paid the cost and watched as the items in my [Hoard] snapped together.

  Immediately, I pulled the pickaxe out and looked it over.

  The handle looked completely the same, but the blade of the tool was shinier, as well as possibly a touch heavier.

  I re-stored the object, finding the description once more and reading it aloud.

  [Standard Pickaxe (upgraded): Constructed of one part moderate, one part high-grade steel and treated ash wood, weighing 7lbs, dimensions 2 feet and 11 inches x 2 inches, with a 10 inch by 1 3/4 inch blade. Durable for up to four years of continuous labour, will become worn and rust with continuous use. Approximate value: 10-12 silver.]

  Whoa. From a year’s expected lifespan to four with a single combination? What happened if I added more?

  Wait. Doing that would likely make the weapon even heavier. Maybe it’d be better to break down the pickaxe and attempt to reconstruct it from scratch?

  Speaking of which, my [Recipes] tab had just lit up. What did that mean?

  I opened it. There was a message at the top.

  [Some items, when deconstructed or combined, will appear here as recipes. Recipes detail the process, material cost, and relevant skills necessary to craft more of said item.]

  Interesting… the only recipe I had available to me was ‘metal container’. I clicked on it.

  It required the minimum of two silver bars in order to be built. It also recommended a skill level of twenty-five in [Metallurgy] and a level fifteen in [Crafting].

  I didn’t have either of those. Whelp, whatever. Time to see what I could make.

  …the resulting box was incredibly flimsy. It fell apart before I even managed to put anything inside of it.

  I restored the box and broke it down, again receiving half of its weight in high-grade steel and losing a single bar in the process.

  Whelp, that sucked. Combining items hadn’t ended up giving me shoddy results or had any kind of skill requirement, but following a recipe did?

  [When combining items, Hoard automates the combination process. Following a recipe requires manual direction.]

  Okay… by that standard, what happened if I just combined my two remaining pieces of steel? Would they form a less anemic-looking box?

  Nope. Just denser steel. Apparently, it was [Folded Steel] and was even more durable than regular high-grade steel.

  Useful, but not a box. Looked like if I wanted to make specific objects, I’d need to combine specific things that only sensically went together in one way—that or take the time to manually improve at different aspects of crafting in order to be able to better follow recipes.

  This was still exciting. It was basically a cheat sheet that told me what skills I needed to refine and to what level in order to produce certain things at will, assuming I had the required materials.

  And as for things I could break down and combine?

  I decided to break down a Recovery Stone. I had an idea.

  I did so, and ended up with a substance labelled as [Purifying Mist] in my inventory.

  Sounded like the direct opposite of whatever we were forced to breathe down here. I checked my recipes to see if I had learned a recipe for Recovery Stones, but no dice. I guess it had said ‘some items’.

  [Purifying Mist: The essence of Recovery Stones, cleanses the body of toxins when inhaled.]

  I didn’t remove it from my inventory. Instead, I took out an empty potion bottle from the supplies I’d commandeered from Selsor’s tent and poured some water inside it. Then I placed that in my [Hoard] and combined it with the mist.

  After paying two gold coins, I had a Potion of Renewal on my hands. Apparently, it’d detoxify my body and keep it that way for about twenty minutes.

  Good… but not enough. I didn’t want to be on a short timer the next time I ventured into the underground. I decided to try something different.

  This time, I ripped off a long rag from a spare piece of clothing and tied it into a bandana. Then, I took another Recovery Stone and set it to combine with the rag.

  [Combination in process.]

  This one took a few seconds. I wasn’t sure why. When it was finished, however, the result looked astounding.

  The bandana itself had been set in light blue stone. It was somewhat malleable, so I was still able to force it over my face, just about.

  Breathing through it felt easy. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to wear, but it did the job of clearing the air around me. Honestly, I felt like I was outdoors again, the air was crisp, nothing like the staleness I’d begrudgingly gotten used to.

  The only downside was that after thirty minutes of wearing it, my face felt hot. That wasn’t any different to wearing a regular rag, though, and I could easily deal with it.

  That was one part of the preparation taken care of. With more Potions of Renewal, I was sure I’d be able to kit myself out with enough detoxification to traverse the underground for hours, maybe even a full day.

  Then, all I’d have to do was find more Recovery Stones, and I’d be able to stay for even longer. And that was assuming that my mask didn’t just do the trick for me the whole time. I might be able to stay for days regardless.

  Satisfied with my discovery, exhausted after the day’s labour, I decided to stop messing around with my [Hoard] for the night and get some sleep.

  I was getting closer to my goals. Before I knew it, this team would be thriving, and I’d be down there completing my quest. Then, all I had to do was spend the next few months enriching myself, and I could decide what came next from there.

  Tomorrow, sword practice, and maybe I’d get my finger back.

  I couldn’t wait.

  ***

  Meeting Vulrak’s healer was a pleasant experience. His name was Mercury, and he had dark flowing hair and a broad set of shoulders. He looked almost like a warrior or a knight, only he was dressed in robes and carried a white oak staff with a ruby tip.

  He was one of the few in the mines I’d seen not wearing a jumpsuit. Even Vulrak had worn one.

  I supposed there was no rule about it. Maybe he simply preferred to dress like this.

  I pondered that as he touched his staff to my group members and, one by one, I began to watch their injuries disappear. Maisie’s healing was on a level of ‘reduce some, remove some’ when it came to cuts and bruises, but Mercury was able to do the lot on whoever he worked on, though he asked to skip over Finn’s broken nose.

  Apparently, he ‘wasn’t great with noses’ and didn’t want to make the injury any worse.

  Finn, unsurprisingly, didn’t insist that he fix it.

