Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 13: Apologies (Patreon)

Nwosu hadn't even made it to the crystal, he'd been hit before that, during internal cultivation. Hence the haemorrhage and the headaches. Honestly, we'd both been lucky here, because damage from misusing internal cultivation techniques could've been far more serious.

His list of losses turned out modest: a pack of special aromatic sticks, a low-grade relaxation tea for before the session. He refused compensation almost sincerely, insisting Old Well was already more than enough.

I thought so too, but the audience demanded its due, the other three patients in the ward were pretending not to be interested, but catching every word. If I'd agreed with him openly, it could've been read as stinginess, so I generously doubled the amount of tea for Nwosu.

He wisely didn't refuse a valuable resource.

I caught undisguised envy in his roommates' eyes, as I was doing my own share of pretending not to be interested in them. Now they'd definitely tell everyone how this bastard had gotten lucky for nothing.

With Choudhury, things turned out more complicated.

Her case had gone all the way to a crystal. Hers had been nearly perfect, nine hundred and seventy-eight units of qi, basically a step away from mainline grade. Priced somewhere around eight million units.

To my great fortune, she'd only managed to burn through about a hundred of it before she was hit and lost control of her own core. The medics treating her had prudently resealed the crystal in time, though it wouldn't have degraded in a saturated environment anyway.

If there'd been one there. I didn't know how the aura had affected the other chambers. In mine, it had wiped it completely.

Eight hundred and eighty-one qi still left the crystal extraordinarily valuable, though it knocked roughly a million off the price, and still usable during a breakthrough, though it reduced the margin for error.

Up to the crystal, Choudhury had worked entirely through Flow, plus teas and preparations, no internal cultivation techniques whatsoever. Proper Earth old school, so to speak.

Stone Root should stabilise her core and prepare her for the next attempt. Naturally, I threw in full payment for Flow and the other teas and preparations for her next breakthrough attempt. And I covered the crystal's difference with ten portions of Double Greed, warning her the dosage would need to be cleared with a doctor first, since the tea had weaker synergy with Flow than with internal cultivation, and the last thing I wanted was for my compensation to turn into a new problem for her.

In financial terms, all told, it worked out cheaper for me than her actual losses.

The last two on the list took a bit more time.

T. Hamilton had been hit within a few minutes of entering the breakthrough chamber. He'd essentially lost only a few hours and a bit of nerve. Spending Old Well on him felt like a waste, but skimping would've looked like plain stinginess and undone all the PR work already in progress. So, Old Well, 10 portions and a brief apology settled it without complications. He seemed genuinely surprised I'd even come to apologise.

F. Moreau, though, the girl from the neighbouring chamber, was openly furious with me and ready to tear me apart, despite being physically incapable of it. She was six years older than me, and in her eyes I was a jumped-up lucky bastard. Her sense of who outranked whom was jammed by the dissonance between cultivation and age.

She gave me a hard time, but her friends were standing right there, so I couldn't shut her up by throwing my strength around.

"Do you want to shout, or do you want compensation?" I asked her plainly. "I'll compensate your losses, but I'm not sitting through a tantrum."

"You're going to compensate me for a large crystal?!" she snapped sarcastically.

Bloody hell!

"Yes," I said. "But I need the logs from the Hall of Meditation, so I know you're not lying to me."

That was a reasonable precaution, and I hadn't asked for it from the others, because they hadn't demanded a crystal from me. And they'd behaved reasonably.

Nearly every misfortune had piled up on Moreau. She herself hadn't been hurt, but she'd sunk a mountain of resources, and her crystal, 716 qi, had been drained completely dry. The medics had literally pried a syringe of breakthrough compound out of her hands. That was the exact argument I'd overheard.

So I ended up promising to buy her a new compound, cover the teas, the Flows, and the stimulant injections, coming to roughly one and a half million. And hand over my own crystal at 670 qi, market value around four million. Even that didn't close the debt, so I had to throw in Old Well and Double Greed on top.

If I didn't sell something soon, I'd have to go to Novak with my hand out.

That thoroughly killed my mood for the rest of the day.

The only thing left was to check whether any of my painfully expensive goodwill gestures had actually made anyone feel better.

I found a free bench in the greenhouse, where I'd gone to calm my nerves, but instead of admiring the plants, I ended up scrolling the school forum.

The old aura threads had racked up a few dozen new comments, a new one had appeared about Aoran treating Bergqvist, but more interesting was a thread started by one of Nwosu's roommates.

Sullivan (the aura firework) is paying off his victims.

The author had laid out, in detail, exactly what and how much I'd handed Nwosu.

The thread had already racked up a couple hundred replies, including Nwosu himself, who'd advised the author to keep his envy to himself.

The thread quickly gathered up all the information about my sources, Moreau included, whom I'd spoken to barely twenty minutes earlier.

