We finally made it to our destination, it only took a week longer than expected, a rescue, a death, and a minor beating to get both of us to this place and time.

"You might as well go meet your contact so I can complete my mission, meet me over there," I said, pointing to a brick building across the street, "Will two hours be enough time?"

Fiona nodded and entered the Bazaar, disappearing in a flash of light as I pulled out the last message spell.

Located the Bazaar, City is under friendly military control. There are a few Black Dragons around use care while entering the town.

The item turned to dust as my message was transmitted. I hoped Frathsar would be safe on his journey, God knows it wasn't an easy trip for us. I kind of hoped Fiona wouldn't show up in two hours and I would be off the hook for this life bond. Although, I was starting to see the advantages of having someone to travel with.

Before entering the Bazaar I decided to see how many credits I had, I hadn't checked my wallet since I met Frathsar. That felt like a lifetime ago but in reality, it was only ten days. So much shit happened in that small amount of time.

Anyway, I can reflect later, time to shop, let's see how many credits I have. My wallet showed that I had 4584 credits. I let out a low whistle, but in all honesty, I still had very little idea on the value of a credit. I could be rich or I could be poor as shit, guess it was time to find out.

I stepped into the bazaar and for a second my vision went dark, only to be replaced by an enormous sprawling market filled with every conceivable being imaginable.

"Um, hmmm where do I even start?" I mumbled to myself, looking at the sprawling marketplace that went on beyond my sight into the distance. The stalls all looked like temporary structures set up with no rhyme or reason. Each one with its own unique flair and merchant. It was also packed. Species of every size and type mingled about the stalls. Buying and selling everything you could imagine.

What I didn't see was guards, at least not at first. Eventually, I spotted certain individuals that stood out. They weren't looking to buy or sell, no they were watching the people keeping an eye out for troublemakers.

One enterprising individual must have overheard me as I entered and offered to sell me a map of the bazaar for only ten credits. I decided to turn down his offer, and he lowered his price to eight credits.

"I'll give you 3 credits."

"5 is the absolute lowest I could go, you won't be disappointed in the quality of the map."

I suspected this individual was fleecing me but I paid him the five credits just to get rid of him. He handed me a roughly drawn map that included zones and what they typically sold. What the little shit failed to mention was that these zones changed daily and the map was a few days old.

'Well whatever,' I thought, wandering to the nearest stall to see what they sold. Turns out it was building blueprints and materials. Not really of any interest to me. A few stalls later I found one of the things I had been looking for.

"Greetings, What can Horace do for you today?" The gruff Dwarven man asked me.

"I'm new to the Bazaar, what wares do you sell?"

"Mostly weapons and armor, I also purchase crafting materials for said weapons and armor."

"Hmm, any interest in something like this?" I said pulling one of the chitin scales from my ring; I also set one of the guns down.

Horace picked up the piece of chitin inspecting it with a clinical eye, he tapped it while holding it up to his ear, then he looked at my armor vest, "Mind if I take a look at your chest piece?"

"Nope," I said removing my armor for him to inspect.

"Hmm, quality is low, but the material is interesting," he said tapping on the interlocking plates, "They sound different, have they been treated in some way or magically enhanced? No, no, I don't see any telltale signs of magical enhancement."

"They are rune inscribed," I responded.

"Rune?" The Dwarf asked.

I took out one of the extra rune inscribed plates for him to look at.

He plucked it out of my hand, looking over the symbols I carved into the backside, "Mhh fascinating, never seen anything quite like it, reminiscent of magical circles but there is no mana signature, good for hiding the fact that you are wearing magical armor," Horace mumbled to himself as he inspected my work.

Looking up, he asked me a question, "Is this your work?"

"It is."

"Would you be able to introduce me to your master?"

"Unfortunately, no, I learned this skill by myself, and as you can see my work is rough at best."

The Dwarf seemed to be disappointed by this news, handing me back my items.

"I will purchase the normal plates for a single credit each. If you had been more adept with your skills I would buy the ones you modified. Perhaps when you reach expert rank you can come back and teach me this skill."

"I could teach you what I know now," I said not understanding why I had to be an expert.

"Doesn't work like that lad, only experts can impart a crafting skill unless I wished to learn from scratch like you are and I can't invest that kind of time."

I just shrugged, "Well I'm not sure if I want to sell the plates yet as I feel like I could upgrade my armor."

