Vic groggily opened her eyes. She brought a hand up to her squinted eyes and shoved it against her face. Her eyelids didn’t want to let the daylight in.

  She hung limply from the side of the bed and slithered down there, to the ground.

  “Fuck”, she said. The light that was filtering in didn’t seem to be the morning kind. It was warm, even hot on her skin. Shit. Ass. Ugh.

  She’d overslept.

  Not her fault. She felt like she’d been slam-dunked into a foam pit without foam.

  Dragging her hands over her face and rubbing her eyes helped. Fucking shit. ASS. Ugh.

  She raised a finger and deactivated the magical traps surrounding her. Those contraptions popped off like balloons, dissolving back into her inventory. She waved off the string-based detection spell too. If only putting them up took as much time.

  She changed her clothes like she was death itself.

  Which meant she didn’t change her clothes.

  Fuck, why was she so tired? She stared at her status bar, but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Her mana bar had restored itself a little more. It was now halfway up. The bonus from the game system was still up, glowing purple prettily, taunting her by pulsating.

  The quest asking her to get the hell out of this city was still up.

  She sighed, grabbed the bed’s fluffy blanket in a ball and threw it back onto the bed, then got up, and disarmed the bear traps at the windows and at the door, dropping them back in her inventory with an uncaring motion.

  She stared at her dark coat that hung limply on the only chair of the room, partly covering the desk right next to it. The other night, the clothes that the servants had taken from her in the most cowardly way possible had been delivered to her door, old cloak included. The innkeeper had been a bit apologetic after waking her up in the middle of the night, but he’d explained that he’d been given express orders from an important member of the clergy on this urgent matter and blablabla. Sleepily, with eyes nearly shut close, having just nimbly walked between the bear traps, she’d just taken them back while internally cursing. Even now, she thought that that was such a paltry power move. HUR HUR look at me, I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP. Her clothes hadn’t even been cleaned, and worse than that, they smelt like they’d been put with other stingy clothes but removed from the dirty pile before they could have been cleaned with the others. How passive aggressive. Whatever. She was putting on her old coat anyway, not that tasteless, peacocky cult’s tablecloth. Vic did so.

  She sighed. She felt so lazy. At least she’d already put half the prize money into her backpack before going to bed to make it less heavy and leave some room in it. She put her lighter backpack over her shoulder.

  She grabbed from her inventory a warm bunch of tiny moist biscuits that she’d yoinked from the buffet at the cafeteria the other day. At least it was kind of pleasant to eat something warm and nice. She chewed and swallowed. She did it a few more times, licked her fingers, and what was done was done.

  She yawned, stared at the sky through the inn’s window, and scratched the back of her head.

  ‘ight.

  Time to move.

  She got up and opened the window, climbed up across the wall, and reached the roof absent-mindedly. She lazily strolled over it, jumping onto the next. She wasn’t far from the markets. They were busy today again from what she could hear.

  She wrinkled her nose at the abrupt mana fluctuations happening below her feet. Ugh.

  Ugh.

  Whatever.

  She was probably being put under surveillance and he was now showing off that he knew that she’d started moving by being a wee active underground beneath her. What a man-child.

  She rubbed her eyes again. What a shame that she hadn’t slept as great as she thought she would in a proper bed. Ugh. What was the point of proper beds if you couldn’t sleep well in them? There was literally no point sleeping there if she didn’t get what she paid for with her money.

  She side-eyed the smoke coming off from the pyres. She’d passed by them on foot last night. They were still burning those piles of inanimate puppets, it seemed. If she had time to lose, she’d probably take some marshmallows and skewer them over that fire while watching them burn with a dead stare. Alas, she had no marshmallows. She missed sugar. Of the culinary type. Hur-hur.

  She abruptly leapt to another roof and slid down to street level. She passed by a crater on the ground. Or rather, craters. They looked like blotches of paint, but instead, there were holes where the paint would have splattered. The rock was partially melted, but the rest had now solidified in another shape.

  She felt tired. A part of the wall of a house was missing nearby. Eh, at least they could build a window in its stead. Free of charge. Such a boon to society that she was.

