Midday stood aghast upon stepping into Netari’s territory. It was a territory, yes, because unlike all the other slaves in Neighborhood 8, who had to share their cabins with each other, Netari had 4 of them all to herself. All and all, it was arguably an even nicer setup than what Jenjo had, and Midday couldn’t help but be intimidated by the sheer disparity in wealth between Netari and himself. The gap was so wide, in fact, that she even had a pack of wolves—literal wolves—keeping watch for any potential trespassers, which left Midday stunned as to how such a thing was possible. One of the wolves that was watching him opened its mouth to yawn, revealing a soot-black tongue in the process of doing so.

Aside from a strikingly well-dressed girl whose uniform had obviously been tailored to fit better than the incredibly baggy standard-issue attire everyone else wore, the place was a ghost town with absolutely no foot traffic. Netari’s territory was positioned such that her cabins formed a little cul-de-sac at the end of one of the roads. It was a neat little place, thought Midday, and he could see right away how the doctor had earned her status as an ‘upper-class slave’. She even had her own well at the center of the cul-de-sac that Midday imagined was for Neteri’s use alone.

With Mister Potatoes sitting on his shoulder, Midday called out to the girl, who was currently in the middle washing one of the cabins. “Umm… I’m here to meet with Netari? Is… that you?” He already knew that the answer was no because Romulo had made it clear that Netari was unreasonably tall, and his girl was quite petite, but he just couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Nope!” answered the girl. “I’m her assistant. Or maybe it would be more accurate to call me an apprentice these days? I’m not really sure, to be honest.” She set down the washcloth she had been using to wipe some dirt off the cabin and stepped toward Midday. “In any case, the name’s Veolia Songson. What kind of business are you here for? I see that you’re injured, but it looks like someone’s already taken care of that, no?”

“Yeah, uh, I have a friend who’s pretty good at that sort of stuff.” Midday frowned, knowing that it would be wise not to mention Gork if he could help it. “But I’m actually here to talk to Netari about ‘Tongue Jellies’… Romulo sent me, if that matters to you.”

“Oh! That’s good!” Veolia walked all the way over to Midday. “Netari has had a crush on that guy for sooo long now… I’m glad she finally made a move on him! They’re kind of a cute couple, don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure if you can call them a couple after one date… But sure.” Midday drew a deep breath. “So, umm, anyway, is Netari home right now?”

“Yep!” said Veolia, “But she’s treating a patient in the medical cabin right now, so how about you come into the hangout cabin for some coffee while she wraps that up? We can chat, if you like.”

“Oh, umm, sure. That… works.” He took a glance at the wolves. There were 5 of them in total, and each was watching Midday was keen eyes now that he was close to one of the residents they were supposed to protect. Midday really did not enjoy the way they glared at him, and his instincts told him that he was in danger so long as he was this close to them. Better get inside then.

“Alrighty then! Follow me!”

He followed Veolia into one of the cabins. All of them were decorated slightly differently on the exteriors, and this one was painted a coastal shade of blue and had large glass windows on all four of its walls—allowing huge amounts of sunlight into the building even at the late hour of the day.

The interior was furnished with a small kitchen running along the wall opposite to the window and a couch along with a coffee table sitting in front of the brick fireplace. Most amazing of all to Midday, however, was the fact that the floor was made out of well-preserved planks of mahogany on which there were no bugs to be seen. Not even one? What the hell? He looked up to the ceiling and saw that there were no spiders or ants or anything at all crawling on it either. You got to be kidding me… How? Midday his best to look calm and collected, but that was easier said than done when faced with such a chasmic difference in wealth.

“Feel free to sit down on the couch! I’ll join you in a second. Just gotta fetch us some coffee first.”

“R-right.” He shuffled over to the couch and took a seat. It was the first time he had sat on anything besides dirt, grass, or bug-infested wood in two months, and he had forgotten just now nice it was to have a decent chair. He wanted to lean back and enjoy the seat as much as he could, but he kept himself from doing so, instead choosing to sit upright with a stiff back in hopes of looking focused and alert.

