A New Star Chapter 94 (Patreon)

"I see you’ve been busy,” I said to the knight slightly dryly. “Who is this you’ve brought?”

“We have the resources,” Lester replied with a shrug, which was exactly right. I had entrusted him with both resources and tasks, including very selectively hiring, and he was continuing to do that.

“Angela, Young Lady,” the leviat said, giving a slight bow.

“Enough of that,” I said, waving a hand. “I assume you’ve been mostly brought up to speed by Lester?”

“I understand we’re looking into a necromantic cult?” Angela asked, though she said it more as a statement.

“That’s correct,” I said, ignoring the startled and confused looks of both Francesca and Cain. “We’re also keeping our thumb on the pulse of the criminal underworld here, especially important considering we are working together with a group of smugglers ourselves.”

“Smugglers?!” Francesca exclaimed while Cain had said the same, only just with his expression alone.

“Long story,” I said, waving another dismissal. “We also need to prepare for expeditions into the Wilds, though we won’t be going up there for a little while.”

“Understood,” said Angela, not at all phased by everything I had just covered.

“Lester,” I said, nodding at the man.

He walked around and handed out initial payments and information to Francesca and Cain, while giving further payments to the other three. The twins hadn’t spoken, but they were generally taciturn by nature, perhaps because of their time since early on as infiltrators, or maybe the inverse, having been always silent and stealthy. Either way, they needed little more than a few directions and steady pay, and they performed quite well. All the information we had on the capital city gangs came through them, though Lester was working on getting somebody else to double-check their work and monitor the gangs. That person wasn’t Angela, however, as she was brought in for a combination of helping in the Wilds and working through dungeons.

Angela was young, at least by both current standards and leviat aging, but she wasn’t quite at my version of young, being around thirty years old. She had more experience than the rest of this teams, sans Lester and, depending on how one counted it, myself, of course. She was given materials and some alchemical agents to help bolster some of her affinities and was assigned to clear a few dungeons; the more materials our own people could gather, the more profit we could make. Not just that, but it wasn’t always easy finding what I needed for my alchemy at the public markets or on the black market, and I didn’t always have time to spend days chasing down every single ingredient, or simple substitute, that I would be using in my processes.

“Anything else?” I asked the twins and Angela after Lester was done.

“No,” the twins answered in sync.

“I have my assignments,” Angela said, shaking her head.

“Then you three are dismissed. Best to be discrete, as well,” I said, though I doubted I needed to remind them not to draw attention while in a Y-rankers house that a princess was currently visiting.

“Understand,” the twins said, again in unison, something that sometimes rattled people, but I found entertaining.

The three then left, all through stealthy or circumspect means, and that left me with our two new recruits and Lester. I eyed the new recruits for a moment, making Francesca shift nervously while Cain just looked a bit perplexed. To be fair to both of them, that was quite a lot that had been dumped on their heads, but we weren’t quite done yet. I specifically had plans for Francesca, though that would only take a couple hours, and then Cain was mine for at least a few days, likely longer.

“Francesca,” I said calmly, breaking the girl out of her startled reverie.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, sitting up ramrod straight. Leftover influence from the academy, in all likelihood.

“You’re going to be with me for a few hours, then you have your instructions, though you’ll need to rest after we’re done,” I said, not bothering to clarify as the girl assumed a rather confused look. “Cain.”

“Yes?” the young giant asked, giving me a slightly puzzled look.

“After I’m done with Francesca, you’re next,” I said. “And then we’ll see where we’re at, but don’t expect to have any free time any time soon. If you’ve got something utterly urgent that can’t wait, go take care of it now, or tell me if you think it’ll be more than a day to wrap up.”

“I’ve got nothing,” he said calmly. “I already told my father where I was going to be and what I was going to be doing. Well, I told him roughly what was happening; I don’t remember anything about smuggling in our last conversation.”

He had muttered the last part and I ignored it, standing up before saying, “Then you cover some more of the materials with Lester, and take one of each of the pills he gave you, though wait fifteen minutes between each. As for you,” and here I speared Francesca with my gaze, “follow me upstairs.”

“Yes,” several people answered at once, but I was already moving.

I led Francesca upstairs to a room I had prepared some time ago, though just with the basics. I had wanted a room to work out of in the capital, and the Count had cleared one of the two large storage rooms on the third floor of his small manor for me to set up as a lab. I had plenty of equipment in here, and I had prepared some more means as of yesterday, especially given the size of one of our new participants. I had not anticipated also having to work on a leviat or similar in the near future, but I was glad I had thought ahead just a little bit and gotten a rather large vessel, though it was going to be more than I needed for this first operation.

“Strip,” I commanded Francesca, who had been gawking at the lab, but now goggled at me instead.

“I’m sorry, but what?” she asked, her expression morphing several times before settling on startled indignation, or something very close to that.

“You are about to receive the very first of the benefits of joining our little elite company,” I explained patiently.

“That being getting naked?” she interjected, still in some consternation.

“That being the first of several medicinal baths that will raise your body affinity by at least one grade,” I replied tartly, gesturing at the vessel I had been pondering just a moment before, a large tub on one side of the room. “You will not want to keep on any clothes, or even any jewelry, through this process, I assure you. Not least of which because most of your clothes, even with minor enchantments, would dissolve in the bath.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” she said, eying the tub dubiously.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” I said, my voice taking on a slightly colder note. “Clothes. Off.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, blushing only slightly as she stripped to her small clothes. When she looked at me and I simply stared at her, she sighed, not getting any more flustered, to my slight surprise, and finishing stripping.

