Nero Walker, Book 2 Ch.44 (76) (Patreon)

Laying in her bed with her hands behind her head, Rose was using her link to catch up on current events. She was waiting for her check-in with her handler. Every night, she was responsible for summarizing her day, and reporting on what her target was up to. She understood why the general was interested in Lord Walker, the young man was definitely odd.

While she was watching the weekly rank matches from the arena, she received a connection request. With a start, she shot up into a sitting position. Instead of the request coming from her handler, she was receiving a ping from General Branson himself.

After taking a second to calm down, she took a seat at her desk and opened the connection. She said, “Hello Sir. Is something wrong?”

The general’s mind was calm while carrying a sense of strength, and Rose found his mental presence as intimidating as his physical one. His voice came through clearly and her palms started to sweat, as he had adopted a stern tone.

“Why do you think there is something wrong?” he asked.

“Well, I was expecting a ping from my handler. But it’s no problem. What can I do for you, sir?” she said.

The general’s amusement colored his psychic presence and he said, “I was available, and I wanted to hear more about our ‘little lord’. Anything interesting happen today?”

Rose replied, “Well, it seems you’ve already heard about his nickname. It seems to cause him some irritation, but I haven’t figured out why. He is still training extremely hard. I tried to keep an eye on him during close combat training, and I saw his bodyguard kill him at least 20 times. I still don’t understand why that is being allowed, it’s insane. Anyway, I haven’t heard anything more about the mental projection he talked about yesterday. Lord Salvatore-Verena didn’t bring it up, or he was avoiding talking about it. And as usual, Ms. Averett was only interested in training.”

“So nothing interesting. How did the training with the new recruits go?” he asked.

“It was surprising. Everyone seems to like Lord Walker. It’s like they adopted him. No one gives him a hard time, and they all tease him as if he were one of them. Although, they seemed to ignore me, Ms. Averett, and Lord Salvatore-Verena. Did you order them to get close to him? Because if you did, it’s working,” she said.

“No. I think they just like the stories that are going around about him. I think he would have seen through it if I had offered a suggestion to befriend him. He is remarkably observant,” he said.

“Yes Sir. But I have to tell you that you may be overestimating him. He is observant, but only concerning things he’s interested in. His tendency to ignore what he doesn’t want to deal with is much stronger than his observational skills,” he said.

Chuckling, the general asked, “So he is still staring at the floor while showering, huh?”

Rose smiled and responded, “Today was even worse than yesterday. One of his new friends from the recruits joined him in the shower and tried to have a conversation with him. Her name is Marie, but I didn’t catch her last name. She seemed to be trying to befriend the target. The result was rather funny. The little lord turned red from embarrassment and avoided all eye contact. He must have gotten his shower done in less than 3 minutes. He practically ran back to his room.”

The general said, “That’s so… weird. Did you figure out why he is acting like that? What did Nick say when you asked him about it?”

Rose said, “I have no idea, it doesn’t make any sense. And Lord Salvatore-Verena wasn’t any help. I asked him as ordered, and all he said was that “Nero has some odd cultural hang-ups” and I shouldn’t worry about it. Today, both he and the bodyguard laughed at the little lord’s display. The bodyguard told the recruit, Marie, that she shouldn’t be offended and should just treat his actions like a compliment. I didn’t know what she meant, but I think she meant that the little lord found the recruit attractive.”

The general’s confusion came through the connection, and he asked, “But if Lord Walker was attracted to the woman, then wouldn’t he have been staring at her, rather than at the floor.”

Rose nodded, and said, “That’s what I thought, hence my confusion. I said that I thought I understood what she was trying to say, but I didn’t say I understood why she said it.”

After a pause, the general responded, “Fair enough. Anything else to report?”

“No Sir. I’ll try and find out more about the mental projection he saw during his pillar choice tomorrow,” she said.

“Copy that. Good job so far, keep it up,” said the general, and then he cut the connection.

Rose’s shoulders slumped in relief. She hated talking to that man, he was just so damn intimidating. Standing up, she shook it off and decided to get some meditation in before bed. Sitting down in the corner of the room on a small mat, she closed her eyes and reflected on her day.