Nobody cared about the morality of the act, but opinions in the comments were still split. People argued over whether I had any money left after all that, or whether I was simply swimming in it.

I decided, what the hell, and wrote honestly.

"Money's gone. In fact, with everything I've promised, I'm currently two million in the red.

"So I'm holding a clearance sale of goods brought over from the Federation. List, prices, and lot quantities below. Message me privately, but starting tomorrow. Today I'm too depressed about the spending."

Built up my reputation, complained a bit, and organised a sale, all in one go.

I closed the interface window without reading the rest of the pages. That was enough. Maybe not quite the effect Novak had been hoping for, but a decent one.

And to hell with this greenhouse, it was stuffy in here. I'd go home, fry up some meat, and drown myself in a bottle of bourbon, or gin without any juice.

Still, so as not to fall entirely into depression and alcoholism, I'd call Bao. Not Zola, though. I wasn't in the mood for poisonous comments. I could call Rene too, but he had individual sessions right now… best not to interrupt.

I rang Bao, and he cleared some time for me.

He showed up at my door an hour later, with a bottle of something expensive, a bag of meat, and a suspiciously cheerful expression, news of my financial disaster had apparently already reached him too.

"Get the pan out," he said. "And by the way, you're a four now, you qualify for decent quarters, and you're still living in a second-year hovel. Did you forget?"

"I did. I've been a bit busy."

"I read about it!" he laughed. "Did your aura cost you dearly?"

"Probably still cheaper than saving it up for the end of the stage," I noted philosophically. "But yeah, not cheap."

Bao took his place by the stove and started laying out cuts of meat on the board with the confidence of someone who'd done it a thousand times.

"You only ever cut salads on the farm," I recalled from the end of first year.

Denis had done the steaks back then.

"I hadn't held a kitchen knife before that," he admitted, sprinkling seasoning over the meat. "Denis taught me the basics, and it got easier from there."

Bao heated up the pan and laid down the first cut. It hissed pleasantly, with that same sound that instantly took me back three years, to a cramped barracks, to the smell of spices and laughter.

Though there'd been plenty of sharp paranoia back then too.

We stayed quiet for a while, each lost in our own memories of that year.

My bout of nostalgia was interrupted by a notification chime, the tenth offer already to buy my goods. I'd guessed right about the chat, the spot was practically perfect for advertising, but I had absolutely no desire to deal with haggling right now!

I winced, grunted, and dug into my settings to turn off notifications, jabbing my finger menacingly through the air.

"What's up?"

"I posted a price list of what I brought from the Federation on the forum, in the middle of my own sob story. Now my inbox is exploding with messages, everything from 'take it all at once at a discount' to people asking for the exact quality specs of some item and whether it's certified."

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "that's not a bad idea. I'll post something too, but not right now." He pointed at the bottle. "Open it, pour!"

What Bao had brought wasn't alcohol.

It had the same black, tar-like colour as the drink Aoran had once offered me, it settled in the chest with the same pleasant warmth, but it didn't fog up the head and had a far livelier flavour. Something on the edge of tomato juice, citrus, and grapes.

The drink went rather well with the meat Bao had brought.

We got properly loose. Me less so, him more, though it probably would've killed a first- or second-stage cultivator outright.

I'd already forgotten all my troubles. The sun was shining again on my horizon, and that was exactly the moment Rene chose to call.

"Mate!" I greeted him.

"Are you drunk?" he caught on immediately.

"No!" I protested. "It's not alcohol, some Federation relaxant."

"Right… Have you sold off all your goods from beyond the wormhole yet while under this relaxant?"

"You too? No, I turned off my inbox, and I'm not taking calls from unknown contacts!"

"Good! Very good, because you and I, mate, are running our own little auction!"

"I don't follow," I said.

"Who?" Bao asked, slurring.

"Rene," I answered, then turned back to the call. "You haven't seen what's happening on the forum. People are worked up, everyone's panicking the goods are already gone, that's why you're not answering."

"You don't want to deal with that whole crowd and pile of messages, do you?" he clarified.

"Absolutely not!" I confirmed.

"Then I'll handle the sales, for a modest 10%. I guarantee the sales will come in above your planned prices, you won't lose a thing, and you'll end up in profit besides. Deal?"

"What's the catch?" I asked.

"No catch. I'll just jack the prices up high enough that there's profit for both of us. And I'll sell everything tomorrow, in a matter of hours, literally. All you'll need to do is collect the money."

"Fine, whatever," I agreed. "Do what you want."

"Just don't go selling anything yourself while you're drunk or high or whatever that is."

"I'm not even leaving my room," I promised.

"What does he want?" Bao couldn't hold back.

"He wants to run an auction to sell off my goods."

"Who's there with you?" Rene asked.

"Bao."

"What?" Bao asked.

"No, that's Rene," I said.

"What?" Rene asked. "Right! Stay there, don't go anywhere, I'll be right over!"