Chapter 475: Setting the Terms

They walked out of the chamber past the cracked wall where the super-alpha had hit, back through the interior chambers, and finally out through the portal into the late-afternoon gold of Xiltra.

The B-rank guard at the stone portal watched them come through.

She looked at the state of them, dust-covered, sweat-tired in the way soul-bodies could still register that sensation, and quietly satisfied, and her eyebrows rose.

"You found one."

"Three cores," Bruce said.

"Three."

"Three."

She was silent for a long moment. Then she made a longer note than usual on her board.

"Ackerman," she said.

"Yes."

"You did not learn to fight in this realm."

"No."

"Where?"

Bruce considered.

"A place where the beasts were bigger and the fights were more expensive," he said. "This is not the first place I have hunted."

"That is a diplomatic answer."

"It is."

"I will not press. Good hunting today."

"Thank you, guard."

She let them pass.

The Guild senior clerk saw the three of them coming and rose from his seat behind the sale table.

He did not do this normally. The senior clerk sat at his table and processed hauls in order. He rose only when something out of the routine happened. He rose now, and gestured them to his table directly, past two other parties who were waiting in line. The two other parties did not object. They saw the senior clerk’s motion and understood that whatever was in the three E-rank hunters’ packs was worth the queue jump.

Bruce set the primary and secondary cores on the table first.

The senior clerk picked up the primary. He held it to the light. He did the same slow professional evaluation he had done with the two-core alpha’s cores, but longer this time. Much longer. He set the primary down and picked up the secondary.

Then he saw the third core.

His hand stopped in mid-motion.

He looked at the third core on the table, at Bruce, and back at the third core.

"You took a three-core alpha," he said. It was not a question.

"We did."

"On the F-rank level."

"Yes."

"At E-rank."

"Yes."

He picked up the third core very carefully. He held it in both hands. He turned it slowly in the light. He set it back down.

"I have processed three three-core alpha cores in twenty years at this table," he said. "This is the fourth. The last one was six years ago. The one before that was eleven years ago. This is rare enough that I need to grade it individually, and my grade will be checked by a senior arbiter before the price is finalized. That process takes an hour. Can you wait?"

Bruce, Kael, and Theron looked at each other.

"We can wait," Bruce said.

"Take a seat at the far table. I will bring you tea. When the grade is finalized, I will come to you."

They sat.

The senior clerk arranged for the three cores to be transferred to a small locked case that was carried away by a Guild runner toward the interior of the Guild building. He returned to the table with a small pot of tea and three small cups. He set them down. He nodded, once, at Bruce.

"You have had a very successful week," he said.

"Yes."

"Word of you will move faster now."

"I know."

"Then you already knew what you were doing when you decided to take a three-core alpha at E-rank. You are not a man who does not think about consequences."

"No."

"Good. Then I do not need to caution you." He inclined his head slightly and returned to his table to process the rest of their haul while the cores were being graded elsewhere.

Bruce, Kael, and Theron drank the tea.

"Bruce," Kael said quietly, "this is going to be a lot of points."

"Yes."

"And a lot of attention."

"Yes."

"You’re going to walk into the meeting with Caelen tomorrow, and Elenora Vessa is going to know within an hour of us leaving this table that you took a three-core alpha today. That is going to change the shape of the meeting she was already planning."

"Yes."

"Are you okay with that?"

Bruce thought about it.

He was okay with it. He was, in a certain way, pleased with it. If Elenora Vessa was going to size him up, he wanted her sizing up a hunter who had just taken a three-core alpha the day before their meeting. That set the terms. He would enter the meeting as someone whose combat capacity was known. He would enter it as someone whose party had just accomplished something rare enough that the Guild’s senior clerk had risen from his chair.

That was a good position to negotiate from, if negotiation was what the meeting produced.

"I’m okay with it," he said.

"Good."

They finished their tea.

The grade came back an hour later.

The senior clerk brought it in person to their table, along with the small locked case now containing the graded and priced cores. He set the case down and slid three soul-stone receipt slips across.

"The primary core graded at three-forty. Standard grading for a three-core alpha’s primary. The secondary graded at two-eighty. The tertiary is the rare one, it is the forming core, the third-rank core, and it graded at four hundred and eighty."

"Four hundred and eighty for one core?" Theron said.

"Four hundred and eighty. A forming core at this quality is the seed for a full E-rank creature. It is essentially the potential of a rank-up crystallized into a stone. It sells to specific buyers at a specific price. That price is set by the senior arbiter, not by me. It is what it is."

"Understood," Bruce said.

The primary, secondary, and tertiary cores together were eleven hundred points. The spine-blades and hide and meat brought the total higher. When it was all totaled and split three ways, each of them received something over six hundred points.

Soul Points: 1,801

Bruce closed his window without commenting.

Kael was looking at his own window with an expression Bruce recognized. It was the expression of a man who had suddenly become resourced in a way that mattered.

Theron was very quiet.

"Kael?" Bruce said. "Ring."

Kael looked up. "Ring?"

"The two-cubic-meter ring at the spatial storage stall. You wanted it three days ago. You can afford it now."

Kael thought for a moment.

"I can," he said. "I will."

"Theron?"

Theron shook his head. "I want to save for the second book. The stall keeper said the lecture manuscript is coming in about a week. I want to be able to buy it plus the second theory book without dipping too low. I’ll keep the small ring for now."

"Fair."

They walked to the spatial ring stall in the softening early evening. Bruce did not buy anything new. His small ring was still adequate for now, and he wanted the savings buffer for anything the meeting with Elenora might require. Kael bought the two-cubic-meter ring. He exchanged the small one for a small credit against the price of the new one. He slid the new ring onto the same finger and the same binding settled and he flexed his hand and smiled, real, quiet, satisfied. The two-cubic-meter ring was the ring he had wanted from the first day.

Theron did not buy anything. He watched Kael put on the new ring with a mild, complicated expression that Bruce read as I am also being sensible and it is slightly less fun than being not sensible.

Bruce filed the moment.

Dinner was at the old soul’s again.

They arrived a little later than usual, in the deeper blue-gold of the near-evening, and the old soul saw them come in and glanced immediately at the small closed case at Bruce’s hip, a case Bruce had bought at the market on the walk over, to carry the receipt slips and a few small extra items, and their eyes went slightly narrower.

"Something happened today."

"Three-core alpha," Bruce said quietly.

The old soul was quiet for a beat.

"Sit," they said.

They sat.

The old soul served them without asking what they wanted. Whatever came out was clearly what the old soul had decided the three of them needed to eat after a three-core alpha day. It was a dense complex dish, small portions again, the same portion pattern as the alpha flank of last night, and the essence in it was tuned for consolidation rather than growth. The old soul had understood, before Bruce sat down, that Bruce had already been fed by the day’s kills and needed help organizing the essence he had absorbed rather than adding more.

They ate slowly.

The old soul, working at the pot, did not speak for a long time. When they did, they said only, "You know what you have done."

"We know."

"Word of you will move very fast now."

"We know."

"Caelen will come tomorrow with a slightly different message than he was going to give you."

"Yes."

"Elenora will want the meeting to happen sooner than she was planning."

"Yes."

"You have set the terms of the meeting by what you did today. Whether you meant to or not."

"I meant to."

The old soul looked at Bruce for a long moment.

"Then you are a more careful player than I had realized. I underestimated you slightly. I am glad to have that correction now, rather than later."

"You did not underestimate me. You correctly estimated a version of me that had not yet reached the interior chambers. That version is not the version you are looking at."