Chapter 557 - Opportunity (Patreon)

Tucker staggered down the street, lifting a jug of rum to his lips and taking a long swig.  The taste wasn’t anything spectacular, though it wasn’t terrible, either.  Still, it did the job, which was all he could ask for.  As he lowered the jug to his side, it slipped from his fingers, shattering against the flagstones. 

“Damn,” he muttered, kicking the shards of glass with his boot.  Then, he looked back the way he’d come.  Mariskal wasn’t nearly as large as Westport, but it still played host to hundreds of thousands of people.  Most were civilians who’d settled in the coastal city because its proximity to the sea offered them a wide variety of opportunities.  However, there were plenty who’d come to Mariskal for the same reason that brought Tucker to the city.  It wasn’t entirely lawless, but the authorities didn’t seem to care much about piracy, smuggling, or other activities that, in another city, would have seen them thrown deep into a dungeon. 

For his part, Tucker and his – or rather Iris’ – crew had come to see the city as their base of operations.  It had everything they needed, including a robust air dock where their ship had been moored.  In addition, it played host to all the infrastructure they needed to move their pilfered goods and plenty of opportunities for Tucker to purchase the necessary ingredients to advance his craft. 

Because as much as he liked being a pirate – and he very much loved it – he hadn’t left his true passion behind.  Piracy – or privateering, as Iris called it – was only a means to finance his experiments in alchemy.  Sure, he could have simply sold his concoctions and made a decent living, but that was a slow rolling means of progression.  Piracy afforded him the opportunity to work with the best ingredients without worrying about failures.  In turn, that let him push forward at an unprecedented pace. 

Often, he thought of it in similar terms to how he remembered working for Micayne, though without the monstrousness inherent in being enslaved to a necromancer of questionable sanity.  Back then, he’d been given everything he needed to progress, and he’d used that to push himself harder than ever could have alone.  Without that opportunity, he never could have survived the events since.  Of course, if he hadn’t been there when Zeke and Abby came along, he probably would have ended up like everyone else in the Radiant Isles. 

He shivered at the thought. 

He would have fought, and with as much fury as he could muster.  However, he knew the scope of the threat Micayne represented, and after the undead started infecting the wildlife, the writing had been on the wall.  No one would survive, he was certain.  Escape had been the only option, though he’d never really had the opportunity to choose.  By the time he escaped the demon realm, the choice had been made for him.

Regardless, everything had worked out well enough, even if there had been a few bumps in the road.  At present, he was part of a thriving operation, he’d progressed much more quickly than he thought possible, and he’d even set the Kirrans on the path to curing their curse.  It would still be generations before they completely recovered, but even now, they’d begun to show positive signs. 

And most of all, he was in love – which was a state he never thought he’d find himself in again.  Iris was far from perfect, but she filled a hole in his life that he hadn’t even realized was there. 

For now, though, he was on a mission, and if he could trust his senses – and he could – the plan was about to come to fruition.  There were six people closing in on him.  Two from behind, two in front, and one from either side.  Currently, they were hidden in dark alleys on either side of the street, but he knew they were ther.

Mostly because they were expected.

That was the whole point of his farcically obvious drunken stupor, after all. 

He stumbled dramatically, whistling a lively tune as if he hadn’t a care in the world.  Meanwhile, he kept his blunderbuss a thought away.  It was classified as an alchemical instrument, so he had no issues storing it away via [Alchemist’s Constitution].  The storage space associated with that skill had grown truly enormous, so it was large enough to accommodate his preferred weapon as well as thousands of the glass globes full of potions that he used as ammunition.  There were larger spheres in there as well – some as big as a basketball and sloshing with volatile concoctions – that he could use as bombs and grenades. 

In this instance, he would only need his blunderbuss, though.  The necessity of even that weapon was in question because he was far from alone.  Gira and Athis were somewhere on the roofs above the street, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.  Meanwhile, Iris and the rest of her crew were only a block or so away, and Tucker knew from experience how viciously they could respond to a perceived threat.  The ship’s healer had even shown up.

So Tucker’s safety was all but assured.

Still, he didn’t exactly enjoy being bait.  There weren’t many other options, of course.  Of the entire crew, he was the only one important and reckless enough to be targeted.  Iris and Gira had well-earned reputations for stubbornness, and anyone who expected to get any information out of either of those women would have another thing coming.  Athis was seen as pure muscle – an accurate assessment, if Tucker was honest – and the rest of the crew didn’t have any actionable intelligence.