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Nero had placed all of his books and spare clothes in his personal dimension. Sitting on his bed with his eyes closed, he observed the little room next to his soul and admired his space-pocket. ‘How cool is this?!?’ he thought.

In order to pull something out of the space, he just had to focus on it, then mentally reach for it. It was like his psychic field pervaded the entire dimension. After mentally grabbing hold of an item, he could simply pull it through the wall, and a micro-portal would appear wherever he wanted. The only annoying thing was that in order to store something, he had to ‘own it’. That required him to saturate an object with his center, in order to make it his. That little detail severely limited the utility of the spell, as saturating an object took around 20 to 30 seconds of concentrated effort. The good news was, it took a day or two for his ‘ownership’ to wear off. So as long as he returned the item back to his space within that time-frame, he could keep control of whatever he wanted.

As he was playing with his personal space, he received a ping from Vera. Surprised, he closed the little mental window into his personal dimension and opened the connection.

“Hey Vera! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. How’s it going?” he asked with a smile. He had finally gotten out of the habit of speaking out loud while talking over the link.

Amusement colored her psyche as she replied, “It’s going well. But for the record, I was expecting to hear from you. We haven’t spoken since that debacle with the general. Why haven’t you pinged me to let me know how you’re doing? Or at least to check in on some of our projects?”

Nero said, “I didn’t want to bother you, and I’m at a training camp. Aren’t I supposed to be cut off from the outside world? And I’m sure you would have found a way to contact me if you needed to.”

Vera sighed and said, “Nero, why would you have to be in isolation in order to train? Never mind, I don’t care to listen to your weird theories right now. I need to ask you about our trading posts. I’ve procured a storefront near the Hunter’s Hall in gate 15. I’m stocking it with arms and armor, and I’ve set up the paperwork allowing us to purchase essence crystals. What I don’t know is what the plan is. How is this supposed to work? How are we supposed to make a ‘boat load of money’ like you said we would? The prices for essence crystals are fixed. Everyone can turn them in for the same amount. I’m assuming you have a reason for saying we had to get this set up quick.”

Nero chuckled and said, “Vera, you’re too nice a person, you know that?”

Irritation came through the link loud and clear, as she said, “I’m not typically referred to as ‘nice’. In fact, that might be the first time in recent memory that anyone has ever accused me of that particular fault.”

Nero smiled, and leaned back his back against the wall while he sat on his bed. “Got it. I won’t make such a horrible mistake again. Now listen carefully, we’re nobles. We get tax breaks, and can buy in bulk. Now we have a trading post, so we can trade goods for crystals rather than money. Stock the store with tents, travel rations, lamps, rope, and all the other little things that are cheap but people have to buy over and over again. Now in addition to us getting the weapons and armor at a discount, we can sell them for full price. We trade the goods for crystals at an inflated price, allowing the hunters to turn in their crystals to us and get their goods right away. As long as our prices aren’t too outrageous, they’ll buy from us because it’s just easier then waiting in line to turn in their crystals to get paid, then go out and haggle to try and find all the things they’ll need in the wilds. You see, we are charging a premium for the ease of a direct trade. In addition, we make even more because we can get the stuff for cheap as we are nobles. If we can manage to make our own products, we’ll make even more. But that is for later,” he said.

Vera was stunned. She did some basic math in her head, and tried to run the numbers. If they just charged a service fee of 5% for the convenience, then added the discounts to the profits, they’d be making a killing.

“Nero, that’s brilliant. You’re taking advantage of human laziness and their desire to save time by blatantly over-charging people and making them thank you for it. How the hell did you think of that?” she asked in amazement.

Nero shrugged and said, “In my old world, that was like 90% of what business was. Well, that and illegally hiding profits and paying their employees as little as possible without losing them. That touches on the production thing I just mentioned. If we find a village or something where people don’t get paid a lot, we can open up manufacturing centers out there and then just use our shipping company to collect the products after they’re made at a steep discount. We can then charge our trading company for the transport, pay ourselves, record a loss, and then pay even fewer taxes. For the trifecta, we need to establish a separate production company, that way we are always paying ourselves a loss, then all the money being made is just shunted to both you and me as the heads of the company. The company will be losing money every year, while we take home all the profits at the reduced tax rate of the nobles. If we do it right, the companies will be paying no corporate taxes and we’ll get rich.”