"That would be a good idea, it is always cheaper getting materials yourself than buying them from a market or the Bazaar, unless those materials are in low demand."

He waved the centipede plate at me, "This is a low-quality crafting material so it makes for a good practice medium. You may want to talk with my brother Olgar, he sells carving tools. They are designed for wood but should work well for this and other softer materials. He may even have some for carving metal or if you are really lucky a magical carving tool. His stall is five rows that way," Horace said pointing to the right, "As for your slug thrower I can give you 10 credits for it. They don't go for much as you can imagine, mostly we just melt them down for the raw materials."

"Thanks, I'll go speak with your brother after this. Here are 2 more guns I'll take the 30 credits. Can I see a list of weapons, preferably staff?"

I decided not to keep the rifles, mostly because my accuracy and combat ability with them would be quite poor. Not to mention the inability to get more ammo for them. If I picked up more guns along the way I might use them, at least until I reached a market.

Horace cleared the guns from the table with a wave and they disappeared into a storage device. The money entered my wallet and then a screen appeared showing weapons like staves, spears, and polearms. Prices ranged anywhere from 20 credits up to 2000, the latter being magically enhanced. I could now see a definite reason to improve my runic crafting if this was how much a decent magical item sold for.

"I am interested in some of the staves you have for sale but I need to purchase some other goods first. Will you be here tomorrow?"

"I will, here take this," Horace said, handing me a thin metal plate similar to the message scrolls only with a different design on it that I now understood was a magical circle. I wondered if I could copy the design or effect with runes, something to think about.

"This will activate a simple locate spell that will show you to my stall."

"Oh, before I leave, what can you tell me about this?" I asked, pulling out the tiny fingernail-sized gem called a mana heart. The reward I got for killing the centipede queen.

Horace held out his hand and I dropped the gem in for him to inspect.

"Ohh, a mana heart. They can be used to make any number of magical items, If you're looking to sell it I can offer you 400 credits for it."

"No, I think I want to hold on to it to see if I can make something with it."

"Well, I wish you luck in your crafting."

I thanked the merchant and headed down to meet with his brother. After a short discussion with Olgar, I purchased two sets of tools, one for wood carving and one for metal. This set me back 42 credits which seemed like a lot but Olgar promised me that they were of excellent quality. He was also able to supply me with a magnifying loupe. After the sale, I asked the man if he could point me to a skill broker.

After a bit of face scratching he said to try and find someone by the name of Victoria, she should be someone in the training district 32 rows over. It took me a good forty minutes to locate Victoria. Mostly because her stall was tiny as was she. The pixie lounged in a small hammock behind her tiny shop counter. She greeted me as I walked up.

"Greetings traveler what brings you by Victoria's Secret Skills today?"

I couldn't stop myself from laughing when she told me the name of her store, her face starting to redden in anger, "Sorry, I am not laughing at you, it's just... my world has a store with the same name and it sells women's undergarments."

The little pixie's face went beet red and I wasn't sure if it was from embarrassment or rage, probably a bit of both.

"Well I don't sell nonsense like that here, I am one of the finest skill traders in the Bazaar," She said in a huff.

"Sorry, again I did not mean to offend; it was just odd hearing the name. Anyway, Olgar sent me this way," I said, trying to mollify the tiny woman.

"Humph, fine, I guess if Olgar sent you we can do business. Are you looking for a specific skill?"

"Honestly, I don't know this is my first time visiting the Bazaar or buying skills."

"Okay, what are your goals or areas you wish to shore up that your class lacks?"

I had to think about this. Right now I lacked ranged damage, I also had an issue if I was not near the ground as two of my main spells would be useless. Something that enhanced my main attack would be nice as well.

"The first issue I have is closing into melee range."

"Hmm, plenty of skills to accomplish that, What is your main weapon?"

"Staff," I replied.

"My recommendation would be Blink Step then. While it isn't as fast or instantaneous as some skills it will enhance the kinetic force of your blows."

"Sounds good, how much?"

"1700 credits."

I nearly choked at the cost. It was over a third of my credits. I tried haggling with the tiny woman but she wouldn't budge on the price. I sighed and transferred the credits and received the skill plate in return.

"Anything else?" The overly happy pixie asked now that she had a large chunk of my money.

"I would like a skill to enhance my damage."

"Single target, multi-target, or AOE?" She asked trying to reduce the choices.