That left Tucker.

He stumbled again, but this time, it was more than just an act.  He’d sensed – via his Trajectory Path, which had progressed to E-Grade – an oncoming projectile.  A dart, if he could trust his senses.  Probably loaded with some sort of tranquilizer.  That was stupid, given that he was an alchemist by trade, which meant that he was functionally immune to most toxins.  Still, he didn’t want a dart in the neck, so he’d conjured a slight stumble to remove himself from its path.

It worked, and the dart thudded into the wall of a nearby building.  The metal tip clattered against the stone before it fell to the ground. 

As his tricorn hat tumbled to the ground, Tucker drunkenly mumbled, “Wha…”

Then, the would-be assailants stepped out of the shadows.  “Stop right there,” commanded one in the front.  He was too tall to be human, though with his hood pulled up, Tucker couldn’t place the man’s species.

Tucker looked up as if he didn’t quite understand what was going on.  “You talkin’ at me?” he slurred.  “Hold on…”

Then, he bent down and picked up his hat.  “There we go,” he said, dusting it off and settling back into place on his head.  After that, he narrowed his eyes and said, “You look scary, all dressed in black.  You’re not robbing me, are you?  I don’t have anything on me.  Somebody stole my gem pouch a few –”

“Take him,” the leader spat. 

The bandits rushed him, which was a huge mistake.

Tucker wheeled on the two coming from behind, summoning his blunderbuss along the way.  He fired from the hip, hitting one directly in the chest.  The globe exploded, bathing the pair in sticky brown goo.  The moment it was exposed to the air, it started to dry.  Turning from brown to white, it solidified before they could take another step, gluing their feet to the ground.  Predictably, their momentum kept pushing them forward, but with their feet stuck, they fell flat on their faces.  Unfortunately – for them, at least – that meant slamming their chests into more of the sticky goo, and in less than a second, they were entirely immobilized.

Tucker didn’t pay much attention to it, though.  He trusted his Glue Bomb to do what it had been designed to do. Instead, tossing a much smaller globe at the one rushing in from the left.  He dodged it – or at least that was his intention – but the Seeker Grenade was not to be outdone.  It changed direction mid-air, then slammed into the man’s face.  It exploded in a cloud of red gas that Tucker knew from experience would knock him out entirely. 

When Tucker turned to the next foe, he saw that Athis had leaped down from the roof and wrapped his great, scaly arms around the fellow’s shoulders.  The sound of cracking bone filled the air.

And screams of pain, but Tucker ignored those.

Instead, he focused on the next targets.  The leader and another bandit stood rooted in place, obviously shocked at how quickly their ambush had been foiled.  They stared at Tucker for a long moment, which was probably why they never saw Iris and Gira approaching from behind. 

For his part, Tucker had taken great pains to only use humane means of detainment.  Aside from knocking his opponent unconscious – and a headache that would come when the man awoke – the gas would have no ill effects.  And the glue would become inert under the application of the appropriate solvent.  So there was no lasting harm done.

Iris was clearly not as restrained.

Her rapier lashed out.  It was not a weapon meant for slashing, but it had an edge nonetheless.  And Iris knew precisely how to use it.  The blade cut through the leader’s hamstring, severing the muscles of both legs.  He tried to use some sort of skill, but Gira slapped her hand against his back, releasing a wave of mana that Tucker knew would disrupt any skills. 

The man clearly hadn’t expected that, and he flopped to the ground a second later.  His companion ended up with a dagger buried in the base of his skull, and he was dead before he hit the ground.  Even as blood pooled beneath the two, Tucker shook his head and said, “I thought we agreed not to kill them.”

“We only killed one,” Iris said.  “That’s a good ratio.”

“I think we have different ideas about what an acceptable rate of collateral damage is,” Tucker said.

“Did you forget what these people had planned?  You saw the torture room they had prepared for you,” Iris pointed out.  “You heard the same thing I did.  They were going to cut off your –”

“I know what that other idiot said,” he interrupted, referring to the man they’d caught the day before.  He’d spilled the beans about the planned attack – and the torture they had in store for Tucker.  As a result, Tucker had agreed to play the role of bait so they could coax their enemies out of the shadows.  It had worked, though they still had a long way to go before they were done.  “Help me with the others.  We need to get them out of sight before the guards -”

Just then, an extremely loud crack echoed down the street.  Tucker didn’t even look at Athis before he shook his head, let out an exasperated sigh, and said, “Please tell me you didn’t just break his spine.”

