Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 9: Double Greed (Patreon)

The morning kicked off with a pile of messages. Dozens of people I was on decent terms with had decided to congratulate me.

Nearly all my senior disciples, my friends, the guys from the first-year mutual aid club, frequent sparring partners and arena opponents.

Some, like Gunther and Dubois, I remembered well; others, like Okoro, not so much; and a few names had slipped my memory entirely.

Who the hell were Rhodes or Paxton? And there was a good half of them like that.

Thankfully, last night's dinner, Aoran's drink, and Novak's meat had kicked my recovery process into overdrive, so I woke up feeling sharp, with an overfilled reserve and plenty of strength to digest whatever the new day had cooked up for me.

Judging by the personal messages, news, and forums, it had cooked up a fair bit. The web was already buzzing about how the ‘First Sixth's student’ had done the impossible. Novak's name kept popping up, Aoran got mentioned plenty too, and people were debating whether anyone would compensate the cadets who'd suffered because of me.

My own name came up as well. People were digging up my tournaments from four years back and speculating about where I'd vanished to for over three years.

Still, I noticed a difference. My name showed up far more on the school forum than on the official news channels, where the master got mentioned more, and even then not by name but by his title, First Sixth.

That looked suspiciously like an attempt to soften the media hit by shifting it away from specific names and onto faceless titles.

No idea whether it would help, but I personally replied to everyone who'd written to me personally.

For strangers, the usual polite copy-paste. For acquaintances, I spiced it up with a few genuine words. But a proper, full reply I saved only for friends. Especially the ones who'd invited me back to Marco's, this time no games, on my tab.

Except Rene.

That bastard, right after his congratulations, invited me to swing by the training hall and bring him the preparations I'd used for the breakthrough.

I called him instead of texting back.

"How's our hero feeling?" he practically sang instead of a greeting, sounding as pleased with himself as if he'd been the one to guess the aura's composition.

"I can see straight through your rotten plan!" I declared. "And I'm not setting one foot in your hall for the next six months!"

The pause on his end lasted just long enough for me to know I'd hit the mark exactly.

"Oh, come on, what are you even saying…" he tried.

"You've already got something set up! Like when I won the monthly tournament, red carpet with first-years lining both sides ready to shower me with flower petals."

"You wound me with your suspicions," Rene said.

"I know you, Rene!

"Not one step into your hall."

"What about private sessions?" he asked.

"Have you forgotten I'm on the fourth stage now, and you're still on the third?"

"Doesn't mean I don't have anything left to teach you," he pointed out, fairly enough.

"True, but right now the value of what I could teach you is unquestionably higher!

"Tangerine, at twelve," I said. "Don't be late, and don't turn it into a show."

"I can't just abandon my students!" he lied.

"That's my only free window today," I said flatly. "After that I've got a pile of things to do and meetings straight through the evening. So either you make it by twelve and then get to brag to your whole hall that you were the first, after my master and his master, to speak with me personally after the breakthrough.

"That's decent advertising on its own, and afterwards you can even flash the preparations I'll sell you around."

"Tangerine, twelve," Rene agreed quickly. "You bring the preparations and a proper story of what happened and how you pulled it off."

"Deal. You bring the money for the preparations. The story, fine, that one's free."

I hung up and turned back to the rest of my messages.

To Bao and Zola I wrote the same thing: Marco's, thirteen hundred.

After Rene, I should have plenty of money to cover a hundred outings like that.

I spent the rest of the morning, right up to lunch, on myself, a full self-diagnostic, a thorough inventory of everything I'd brought back, and checking prices in the school shop and at the latest auction.

Rene showed up first at the Tangerine. He even allowed himself a flash of irritation when I turned up, even though it was only 12:01.

"Well, finally," he said instead of a greeting, stretching out his hands and demanding greedily. "Give!"

I sat down, pulled two sealed packets out of my pocket, and set them on the table next to the packaged filter.

"Double Greed," I said. "Both packets are powder; together they form fine, soft and sharp crystals during brewing. The soft ones are a mineral that helps slow down dispersion. The sharp ones are what'll turn your life into hell, especially once the crystals reach your kidneys.

"Without a filter," I pointed out, "I don't recommend drinking it."

Rene raised an eyebrow, picked up one packet, turned it over in his fingers.

"How much?"

"Forty-two thousand per portion, plus the filter.

"I needed fifteen. I'd recommend keeping twenty on hand."

"Eight hundred and forty thousand? You're robbing me blind!"

I pointed at the tea.

"It'll save you effort equivalent to a large crystal. And we both know the smallest one starts at two million."

"How about a discount, for an old friend?"

"How about the friend doesn't get greedy and agrees to take it at cost?" I asked. "You will tell everyone you paid eighty. Understood?"

"Understood," Rene agreed.

"The compound?"

"Two hundred and fifty thousand."

"Ouch!" he said. "That one's at cost too?"

"Yep."

"I can say five hundred."

"Doesn't matter to me. Last ampoule I've got."

"But you've got another one, the drinkable kind, and you'll want to sell that for a good price. If it comes out higher than two hundred and fifty thousand, it'll look like you chose the cheaper option for your own breakthrough. That'd be more than a little odd."

