Post-Mist II

The next few days were fairly busy, especially for Keilnei. Quite a lot of work goes into the process of converting an animal carcass into preserved meat, and she’d managed to capture multiple deer, rabbits, and birds alongside Zena. She showed Snow how to butcher the beasts, setting aside the skin for later. After that, Gil helped her to make a small smokehouse while Snow did her very best to chop up a rabbit. She couldn’t stop seeing it as a cute little critter while it was still recognizable, so most of the work ultimately fell upon the Draenei. Curing the hides was sure to be even worse, though Keilnei knew a trick involving the animals’ brains for that.

Gil and Candress would have likely been somewhat better at the harsh task, but they were busy in the Arcane Sanctum. Azerothian magic was not quite as universally applicable as a good firearm, but it had proven usable in at least one world beyond its original setting and had a substantially higher power ceiling. That meant it was a high priority to learn, and Candress was by far the member of his retinue he felt most comfortable monopolizing.

He was hitting a wall, despite his Soul Talent. Candress was, by her own admission, not all that impressive a mage among her own people. As he approached her level of skill and tried to learn spells she found tricky, her ability to accelerate his growth dwindled.

Tossing around bolts of barely contained elemental energy was extremely useful as a basic attack, but in terms of complexity not actually much different from making and throwing a snowball. Pack in as much raw material as you could safely hold and apply a vector; easy. More advanced techniques like creating a thin sleeve of magically reinforced (yet flexible) flash frozen water vapor around oneself as a form of armor was quite a bit more complicated.

“You are doing very well, Master Gil.” Candress assured him. “Most apprentices can’t manage even this much.”

“This much” was a disk of frigid air with roughly the protective value of a sheet of tinfoil, which gave his outstretched palm frostbite when he maintained it for more than a minute or so. Gil knew that it was a bit greedy to expect phenomenal cosmic power from a random kidnapped middle manager, so he did his best to focus on the positive.

While the small frost shield wasn’t much to write home about, he could still think of at least a few niche uses for it. He wasn’t terribly likely to find himself needing to rapidly freeze and heat a metal bar in order to break it, but that was always a good trick to have in your back pocket. More practically, the training version of the spell helped him to develop his fine control, working up to the point where he could insulate the inside of his frost armor and move around with it like a second skin. To do that, he’d need to learn how to move it and then to learn how to anchor it to certain points on his body.

He had a little bit of fun watching Keilnei’s body language shift around when he let Silky ride his dick near the huntress’s work station. It didn’t change as much as he expected, honestly. Her eyes started to glow pink and her language became coarser, but she was already in the middle of a task and he hadn’t actually asked her to join in.

“Now I know better than most how to handle all kinds of meat, sugar.” She slipped into character while continuing to instruct Snow, “You’ve got to edge it. Too hot and it’ll be over quick, but not in a way that’ll satisfy anyone. Too cold and it’ll just sit there bored.”

“Of course.” Snow said, completely unphased, “Should I get the next few steaks ready while you work on the fire?”

“Yeah, take some of that salt and give it the real VIP treatment.” Keilnei said, putting more wood on the fire. “Oh, and double check the lumber to make sure none of it is pine. When knows if I made a mistake when I was handling the shafts and let an extra slip in. Whatever we tell the boys, the type of wood really does matter.”

Magical training and trolling Keilnei could only take up so much time, of course. He had a few books of dry poetry from the Durst manor that he could read if he was ****, and he did just that for an hour or so. He also routinely checked his tablet for updates on any of his girls, fretfully wondering about all the things that were currently out of his hands.

Was Ireena recovered? How was Rose doing? Did the rescue team manage to get their hands on Noa? Had Zena eaten the bead of Lerasium whole yet?

He’d realized she’d taken the mysterious bead of magical metal not long after the portal closed. He was irritated, but it wasn’t as if he had any idea what the hell it actually did. He was more annoyed on principle than out of any particular investment in the item itself, especially since he’d used his Golden Rule on Zena. He wasn’t sure if that item had worn off with distressing speed, or if she’d just somehow psy-opped herself into believing that stealing the small lump of metal was what Gil wanted her to do. Intent based magic could be very twitchy.

He kept busy for most of the day without much trouble, saving his major tasks for later in the week. He doubted that he’d be able to handle Noa’s entire dungeon in a single trip, not without severely overtaxing his supplies of healing items. Letting his girls work in the field was a distinctly mixed bag, since it meant he didn’t have them on hand himself, but he was moderately confident that his current team could handle at least one level of Noa’s dungeon. Maybe two.

It was more for tactical reasons than anything else that he pulled out his tablet to sell Zeto’s symbiote. The arrogant prick seemed to be one of the few movers and shakers in that region, so knocking him out seemed like it would be a serious boon to the rescue efforts. Probably the whole tree thing, too. With less coordinated defenses, they might be able to plow through and do multiple missions that Gil would get credit for.

Of course, his mind derailed when he saw what a T5 Big Name actually sold for.

Sim-Seru 008

5 credits, Parasite Binding, Platinum Card

Given his somewhat anemic shop, which Gil absolutely intended to complain about in his report, the five credits were somehow the least valuable thing in the list. He would have only been slightly disappointed if that had been his whole prize, but the rest was substantially more interesting.

The Parasite Binding was one of the core bindings, and it showed up all the time. At the conceptual level, it was one of those creatures that latched onto a person and gave them superpowers while stripping away their humanity, free will, and individuality. You know the type. How much it actually did that varied, mostly based on what the customer wanted. The Company being what it was, the default version tended to imprint the infected onto the Tester as their mate, king, or at least another member of the “hive.”

