Chapter 16

“I know,” a frosty voice answered. The cat was using the same necklace as Charlize the crab, but it had none of the warmth and change of tone that had come with her.

“Umm,” Adrian hesitated, not sure what to say. “Can I enquire about your name?”

“No!”

What?

“Umm,”

“What do you want?” the same cold condemning voice as earlier answered.

“I would like to ask some questions.”

“I am contract bound to answer.”

Something was very wrong with how he was being treated.

“Can I ask if something is amiss?”

“No.”

“Is this about my interface?”

“Of course not.” But he caught the slight hesitation.

“Is there anything I can do to make it better?”

The cat started purring and laughter sounds came out of the voice box.

“I am sorry. Did I say something to offend you?”

“What do you want?”

Adrian was sure that the cat was glowering at him.

“I was wondering how much a zuaqliaq berry would sell for.”

“Are you selling?”

“No, I was just asking.”

“Ten energy,” the cat said in a dismissive tone.

“What?”

“Ask a dumb question. You get a dumb answer.” The belligerence he was receiving made him want to step back and end the transaction, but he did not have that luxury.

“I thought you were required to answer my questions?”

“Zuaqliaq berries are considered a treasure and therefore we can offer any price we want. However, there is no point in me buying if there is no secondary market. And if humans don’t know they won’t ask, hence ten energy.”

“Well, I would like to discuss purchasing knowledge to use them.”

The trader just turned up its lips, showing its teeth. It was not smiling.

“If I could have saved him, I would have.”

The snarl if anything got larger.

“It was his choice,” Adrian repeated, knowing that his voice sounded weak.

“You do not know what you have done.” Then the cat almost sneered at him. He felt like a beggar being examined by a pompous noble, dirty, small and insignificant. Adrian internally decided not to be intimidated.

“About the berries.”

“I have four memory stones that deal with processing zuaqliaq berries. Two alchemy, one leatherworking and one in cooking.”

“What are the differences between the alchemy ones?”

“One is for one who knows what they are doing and the other is for someone who has some idea. They are both too advanced for you.”

“I have other skills.”

The cat literally rolled its eyes at him. No longer even pretending to be civil.

“Is that all?”

“Can I get the simpler alchemy training in a pathway book?”

“Yes, but no discount.”

“That is not fair.”

The cat showed its pointed teeth in a grotesque caricature of a smile and then purred louder. “Oh, I miss spoke. I don’t have a pathway book available only a memory stone.”

Adrian was almost certain the two forms of knowledge sharing were interchangeable. “What?”

“My mistake,” the cat said not sounding at all apologetic, “but we only have the memory stones.” It continued purring, but the automatic translation did not kick in. Adrian knew he was being insulted. “Anything else?”

“I’ll buy it,” Adrian growled out the response. “Can you tell me whether I can absorb the information?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“That service will cost a thousand.”

“But that sort of advice is usually free.”

“Two thousand.”

“You can’t.” The whiskers twitched. “Okay, two thousand.”

A paw got shoved out, and it wasn’t like what he expected. It was four-pronged, but instead of having the three joints he was used to with human fingers the central fingers had four joints and the outer ones had six, with the second and fourth joints being able to bend in the perpendicular directions. The level of fine motor control that would offer was incredible. It had multiple opposable thumbs that could position themselves from any angle that it needed. The trader might look like a ferocious beast, but it had evolved for more detailed work. Then again, all the traders came from species that triggered the Alpha event, so it should not have surprised him. Opposable thumbs were sort of critical to building supercolliders.

Bitterly, he handed over two thousand energy.

The purring grew louder, obnoxiously so. The damn cat was laughing at him.

“No.”

“That’s it.”

“You paid for the answer and you got it,” the now smug voice responded.

Adrian hesitated furious at the trader. He knew how knowledge capability worked. The ability to fast learn stuff would be opened up by extra intelligence, but given he had already used intelligence potions so there would not be any shortcuts. How long was it till he could use the memory stone?

“How much for you to tell me when I’ll be able to use it?”

“Three thousand more energy.” The purring was thunderous.

He passed the energy across, trying to smile like normal even as he was imagining going battle wraith on the smug monster in front of him.

“Nine hours.”

“Can I please buy the memory stone?”

“Thirty thousand energy list price, no positive modifiers, five strikes for personally offending the trader works out to be a fifty percent penalty.”

Adrian stopped his knee-jerk reaction to dispute the words. He had never been one to let slights and unfairness pass unremarked, but so far the cat had shown a simple desire to antagonise him and arguing would get him nowhere. It never did against these types.