  She scratched the back of her neck, then pushed down her hood over her face before an incoming patrol came close. She was near the market place, it seemed. The patrol didn’t stop her, but she did see a wrinkled nose across one of them as they passed next to her.

  She took a few more turns.

  She had to be pretty close, now. She’d recognized the landmark that she’d been described a couple roads ago. She walked in the correct side-alley and saw the rickety plank of wood hanging from some chains. There was a pot of flowers at the window right next to the entrance. Charming.

  She stopped over a puddle of suspicious water and read “Orton’s shop” painted clumsily over the hanging panel. She stepped away right as a gruffy looking man exited, nearly slamming into her if she hadn’t dodged.

  Vic glared, raised a fist, then stared at the puddle, and moved on.

  Wasted energy it’d be. Not worth the effort.

  “Please come again!” a voice said in a customer-service tone. “Oh!”

  An elf was right at the counter. Behind him were a myriad of flasks containing liquids, powders and organic matter of all kinds. His smile lowered itself a little when Vic removed her hood as she cleaned her boots over the doormat.

  “How can I help you, kid?” he said. “Need help with an ailment? I only do alchemy presentations on Fridays, you just missed it. There won’t be much of a spectacle today.”

  Vic blinked a few times and sighed. Honestly, being treated like this was a change, at least. Not necessarily a nice one, but a change, still.

  “I’ve got some goods that a merchant from the market said you’d give me a good price for”, she said. The alchemist smiled at her. He had quite the eyebags. Maybe Vic wasn’t the only one not to sleep so well.

  “Oh, what sorts of goods?” he said. “I do take toads as you must have heard, but I’m often brought the wrong species. You’ll have to let me examine it for… five minutes, I’d say, to see if it’s the ones I require. Ten common coppers per toad is the rate, not eleven.”

  Vic sighed. She didn’t even argue. She just tiredly smiled.

  She raised up her cloak, hiding what her free hand was doing, and opened her inventory to take out a comically large Sourflesh mushroom that would have spanned the entire length of her arm if she’d put it against it.

  “How’s that for a toad?”, she said, light-heartedly. “Do I have the right species?”

  The elf stared blankly at what she’d taken out from nowhere. He gaped. Then he stared back at her.

  “Oh”, he said, shortly. “I… didn’t know I was in the presence of a most respected…”

  “Mage, sorceress, at this point I don’t care. Call me a magician if you want”, she said.

  “Aren’t magicians scammers?” he said, informally.

  She shrugged. Maybe that was the point. Mindless smalltalk. Something to take off her mind. Yeah.

  He’d leaned in closer, ogling the mushroom.

  “I’ve never seen a Sourflesh mushroom so big. And so fresh! How did you get that?” he asked, readjusting his glasses. He’d sniffed the air before it, probably recognizing its smell.

  Vic shrugged.

  “That’s a family secret” she lied, closing her eyes. A saying that was often used by mushroom enthusiasts who kept their mushroom spots secret.

  “Hmpg. Of course I’ll take it!”, he said. Vic smirked. That was obvious enough.

  “How much are you giving for those?” she said.

  “Hm… Let me think…” he said. Vic blinked while he thought. “That has to be worth… three… no, four common silvers… I could make it a silver honour, but that’s because it’s so fresh…”

  Oh damn. After getting the cash prize of the spell contest, this felt like three times nothing.

  Vic thoughtfully scratched the back of her head. Hm…

  “Oh, by the way, Amissa sends me? She’d… told me that at the market. About a week ago”, she said. It felt like it had happened ages ago. “…when I asked for an alchemist.”

  He startled.

  “Anissa the wondermonger?” he said. He scratched the back of his head. He smiled a little. “Oh, that’s nice of her.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Vic gnawed the inside of her cheeks. Was this a repeat of the merchant who had recommended her this city? If she ever met him, she was roasting his ass literally into oblivion. She was quite killing him.

  “Was it, now?” she asked.

  He startled. Maybe because of her accidental abrupt change of tone.

  “Oh, it’s… how to say… Well, to be honest, I was still an apprentice but a few moons ago”, he said. “I left… on bad terms with my old master. My permit to buy certain products at low prices has been delayed for a while, and the alchemist’s guild has made their partners and official cellars… unavailable to me. I’m mostly stuck with what’s sold on the open markets, which ensures that my stock is limited to what any elf worth their salt can already make. There’s only so many tricks in my book I can pull and there’s just too few difficult potions to pull off with what’s available to me. Humans make… adequate customers, but they usually don’t need anything fancy.”

