In hindsight, I can see how teleporting in the middle of a village of superstitious peasants wasn’t the best idea ever.

“Everyone calm down!” Hisako, who is struggling to stay upright and not vomit, tries to calm the rowdy crowd. But her attempts fall on deaf ears and some peasants are hurling colorful insults at me while others are praying for salvation.

I feel like anything I could say would only make the situation even worse, so I store my Portal Gun and cross my arms. This commotion should quickly reach the Elder’s ear, and he will be able to calm these people down.

I could do it myself but teleporting an entire village into a river might not be the best way to increase my reputation with these people.

The guards posted at the Elder’s mansion finally show up after a few minutes of an intense staring contest between Hisako, who gave up trying to reason with the villagers and snarled at the first one who dared saying a word, and the terrified peasants.

The first to arrive is an out of breath goat-eared man, “The-The Elder wants to see you two as soon as possible.” He says while his colleague disperses the crowd.

I nod and go towards his mansion; I can almost feel the curious and hateful stares coming from the windows covered by wooden blinds of the surrounding houses. Hisako has to regularly stop to wait for me since she’s almost running to the mansion.

Man, she doesn’t even hide how much she wants to get rid of me.

I wave and smile at her, thus making her rage even more.

“Come on, the Elder is waiting for us! It’s impolite to make someone like him wait!” she said with urgency.

“True, we don’t know how many hours he has left to live. After all, your Elder is truly deserving of his title…”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look at another sentient being with so much contempt.

I can’t see why she’s acting like that, my joke was hilarious! Maybe I should become a comedian if this whole time travel thing doesn’t work out.

We finally arrive at the Elder’s mansion, and the guards prompt us to enter as soon as we arrive. We almost run to the throne room, and the others kneel as soon as we enter. The Elder looks at me with narrowed eyes, they are so narrow that I’m genuinely beginning to wonder if he can actually see anything like that.

“So, care to explain why you appeared in the middle of my village by using an unknown Formation?” he declares with a strong, authoritative voice that makes the kneeling beastmen shudder.

I, on the other hand, am completely unfazed and just cross my arms while staring at the Elder through my helmet.

“What’s the problem? It was faster that way. And it beats walking two days while enduring her constant nagging.” I reply while pointing towards Hisako, who briefly stares daggers at me before focusing back on the floor.

The Elder rubs his temples and sigh, “So you tell me…You used some unknown, and no doubt very rare and expensive, Formation to instantly travel between the mines and the village… just to save two days of travel?”

I nod, “Yeah, pretty much. She’s that insufferable.”

Snaga sighs and leans back, “I…I see.” he then turns towards Hisako. “Aspirant Hisako, raise your head.”

She does as she’s told, and Snaga continues, “How did John Thomson handle the mine?”

Hisako then recalled the entirety of our brief journey after handing the artifacts she found to the Elder, and his face became paler the more she talked. His jaw dropped when she arrived to the point where I punched that weird ghost thing to death.

“Just to be clear,” he says after Hisako finished her story, “You somehow entered the mine and then you found some unknown ancient construct in there. There was a creature sealed in there that killed two people in an instant, and your first idea was to punch it?”

“Of course.” I reply while uncrossing my arms.

The Elder holds his head between his palms and sigh, “I see…”

He then raises his head and look at me with a faint smile, “I’ll be honest with you. You weren’t supposed to succeed. The plan was for you to endure Hisako’s berating for the two days journey, arrive to the mine and fail to enter then come back. Then, you were supposed to be sorry for your actions and buy my information at an increased price.”

Oh.

“So, all this stuff about being a warrior was just a scam, huh?” I ask.

He nods, “Of course, there’s no way I can discern who’s a warrior or not when from just a glance. But I knew that you wouldn’t risk your life to wander around the Clans’ territories if you didn’t have a good reason, and your armor betrays your wealth, so I thought I could get a decent sum out of you.”

I’ll be honest, I never saw that coming. I’m quite angry that I’ve been played like a fiddle and risked my life for virtually nothing.

Snaga notices my anger and raises his palms, “Don’t worry, my promise still holds even if you really weren’t supposed to succeed. If what you killed was really the reason behind the disappearances in the mines then this will be a boon for our Clan, not to mention the very interesting artifacts that Hisako brought back. ”

“So, I’ll get my information then?” I ask with a voice filled with venom.

“Of course, but we’ll need to be alone first.”

“But Elder, that’s-” one of the guards begins to protest, but he’s silenced by Snaga.

“Listen, this man fought a Spirit and survived, so you wouldn’t be able to do anything if he attacked us.”

The guard clenches his fists and nod before leaving the room; he’s closely followed by the other guard and Hisako, who stares daggers at me before closing the door behind her.

