City of Opportunities Finale – Risk and Reward

Eldred came back to, covered in pain. It was different from the embrace of cold Nyx indirectly subjected him to. This was actual, inhibiting pain, laming his muscles. Dullest were the throbs of the bruises he had suffered now over four days ago. They had healed well, aided by the potion, and only flared up again now because of the other injuries.

Oddly enough, the one that bothered Eldred the most was the chafed trench on his arm. Sure, his poor rolling had injured his right shoulder in a way that hurt with every heartbeat, but something about the peculiarity of the shallow, wide wound on his arm was just a little more bothersome.

That was until he realized there was an actual winner of the competition.

Eldred tried to inhale through his nose – to no success. When air eluded him, he desperately pulled it through his mouth instead. It scratched over the back of his dry throat. He must have been breathing this way while he was out. He coughed. He tried to open his eyes. His lids refused the pull for several moments. The crusty layer sealing them broke.

The first thing he saw was Avari. The gremlin stared at him. When he focused on her, she let out a relieved sigh. “What are you seeing?” she asked him, her voice still reverberating with concern.

“A gorgeous gremlin? Slightly cowardly, but I can forgive that.”

“Cowardly, my ass!” Avari shook her head, then pulled back. She had been close enough that her face filled his entire field of view. “At least you didn’t get a concussion from falling flat on your face! Count yourself lucky!”

Eldred realized now he had been turned onto his side. Groaning against his will, he pushed himself into an upright sitting position. He pulled his shoulders back. His spine popped. It was a sweet relief that lasted for only a moment. His hand carefully probed his nose. It was at a very off angle and tremendously swollen.

“You know, I never thought I was an attractive guy,” he said, now realising how nasal he sounded. Blood clogged up both of his nostrils. “I don’t think a crooked nose will help me.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to deal with having a crooked nose, you absolute mad fuck.” There was a deep respect and concern in Avari’s eyes, both of which Eldred considered well-founded. He wasn’t insane enough to miss that what he had done was every bit as stupid as it was impressive. “You’ll easily be able to afford a trip to the medical alchemists.”

“Your determination carried you forwards, Eldred,” Nyx’s voice filled the air by his ear. “My trust in you should never have wavered.”

He smiled as much as the swelling in his face allowed him to, then turned towards the Cannibal Golem. The corpse (or whatever other description was appropriate for a broken construct) laid still. While Eldred was out, Avari had taken the precaution of taking its arms and legs off with the power pick. It was an effective way to deal damage to a motionless target.

“Think that’ll be enough to pay you back?” he asked.

“…Yeah,” Avari said, voice brimming with sarcasm. “It just barely might.”

______________________________________________________________________

“What the…” the corporate clerk muttered.

“Pretty good, isn’t it?” Eldred asked and put another piece of the Cannibal Golem on the pile.

Getting it back to Iridescia had been a massive pain. Carrying it in one piece had been completely unviable. First, they had broken as much of the stone off the underlying metal as possible. That had drastically reduced the weight already. Still, combined with their other loot, it had been too much to just haul around. With materials they had scavenged in the city, they had built an impromptu sled that they took turns dragging around. All the same, it had taken them a whole week to get back to the surface. Their rations had been near their end. Avari’s arm was starting to get better. Eldred’s nose was healing crooked.

The rising number on the calculation sheet the worker kept updated made all of that worth it. The man’s eyes had stopped widening and now were just reflecting the naked greed. Eldred was no idiot. What they would pay him for the metal was likely half of what they would then take to pass it into the wider economy. Such was the privilege of those that held access to the resources.

It did not matter to him, not at this juncture. The sum that was accruing on the sheet was already more money than Eldred had accrued in his entire existence before then, and they had barely weighed in two arms. More digits continued to be added. Then, they also presented all the other dwarven metals they had found. It added another 10% to the overall value.

“How would you like your payout?” the worker asked at the end.

Avari reached for a pen and paper, then scribbled down a string of numbers. “Send 20% to this account.”

The suggestion that Avari should only get a fifth of everything had been made on the way back. Nyx had brought it up, Avari had reluctantly agreed, and Eldred did not care either way. She was owed her fair share. It was also true that he was the one that fought to create the vast majority of the value in this endeavour.