“I apologise for any offence I have created.”

“Six strikes.”

He bit hard on the inside of his lips while keeping a smile fixed on the outside. Ambusher’s Fade kept his hands from violently clenching.

“That adds up to fifty thousand energy.”

The cat’s mathematics was wrong. Each strike was a ten percent addition to cost and six strikes should have only taken the cost to forty-eight thousand.

Adrian said nothing and the moment the violent trembling stopped he handed across a chip with the money. “Thank you.”

“Will there be anything else, Sir?”

“Yes, I need something to prevent myself from being identified by mana octopods.”

“I am not sure I have anything, Sir.”

They did, Adrian knew that, otherwise Kiyoko would not have brought him to a trader. Possibly he needed to go find one that was less antagonistic.

There was a cough behind him. “Sorry for interrupting, Simba.” Kiyoko walked up and somehow interrupted the shielding magic that the trader had put down.

“That is not my name,” the cat answered, but he seemed to preen slightly.

“I know Noman, but Norman is so…” A dissatisfied expression went across her face. “Mundane? Human?”

There was a sharp loud purr with echoing laughter from the voice box. “You’re telling me,” Norman said in a jovial tone. “But we are expected to take a normal-sounding name and…”

“Simba is not normal,” Kiyoko finished for him. “I can use it as a nickname…”

The cat hesitated. “No call me Norman.” He looked theatrically up at the sky. “The powers to be might get annoyed if I go by a different name. You know bureaucracy, laws, those sorts of things.”

Kiyoko poked Adrian sharply in the side, causing him to grunt in response. “Simba, I mean Norman, I know he’s annoying, but this is important to me .” Kiyoko stressed the word ‘me’ to clarify that it meant far more than those two letters should.

“I was only teasing.”

“I am sure.”

The cat looked down uncertainly.

“It was some innocent payback.”

“Of course. So,” Kiyoko beamed up at him. “What can we do?”

The trader seemed to melt in front of her and was suddenly more than keen to provide options. He had lost more than just Jaracol, Adrian realised with significant sadness. The entire infrastructure that underpinned the system’s help had turned against him. Was his interface the friend of all these traders or was this cold shoulder what they did to anyone who was responsible for an interface locking themselves away. It was not just this event. Jaracol would be trapped for a thousand.

At least he was alive.

On the table were the three separate packages that the trader recommended.

“How expensive is the best?”

“Six hundred and fifty thousand.”

Internally, he gulped a little at that cost. He remembered when a couple of thousand was a fortune but there was no Jaracol to direct him and Kiyoko’s view was that this venture was a death sentence for anyone else and might even be for him, but the spectre of a threat that could destroy his family meant that he could not walk away.

“The price is good,” she assured him. The cat, when he made eye contact showed its teeth.

“Fine, I’ll buy it.”

A paw was thrust out, and he dropped the almost glowing chip onto it. There was a flurry of activity and he was left with the armour that he was expected to wear. It looked thick and bulky but when worn would cover him completely.

“That is going to restrict my vision,” he half complained looking at the helmet.

Kiyoko shrugged. “It’s by far the best available. Will hide you from Magic Focus and it has passive chameleon properties that let you blend into the surroundings.”

Its positives were great, but its negatives were just as crippling. It was bulky and heavily restricted his movements and provided no bonus to Ambusher’s Steps. Once it was on, he would be reduced to only having five steps available till he switched the armour back.

He swept the pieces into his bag and then with a thought he was dressed in it as the convenience feature of his legendary armour effortlessly allowed him to switch to a new set of equipment.

To test the suit, he completed a quick run through of his agility exercise. It was bad and as he suspected its bulk severely restricted his range of movements. He definitely did not want to have to fight with this on him or to sneak, but he guessed he had no choice.

He signed heavily.

“It is the best we could get.”

“I know.” He jogged on the spot and grimaced. “I guess I’ll go just after dark.”

“Yep, eight o’clock.”

That meant he had four hours to prepare and then he would be the hero once more. Adrian took a moment to taste those words in his mouth. He would be the hero once more. This time, it felt right. There were no concerns about manipulation. There were no threats. It wasn’t even about duty or any of those types of concepts.

He wanted to do this because he could. It would be a challenge, he knew, but this was something that only he could do, which made it special. Most likely, he would have a look and discover that it was a town-ending type of threat. Maybe that would let Wangaratta fight it off or at the very least give them time to run. That was for the best.

Then if it was a planet-destroying disaster… Well, he would see what happened. That the system wanted a peek made him believe that there would be a solution to deal with it. And if it was a world breaker, then what he was doing was even more vital.