The Elder leans forwards, “Now I’m going to give you what you want. The Ancient Metal is said to be a gift from the Gods by certain Clans, and they hoard it like their life depended on it. They won’t hesitate to declare war on a Clan who happens to have even a small chunk of the stuff.”

Those Clans are fucking insane.

“And the worse thing is that their attacks don’t even accomplish anything, no one in the Clans knows how to work that damn metal. But I digress… There happens to be one of those Clans on our southeast border, and from what I’ve heard they have quite the sizable hoard. As for the Ice Roses, I’ve heard that there should be some on the mountains near the United Clans’ capital. I don’t know if it’s true though.”

“You’re telling me that you don’t have any of the materials I need?” I shout while clenching my fists.

A shit-eating grin creeps on the Elder’s face, “You asked if I knew where something about the materials, not if I had them.”

I grit my teeth and resist the urge to shoot the scheming bastard in the face. Doing so would accomplish nothing besides making me feel better for a brief moment. And I think I still can pull one over this old fart…

“Then, I want one last thing. I want to learn about making Power Stones from your blacksmith.”

His grin dissipates, and he waves his hand around, “Sure, whatever. It isn’t a secret anyway, so I’ll allow it. The blacksmith is at the left end of the main road, tell him that his old pal sent you, he’ll understand. However, once you’re done then you’ll have to come back here to have someone escort you out of the Ironclaw territory, I don’t want you wandering around.”

I nod, and grin as I leave the mansion. But before I head to the blacksmith, I create a waypoint to the throne room on my Portal Gun. Those artifacts that Hisako plundered were very interesting, and after that last meeting I don’t want to leave them to this bastard.

The village is small, so I quickly arrive at my destination; two small houses glued together with a large brick chimney between the two. An anvil shaped signs hangs on top of the door, so I push the door open.

A bell echoes in the small shop as soon as I take a step inside, and I am surprised to see how decent the shop looks. There’s a large wooden counter that occupies most of the room, and a few miscellaneous items are lined on the floor. There’s everything from silverware, nails, hinges and even a few old swords here and there.

“I’ve never seen you before, who are you?” a stout old man with a white trimmed beard and two ram horns on top of his head emerges from the dark backroom. He’s wearing a leather apron and grey cloth pants that are covered in soot, and he’s holding a large hammer in his left hand while he wipes his sweaty forehead with the other one.

“My name is John Thomson, and the Elder owes me a favor. I wanted to learn more about making Power Stones so he sent me here, and I apparently have to say that ‘an old pal sent me’.”

“For crying out loud, that senile bastard always dumps his problem on me!” He takes a deep breath and beckons me to the backroom.

“All right, I’ll teach you. But you better listen well, I’m busy and I won’t repeat myself.” I nod and follow the blacksmith through the backroom; he opens a creaky wooden door and reveals another room. Most of the space is occupied by a large stone construct: There’s four iron-capped spiky pillars surround a large concave pedestal while a large stone cube with a large multicolored stone embedded in each face slowly floats above the pedestal.

This construct is surrounded by twelve concave stone pedestals, three on each side. The other eye catching items in the room are the jars labeled with strange drawings filled with multicolored liquids on a big shelf in another corner of the room. Finally, there’s a round copper furnace with a few stones embedded into its surface, and there’s a tower made of five small copper vessels welded on top of the furnace.

“Well lad, listen.” The blacksmith says before picking up a thumb-sized rock from the ground and placing it in the center pedestal.

“This is an Infusion altar, and its name is pretty much self-explanatory. It allows you to infuse elements into an item.” He then slapped the side of the furnace, “This bad boy is an Elemental Distillery, it extracts the raw elements from whatever you put in there and it enters the alembics at the top. You then drain the alembics into the glass jars you can see on the shelf. This model of distillery is quite nice since it shows what type of elements it contains. That feature helps you to not mix up the elements when you drain them, so they don’t destroy each other, or explode.”

The smith then opens a window and rips a handful of leaves from a tree before chucking them into the furnace. The construct rumbles as soon as he sets fire to the coals in the furnace, and a hissing noise comes from the alembic.

“Let’s see what we have here…” he mumbles before grabbing a yellowing notebook and focusing on the dirty glass display on the copper vessel while flipping through the pages. I peek behind his shoulder and see that the pages are filled with pictograms, some of which I recognize from the labels on the jars.

“There you go! We extracted the nature element from these leaves.” He grabs a jar half-filled with green liquid and opens it before placing it under the small spigot of the first alembic. A similar green liquid pours out.

The smith waits until there’s no liquid left in the alembic and closes the jar before going next to the altar. He pours a bit of the green liquid on one of the concave pedestals, grabs a long rod leaning against one of the pillars before tapping the floating cube.