“Cash,” Eldred stated.

The worker raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “If you want to lug all of that around… one moment.” He stood up and went into the backroom to fetch the necessary notes.

“Really?” Avari asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Are you one of those guys that don’t trust banks?”

“No, I just don’t have a proper bank account set up,” he responded.

“You know, I’d have respected hating banks more.”

The clerk came out, pushing a small pallet of cash in front of him. Iridescia had a central currency that had emerged, after several hundred years, just to normalise the economy. Several wars had been fought between corpos about whose currency was the one that would take that spot, only for them all to agree that cracking skulls over it was too unproductive to keep going.

The Iridescent Dollar, or Irid for short, was backed by the resentful agreement of every corporation involved. Because no one trusted the other, the currency was only allowed to be printed by the Coin God, one of the many deities that had, like so many species, made Iridescia his permanent home.

At least, that was the history lesson Eldred remembered. Who knew how much of that was accurate.

With a huge smile on his lips, Eldred followed the process of the money being counted for him. Brick after brick of cash was placed on the counter. When he shovelled all of it into the otherwise empty backpack Avari had bought for him, it filled up to the brim. He barely got the flap over the top, hiding the contents from onlookers.

“Can’t believe you destroyed a Cannibal Golem…” The clerk shook his head. “Impressive wo-“ His head snapped around when a phone on his desk suddenly rang. Not his smartphone, not the simple black work phone, but a red phone whose polished, unscratched exterior betrayed how seldomly it was in use. The worker immediately went for it. “At your service! Yes… yes… I will let them know… thank you!”

The clerk turned towards them. What had been simple respect for the haul had been replaced with a nervous hesitance. He cleared his throat. “Out with it,” Avari stated.

“The CEO would like to talk to you sometime in the coming days,” the clerk said.

“I’ll make time,” Eldred promised. “Was a date mentioned?”

“No just… open invitation during the next couple of days.”

“Perfect. Now!” Eldred shouldered his backpack full of money. “I need to buy a couple of things.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

“Holy shit,” Avari muttered under her breath. “Is that really you?”

“The suit adds a bit much to my shoulders.” Eldred responded and gave the pointy parts of his new outfit a self-aware pat. There was nothing beneath them for two solid centimetres, giving him a notably broader silhouette than he deserved. “I’ll grow into it.”

Avari circled around him, all but undressing him with her eyes. It felt fantastic twice over. First because this was perhaps the first time in Eldred’s life that a woman was actively checking him out and second because that woman had shot him down for not being dressed well enough several times before.

When she arrived again at his front, she tilted her head back and studied his face. “Now that I take a good look at you, you were right – it would have been a shame if they couldn’t have fixed your nose. You got a pretty decent face.”

“It’s average,” Eldred responded, rubbing his smooth chin. He was both blessed and cursed with a lack of beard. After, he put a hand in the pocket of his custom-tailored, black pants. He had always imagined suits to be stilted, instead, it was the most comfortable thing he had ever worn.

[Eldred AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e86eddc62b3e.png ]

“Nah, it’s like… 7 out of 10? You’re no Adonis, but you definitely got something going.” She took in the rest of him one more time. “You look… rrrrrrrreally good in that suit.” The way she rolled that r had Eldred stare down her cleavage with unclad desire.

It would have taken a eunuch not to stare at her tits anyway. The gremlin had shown up with a jacket but had stripped out of it at the entrance, revealing a white tank top that hid just about nothing. Enormous tits stretched the fabric to the utmost. He had a deep view from the top and if he tilted his head just slightly, he got a very nice look at her grey sideboob as well. The yoga pants she chose for the bottom wear did just as little to hide the juiciness of her thighs.

‘If I didn’t know any better, I would think she’s enticing me,’ Eldred thought, sarcastically. “Glad to see they fixed your arm as well,” he commented.

“Yeah, that sucked, but it got done quick enough. Couple of injections, then there was a loud crunch and then I was right as rain.” She looked around. “Where’s Nyx?”