For now, he had to get used to his new armour. With a thought, his Ambusher’s Set covered him.

“I am going to go break this in.” he told the oracle. “If you run into the others, tell them I’ll be back soon.”

With that, he ran to the wall to leave town and leapt. It was three metres high, but the air grabbed him and he flew over the fence almost like it was a hurdle.

He landed at a run.

Step, step.

The Ambusher’s Skills covered him and he easily faded into the shadows.

Another Mind flick and the legendary armour disappeared, and he was clad in the passive camouflage suit. His vision was instantly restricted, but most of his domain abilities did not rely on his eyes so he still knew what was happening around him.

His Mind oriented onto a family of mice in a nearby house.

With agonising slow steps, when compared to his usual movements he snuck towards them. The leather of his suit caught on the door and they scattered.

Once more, stopping to pick a new target. This time a couple of birds. The Ambusher’s Skills wanted to help him out, confuse the small minds with psychic abilities to make it easier for him to sneak up. It was a simple solution, but it was not why he was doing this.

There were no mistakes, and he snuck to within three metres before they noticed him.

It was hard relearning his movements. Size was one important factor. The new armour was three or four times as thick as the previous set. He felt like the Michigan man. A moving blob.

It meant that he needed to be extra careful when sneaking around things. Usually, he would try to get as close as possible to the objects he was navigating by to prevent his silhouette from giving him away. Adrian had to break that habit.

It was difficult, but practice makes adequate. He learnt to go wider. Sneaking up or past anything was challenging. Ambusher’s psychic deterrence had apparently been shoring up the gaps in his technique. He had never realised how much he subconsciously relied on the animals around him looking away when he approached them.

Now with Ambusher’s Steps suppressed he needed to pick the moment to move more carefully. Initially, he would look at them but half of the animals seemed to have a sixth sense or more likely they were conditioned to search for anything that appeared to have eyeballs, which meant just looking in their direction would set them off.

He started actively shutting his eyes while doing his exercises, relying purely on his domain. A simple choice that ramped up the difficulty. Especially foot placement, so he quickly adjusted to a new routing. Open eyes, check the ground, move, shut eyes as he padded from one spot to the next. After five minutes of slow movements, he opened his eyes and looked down at the pink and grey bird in front of him. It was literally close enough to touch. He had briefly had one as a kid after nursing the chick. Then it had flown away.

Earth Galah

This is a native earth species that has developed the ability to encase itself in protective earth armour and emit a shrill sonic wave that can do significant damage to most Alpha creatures.

There was only one within touching, but another six nearby. They had their heads to the ground, picking up seeds and crunching on them. Each one that he looked at had the same mix of magic. His breath caught.

Galah Leader

This is a native earth species that has developed the ability to encase itself in protective earth armour and emit a shrill sonic wave that can do significant damage to most Alpha creatures. In addition, this creature has developed sapience and has a leader ability allowing it to direct the rest of its flock.

The galahs were going to be fine. Having a single sapient creature amongst them was a massive survival boost. Adrian remembered the possums vividly and how dangerous that leader had been. The galahs or at least the five others he had seen did not have the mix of magic types that the possums had possessed, but just these six were a threat. Coordinated sonic squeals would hurt him badly and would outright kill almost anyone else. However, seven galahs were not a large flock. Adrian was sure there would be more of them and who knows what other skills were available.

Hopefully, this galah wasn’t psychotic like that possum had been.

Slowly, he backed away.

He spotted another galah.

That one had earth armour and an earth spike attack. Why a bird would have earth magic rather than air was a mystery, but at the very least, it would surprise anything that attacked them.

Once he was clear of the birds with another thought, he was in his Ambusher’s Set and Adrian was as ready as he was ever going to get.

Jogging back he inadvertently spooked two galahs. There were two squarks of outrage and the entire flock took off. Over forty of the birds and his eyes caught advanced air abilities, along with the ability to increase size in that two seconds that he had to view them. The flock acted normally and like it was what they always intended. They winged away and settled in a gum tree almost half a kilometre away.

Forty of them would challenge even someone with his skills. Luckily, they were not a threat.

The wall came into sight and he used what he was calling flying jump to leap over it. Some guards saw him and he waved midair and kept running once he landed.

If jumping security walls was a problem, he would let Kiyoko earn the favour he was doing and put out the spot fires on his behalf.

“Where are you guys?”

“Town square near two traders,” Charlotte’s voice came back instantly. “Some guys have started drinking. Kiyoko told us you had some scouting to do tonight.”

“Yeah, you guys enjoy it. We’re not leaving till morning.”

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