Limitless Path

Beth easily navigated down into the underpinnings of the arena section, making her way back to the shop carrying her loot. She tapped the door open with one hand while holding the sack out from her body with the other, frowning at the more than slight smell that was emanating from it. She entered the shop and walked up to the counter, setting the sack down and looking around. The shop was the same as always, and Blood had distanced herself to the far corner, certainly for no particularly smelly reason.

After just a few seconds the left door opened and Jaq walked out, starting in immediately on her before he had walked to the center of the counter. "What in the name of the Deep Dark is that? And what kind of butter knife did you lose a fight with? And what do you think you're doing, putting that on my counter?"

"That's my ticket to greatness," she said, seeing his frown deepening in response.

"It got me Leatherworking making it," she continued with a grin, watching his nostrils flare and his frown reach truly great depths.

"It's a joke," she finished somewhat lamely.

"Despite your desperate lack of humor, I could tell," he replied coolly. "Are you here just to make a mess, then?"

"Oh no, I'm here to sell. And to buy…maybe," she replied, before adding, "Oh, how's your Toxic Resistance?"

"I can assure you, nothing you have in there is dangerous to anyone here but you," he replied, the frown persisting.

Beth narrowed her eyes at him but proceeded to open her makeshift bag after a moment and start to pull the items out, beginning with the golem cores. She laid everything out in groups in reverse order that she had found it, ending with the pile of ore. Without a word, Jaq took the lion hide and threw it into an opening that appeared in the wall, the opening then immediately closing seamlessly. Beth's lips thinned at that, but she still refrained from saying anything.

"Let's start with these," Jaq said, moving to the golem cores. "Simple golem cores, I should think."

He picked one of them up, holding it up for a moment while the circuitry patterns in his eyes glowed slightly. He put it back down after a moment, his eyes returning to normal, the patterns barely discernable now. "These could be worth something, but I'll have to scan each of them. Let's go over everything else, then you could look around to decide if you want something while I scan these."

He moved down a step to the next items on the counter, the mushrooms she had gathered near the salamanders. "These are simple, very low-level mana herbs. This type is fairly common but used often. I would give you three silvers," he stepped to the next item, but Beth interrupted him.

"Three pieces of silver for thirty mushrooms! Aren't you being a little cheap?!" she exclaimed.

"Relax. I know you are poorer than anyone can imagine, but I am giving you the price per individual item," he replied with a gesture to the mushrooms.

"Oh. Never mind," Beth said in a quiet voice.

"These are actually not bad," he said with only a slight frown, picking up and glancing at one of the vine hearts. "Heart of a low-level plant monster. Good for a number of different professions in simple recipes. Six silver pieces."

He moved on to the next item, picking up the single flower colored red, taking a deep breath of the poisonous pollen. "Ah, Unwilling Slumber. This is a rather risky pickup, considering your strength. But a valuable find, nonetheless, as I would buy this for eighty silvers."

He continued down to the pile of slightly squashed flowers, picking one up to examine. "Sunsong flowers. Not a bad find, but only slightly better than the mushrooms. Four silvers," he put the flower down and moved onto the last bit, the ore.

"Low grade mana silver ore," he said, picking up a smaller piece. "Another decent find. I assume you undertook some kind of trial. With your training, I'm quite surprised to see you still alive."

He put the piece down and, just as she opened her mouth to retort, said, "I'll give you ten silvers per kilogram, as you measure it, for this. You have about forty kilograms here, so that is four golds for the silver. All told, before I analyze the golem cores, I will pay seven golds and seventy silvers for the rest."

Beth's mouth snapped closed with an audible clicking sound. Nearly eight GOLD! And that's not even all of it! She just barely resisted the urge to jump in the air and scream, but she still had a huge grin on her face and a manic gleam in her eye. She tried to get herself back under control but found she was bouncing on her toes, and she had to take a few deep breaths to calm down. She refocused on Jaq only to find he had walked to the far-right side of the counter. He gestured to her and then to the thing next to him.

"I imagine you thought this a display rack?" he asked calmly, pressing a small button. A platform unfolded on the ground in front of the machine, about four feet to a side, and the side of the machine folded out to reveal a number of arms and armatures.

"This is a scanning machine that can take a somewhat simple but perfectly serviceable scan of your body. I can better match armor and equipment to you with this, and it will stay with your CRA file, being updated whenever you request a new scan. Please step on the platform and hold out your arms," he continued.

She stepped on the platforms and held her arms out in the classic T-pose before giggling. "Yes?" Jaq asked with a single perfectly arched brow.

"It's just standing in T-pose. It's like a joke, because games and 3D animated stuff online sometimes break and have characters just doing a T-pose. It became, like, a big meme and stuff," she explained, flushing a little at having to explain the T-pose jokes to someone so serious and powerful.

"Yes, early programmatic bases using that as a simple default pose to work around. It can lead to some interesting and amusing errors," he responded.

"I'm sure it can," Beth replied, deadpan.

"Despite what you may think, I do actually laugh. Just not at you. I don't believe in punching down."

"You're not Baelvyr, you're punching level," she replied in a clipped tone.

"I thank all the stars every day that I'm not, and I assure you I am not," he replied, causing her to furrow her brow quite deeply for a moment as she thought about it. "But enough, your scan is done, you may stop asserting your superiority over the platform now."

"Did…Did you just make an asserting dominance joke?" Beth asked with her mouth hanging open slightly.

Jaq had walked away and pulled a number of things out of another slot on the wall that opened, saying as he worked quickly and fastidiously, "I haven't the faintest idea what you mean." Before she could respond he continued, "Now come over here and try these on while I exam these cores."