  Vic nodded all while he spoke. Oooh. Hm. That was a story she could get behind.

  “I’ve got four more of these”, Vic said, pretending to rummage beneath her cloak, searching for nothing in the pocket inside the cloak. “You want them too?”

  The alchemist blinked, giving her a new studying look.

  “How much do you have in stock?” he said, eyeing her cloak with a little interest.

  “A great variety of stuff I want to stop carrying around”, she said, pretending that she was uninterested. “Okay, let me take out one of each.”

  Hm. Yeah, time to see if the feathers caught his interest.

  She took out the wrapped up [epic!] feathers, extracting them from the packets she’d put them in before shoving it back in her inventory.

  “Well for starters! I’ve got feathers from Blazing Eagles, Northrumb’s feathered bats, and frostbite cranes!”

  The alchemist’s mouth gaped, and she saw him stare at the frostbite crane’s feather. Heheh. Yeah, she bet he was impressed.

  “How-? Where did- You’re…” he stopped, and stared at her. “You’re from very far away, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, you have no idea”, Vic said, nodding. She then properly answered. “The cranes were migrating north when I stumbled on them. Those birds were horrible. I still got a couple of those feathers as payback. They were hell to get my hands on. I have a terrible opinion of ice spells since then. Fucking birds.”

  Orton chuckled like he was gobsmacked.

  “You’re… an actual warmage!” he said. “Of course… wow. That’s quite precocious, ah indeed… Ah, Alright”, he chuckled once, rubbing his face while his eyes didn’t leave the frostbite crane’s feather between her fingers. And he had no clue she had about more than a dozen of those.

  “I’m not sure if I’d want to pay for that one with my current state of business. How come you haven’t sold those so far? They’re pretty in demand.”

  Vic shrugged.

  “Any potential customers and caravans I crossed paths with wanted it for coppers. Bunch of bastards thought they could pay me nothing for it. Eh. Usually to be honest they proposed a couple of silvers for it. I generally cut the conversation short when they assumed too much too quickly, and mostly that I was desperate enough and easy pickings.”

  “Understandable. I’ll… keep that feather in mind. Hm. No, I’ll take you one, I think, I can’t miss this occasion. For… fifty common silvers?” he said.

  “Ninety”, Vic said.

  “Wow, you’re merciless”, he said, rubbing his face again. He bit his lips, still looking at the feather. “Seventy”, he said.

  Ugh. She’d haggle more, but… it wasn’t like it was a huge difference. There was just a world of difference between this and the prize money.

  “Seventy-five”, she said, mostly to make sure this wouldn’t keep her awake at night.

  “Done”, he immediately said. Vic put the feather down on the counter, holding the other mushroom beneath her arm gently so not to damage it. The texture was a lot like the tongue of a cat.

  “Not taking any other feathers?” she asked. He thoughtfully rubbed his chin.

  “I don’t think I can make anything with the Fire Eagle’s for now. How many feathers from the feathered bats of Northrumb do you have?” he said.

  Vic eyed the number in her inventory. She pretended to be rummaging in something and counting something else.

  “Eh, about fifty. Fifty-four to be exact”, she said.

  “I’ll take the whole stock for ten common silvers”, he said.

  “Hm, make it eleven, they’re all proper fully grown feathers”, Vic said. The alchemist snorted. “You really haggle for coppers.”

  Vic smirked.

  “Nah. Okay, keep it at ten. It’s fine”, she said.

  “No, no, understandable. Eleven it is”, he said. Vic stared. She raised an eyebrow.

  She politely put one feather of the Fire Eagle’s variety on his counter.

  “On the house”, she said.

  He stared at her.

  “Oh”, he said. “You… You’re sure?” he said.

  Vic shrugged.

  “Take it, I might as well get rid of that weight. It’s been a while since I haven’t sold those ones anyway”, she said.

  He nodded seriously and pocketed it in a compartment in his counter.