Veolia came a few seconds later with two mugs full of a steaming-hot fluid that had a nearly opaque, black color. It had a distinct, earthy smell to it that he found quite appealing, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it beyond that. “Is this… coffee?” He accidentally spoke the question on his mind.

“Is this your first time having coffee?” Veola sat down next to him on the couch, just inches away from Midday. She picked up one of the mugs and took a sip, as if to show him that it was safe, and set it down again. “Why don’t you give it a shot? Just remember to take a small sip at first or you’ll burn your tongue!”

“Erm, alright.” Midday awkwardly picked up his mug and brought it to his lips, taking a small sip. He recoiled from the unexpected bitterness almost immediately thereafter. “Is it supposed to be medicinal?”

Veolia laughed. “Ah, well, not really, but Netari might disagree with that… She’s hopelessly addicted to this stuff, you know. Stays up way too late drinking it sometimes. I’m guessing you found it bitter?”

“Yes ma’am.” Midday blushed, surprised by and embarrassed about the fact that he had just addressed someone who was clearly the same age as himself with ma’am as opposed to just using their name like a normal person.

“Just call me Veolia. No need to be so formal.”

“Right. I’m sorry.”

“And no need to apologize either!”

Midday nodded and took another sip of his coffee, trying to appreciate what was surely a very expensive beverage as best he could. “So… I guess we can get down to business?”

“Business? What business? That’s Netari’s thing! You and I are going to sit here and make small talk about Netari and Romulo’s flourishing relationship until Netari finishes her business with the client who’s getting treated right now, got it?”

“O-okay then…?” Midday was stunned. This was evidently not how he had imagined his trip into Netari’s territory would go, and he wasn’t really sure how to react.

“Oh, and to be perfectly honest with you here, I have no idea how long it will be before she’s finished in there! So get cozy… because we might be here for a while.”

The two of them spent the next 20 minutes making awkward small talk—most of which was her asking for advice on what kinds of things Romulo liked to do so that Netari could plan better dates and whatnot, but the conversation eventually drifted away from that towards education. Veolia was horrified upon learning that neither Midday nor Romulo knew how to read and, seeing as how Netari’s meeting with her client was taking much longer than expected, Veolia eventually took out a novel she had been reading and had Midday look over her shoulder as she read it aloud, hoping that maybe he would pick up on a few things from the process. Midday learned absolutely nothing from this endeavor, but he was nonetheless glad that they had found something to do that didn’t involve making conversation.

Finally, after more than an hour of waiting, Netari burst through the door unannounced with blood still on her hands from the procedure she had been doing before then. Her first words were: “Fucking finally! Holy shit! Who the hell loses not one, but BOTH of their legs in a single fucking day! Do you KNOW how LONG it took me to sew that shit back together? Like 3 hours, that’s how long! What—” She stopped herself from continuing upon noticing Midday sitting on the couch, taking on a much more professional-sounding tone after taking a moment to regain her composure. “Oh… I see we have a guest. You must be Midday, I take it?”

“Indeed. And, judging from your height, you’re Netari.”

Netari was tall. Unreasonably so. It might have been true that she was short relative to someone like Romulo but, to Midday, she was by all means a giant. She had a fairly decent athletic build to go along with her stature too and, from what he had learned after talking with Veolia, her appearance was for more than show.

When you combined Netari’s enormous stature with the fact that she was a whopping level 15, one could very easily argue that, before the recent arrival of Romulo, she had been the strongest slave in Neighborhood 8 in regard to raw physical might and, even now, one could still so far as to say that she was a contender for the status of having the best Ability in the Neighborhood. Midday hadn’t known much about her before his conversation with Veolia, but he was now well aware of just how big of a deal she was. Even so, he remained calm and composed, trying to play it cool.

“Correct. So you’re here for the Tongue Jelly procedure then? Good! Oddly enough, it’s been difficult finding test subjects for this one.”

“I’m here to talk about the Tongue Jelly procedure. And to claim my compensation for taking the trouble to come here for a visit. If I’m sufficiently impressed by all that, I’ll consider allowing you to perform this procedure on me.”