  “Noses are just the worst, honestly,” Mercury complained. “They’re extremely tricky to properly align once they’ve been broken. Just a slight misplacement can cause them to re-set in a strange manner. I find they’re just better left alone.”

  “How about reattaching fingers?” I asked him once he’d finally made his way to me.

  The rest of the group were done, now. They all looked to be glowing, sitting around and relaxing, their injuries as well as their fatigue completely healed.

  “Oh, fingers are much more agreeable than noses… do you have yours in ice?”

  “I do,” I half-lied, knowing that my [Hoard] was much better than any ice.

  “Well, I’ll need to treat it for any signs of necrosis, and examine the bone, but assuming the severance was mostly clean, and the digit looks intact…” He narrowed his eyes. “Can I see it? The finger, I mean.”

  I ‘went to get it’, meaning I dipped into my tent and took it out of my [Hoard]. I hurried back to him, feeling a little bit weird holding my own finger.

  “Hmm… nasty break, but the flesh seems incredibly well-preserved…”

  He gave me a funny look.

  “You said you put this in ice?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “It isn’t cold at all.”

  “Oh, well—I defrosted it, because I knew you were coming.”

  “Ah,” Mercury blinked. “That makes sense. Anyways…”

  He hummed a little more.

  “Two options. I can take you to the doctor’s tent right now, and you can have this restitched, while I use magic to pull the flesh and bone back together, or…”

  “Why is there an ‘or’?” I asked, cutting him off.

  “Because going to the doctor’s tent is incredibly expensive, and I’m not covering it.”

  Whelp, that was about as good a reason as there was.

  “What’s the ‘or’?”

  “Oh. Now you ask. Almost like you could have just let me finish.” He hummed to himself. “The ‘or’ is… are you much of a botanist?”

  “Am I much of a what?” I asked, head askance.

  “How good are you at identifying plants?” he asked instead.

  “I… know what a plant looks like.”

  “Well, isn’t that wonderful,” he deadpanned.

  “I know my way around plants pretty well,” Jackal interjected.

  “Really?” Mercury asked, peering at him from where he sat. “But you’re, and forgive me for saying so, but you’re a dog.”

  “I’m an omnivore, asshole. Get to the point.”

  “Oh.” Mercury blinked. “My apologies.”

  “My feet ain’t killing me for once, so imma give you a pass. The fuck do you need plants for?”

  “If your friend isn’t going the surgery route, then I require crushed daselbrood leaves in order to create a poultice that will help to encourage healing, plus keep everything in place once I’ve finished my work. It’ll need to be applied for a short time after.”

  “You don’t have your own?” Jackal asked.

  “I do. But they’re from my personal stock. I was asked to help heal your wounds. Between your camp and the other, I’m expending most of my mana on this. I won’t spend my own materials on healing you, too.”

  “What if I paid?” I asked him.

  “If your friend is truly adept with plants, you may be better off searching with him. These aren’t easy for me to come by. I’d charge at least two hundred for the amount I’d use in your healing.”

  “Two hundred?” Jackal shook his head. “Nah, fuck that. I’m not letting you get ripped off.”

  “You’re going to search for your own, then?” Mercury asked.

  “Fuck yeah. I see those little plants all the time. I know a spot or two.”

  “Really?” Mercury asked. “Because I need twenty of them.”

  “Twenty leaves?” Jackal scoffed. “That’s nothin’.”

  “Twenty plants,” Mercury specified.

  Twenty plants? Damn, that was a lot.

  Maybe it wasn’t, because Jackal didn’t seem bothered. “Hah, no problem. I’ll get on it tonight.”

  “Allow me to place a preservation spell on your finger in the meantime,” Mercury said. “I can hold onto it for you until you’re ready to begin the procedure. Preserving it for up to a month is no issue.”

  “We won’t need a month, don’t you worry,” Jackal boasted. “Hell, I’ll probably be done before morning.”

  “Well, at the very least, I’ll knock off ten gold for every flower you find. I wish you luck in locating them.”

  Mercury left soon after. Jackal was eager to take the day off mining and go hunting for daselbrood plants, but I told him to calm down. We still had a new quota to make, and it was like Mercury had said, we had at least a month until the preservation of my finger became an issue.

  Hell, it might not have been an issue at all if I could keep it in my [Hoard], but I wasn’t sure if there was a limit on how long [Hoard] preserved things, and I could hardly think of a good reason that I’d wanna store my finger here instead, so I’d let him take it.

  Jackal eventually settled down and agreed that we’d start searching tomorrow. Apparently, he knew some spots where plants grew. Tonight, I had my first sparring session with Naska, and I wasn’t missing that to walk around gathering plants, whether I wanted my hand back together or not.

  I sped through the day’s work in anticipation of my training. By the time I arrived at Naska’s camp, all I was thinking about was swinging a sword. It was steadily occurring to me that I never had before. Not once in my entire life had I even held such a weapon.

  So it was that when I arrived at Naska’s camp, saw a sword laying there in a rack, and attempted to pick it up, I was immeasurably pissed when she slapped my hand away and handed me a wooden one instead.

  “No. You earn your way towards a real weapon. Show me that you can use this, first, and I might trust you not to impale yourself.”

  I stared at the wooden sword in my grip. It was hand-crafted, with intricate carvings around the handle and a repeating pattern spiralling down the blade…

  Had Naska made this herself?

  I was distracted from my musings by the sound of whistling wind and a wooden sword smacking me right in the tricep.

  “Ow!”

  “Lesson one,” Naska recounted as I rubbed my arm. “In a battle, do not stand still whilst admiring your own sword.”

  “We weren’t in a battle!” I protested.

  Naska hit me again. “Lesson two. Do not ever presume you are not in a battle.”

  “I’m not presuming, you’re just—”

  Naska followed up with a third strike.

  “Lesson three.”

  “—hitting me!”