  “Mighty kind of you”, he said. He pleasantly smiled. “What else do you have in your enchanted cloak? I’ve never seen this… enchantment before, this… storage ability. Do you… would you sell it too? I could find you a customer for it no doubts.”

  Vic blinked.

  “Oh no, I’m emotionally attached to it. Can’t separate myself from it”, she said, patting the side of of her coat. She didn’t confirm nor deny that the magic coat was the source of her storage ability. Lmao. If she ever was being followed and got mugged for the “magic” cloak, that’d be a great prank. Maybe some researcher would spend hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to make this “artefact” work, when it had been Vic making the magic work all along.

  Vic chuckled.

  Hmm.

  “Now now… Let’s get serious. I’ve got… mineral dusts of all sorts: viviridium, calcified ember, ground alkiline, pure silver dust and the mana-richest limestone around those parts, taken directly from the most fertile desert spot in the Wastes”, she said, taking out glass containers having each the powders in question, seeing his eyes widen dramatically while starting to gape. If he were a dog he’d be wagging his tail. That was just typical alchemist behaviour. Her former mentor reacted so much worse than this way though. She was pretty sure she’d been exaggerating sometimes just to make Vic feel giddier about her findings when she was still a newbie, like one would with a puppy. Anyway. “Oh and the dusts don’t come with the jars. I need to keep them for later. Can’t store my next dusts properly without them”, she said light-heartedly. She continued on. “I also have crystallised sulphured gryphon eggs that still smell of the sulphur geysers they were around”, she said, putting down one pear-sized egg down on the counter, and then putting next to it humongous bulbous cores the size of watermelons that glittered colourfully like pretty jewels, which was the very moment the alchemist let out a panicked laugh of disbelieving joy that sounded a lot like a whimper, “…those huge gems taken from the very core of the many monsters I defeated, and of course, because how could an alchemist not enjoy a bit of liver, here, the livers of cockatrices, wild demonhogs and andrakors, respectively.”

  She put down the sloshing glass pots keeping them in suspension.

  Heheh, this was probably any alchemist’s wet dream.

  “Oh-uh- you… uh”, the alchemist said, staring at the livers, seemingly panicked, “Keep the demonic contraband out of sight, alright? I’m not meddling in that, enough issues already on my table, hahahaha!”

  He’d been eyeing the open door.

  Oh right. Alberon had spoken of it. No demonic ores in my city, rawr rawr, demon mask emoji implied through his facial expression, which was hidden behind a mask.

  “My bad”, she said light-heartedly, and pulled the jar with the demon hogs’ livers back in her inventory while staring through the door. Those did have that demonic sheen to them. Eh. Her mistake. A good thing she hadn’t sprung them up in plain daylight when she’d sold some of her goods to that merchant Anissa. What was she saying? It might have ended up better than getting pursued by the resident god and its clergy and their grandma. Honestly maybe it’d have turned out better because she would have run out and managed to get out before getting too deep in the city. But ugh. She wouldn’t have gotten the prize money. Uuugh. Anyway, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. “No one’s seen if that’s any relief. There’s no one around hidden through magical means either.”

  “How did you… get through the entrance with those?” he asked. “They’re pretty thorough with lone merchants or lone travellers.”

  Vic blinked.

  “I’m a war mage?” she said. Yeah. That ought to explain it. “So, magic.”

  “Ah… I see”, he said nervously. “You… I… Let’s move on”, he quickly said, gulping down. He looked uneasy.

  “So… is there anything you’d like?” she said, pointing at what she’d taken out. “I’ve got more of the same in stock if you need more.”

  He shook his head off but not to answer her. He looked at what she was offering.

  “Oh… well, of course”, he said. “I… I’ll take… four of each of the powders you’re showing off there. I’ll get my pots. Hm… I’ll take two gryphon eggs, and… that enormous magic gem”, he said, picking the green iridescent one. “Did… do tell, had you shown Anissa… all of the goods you were offering?”

  “Oh, no. No no, just some tinier magic gems and a couple of goat chimera’s horns”, she said. Damn, was he really that caught up on the illegal merchandise? Better make him think of something else. “Oh, do you have health potions?” she asked. “I meant to buy some too, not just sell you goods.”

