The meeting hall was suddenly filled with the goblins’ gasps, hisses, and screeches before Caliban smacked his hands together, the air cracking with such force that all conversation was brought to a screeching halt, for all that his voice was still a perfectly modulated calm.

Caliban cleared his throat. “Let me be exquisitely clear. Blue Corp is only here to secure assets to be put into our care. This is a fiscal operation and security detail only. In no way, shape, or form should it be taken as a hostile takeover of any sort.”

His reassuring smile turned cold as a northern gale. “So, now that I have assured you of my client’s liquidity and you assure me that your library is, in fact, in good standing, I believe it’s time for us all to reveal our hands. Don’t you agree?”

Squiglepuse’s hard gaze furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“It means were done with this bullshit!” Eric snapped. “We put our cards on the table right now! You show me your library by the end of the day, and I show you my gold! If you can’t show me your library, you’re in gross violation of the contract we signed with all the penalty clauses therein, and we don’t owe you shit!”

The goblin gazed at Eric for long moments while Caliban groaned and slapped his cheeks with his palms. “We still have to secure your gold, sir. It will take at least three...”

“Done and done!” The goblin positively screeched. “Witnessed by all!” He quickly jabbed a line on the contract, and Eric was all too happy to play the impulsive hotheaded idiot and sign under him… but only after coldly and coolly reading exactly what his opponent had written.

“Done!” Eric said, smiling with triumph. “Now hand over your library, asshole.”

But the goblin before him was laughing in his face. “FOOL! Stupid idiot! Too foolish to learn goblin precedent! Too much of an idiot to listen to your own counselor! The other party ALWAYS has to deliver before goblins do. Even among goblins, the one with higher status gets to deliver LAST!”

The creature flashed sneered, snorted, and hacked a nasty stream of snot right at Eric’s face.

Quickness check successful!

“And unless you can deliver a ton of gold before first light, fool, you’re mine! Body and soul!” His gleeful sneer turned to a look of confusion when Eric seemed to disappear, 38 Quickness meaning that sometimes, at least, he really could move faster than a mortal eye could follow.

“How did I miss you?” Squiglepuse cursed, too stupid even to show fear when he managed to catch Lord Grim with his blast.

“Is that a final goblin trick?” Eric quickly said, for Grim’s benefit as much as his own curiosity. “To use goading and your enemy’s hot temper to turn possible victory into a certainty? Goading your foes into physically lashing out by blowing snot on them, so they come off as violent aggressors? Assuring that any injury you suffer can be used to claim the case in your favor? Because you must be really, really worried about your chances, if you’re blowing snot on a man as powerful as Lord Grim.”

Eric flowed into a bow. “With your permission, Lord Grim, I have a deposit to make, and a library to purchase for both our sakes.”

“You’re bluffing! You seek to flee!” Administrator Squiglepuse snarled, eyes glaring with red-rimmed hate, and perhaps just a bit of fear.

Eric flashed a bemused smile. “Shall we all head up together, then?”

The goblin looked at him strangely, as if at a complete loss for words, or perhaps recalling what his seer had said about serious firepower being more than a match for his so-called security detail.

Eric lifted a finger as if in sudden thought. “Oh, and lest we forget, you did say that all the contracts Lord Grim and I signed are now under your purview, am I right?” Eric flashed a knowing smile. “That is why you were so quick to gloat and declare this demesne your own, am I right? Our dear Grim has some property or deed in play?”

“I do indeed,” the looming man conceded with a solemn nod. “I am to pay the council a fee of 1000 credits per year for the use of this land.

“That’s when we thought it was worthless!” Sneered one of the administrator’s sycophants. “Before you bribed the construction crew to include your land as part of the city proper! We payed for that wall. By all rights, this property is ours! Ours, you stupid humans! And now you have six months to pay 150 years worth of fees! That’s 150,000 credits, you necromantic abomination! And you have to pay it tonight. Tonight! Ha!”

Eric flashed Lord Grim a bemused smile. “And I have no doubt our friend here will honor that deed’s updated timeline to the letter. Just as you will honor my own.”

Furrowed brows turned to bulging eyes and disbelieving shrieks when Eric nodded to Caliban, who solemnly showed a copy of Eric’s own priceless document.

“Fortunately, Goblin law cares little for contractual privacy, so the fact that Lord Squiglepuse now knows of his banker’s transactions is of zero concern. In fact, his superiors will be pleased that his transgressions came to light. Though perhaps not so pleased to find that they have to honor this independent chartered account with the Galactic Reserve Bank in… what time frame did we agree upon? Oh yes, before first light,” Caliban said, smiling coldly into the mercury sphere Eric sensed was recording absolutely everything.

“And before you ask, yes. We have multiple backup documents, just as I’ve made a backup copy of this very document you were so insistent to have our friends sign.”