Beth moved back to the front of the counter and saw that he had laid out three sets of clothing for her. They were made of a thick but soft fabric, colored in black, with a thin copper stripe running up the left side of the shirts so that it would cross overtop her left breast and end mid-shoulder. She took her gloves and boots off and set them on the end of the counter before literally pulling the remains of her jeans and shirt off with slight tugs.

While her bra had a small cut on it, and was also rather too tight, she was just now noticing, her underwear overall had survived the deal somehow almost fully intact. She didn't really mind so much stripping down to her underwear, having never really seen much difference between that and a bikini, at least with the style she wore, but she did turn a slight bit red. She glanced over, but Jaq was fully absorbed in the golem cores, eyes glowing a little brighter as he did an initial sort of them on the table.

She quickly grabbed a set of the pants and pulled them over her legs. While the material was thick, it was extraordinarily comfortable, far more so than any pants she had ever worn. She stood for a full five seconds just gaping down at the pants on her legs before waking herself with a shake. The fit was also perfect, the pants clinging tightly to her from waist to ankle. She was a little bit embarrassed by just how much they accentuated her sculpted legs and now somewhat larger butt, both thanks to her stat gains. However, she couldn't really deny that a part of her was also a little pleased with the effect. Even more so, she couldn't wait for Sabs to get a load of her in them, a thought she very quickly dismissed with another brisk shake.

Having put on the pants she looked through the three piles a little more carefully, surprised to find that they were, in fact, complete sets of clothes. She had thought them just shirts and pants, but there were also three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear, and even three bras very similar to a sports bra. She turned so her back was to Jaq and quickly shucked her damaged bra and pulled on one of the new ones. She was again stunned, the bra being extremely comfortable everywhere, with a perfect fit. She also felt like it provided a perfect level of support for her growing breasts, keeping them contained perfectly while still actually looking nice.

She grabbed the shirt from the dwindling first pile and pulled it on, getting a little peeved at being stunned for the third time in practically as many seconds. The shirt was long-sleeved, but seemed very cool and breathable, while it hugged her form quite well. She wished she had a mirror to examine herself, and as if he was reading her thoughts, Jaq sighed while still examining a golem core and pointed at the measuring stand, saying, "Reflect."

The stand changed slightly again, and now the entire back part had become a full-length mirror. She quickly stepped over onto the platform and looked at herself in the mirror. She could see her own eyes widen as she observed herself. She couldn't help but think that she actually looked kinda good, the first time she had thought that way in years, at minimum.

The effect of the deep black clothing, with the copper stripe giving a good accent, combining with her midnight black hair and dark green eyes, made her look rather sharp. She admired herself for a moment more before she noticed that she had started tapping her chin, getting a little too absorbed. She quickly stopped and hopped down, grabbing the pair of socks from under the panties and throwing them on. She would try the underwear on at a later time, excited to see how good they fit and felt.

She walked over to Jaq, who had sorted the cores into a rough pile and was picking them up from there, inspecting them, and putting them into rows. She guessed he was grouping them by some kind of value system, but she couldn't see any difference between the different rows he was placing the examined stones in. Blood was sitting in rapt attention now, watching what Jaq was doing with a slightly cocked head, one ear bent to the side.

"Put your boots back on and throw away those scraps," Jaq said calmly while continuing his sorting.

Beth moved over and chucked her boots on the ground, stomping her feet into the armored leather equipment to secure them. She then picked up the tattered remnants of her clothes and moved through a gap in the counter to the opening that Jaq had used earlier and tossed the rags in. The opening closed quickly, and she moved back around to the front of the counter, grabbing the rest of the clothes and her gloves and putting them in a pile next to her sword on the counter.

"How much for the clothes?" she asked Jaq.

"Hm? Oh, just give me half a silver and call it good," he replied, still working on the hundred cores.

Beth made fifty coppers appear on the table out of her status screen in five piles of ten, which disappeared without Beth even seeing Jaq do anything. She started wandering around the area while he finished the inspection, taking a little closer look at some of the things in the cases and racks. There were labels giving some description of the items in Universal Standard, but Beth was really wishing her Identify was able to work on objects as well. There were definitely areas where the description of the item fell short or was missing entirely, just listing a name.

She returned to the front of the main counter as Jaq was finishing with the golem cores, watching him place the last two in the top row. He had divided the cores into five rows, and he quickly counted them up before his eyes stopped glowing and he seemed to finish tabulating everything. Beth and Blood both looked at him expectantly.

"I will give you three golds for all one hundred," he said.

"So, what does that make, total? Eleven golds?" she asked with wide eyes.

"Don’t try to pull that on me; remember who the novice is here. That makes ten golds and seventy silvers," he said, eyes narrowing as the frown began creeping back onto his face.

"Alright, alright. You caught me. Ten gold and seventy silvers it is," Beth replied with a sigh.

With a short and sharp movement of his hand, Jaq made the money appear on the counter. Beth quickly waved her hand over the money, sweeping up the eighty coins in a blink. Afterwards, she asked, "What do you have by way of armor? And do you have any gloves that are more heavily armored than this?"

"I have several styles of armor that you would be able to afford now; I believe I mentioned them last time you bought from me. I'm not much on gauntlets here, I'm not a blacksmith myself, and my tech items are far out of your price range. I'll see if we have any stock of anything for someone orientated around smashing things," he replied before walking off, disappearing through the right door this time, Beth narrowing her eyes, still suspicious of where the doors actually led.