“The hell do you mean ‘taking the trouble to come here for a visit’? You live like 2 minutes away. Our houses are literally on the same street.”

“Even so, I expect that you’ll honor your promise, no?”

“Yeah, yeah, I will.” She shrugged. “So, what do you want?”

“Well, frankly, not much. Just information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Put succinctly, to not waste your time, I want information about the black market.”

“Whoa, dude, slow down. You’re awfully pushy for a level 5 brat, aren’t you? I met you not even 30 seconds ago and yet you’re already asking me to give you confidential information about something I almost certainly know nothing about. Can’t you just ask me for food or something? You look like you need some. Romulo told me you were skinny… but jeez. Not THAT skinny.”

“Well, that’s what I’ve got the Devil Peppercorn for,” said Midday.

“Uh, you do know that Devil Peppercorn only makes foods healthier, right? It doesn’t add calories or anything like that. All it does is reallocate the way the calories in any given food are distributed in such as way as to maximize the ‘healthiness’ of any given meal for the specific needs of any given individual—which is insanely impressive, of course, but it won’t help you gain weight.”

“I don’t understand. I thought the whole point of the ingredient was that it boosted the nutritional value of foods.”

“It does, but not in the way you think. Take oatmeal, for instance. You probably have that a lot, so it’s a decent example.” Netari walked over to the kitchen and opened a cabinet in which there was a large collection of alcohol. She spent a few seconds surveying the options before grabbing a beer and taking a seat at a desk situated adjacent to the kitchen. “Stop me if you don’t know what these words mean, but oatmeal, as a food made purely out of grains, is very high in carbohydrates but, relatively speaking, is low in protein. This is normally fine, but seeing as you, in particular, are someone who does a lot of physical labor out in the field every day, it’s only natural that you would benefit from getting more protein in your diet as opposed to carbohydrates. As such, Devil Peppercorn recognizes this and converts most of the preexisting carbohydrates into protein for you without adding or subtracting from the total number of calories present in the food. It’s really nothing special in of itself, and you could theoretically obtain the same results via well-planned dieting but, realistically speaking, a Devil Peppercorn diet is always superior to a conventional one because the ingredient itself knows the exactly what your body needs at any given point in time and can adjust the dietary values of a meal accordingly in real-time.” She paused to take a sip from her beer. “But again, it doesn’t add or subtract calories. If you want to gain weight, the only way to do that with what you have available to you at the moment is to eat more food. Plain and simple.”

“I… see.” Midday nodded. It was clear to him that her knowledge of the ingredient was miles ahead of what Gork had been able to tell him—though he only understood maybe half of the jargon she had used. “So, what happens when you increase your dosage? Is there a benefit to doing that?”

“There is.” She took another sip of beer. “The efficacy of the ingredient increases in a ‘1 + ½ + ¼ + 1/n’ sequence, meaning that 3 beads give 75% better results than taking only 1, which might be worth the suffering if you’re especially desperate, but that taking, say, 10 beads—not that such a thing would be possible—would only give 99% better results than taking 1 bead. It’s less than double the efficacy for 10 times higher intake. In simpler terms, there are diminishing returns as the dosage increases.” She took yet another sip of beer, finishing off the entire bottle in only 3 sips. “The mechanism for how that works, before you ask, is that Devil Peppercorn achieves a greater level of control over the nutritional values of any given food as the concentration increases, allowing to more precisely adjust its properties to better maximize health benefit.” Netari sighed. “I trust that’s all the information you needed?”

“Well, my question was about the black market…”

“I don’t give fuck what your question was. That’s all the information you’re getting today. Consider yourself rewarded.” She lazily set aside the beer bottle and stood up. “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the Tongue Jellies, shall we? Come with me. I’ll take you to the laboratory cabin.”

“Sure.” Midday stood up and followed her out the door. “See you later, Veolia.” He figured he would get another chance to ask Netari about the black market soon enough and, since the information about Devil Peppercorn had been fairly useful, he was satisfied for the time being.

Veolia returned the farewell and, with that, Midday and Netari set out for the laboratory.