A lot of testers that engaged in water cooler talk pegged parasite as probably the best core binding for mass combat purposes, but a little bit too married to a specific vibe. Its upgrades were optimized to allow someone to conquer an entire setting, building huge biological fortresses, sending out parasitic creatures to assimilate one’s neighbors, and creating living bioengineered troop transports and the like.

You didn’t have to engage with any of that shit, technically. You could make a secret underground lair, for example, and assimilate entire communities quietly. Most people started that way even if they were planning on transitioning to warlord later. Alternatively, you could buy just the base version of the binding and be pretty damn happy with a suite of physical enhancements and the ability to infect others with subservient parasites using your stinger tail or a substantial amount of goo you could excrete from your mouth.

In Gil’s experience, the parasite was one of the stronger consumable bindings available because it usually came in the form of a small autonomous creature capable of hunting down and capturing most people beneath a fairly generous power threshold. Even the weakest parasite “units” could pretty reliably capture anyone in his current retinue with almost no chance of failure.

Despite that, he was most excited about the Platinum Card, one line into its description.

Platinum Card

Green Eye

Allows you to detect all items and services a business offers, from off-menu items at a diner to the laundromat manager’s willingness to kill for money. In addition, this item grants you one credit for every 10 standard credits you spend on upgrades, which can only be spent at external marketplaces. Current value: 5 credits

The primary benefit was niche, but alright. However, it was the Green Eye tag that made it a real treasure. Because the item’s secondary effect relied on an external marketplace existing, probably some kind of loyalty program attached to the intended final product, Gil would probably be given access to his old master’s meeting space as a substitute. That was uniquely valuable to someone like Gil, especially in his current test. He had friends, a lot of them, some of which were only testers because he’d paid for them to get the job, and they were scattered across an uncountable number of worlds.

Right now, Gil had access to five settings. Each of them had their own quirks, as well as their own resources he could harvest. Stuff like the healing leaves. When he went to market, he’d have indirect access to every world that anyone in his old master’s marketplace was in the process of testing.

Sure, only a vanishingly small minority got their hands on green eye orbs, but… well, enough did. Gil’s old master had taken tens of millions of people with him when he finished his first test, and while more than half had retired or been demoted in the several hundred Company Standard years since then, anyone they’d promoted in the meantime had also been connected to his meeting space.

One of Gil’s GMs had once told him it was one of the largest meeting spaces in The Company, and frequently used for cockamamie experiments and studies related to how external items might alter a gameplay experience for good or ill. That gave the Bazaar a certain level of legitimacy as long as one kept up to date and followed any new rules. Some GMs heavily restricted trading, but in that case they usually didn’t allow Green Eye items in the first place.

All told? It was one hell of a haul. Even better, he could explain the card without much trouble. That was useful, because all of his girls were very concerned when he broke into hysterical laughter for no clear reason.

“It’s a portal making device from your organization, then?” Keilnei asked, examining the silver rectangle. “Why send it now? Are they concerned about the success of your mission?”

“I doubt it.” Gil said, grinning. “I just got lucky and they had one available to send, I imagine. I’m not doing anything particularly important in the scope of the multiverse. No offense intended.”

“None taken, I suppose.” Keilnei said, checking the fires again. “So, what do you intend to do with it?”

“It’ll come down to who I find and what’s available.” Gil said. “Hey, Snow, could you help lay out all our possessions? I want to see what I have to offer.

••••••••••

Several hours later, Gil finished sorting his items. He didn’t intend to sell off any of his limited Company Sponsored items lightly, and the Parasite was right out; he wouldn’t be able to reproduce them until he had used this first one if the Beastmaster Sphere was anything to go by.

That meant he had a backpack full of spare clothes, hand tools like knives and axes, a couple swords, a few uncured hides, and an extra suit of Elven armor sized for his own frame. If he was very lucky, he would be able to find someone interested in buying a tired old wolf. Plenty of people would be able to turn back the clock in one way or another; hell, Gil himself could have turned Terra the Wolf into a perfectly healthy high school girl. He still might, if someone made a particularly good offer.

5 credits could plausibly carry him a long way, since they tended to be useful to basically anyone in any test. Even if someone didn’t have a shop, credits were the closest thing to a universally accepted currency among testers while they were working. He could only trade what he had on his person and things (or people) registered as his property with The Company, so he was bringing basically everything that wasn’t a necessity. He even had Snow cook up a few lean cuts of meat, just in case someone was willing to give him something good for dinner.

“Alright, everyone.” Gil said the next morning. “I’m not certain what I’ll come back with, but I’ll probably want to try for the dungeon later today. Don’t let me forget.”

“What do we do while you’re gone?” Candress asked, ignoring the fact that she was the only one who needed to ask. The others clearly had their own tasks.

“Don’t worry about that.” Gil said. “Typically Green Eye Orbs stop time while in use. You won’t even notice the time passing.”

Gil looked down at his tablet and navigated through the new menu. He selected The Bazaar, largely ignoring the dozen other meeting spaces he had access to; most of those had populations that rarely crept above single digits. The Bazaar had several hundred people present at that exact moment, and Gil had seen the population reach nearly five digits on one occasion. A wedding, actually.

He was pleased to see that he was allowed to bring along one member of his retinue. He’d been planning on Candress, who would take it in stride, until he saw that he could choose who to bring from off of a menu. Everyone in his retinue was listed.

“Good news, Rose.” He said with a smile, “I’m taking you home to meet the family.”

He selected Rosevalda Durst/Flechette from the menu, and pressed the button to initialize.