"Fair point," I agreed, with this marketing genius.

The second compound really was cheaper. And if I was going to double its price anyway…

"Say four hundred."

"One million ninety thousand, total?"

I nodded.

Rene sighed and transferred me the money.

"Now hand over the rest of the goods already!" he grumbled.

I set the ampoule on the table and dumped out the packets with the filters.

"Careful with the filters!" I reminded him. "You don't want to damage them. And order yourself a tea set made of bulletproof glass or ultra-hard ceramic. I'll send you the brewing recipe and the whole breakthrough process, but I'd recommend brewing at least one packet beforehand, just to practise."

"Deal. Now tell me what actually happened during the breakthrough. Did you really form a real aura?"

"Aoran says I formed a very well-defined proto-aura. It hasn't fully imprinted itself in me yet."

I went into detail, how I'd guessed half of it right, how I'd gotten the rest wrong, how I'd swapped sharpness for cold, and hardness for force.

"So my advice about how I see you didn't help you all that much?"

"Well, actually, thinking about it, that was exactly the part I got wrong on the first attempt. If you put together what you said, plus Bao, Zola, and Kate, something along those lines is basically what came out.

"Not exact, none of you said I was cool and dangerous, but it was close.

"Want me to tell you what I think of you?"

Rene leaned back and thought it over.

"No," he said, after a few seconds. "If this is about self-knowledge, then I want to actually know myself, not guess based on other people's words."

"Ouch!" I said, feigning offence, hand pressed to my chest.

"You'll survive," he waved me off and stood up. "Right, I'm off to the hall. My current lot need supervising."

"Good luck," I waved back.

We never ended up ordering anything at all. The whole conversation took ten minutes, and I still had a full fifty left before my next meeting.

I decided not to ruin my appetite and just went for a walk instead.

I got to Marco's first, as it turned out. Then Bao showed up, and we ordered drinks while waiting for Zola.

She was a good thirty minutes late. The cause was the arena patients she'd been complaining about last time.

Once she arrived, I repeated the story about forming the aura, and Zola, even though her own breakthrough was still a long way off, was the first to ask what I thought of her.

"A bitch!" I said.

"Completely off her rocker," Bao added.

"Ha-ha! A pair of shitheads!" she said, offended.

Well, I'd paid her back, so I decided to get serious after that.

"You're sharp. Pointy sharp," I clarified. "I think it should be a hot kind of sharpness."

"And the explosive force of your mental issues," Bao added. "Their volatility, and that hidden craving for love and human approval."

Damn, he actually knew Zola better than he knew me.

I nodded, agreeing with him.

"You two…" she wasn't sure whether to be offended or not.

"Shitheads?" I asked.

"Arseholes?" Bao offered instead.

"The important thing is that we genuinely mean it," I said.

"Well… fine," Zola decided to concede. "And you've got daddy issues," she jabbed back at Bao in response.

"Which doesn't define his personality at all…"

"Let me guess," Bao cut in sarcastically. "I'm a rich little shit!"

"You were, first year," I agreed. "Not any more. Now you're someone trying to become better. Someone who doesn't forget his friends, or their kindness."

Bao flushed, awkward.

He still thought of me as an honest person, so praise like that made him uncomfortable. Still, I wasn't lying or exaggerating at all. He hadn't forgotten Denis and Marlon, and had sent them internal cultivation techniques, despite the fact that life would probably never bring us back together again.

"You've grown a lot since first year!" I said.

"Not just physically," Zola clarified.

"I'm not that good a person…" he muttered, still awkward.

"Yeah," Zola said, "sometimes you're an arsehole and a shithead, but that doesn't take away from your good qualities.

"You don't think the two can exist side by side?" she asked.

"That one's more about you," I told her.

Zola waved it off.

"Chance threw us together, but you put up with me despite all my prickliness."

"Barely!" Bao joked, his face slowly returning to its natural colour.

We all fell quiet for a while, giving our full attention to the cakes and drinks.

"Can you two say the nice stuff about me one more time?" Zola asked.

"Were you even listening to us at all?" Bao asked her.

"Yep, you said I have a huge craving for love and human approval. So praise me!"

"I think you should talk to your colleagues and your boss," I said. "We're probably underselling your professionalism. You're the only one of us already on staff, after all."

"Yeah," Zola snorted. "Fat chance of getting anything out of them!" and then her face lit up. "I could ask Diana!"

Bao and I exchanged a look.

Well, maybe she'd actually pull it off this time.

Zola said her goodbyes quickly after that, and Bao and I finally compared our lists and price sheets, so we wouldn't undercut each other's deals and could redirect clients to one another when needed.

The meeting was productive, and right after it, Novak called me.

"Do you still remember how to brew Fern Bloom?"

"Barely," I admitted. "I remember it causes diarrhoea if you get it wrong."

"Exactly. Refresh your memory. We'll have a guest tomorrow, one of Aoran's colleagues. The same one who was with him at our first meeting."

"The seventh-stage urdan?"

"Yes, him."