  “Oh! Could have told me before. What kind?” he said, and he sounded a bit happier.

  “Ugh, middle tiered? At least five”, she said, and she began making the math, but huh… Should she just take as many as she could? She was rich, now. Filthily so. Money existed to be spent.

  “Five… huh, would you take them for the big gem I’d just picked?” he asked. Vic considered it. Hm. Honestly, she would have given the big gem a price of hm… forty silver commons. Yeah, that’d do, for five middle tiered health potions.

  “Yeah, that’ll do. Hm…” she said. She squinted. She did deserve something, didn’t she? “Do you have high tiered health potions?”

  “Oh, I only have one”, he chuckled. “A leftover from my apprenticeship. My graduation’s masterwork of sorts”, he bitterly chuckled. “I can’t make more. I’d sell it for at least one golden honour, I have to warn you.”

  Vic instinctively cringed at the price. Yeah. Eeesh, that was high tiered potions for you.

  Then she considered it.

  Ugh…

  She’d seen high-tiered health potions in action… It could be a lifesaver…

  Ugh… UGHHH… Sure, she was rich for now. But still. A golden honour… That was five golden commons. FIVE! Ugh…

  “Fine…” she said, grumbling. “I’ll take it…”

  She rummaged in her backpack and grabbed a golden honour.

  At least she wouldn’t have to convert that coin into the common currency. Yeah. Now she would only have to deal with that stupid tree symbol on one side of those coins just a hundred minus one times. Honour my ass. What a gaudy name for a currency. There was no honour to be found in coin. Calling it that was probably Alberon’s idea. She had no doubts that he’d been stupidly proud of it, thinking it was a great one while all his goons went all “yay! Of course you’re right m’liege! You’re so clever!” She’d have to mock him for it if she ever saw his gaudy self around before she left.

  “Oh wait, can I exchange some currency? I’m getting out of this city, and in my travels, so far, I’ve never seen people pay with it so I’d rather have commons if I can help it”, she said.

  He blinked a few times.

  “Wait, you want to buy my high-tiered potion?” he said.

  Vic blinked back.

  “It beats dying, I guess”, she said. “I nearly died in my last fight against some hack. A high tiered health potion in my tummy would have been a game changer.”

  He let out a laugh.

  “Oh, a fight between magicians?” he said cordially. “Must have been quite the sight!”

  “Oh, you know it”, she said back, smiling mischievously. “Nearly blew up the city.”

  His smile fell.

  “That’s in bad taste considering the recent events”, he said.

  Vic frowned.

  “The ones were a dark sorceress of dark designs fought against the resident god?” Vic said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Precisely”, he said, short and to the point.

  “I saw the fight, though, I even had a very good look at it. It was more one-sided than you’d think”, Vic said, looking away, towards his stall where there were plenty of low-tiered potions with anagrams on them. Some looked like they were used to clean up or unclog sinks. Yeah, yeah, whatever, a certain someone was about to catch strays. “Trust me on this when I tell you that your god would have lost if it were not for his cowardly use of cannon fodder. His opponent didn’t even start the fight. If not for her hesitation and unwillingness to really fight, there was really a moment where everything could have gone so much worse than anyone could possibly imagine.”

  “Get out.”

  Vic blinked her eyes opened. She stared back at the alchemist. He looked livid.

  “Huh? Wait. What… Why?” she said. No way. He was pointing at the door, his other hand throwing back the huge gem in her arms. She barely had the time to put it back in her inventory before he threw the fragile jars away. What? She was being thrown out? So fucking intolerant! Damn fucking city with rotten people.

  “My aunt died because of that blasphemer’s final attack. Get out. I don’t want your goods.”

  Vic’s words died in her throat.

  She’d been about to say she’d been the assailant.

  She swallowed.

  “Listen- I-”

  “Get. Out. I’ll cuss you out. Get out. Out of my shop”, he yelled coldly.

  She just took the objects he threw back at her. All in fragile balance, she ended up with her feet in the middle of the puddle of suspicious liquid.

  He slammed the door.

  Vic stared down at her reflection in the puddle. It was too muddy and she saw nothing useful there. It stank, though.

  Fuck.

  She wanted to scream.

  She just walked away.