Vera’s psyche was vibrating with conflicting emotions as she said, “Nero… I am so proud to know you. You have never been more attractive than you are right now. I need you never to tell anyone about any of this. This is just between you and me. We’re going to own everything. I’ll be in charge of it all. You just keep coming up with ideas, I’ll handle everything. Remember, DON’T tell anyone about anything you amazing little man.” She then cut the connection.

Nero was stunned. Vera had never spoken to him like that before. In fact, he’d NEVER heard her sound so happy. It was like seeing a school principle skipping to class, or a comedian praising the human condition. It took Nero at least a full 3 minutes to process what had just happened.

Eventually, he shook it off and stood up to stretch. He still had an hour or two before he had to get to sleep. Opening his identity, he checked his progress.

Name

Nero Walker

Level

10

Race

Human

Growth

17%

Tier

1

Condition

100%

Age

14

Center

68%

Body

2

Mind

4

Soul

2

Confluence

10

Stars

0

Pillars

1 / 1

Jennings wasn’t kidding when he said that Nero’s leveling speed would slow down when he reached level 10. He’d only gotten a few points in his growth. He wondered if it would really take a week for his next level.

He opened his stat breakdown to check his daily progress.

Body

2

Base

Operative

Level Stress

Presence

11

15.4

1.6

Durability

8

11.2

9.2

Recovery

21

29.4

13.4

Speed

13

18.2

8.5

Adaptability

32

44.8

9.9

Power

8

11.2

14.2

Mind

4

Base

Operative

Level Stress

Weight

26

46.8

4.8

Control

29

52.2

9.1

Field

23

41.4

12.9

Precision

39

70.2

16.4

Endurance

46

82.8

14.1

Focus

48

86.4

10.9

Soul

2

Base

Operative

Level Stress

Size

29

40.6

0.4

Density

101

141.4

0.4

Intensity

76

106.4

0.3

Pressure

27

37.8

0.3

Harmony

24

33.6

5.3

Adaptability

270

378

0.1

If he remembered right, he gained a little across the board. Maybe a point or two? All of that hard work for a few measly points. Well, he was sure his skills had gone up a lot at least. Rather than check to see if he was right, he told himself that he was right, and then adamantly forgot about it.

Walking over to the desk, he pulled out one of the books Jennings had given him. Nero smiled at the ease of using his personal space, it made him feel like a real life mage. Sitting down, he opened up the spell book to go over the common spells that every hunter needed to know.

Having paged through the book before, Nero knew what kind of spells there were. Included in the book were spells for attaching a soul-bound tracker to an item/person/beast, and some for starting fires and cooking, even some for placing deterrent wards. The section on wards didn’t make any sense, but Nero was completely unfamiliar with the field, so he just chalked it up to something future Nero would have to deal with.

He spent the next few hours trying to master a technique which highlighted anything with a mind within his psychic field. Basically, a person had to look for disruptions in the ether. It was like looking for holes in the ambient essence. Supposedly, it would be incredibly useful for finding ambush predators that could hide their thought-signatures and emotions. Nero, however, thought it would be useful for finding people trying to kill him.

The fact that he was going to be out in the wilds, and comparatively unprotected, was not lost on him. If he were trying to kill someone like him, he’d wait for them to be outside the walls. After all, the CIA didn’t perform political assassinations on American soil, they did it when people were outside of the country, the internet was very clear on that.

Eventually, he found himself in bed, mentally going over his memories, collating and assimilating the experience he had gained throughout the day. It was getting easier to feel when he had unclaimed essence floating around waiting for him to take it into his soul-tree (which was his clever term for what he calls his growth stat). It was getting easier to slip into his soulscape and let the memories become part of him. With a smile on his face, Nero drifted off to sleep, happy with the day’s accomplishments.