There was no better invitation his banshee could have asked for. She revealed herself, appearing by Eldred’s side, and immediately went in for the kiss. While she surrendered her tongue to his, Avari got a good view of the ghost lady’s new outfit. Just as Eldred had desired, she now wore a white, tightly fitting blouse with a black pencil skirt at the bottom. It cut off notably above her knees, long enough for the illusion of propriety but also so short that it could be pushed up for access easily. Between the rim of the skirt and the black of her lower legs was the almost shining white of her shapely thighs.

Eldred loved everything about that outfit.

Avari stared at them. Something had clearly changed about how the gremlin saw him. Eldred’s intuition had gotten just a little bit sharper after two near-death experiences. He would have liked to believe that he hadn’t been so dense before to miss when a sexy shortstack was giving him bedroom eyes after he had saved her life and made her quite rich. Ultimately, whether his past self was or wasn’t that idiotic didn’t matter. That Eldred had been consumed in the conflagration of the fight.

“Let’s keep talking in my office,” he said and spun around. He had just randomly been on the lower floor when Avari decided to show up.

“S-sure!” she stammered and followed along.

His office really was a squatter’s room. Nyx’s mattress would have been good enough for Eldred, but with money to spend, he had decided to invest in something more hygienic. Two camping mats had been put side to side on the concrete floor and a couple pillows haphazardly tossed on top for extra comfort. A blanket and a sleeping bag offered warmth. Next to the ‘bed’ was the backpack, still well over 95% filled with money.

Avari tilted her head back, a confused look on her face when she noticed something missing. “Are you telling me that you didn’t pound her silly in victorious sex?”

“You know I already did that,” Eldred responded. Admittedly, with a broken nose and an aching body, the sex he had with Nyx the night after he had destroyed the Cannibal Golem had been limited – but he still had tried and Avari had been there to listen to all of it.

“Do I ever…” She sounded annoyed, but her hips and tail were swinging left to right enticingly. “Still, thought you’d pump as many loads as your fragile human body can give after you made more money than your last five generations combined.”

“Oh, I was thinking about it… but I decided to… save that victorious release for the right time.” Eldred stared at Avari, his meaning written all over every syllable of his slowly spoken explanation.

“Ehem!” The shortstack cleared her throat. “So… got a haircut?” she changed the topic.

“Didn’t think you would notice.”

“I pay attention.”

“Yeah, but it’s only the tips.” Eldred pinched a strand of his hair between two fingers and pulled it into his field of view. “A last trim, because I never took care of it.”

“I suggested he let it grow until the day he loses,” Nyx added.

“That’s so hot… I mean, that’s a stupid idea!” Avari blabbered. “Sure, just grow your hair out, gives your enemies something to pull on.”

“I prefer being the one to pull hair,” Eldred shot back instantly, utilising a particularly deep, dark tone of voice. Nyx always responded to it with shivers. Avari responded to it by blushing and getting stunlocked like the victim of poor balancing in a video game. “What’s your next move?” he prompted her to return to the world of the thinking.

“Uuhhhh…” Avari needed a moment to restart, then made a gesture at his literal bag of money. “Help you get that on an account before we get robbed.”

“We?” Nyx’s question came in as a suggestive trill.

The gremlin crossed her arms under her breasts. The already magnificent mammaries were massively emphasized. She stood there, a tiny challenge to his willpower. “You said I could be in, so I want to be in. You’re a suicidal maniac, but you also are a successful, suicidal maniac. I’m throwing my lot in with you before I die of boredom in this fucking ruin.” She stopped for a moment. “I-if that’s alright with you…?”

“I plan to use all my remaining funds to buy as much Echo as I can afford,” he told her. “I’m going to make you rich and powerful, under one condition: this company won’t just be a company. It’ll be my personal harem.” Arm around Nyx’s waist, he smirked. “That’s who you’re going to work for. With that in mind, do you still want this ‘we’?”

Avari took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then sighed. “Just fuck my brains out already?”

A delighted chuckle rung out from Nyx, a sound of deep satisfaction that Eldred had never imagined hearing from a woman that now would have to share. “Welcome to the company, it will be pleasant,” she promised.

Before Avari could groan at the pun, Eldred stepped forwards.