35 Emergency Chain Quest- Lucy

At this moment, Luke was on his way to the very slave market where Jacob had freed Harlem, Gard, and himself.

It was late in the evening as Luke walked towards the Slave shop named 'Forgansons'. Currently, Luke intended on interfering with the storyline.

He would save the maiden from years of suffering, in exchange for speeding up the storyline to a few days.

*Ring*

As he entered, the door-bell rang, attracting the attention of the owner, who was instructing his subordinated to prepare for closing the shop.

The owner stared at Luke's unusual appearance with a discerning eye, before stating, "Sir, we are nearing closing time. If your business isn't urgent, then coming tomorrow would allow you to experience our best service."

'Quite the nice way of indirectly telling us to get out and come back tomorrow' Luke thought inwardly as he said,

"It is urgent. I am here to retrieve a particular product of yours. She should be here by now."

"Oh!" The owner understood what this masked customer was getting at. This customer was here to buy one of his slaves, who is likely to have some connection with this customer. This meant that there would most likely be a sale.

The owner was sceptical of Luke at first, but now that he was informed of the high chance of a sale, he immediately turned into a professional sale-person.

"Welcome dear customer! How may I be of service?"

"I want to buy someone. Her name is Lucy"

"Just a moment sir."

The owner turned around and began to have a conversation with one of his subordinates, who nodded and quickly ran into the basement below the building.

While the man was bringing Lucy from the basement, the owner offered Luke a seat along with some snacks and a cup of coffee.

It was truly astounding how fast this coffee was made. Luke extended his index finger and pressed a button on the inside of the mask, which activated a mechanism, dislodging the lower half of his mask, just enough to expose his mouth and the lower part of his nose.

Putting the mask segment on the table, Luke took a sip of the coffee and remarked.

"This is pretty well made for something that was created in under a minute!"

"Haha. Dear customer, We have a special recipe which allows us to provide well brewed coffee rather quickly."

"Mind if I- Oh wait, where are my manners. You can refer to me as The Sage. And you are?"

"Forgan, Forgan Moriarty."

"Well then, Mr. Moriarty, is there a way for me to buy this recipe?"

"Naturally! It will only be 2 silver."

"A rather high price for coffee. 1 silver."

"Haha. Dear customer, you must be joking! This is the pride of our store. 1 silver 12 bronze"

…

After some haggling, Luke managed to get the recipe for 1 silver 2 bronze. He couldn't do anything about it. Even though it was detrimental to his health, the old Luke still enjoyed a plentiful 4 cups a day of coffee.

Now that he was in Ultimatum, he could indulge himself to his heart's content!

At this moment, the subordinate returned from the basement, followed by a woman just beginning to bloom in age.

"Mr. Sage, this is our latest product. Lucy, who has just lost her family and village due to an attack from unknown raiders. She is yours for a mere 60 silver!"

"Hmm? 60? Why is she this cheap?"

This stumped Luke. His current savings were 3 gold, 40 silver, which would equate to 100 silver. He had come with all his savings to buy Lucy for 100 silver, the same price he had been sold for in the first place.

However, she was now being sold for 60 silver? Ever used slaves were devalued to around 80 silver. Only the ones worked down to the bones would be sold for 60 silver!

"Haha. As you see customer, she is a discounted product because of two reasons…"

Just as Forgan was explaining the reason behind why she was this cheap, Luke noticed a sharp glint in Forgan's eyes.

It was the glint that a hunter carried when preparing for the final blow to his prey. It was a feeling Luke had felt very often when he was hunting in the woods.

Acting on impulse, he drew his pistol while condensing mana around his left hand.

Just as he began this motion, Forgan threw the table in the air, obscuring his view, with the biscuits and coffee being flung into the air.

Feeling an impending sense of danger, Luke stopped pulling out his gun and instead leap to one side while speeding up the mana condensation in his hand.

Just as his body was in mid-air from the jump, he heard two distinctly loud gunshots in close proximity to each other.

*Thump*

Both the bullets tore through the cheap table, and one imbedded itself into Luke's Left shoulder.

As the pain was about to overwhelm his sense, he finally condensed enough mana in his hand and launched it around him to form a mana barrier.

This was the most basic defence used by all magicians unrelated to their level. That was because this had a casting time of 1 second for a magician of Luke's, while all other forms of defensive spells take at least 2 seconds to cast, due to the additional step of changing the pure mana in one's body into an element.

For higher level magicians, the time would be reduced, but the time difference of double the casting time would remain.

It was also useful in all battles, since its strength depended on the mana of the user. The higher the level, the more pure the mana, and the stronger the mana barrier.

With this in place, Luke stopped moving too much and instead began to cast water magic to both remove the lead-leaking bullet, and reduce the pain he received from the wound.

In his long life, the only two times he had faces such incredible pain was in this game world! One was his own doing, while the other was from a bullet, and both were something Luke was not used to.

Such pain threatened to knock him unconscious, but he quickly removed the bullet and more or less froze his entire shoulder, reducing its movement to almost zero.

This entire process too 3 seconds from when he was hit, allowing plenty of time for the debris to settle down and for Luke to see what actually happened.

With his ears ringing, and vision blurred from the slight pain which still permeated his body, he could see the man who brought Lucy up, and another man holding revolvers. Pulling back the hammers to shoot once more.

However, this time he was not worried about it at all. Being level 24 allowed his mana barrier to hold up to most conventional fire-arms and projectiles not used by MI9.

Sweeping his gaze across the room, he could vaguely see the figure of Forgan also pulling out a gun from behind him in a panic to shoot down Luke and completely kill him, while Lucy was laying on the ground, holding her ears since the gun had fired extremely close to here.

At this moment, a system notification came up.

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Emergency Chain Quest- Lucy

Lucy Maynard has been through a lot after a fateful meeting with a nobleman. She even lost her parents and has now lost all hope in life. Rescue her from the slave shop after dealing with its owner.

Mission Objectives:

Task 1:Eliminate the threats to your life within the slave market

Task 2: Question the Slave market owner on the reason for him attacking you

Task 3: Rescue Lucy from the slave shop

Mission difficulty: E

Mission reward: 1000 exp, +10 favorability with Lucy, Random reward

Mission failure: Death of Lucy or Death of player Luke.

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