The cube vibrates, and the stones light up. My jaw drops when the green liquid turns into a floating stream and enters the rock, which now looks very green. The cube stops vibrating, and the smith grabs the stone before handing it to me. “And there you go; a nature-attuned Power Stone. Now can you leave my shop?”

That was interesting… I never saw anything like that before!

I nod, “Sure, but before I go, can you tell me how to make a spatial bag?”

The old man snorts, “Tsk, as if it was that simple. The secrets to making worthwhile spatial bags are closely guarded, and I only know that you need to infuse a container with the essence of emptiness. But that’s common knowledge, and it’s only useful if you want to make something that can barely hold a handful of items. Anything other than that and you’ll have to ask a master blacksmith, although I doubt he’ll tell you anything. Now get out of here!”

I hurry out of the shop and discreetly mark the location of the altar on my Portal Gun. The Infusion Altar is the biggest thing in that room, but it’s a bit smaller than the Scanner so it should easily go through a portal. I look at the sky and grin. I still have a few hours left before night, so I quickly create a portal to the Bazaar under my feet.

After all, an interplanetary robbery needs some special equipment.

I finally land back on this backward planet populated by a bunch of savages after buying certain things from the hardware store. I emerged into an isolated clearing, so it should be fine to set up my temporary base here. I drop my plastic bag filled to the brim with bottles of magical disinfectants and glance at my new bright yellow pressure washer.

This product should kill all the germs that touch it for an entire hour, so it’s perfect!

I turn the engine on to see if it’ll work with this planet’s atmosphere, and it seems to run flawlessly. I turn it off and prepare my Portal Gun; the glow of the GPS illuminates my face in the dark night as I select the correct waypoint.

These people are sensitive to mana, and my Gun happens to throw the stuff everywhere once it generates a portal, so I’ll have to act quickly. The sudden and massive burst of mana will alert the villagers, and it’s very likely that the Elder will come rushing to the disturbance.

For this reason, my first target will be the blacksmith’s hut. It’ll cause the Elder’s mansion to be undefended and I’ll be able to easily steal the artifacts from the mines. And maybe some more things, it depends if I find anything interesting.

I take a deep breath and teleport into the room where the Altar is stored. My arrival probably forced most of the villagers awake, so I need to act quickly!

I charge my Gun to its utmost limit and fire, the recoil is so strong that it triggers my shield. A massive portal appears under the Altar and sends it to the clearing. My next target is the Distillery, and it sinks into another portal without an issue. After that, the jars and the notebook also appear into the clearing. Now, I just have to hope that a random beast doesn’t find its way to the clearing and eats everything.

I’m about to head towards the Elder’s mansion when I hear the sound of metal hitting a hard surface, and I turn around to see the terrified blacksmith throwing small javelins at me. I shoot in the air to scare him off and disappear into another portal that makes me appear in an area without a lot of people. I hear bells being rung, and I can spot groups of angry villagers running around while carrying torches and pitchforks.

Man, if you told me a month ago that I would be pursued by a bunch of angry half-beast peasants from another planet then I would’ve laughed at you. Now, shit like this is just another day in the office…

The biggest group is being led by a fuming old man wearing disheveled robes.

I smirk, my distraction worked so I teleport into the Elder’s mansion and check my surroundings.

Looks like this place is some sort of unused guest room.

I didn’t directly teleport into the throne room since there might be some sort of security system. I won’t make the same mistake twice and underestimate this world’s offensive capabilities. After all, the only things that managed to bypass my Glove’s protection were from this planet.

Opening a few drawers reveals nothing of interest so I exit the room and enters the next one. This one looks more lived-in and I find nothing interesting except a coin pouch. I ‘borrow’ the pouch since I might get into a situation where I need a few coins and continue to explore the mansion.

Five minutes passed, and I only earned a few coins and a couple of loose Power Stones.

I think I took everything of value here. My detector says that there are two people in there, but it must the guards, so it will be easy to take care of them. I might as well enter the throne-

A massive spark of violet electricity lands on my chest as soon as I open the room’s door, and the heavy silence is only interrupted by a casing hitting the wooden floor.

“Riko, prepare another blast while I hold this bastard off!” a voice I never wanted to hear again barks orders before raising her sword and focusing towards me. “I knew you bastard would come back for the Formations and the Artifacts! Did you really think I didn’t notice your gaze full of greed when we went back to the throne room?!” Hisako barks while pointing her sword towards me. I notice that her sword is different from the one she carried before since this one is very thin and has a faint red glow around the edges.

For fuck’s sake! Am I cursed or something?

I don’t have time for this bullshit, and I’m fed up with playing nice.