Squiglepuse’s face grew an interesting shade of green, Eric’s Perception only barely hearing the words he whispered. “Kill the boy.”

So faint, he was sure no one else had heard the whisper, but he was no fool.

Quickness Check made!

“Assassin present! Get out of there!” Eric screamed behind him, making no pretense any longer, but most definitely doing nothing aggressive as he raced up the stairs, too filled with a growing sense of peril to admire the marble steps or polished silver banner, save to sense the blurry outline of a form cloaked in shadow and confusion, Eric weaving just as he sensed hot death streak by his ear.

And then he was racing down the corridor for all he was worth.

“Assassin!” He screamed as he dove into a tumble, using his superhuman agility to spring from one oak-paneled wall to the next before crashing right through a glass window and into the massive walled courtyard surrounding the manor, immediately waving at the dozen glaring spotlights now pointing his way, feeling for the first and hopefully the last time the oppressive thrum of massive arcane batteries, effectively giant twelve foot long rail guns pointed his way.

“My name is Eric Silver! I’m about to make my deposit! There is an assassin behind me! Please cover me!”

Eric didn’t wait for a response, for all that he couldn’t help admiring the sight of a dozen men armed in cobalt blue storm soldier armor that looked like something out of a sci fi adventure story, for all that it was electromana and not electromagnetic power sources that were in play, the modified wands they carried looking an awful more lot like TAC-50 anti material rifles than he would have thought possible.

He decided that the cold chill in the pit of his stomach was absolute exhilaration, not mind-numbing terror. Because if he wasn’t paying witness to either elite white Tier troops fully armored at the end of the basic crafting tech tree, then he was gazing upon actual Bronze Tier soldiers, and suddenly he didn’t feel nearly so bad about investing 20 million credits in a single night’s work.

If these troopers could keep his gold and his person safe…

it was well worth the cost.

All the same, he couldn’t help but gaze at the manor with haunted eyes, feeling no shame in donning his reinforced scale helm once more.

Armor that had saved him from more than one assassin’s dagger, crossbow, and bullet.

For long moments he stared at the soldiers clearly looking his way, many sitting comfortably on the giant arcane tanks rising higher than the impressive granite wall Lord Grim had surrounded his home and his football field sized front yard with. And though he saw no expressions on their reflective face shields, he could tell he was being judged and measured by absolutely everyone there.

Here goes nothing, he thought to himself, suddenly wanting to laugh.

Because with all this buildup, all these resources spent, if it turned out that he had no more than a backpack’s worth of gold weighing down his psyche, never mind that using a personal ES Space for gold was a supposedly impossible achievement, he’d look like the biggest goofball in the universe, and knew he’d never live it down.

“Yeah, kid almost got mugged, carrying five gold bars in his backpack. So of course he needed the entire Blue Tiger Platoon to cover his ass, whenever he lifted his legs to take a shit from that day on!”

Eric winced, somehow knowing that that was exactly what half these mercs were imagining telling their wide-eyed friends and adventurer fanboys and girls when next they treated the up-and-comers to drinks.

All this build up, for a backpack’s worth of gold.

Not even enough to pay off those assholes who would be more than happy to drag him off in chains.

That was, assuming he could get whatever he managed to collect out at all.

Because talk about performance anxiety…

He felt like he was desperately trying to take a massive constipated shit in the ER, with no less than three specialists and half a dozen residents on rounds, all of them cute enough to date, all of them gazing with bemused smirks or sisterly pity at his grunting, groaning form, doing all they could not to snicker out loud.

Straining to the point of tears on that one tight little stubborn turd, mocking him, until finally it popped free, and all his shit began to flow.

And flow.

And flow.

Filling him with such relief that he felt like he was taking a glorious piss after a full night of holding it in, desperately studying for exams, then sinking into the softest of down stuffed mattresses with a long island ice tea after a four hour hike under the blazing summer sun. Before peaking in the arms of his beloved, his limbs melting to butter as she sung a soft lullaby, and all his tension and cares melted away as he drifted in a delicious languor on the cusp of sleep.

Never had he felt such incredible relief as he did at that endless peak without end. A moment he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to, even as he sensed the screaming red light of hostile intent blaring on his interface… before immediately being extinguished as half a dozen arcane blasters atomized his unseen foe.

By the time he got to his feet, his knees were wobbly and he had a dopey grin on his face, feeling gloriously drunk and utterly hollowed out. He knew he had grown in inconceivable ways, and strained himself more than a bit, and it would be quite some time before he’d be using his ES space again. Then all thought left him when he truly took in the sight that had left even an elite guard of Blue forces breathless.

One thing was for sure, Eric thought as his disbelieving mind screamed with awe and wonder.

The massive pile of golden bricks soaring well over two stories high was a damned sight more than a single backpack’s worth of gold.