Again, I had to think. What was my greatest weakness? I had a decent amount of single target abilities, and one very good AOE skill with Seismic Strike. 'Maybe instead of getting one good damage skill, I could enhance them all?' I wonder.

"Is there a skill for multicasting the same skill?"

She smiled, "There are a few options, although, they are expensive. Both in credits and mana, have a look," she said, tossing up a System window for me to see.

Reversion: Allows you to recast the same skill on the same target or location, Mana cost is doubled for skill cast. If mana is lacking for the second cast you will receive skill backlash for double the damage and be unable to utilize said skill for 24 hours

Multicast: Allows you to reset a skill cooldown up to 2 times for any spell under the level of your intelligence score. Each recast doubles the mana cost of the spell. Recast cost resets after 1 hour

There were more options available but these two stuck out. At first, reversion sounded like the better option since it had no cap on skill level until you got to the downsides. I asked her what the prices were on both.

"Reversion is 3500 credits and Multicast is 2100."

I already knew she wouldn't haggle with me on the price. I thought about what I could do with Multicast since I couldn't afford Reversion anyway. After I mulled over the possibilities I decided to purchase the skill, adding Multicast to my repertoire.

With the 75 mana cost of Multicast, I was limited at the moment on what spells I could use it with but that was fine. With my current mana pool, I could double-cast Seismic Strike or triple cast Flurry of Blows, although, I would need to be wary of that since it would make the spells cost double or more for an hour after.

I would need to play with the skill to find out all that I could do with it. I thanked Victoria deciding to head back to the exit since I had been shopping for well over an hour.

I popped out of the Bazaar blinking the disorientation away and made my way over to our rendezvous point. I noticed Fiona wasn't here yet so I waited and did some people watching. I made special note of the few Black Dragon's I noticed wandering about the square until I spotted trouble.

Walking down the street with two flunkies in tow behind her was the Chaos Mage, and to make it worse Fiona just happened to show up at the same time. Of course, with my luck, the psychotic woman just so happened to spot us and I recognized one of the men with her as the Assassin I scanned earlier.

"Shit, we have company," I said to Fiona nodding my head in the Mage woman's direction.

Fiona paled when she saw them approaching, gripping the hilt of a new sword tight.

"Well, well, well, If it isn't a dead man and a runaway slave," Sharla said, venom in her voice as the other two went to either side cutting off our retreat, "Get over here slave I am going to punish you!"

When Fiona failed to move Sharla turned her hate-filled glare towards me, "What did you do with my slave," she demanded.

"No slaves here, how bout you fuck off," I said back to the woman. I knew it was dangerous to antagonize her here but that had been my intention. She started to cast a spell and the other two drew their swords.

"What is going on here!" A deep voice said from behind the three people.

I had seen the group of army personnel approaching when they saw the possible altercation.

Sharla gritted her teeth in anger and canceled her spell, the others put their swords away and just to gloat I scanned all three. The Assassin was the only one that seemed to notice my scrutiny and he eyed me like a cat, eyes a mouse.

Sharla Cotton | Chaos Mage | Level 18

Assassin | Level 12

Duelist | Level 13

"There is no fighting in town if we catch any of you with bared blades or casting spells again you will not be given a warning. That goes for you two as well," he said, looking directly at Fiona and me.

"He stole my slave and I was just coming here to retrieve her," Sharla said to the officer, pointing to Fiona.

"Show me your neck girl," the officer demanded.

Fiona took off the poncho showing that she wasn't wearing any slave collar. I could see Sharla narrowing her eyes at me, probably wondering how I had removed the device without killing the woman. I then realized this put a large kill me at all cost sign on my back.

"Looks like you were mistaken, move along before we toss you in cells."

The three nodded to the guards and moved off, I could see Sharla whispering into the ear of the Assassin and he broke away into the crowd and I lost sight of the man. Not, good.

"Thanks, officer," I said appreciatively, "I have had a few run-ins with the Black Dragons outside of town and I can say that I don't much care for them."

"Yea well we have an uneasy truce in place. They out level us but we outnumber them. And as much as I abhor slavery there is nothing we can do to remove the collars. Try to stay out of trouble."

I thanked the guards as they walked off to patrol the area.

Turning to Fiona I said, "I think the Assassin might be trailing us."

She nodded once, tossing the rain poncho in a bin like it had murdered her only child. 'She really did hate that thing,' I thought, smiling.