“Good. Now we fill the bath,” I said, quickly putting word to deed. “This will not be a very…pleasant experience, but it will make your significantly stronger. Repeated baths will also lead to an increased body tier, depending on what your body tier is currently at.”

“Two,” she answered, eying the tub even more dubiously as I filled it first with a light green liquid, then with a yellow liquid that fully overwrote the green color. I put in several pills that dissolved almost instantly, creating a nice, if slightly astringent, smell in the room. What was not obvious was that I had installed two narrow ventilation stacks that sucked air out of the rooms and expelled it outside the house, both of which I already had running.

“Enter the tub,” I said, throwing in the second to last pill.

“Very well,” she said, sighing again and putting on a put upon expression.

“It’s a bath, girl, not an execution,” I scolded her slightly, holding out my left arm for her. She grabbed hold of me, her grip not even noticeable, though she was exerting quite some strength; five tiers and quite a few grades, unless I missed my guess, in difference in body affinity would do that.

Francesca gasped as her first leg entered the bath, though whether from the cold of the liquids or the slight stinging, slightly pleasant sensation she was likely feeling at first, I neither knew nor particularly cared. She paused with one leg in and looked at me and, when I gave her the most deadpan expression yet, turned back to the tub immediately and continued climbing in. After the second leg, she sat in the rather large vessel and looked up at me blankly before I sighed.

“Girl, you’ve got to lay down fully. The bath won’t be nearly as effective if you’re not submerged,” I said, gesturing at the rest of the tub.

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled, wincing slightly as the medicine started to sting slightly more.

I had actually gone out of my way to do a little testing and make something that wouldn’t cause quite as much pain for this first set of baths for my new recruits, but not as much pain wasn’t no pain. I watched as the girl, a young woman, really, lay back fully, taking a deep breath before letting her head, including her face, fully dip below the liquid. She had not crossed her arms or legs, which was a good start, and also meant I didn’t need to correct her on that. I watched for another handful of seconds, the young woman staring up at me through the water before closing her eyes and starting to meditate, or just concentrating on blocking out the pain.

After a moment, I turned to other work. The longer Francesca stayed in the bath, and the longer she managed to stay submerged, the better the result would be. I also didn’t need to watch her like a hawk; my senses were more than keen enough, coupled with my affinities, that I could monitor someone in the same room without staring at them like some kind of tiger sizing up a cut of fresh meat. I had more to concoct as well, considering I was in the capital with access to its markets.

The one bad thing about being in the north all the time was it was damned hard to get things. Sure, I was right next to the Wilds, and I could jaunt off and explore whenever I wanted, but the advantages of a robust market system should go without saying. Having a wide variety of materials on-hand at all times, day in and day out, was one such advantage. I could get some things through Pietr and Robin, and often leaned on them, but it wasn’t as easy to ship materials back up north. The pipeline normally went the other way, which also meant people sometimes got suspicious of Robin; her group normally brought materials down south, the most having been done to them in refining metals into bars. They then took finished goods back north, bringing weapons, armor, enchantments, arrays, and even finished alchemical agents, to name just some of it, to sell to the guards and explorers along the border.

Robin suddenly bringing alchemical agents, including many completed pills and potions, south while buying up materials had caused waves at first. That was years ago, and things had settled down, but she was limited in a few ways in what she could get, not least of which because she was, well, a smuggler. Not that she, or a member of her crew, couldn’t go to a reputable merchant and buy things, but there were always complications in keeping their business discrete, and it could sometimes be a massive pain in the ass. I always took advantage of any chance I had in the capital to buy up tons, though not quite literally, of alchemical materials, both rare and common. There were dungeons and special instances in different parts of the country that produced certain materials at regular intervals, and the capital being the beating heart of the country’s trade network made it the place to acquire anything and everything.

There was also the dungeon beneath the capital itself, but that was a whole different beast. It was the personal property of the royal family, or some proprietary nonsense like that, and anything that they pulled out of it was considered a strategic resource. Even smugglers and black market dealers had a hard time getting their hands on any of that stuff, but that was fine, for now. The dungeon, which had at least one entrance below the royal palace, mostly produced higher grade materials, things even I wouldn’t really have much use for at the present moment, both because of my skill and because of my, and my people’s, current grades. I was just on the cusp of hitting J-grade as an alchemist, though still I-grade, and most of what came out of the secret, or not-so-secret, royal dungeon started at G- or H-grade. I could work with that stuff, but that was apparently stuff from the very first floor, and it rapidly increased from there. Much of the stuff that they pulled out of there was at least M- or N-grade, with rumors of things beyond that, and even getting one’s hands on the G-grade stuff was basically impossible.

I dismissed those thoughts, glancing over at Francesca to find her still submerged, or re-submerged, having only surfaced for a brief moment a minute before to refresh her breath. I waited another few minutes, finishing an elixir in the meantime, until the young woman sat up again, this time not going back down. Before she could ask, I strode over to her and gave her a quick exam, grabbing her wrist and checking her pulse before checking her eyes and then feeling the muscles of her back.

“You’re done,” I confirmed, washing my hands in the small sink to the side. “There is a small shower in the corner, and I would suggest you use that rather than walking naked around the Count’s house and dripping alchemical fluids while looking for the bath.”

“Right,” Francesca said, eying the shower head a bit dubiously as she fully climbed from the tub.

“Shower and dress and then send Cain up to me when you go back down,” I told her. “Oh, and you may just want to rest afterwards, but eat something first. Your body definitely needs the nutrients.”

“Needs the nutrients?” she muttered as she stepped into the shower. “Holy crap! My body affinity went up a full grade!”

“That’s just the beginning,” I replied mildly, already working on my next brew.

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