14.1. Selling and Trading

“Huuu…” Faust exhaled, seeing the Clear Mirror Sect come into view, finally letting the tension drain from his shoulders.

The afternoon sun shone bright yellows across the mountains, warming up Faust’s clothes pleasantly like a soft blanket. A far cry from the dull gray skies of Dark Petal Valley.

Faust bemoaned that it had taken a near two week round trip since it took so long to harvest the flood dragon’s corpse and transport everything. He sighed deeply.

If only the flood dragon had just been less than half transformed like they initially thought, they wouldn’t have been even a fraction as thorough with the corpse. The sect merit they could earn in that time would have outweighed any gains of selling a better than average serpent corpse.

“Hehe…” Sirius giggled.

“What’s so funny?” Faust asked lightheartedly.

“This team worked well.” Sirius answered, beaming proudly and turning her nose to the heavens at her decision.

“Indeed!” Satheon added jovially, “While body tempering is the only true way to strength. I see the versatility in spellcraft!”

Faust raised his eye at that, but didn’t comment. Satheon was a well known body tempering crazed fool. Nothing to do about it.

“Sorry. I wasn’t helpful.” Phalecia apologised for at least the third time.

“We told you already. This time it was just out of your league. With more experience, you’ll get better.” Faust assured her calmly.

“Yeah! Just don’t say no next time!” Sirius chimed in.

Phalecia’s face still looked blank, so Faust couldn’t tell what emotion she was feeling, but seeing how her shoulders weren’t tense and she wasn’t averting her gaze, he guessed she was feeling alright.

The group came in front of the mission hall.

People were already gathering around, passing through the markets on Diamond mountain, catching sight of them and stopping to stare at their group.

Bang!

The shoddy wooden platform of dragon bones landed in the open space in front of the mission hall.

Hushed whispers and murmurs started all around.

“Huh? I expected someone would have recognised these by now?” Sirius tilted her head.

“Wait for it.” Faust said enigmatically.

“DRAGON BONES!” Someone shouted.

The crowd erupted. Not in cheers but in whats and impossibles.

Faust and the group landed in front of the bones, walking forward into the mission hall under everyone’s fervent gazes of admiration.

As they entered the relatively more calm mission hall, Faust had to fight to keep his expression neutral. This is what he had been missing. This was what he was aiming for when he painstakingly polished his foundation, spending almost 15 years planning and working to make himself into a prodigy.

Seeing the group approach, one of the deacons, a middle aged man with a thick brown beard, snapped up to position from leaning lazily against the counter.

“Hey you!” Sirius immediately ran up to the counter with the mission slip. “Your information was terrible! We almost died!” She complained, slamming her hands against the table and pulling herself up to make herself seem taller, glowering at the startled deacon.

“I see…” The deacon squeezed out after a moment, quickly recovering. “The mission hall can only be so accurate with these things.”

Sirius was about to say more but Faust picked her up by the waist and set her down on the side, sparing the deacon from any more undeserved rebukes. Misleading or incomplete information was the norm for the mission hall and not by any fault of the deacons who handled its management.

“The mission is complete. But it needs some revisions.” Faust began.

“Of course.” The deacon calmed in the face of Faust rather than the more explosive Sirius.

As the deacon turned to fetch his quill and other instruments, Faust and Sirius met eyes, she winked at him and he suppressed the slight smile on the corner of his lips.

“The original information was to find and eliminate a six hundred meter black serpent attempting to transform into a flood dragon in Dark Petal Valley.” The deacon began, “How was the mission different?” He prepared his pen.

“For starters, it wasn’t beginning to transform and was around half or more transformed into a flood dragon—” Faust was interrupted.

“Half!? HALF!” Sirius’ voice escalated as she climbed up Faust’s arm, shouting into his ear. “That thing was practically a flood dragon already! Are you blind!” She turned from Faust to the deacon. “Look outside!” She squealed. “We have the bones to prove it! That was not a partially transformed serpent! We almost died!”

Sirius’s voice was so loud and high pitched the entire mission hall turned their heads to her, rubbing their ears.

The deacon’s smile faltered as he reached one hand to try covering his ear while the other was forced to write down the details.

Faust cleared his throat, “It was also more than eight hundred meters long, late stage Open Palace equivalent—”

“EIGHT HUNDRED!!!” Sirius gaped in indignation. “IT WAS EIGHT HUNDRED AFTER WE FORCED IT TO SACRIFICE SOME OF ITS CULTIVATION!!!” A few of the newest disciples were forced to flee the hall at the grating sound of her purposely high pitched and childish voice.

Faust held back a smile as he saw the deacon shaking in raw frustration.

Now was the time for Faust to push Sirius down, cutting off her highest pitch voice.

“Sorry. It was difficult to tell in the middle of combat. We lured it into a formation and hit it with the power of a pseudo golden core level attack, after which it appeared to be around eight hundred meters long.” Faust continued.

Sirius quickly ducked out to where the dragon bones were.

“Between the four of us, while we’ve mostly healed on the way, we also lost two life saving artifacts in the fight. The black flood dragon was also already injured by a fight with an Iron Spine Crocodile…”

The deacon exhaled deeply, relaxing under Faust’s calm and steady voice as he wrote.

BANG!

There were more oohs and aahs, another yell about dragons and Faust knew without turning around that Sirius had dumped the flood dragon’s skull in the middle of the mission hall.

“Does this look like a serpent to you!?!?” Sirius shouted, leaping over to the counter and splintering the wood of the counter slightly.

The deacon’s face fell even as he grumpily turned to look at the new decoration taking up the center of the hall.

“I see…” The deacon spoke, eyeing the skull and writing something down.

Faust made a show of pulling Sirius back and covering her mouth as the deacon continued writing some more down.

“After reevaluating the mission, the rewards will be increased by fifty percent.” The deacons spoke.

Faust raised a brow and let Sirius escape.

“Fifty percent! FIFTY PERCENT!” She screeched like a banshee, before launching into a loud recounting of the battle that surprisingly wasn’t that far removed from what actually happened.

Halfway through the story the deacon was rubbing his temples while trying to cover his ears. Despite Sirius’s voice, she had a storytelling bone inside of her somewhere and people moved from admiring the bones outside to crowding the mission hall as they listened to the retelling.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

While not quite getting what he and Sirius were trying to do, Satheon also began joining the recounting of the battle enthusiastically, much to the group’s benefit.

“…So I think if it’s just brought up to eighty percent then it would be closer to the sects standard metrics for mission reward versus danger.” Faust didn’t forget to prod the deacon in a calm voice.

Eventually, as Sirius’s story was reaching its climax, the deacon broke.

“FINE! FINE!”The deacon finally shouted. “Stop! Eighty percent! The sect can provide an eighty percent bonus due to the misinformation at most!” He conceded.

Faust bowed, cupping a fist in his hand. “Thank you for the generosity despite my junior sister’s antics.” He smiled, before catching Sirius and covering her mouth with a hand once again, beginning to drag her out of the mission hall.

As they walked away, Faust let Sirius go.

“Heh. It worked like a charm. They never raised it this high when I was by myself.” Sirius beamed happily, bouncing ahead.

“There needs to be a good judge to complement the bad one. Otherwise it’s just annoying.” Faust agreed. They had discovered this method of haggling with the mission hall deacons within their first year at the sect together.

Phalecia had a blank look on her face while Satheon continued the regaling of the tale even as they walked, his nose pointing through the ceiling as he laughed boisterously.

“FAUST!”

The hall went silent.

From the peripheral disciples and merchants, to the most senior outer sect disciples and even the deacons. The entire hall collectively turned their heads to the source of the voice.