Chapter 42

"Sure, you can reach the surface by going up a shaft we have to the edge of the village, just follow me." Says one of the men, and I am very surprised. I thought they'd want to suck my blood or something.

"Oh, thanks," I say, and I follow him. "So, what is a village doing down here anyway?" I ask as we walk towards the village.

"We are here for the collection of Giant Black Leeches. They produce a large amount of blood that can be combined with certain alchemy ingredients to supplement the need to suck blood in many vampires." Oh, well that sounds convenient.

"Do you have a place I can sell some? I killed quite a few trying to get here." I ask. I hope they aren't some kind of protected animal they raise from birth or something.

"Sure, I would be surprised if you found anywhere willing to buy them other than us." He says, still walking. The other man stayed behind and is watching the darkness from where I came. "How many do you have?"

"I have 15," I say. They are mostly intact too, so they should have a lot of blood in them.

"You adventurer types sure can carry a lot with you. I'll take you to the company store just over here." We walk a bit more, and we reach a shop in the center of the village. Everything in the village is unremarkable, probably because of the low light conditions.

"Thank you," I say to the man, and I step inside. Inside the store, there are many things on racks all over the place, just like the general stores of the two towns I've already visited.

"A human..." The man behind the counter at the far end of the room says, and I can see that he is a vampire as well.

"Yes, I found my way here on accident and I collected some Giant Black Leech to sell," I say, walking up to the counter.

"Ah, that's good, we always need more for our brothers of the night around the world." He says, and he walks to the right towards a hatch in the counter. "Follow me out back and we will measure the blood we can get from them." The vampire leads me out back and up to a giant vat of some sort. It looks like one of the things beer is made from, but I know it has leech blood in it, so I am grossed out.

"Place the leech here on the ground and I will place it in the vat. Then, I will drain the blood and give you a measurement for how much we got out." He says, and points to an open area in front of both of us.

"How much is the blood worth?" I ask as I place a leech down from my inventory to where he pointed.

"We will pay two credits per gallon, which is far more than anyone would pay elsewhere." I know he is trying to make it sound like I'm getting a good deal, but I can't imagine selling blood by the gallon anywhere.

We go through all 15 of the leeches and get an average of 120 gallons out of each one. At 2 credits per gallon, that makes 3,600 credits for the whole amount in my inventory.

"Thanks for the business, would you like to buy anything while you are here? Not too often that we get outsiders." He asks me as I prepare to leave the store after getting my credits.

"Well, what kind of vampire things so you have?" I ask, and he gets a big smile on his face.

"You're in the Black Death Leech Farm, a home to vampires more than 1,000 years old. We have anything you could want." He says, with a smile. I seriously doubt the 1,000 years thing, but I'll check out what he has for sale.

"What kind of bows do you have?" I ask him, and he walks me over to a shelf of bows. I use Identification Vision to look at them.

>High-Quality Iron Bow

>High-Quality Orchelium Bow

>Demon Bow

Only three of the bows were distinquishable at any way. I don't think I'll buy them though.