“Uh…I didn’t?” the giant Kirran replied.

Then, Tucker heard a body fall to the street.  “I feel like I’m dealing with children,” he mumbled. “Deadly, psychopathic children.”

“What?” asked Athis when Tucker finally looked his way.  Just as he’d expected, the man had been crushed and had fallen to the Kirran’s feet.

“Nothing.  Just…nothing.”

After that, they did just as Tucker had asked, gathering the living prisoners and transporting them to a predetermined location.  Along the way, they had to gag the leader to keep him from crying out and bringing too much attention to the situation, but other than that, they had no issue moving everyone to the warehouse Iris had rented for their use.  In one section, there were hundreds of crates containing mundane goods they’d liberated from their original owners, but a much smaller pile of boxes held potent natural treasures Tucker used for his experiments.

They separated the four prisoners, putting them in different rooms so they could question them independently.  Then, Tucker fed the leader a potion – forcibly – that stopped his bleeding.  After that, he planted the tall man – who was some sort of half-ogre – in a chair.  Of course, his hands and feet were bound, and they’d fitted him with a powerful suppression collar that was normally used on slaves.

“Alright.  Spill it.  Who sent you?” Tucker asked.  Iris stood behind him, digging at her fingernails with a small bladed dagger. 

“I’m not telling you anything.  If you expect –”

Iris hucked her dagger at him, burying the thing in his shoulder.  There was a nerve there, so Tucker knew just how painful such a wound could be.  Of course, if there was any doubt, the man’s scream would have told him enough.

“Oh, calm down.  It’s not even a lethal wound,” Iris said with a roll of her eyes. 

“You crazy bitch!”

“Now, don’t go talking to her like that.  I’m a pretty reasonable man, but the second you start treating my girlfriend with –”

“Wait – am I your girlfriend?” Iris asked.

“Uh…yes?”

“That’s the first time you’ve called me that,” she said with a small smile.  “It feels nice.”

It definitely did, but as pleasant as that little exchange was, Tucker needed to maintain his tough-as-nails demeanor.  So, he went on, “Anyway.  I wanted to talk to you about a potion I just made.  You know I’m an alchemist, right?”

The man nodded.

“Good.  I’m pretty decent at it, too.  Anyway, I made this potion,” he said, summoning a vial to hand.  It contained a blue liquid.  “One part chimera venom.  One part stinging kelp from the Barrow Sea.  A quarter portion of great canid saliva.  And just a pinch of noxiric fungus.  All suspended in a solution of liquid mana.  I call it an Agony potion.  I’ll give you one guess as to what it does.”  Tucker waited for the man to make that guess, but he said nothing.  “Oh, I’ll just tell you then.  Imagine the worst pain you’ve ever experienced.  This is worse.  I’m told that even demonkin can’t handle it.  But the fun part is that it doesn’t actually do any damage.  Nor does it stop unless the antidote is administered.  And I’m the only person who knows how to make that antidote.  So, if I pour this down your throat, you can expect to remain in agony until the day you die.  Or until you tell me what I want to know.  So, I’m going to ask you one more time before we get serious about this – who sent you?  And why?”

“The Imperium!” he half-shouted.  “They’ve put out a bounty on pirates, and they’re looking for natural treasures in bulk.  You satisfy both.  We were going to take your ship and your cargo and take it back to Larapole.”

“The Imperium?  Why would they have a bounty on pirates?” asked Iris.

“They’re at war.”

“They’re always at war.”

“Not like this.  There’s a horde of monsters that routed one of their armies.  So, they’re building up their forces, and they’re doing everything they can to advance their most powerful fighters.  I don’t know how the treasures fit into that, but that’s why they want them.  As to the pirates…well, they can’t let threats to their supply lines continue,” the man babbled. 

“Hmm.  Interesting.”

After that, the man’s information petered out, but to his credit, the interrogation of the other people in his group of bandits corroborated his statements.  So, Tucker believed him. 

Afterwards, he sat across from Iris and asked, “So, what does this mean for us?”

She grinned.  “Opportunity.  That’s what it means.”

“I like the way you think.”