Chapter 139. Water Syndicate vs the Snack Shack
Business continued to flow freely. Potatoes flowed out, fried into delicious golden chips and fries, and gold flowed in. A few days passed. Rhys checked on the raccoon’s farm and watched as the raccoon grew the next generation of farmers, and swung out a few times to make sure the ex-criminals got to work putting their powers to good use, producing potatoes, tomatoes, and continuing to set up Rhys’s second farm. Rhys poked around in town, looking for someone selling sugar beets or sugar beet seeds, but there wasn’t much of an agriculture market in this city, as developed as it was, not to mention that most mages weren’t overly interested in agriculture, since they didn’t have to eat. He wanted to head out into the surrounding rural areas, talk to some mortals, and source himself some seeds, but with the criminals hanging over his head, he couldn’t leave the shack unattended. He was the sole Tier 3 in their arsenal, and as competent as Sable and Lira were, they weren’t Tier 3; if a Tier 3 or worse, 4, showed up, he’d be the only one who could stand a chance against them.
Sable hung out in the tunnel. Rhys always paused to exchange a few words when he passed, to make sure she didn’t get bored, but honestly? She seemed happy with her seclusion in the dark. He didn’t know what kind of monster her father was, but given Sable’s limbs and tail, he seemed likely to be some kind of bug-based monster, maybe a scorpion. Scorpions liked the dark and hiding under stones, so maybe Sable shared that proclivity. He didn’t know, but she seemed happy, so he wasn’t going to force her out of her happy place. Not when it also helped him out.
The Crimson Flare Orb wasn’t much use to him offensively, given his low affinity with fire and fire-based techniques. He offered it to the other mages, but none of them were interested. Mouse took a good look at it and finally explained that it was an orb meant to be slotted into a larger armament—basically, a mana battery for fire-elemental mana. It had high power output, as he’d seen, but took a great deal of time to get going, as he’d also seen, which meant that even though it allowed a Tier 1 mage to access Tier 2 fire spells, realistically, it couldn’t be used in combat by a single mage, since it took too long to heat up and fire… as he’d seen in Logan and Sable’s battle. As a mana battery powering some kind of city-defense level armament, it was perfectly acceptable; after all, it was the kind of weapon that could be fired at an enemy army from a hundred miles out by some grunt with little training. Still, what made it useful for long-ranged city-level conflict made it not too much use to a mage engaging in one-on-one combat, since a real Tier 2 mage could easily dispatch a Tier 1 mage faking Tier 2 with such a clumsy orb.
Looking back on it, he recalled Logan bragging about his prowess and his orb. Had it all been a bluff, meant to dissuade him and Sable from attacking? He pursed his lips. A weaker or more cowardly Tier 2 mage might’ve been scared off, but he was Tier 3, and Sable was a high-class, aggressive Tier 2 mage who didn’t hesitate to charge into any battle. It had been a poor misread of his opponents, when what he should have done was stall for time to charge up the orb… though thinking back, he’d bought himself some time chatting with Sable, hadn’t he? Ultimately, Rhys had to concede that Logan had played his orb perfectly. Logan’s real mistake was that he was using trashy tactics against opponents who were even trashier, who weren’t playing mind games or three-dimensional chess, but instead the simplest, trashiest game of all—raw might.
At the end of the day, they’d won, Logan had lost, and now he had an orb of fire no one wanted, that he had to figure out how to utilize. With no better use for the orb, he chucked it under one of his oil pots… where it became a convenient, easily configurable, and highly regular source of heat, so he immediately put one of the more enchanting and engineering-inclined mages to work manufacturing a series of heat coils to distribute the heat from the orb evenly across all the vats that required heat. It was nice to not have to run around searching for fuel or powering the fire with his own mana, too, so that was an added bonus.
He was standing in the kitchen, chopping potatoes for chips, when an urgent pulse of mana rushed to him from Sable’s location. Rhys dropped his knife and ran, and Lira, who’d been appraised of the situation, chased after him. They were still using a stand out front instead of inviting guests in to the store, due to the furniture’s run-down nature and the potential of criminal incursions, so there was no one to worry about when he ripped open the trap door and dropped into the tunnel. Lira followed after him, splashing down in a self-made puddle. They ran along the tunnel, toward Sable’s mana pulse. The sounds of fierce battle echoed along the tunnel the second they stepped inside, growing louder with every passing second.
Around a turn, and the fight came into view. Sable clashed with a group of battle-scarred men. The majority of them were Tier 1 or so, but hanging in the back, one of the men emanated a powerful Tier 2 aura, at the upper limits of the Tier, if not on the verge of breaking into Tier 3. There was a bored expression on his face, but as Rhys and Lira appeared, his expression brightened. Over Sable and the underlings’ battle, he pointed at the two of them… no, at Rhys. “Finally, a warrior worthy of my intervention. Lloyd Waters, at your service!”
“I think Sable’s worthy enough of your intervention,” Rhys countered.
“Someone so easily bogged down by my underlings isn’t worthy of my blade. I take it you’re the one who killed my younger brother?”
Rhys blinked. Logan Waters had been in his forties, easily, with the receding hairline and pot belly to match. Lloyd, on the other hand, looked in his mid, maybe early thirties, not quite youthful but with the strength and vigor of a man in his prime. Between the two of them, he would’ve called Lloyd the younger and Logan the elder… but that was using mortal logic, not mage logic. Lloyd appearing younger just meant the man was more skilled, and able to freeze his age younger.