A screwed Merchant

"Always watch out that everything is always listed. Freddy is a screwed businessman not always honest, but trustworthy enough to never reveal the secrets of his customers. If you have some D-Class Manastones to spare and you need a petty non-lethal revenge, check his prank-star box. It is worth every piece of stone you pay. If you share your story with him he might even help you. I heard he had done that a lot in his early days." Rocky whispered into my ear.

Freddy reappeared in front of them again. In his hand he held a floating plate that was loaded with stuff. He flicked his wrist and the plate floated over to us hovering exactly above the Manastone that Hilda put on the table.

Beside the very obvious eggs, it was loaded with stuff. Two rings were on top of the stuff. Hilda and Jasmine grabbed one each and turned to us. Hilda handed me my ring, while Jasmine handed Esy hers. It was beautiful, the ring was gold and had three stones embedded on top. The stones formed a triangle. The first one, the one pointing forward, or backward depending how you wear it, was green. The other two stones were black.

"Imprint it with a drop of blood." Hilda and Jasmine said in unison, before Hilda continued, "do the same with the gloves and the soul pendant."

Jasmine told Esy to do the same with the Spirit flow amulet. I took off the gloves and bit into my thumb until I tasted blood and the pain of the injury was registered by my brain. I let a drop of blood fall on the ring before I did the same to the gloves.

While I imprinted them Hilda handed me another trinket, a pitchblack amulet in the form of a skull. as my blood dropped on the skull its eyes illuminated in purple flames for a short moment.

Before I could even ask a question something appeared in my mind. 6 spaces appeared in my mind. Everyone who owns a spatial artifact knows what I mean. The first two spaces were empty, both had a volume of 2,5 km³ (~0.6 cubic miles). The third was filled with a small world, a big lake in a forest at the foot of a snow covered mountain. It was around 8 km³ (~1.9 cubic miles) big. The 4th and the 5th space were different. They were filled with seas of liquid mana. Not just any kind of mana but Mana of the Sun and the Moon respectively. The amount of mana swimming in this space was so unimaginably big. The spaces were small, even tiny in comparison to the first three with only about 200 m³ (7000 cubic feet). The liquid filled them up to around the halfway point. This equals around 100.000 liters of liquid mana.

The last space was filled with a blue wisp. It floated in the space like nothing, It was a soul. The soul pendent was able to capture souls, and store other undead. The point of this is that if you feed Souls to an undead they will grow stronger. They can even reach sentience.

Not that it should be necessary for me to say that, but I didn't know anything about the above at the start. Except the sizes, and the content. I had no clue that I owned a soul or that I just got massive amounts of liquid mana.

I spaced out for a second for my focus returned to the real world. I looked at Hilda who smiled at me and just said: "It's normal for you to space out the first time. I do hope you are satisfied with your trinkets."

"I am, Thank you mom!" I replied, and hugged Hilda.

"Let's sort this out." Hilda said and began to sort out the adventure starter pack.

The Adventure Starter pack was quite massive. It contained the following things: One two man tent 'Outlaw MK9' with special enchantment to increase survival in the wilderness, one sleeping bag, one hamrock, one light blanket, one wool blanket, two sets of cooking tools, a small axe for wood work. A big first aid kit with bandages and small amounts of medicine, one bottle with 10 antitoxin pills, one bottle with 10 mid-grade healing elixirs, 10 mid-grade Mana elixirs, 10 mid-grade stamina elixirs and other tinctures. A knife kit for tanning and butchering. Tools to remove horns, teeth or other useful materials from a dead beast. 14 days of rations and 4 cantines for water.

Both sets also contained a studded leather armor that was enchanted with simple boosts, nothing much really. The best enchantment was a temperature regulator. The effect controls your body temperature so you don't freeze in a blizzard and don't die of a heat stroke in a desert.

There was only one set of weapons that Hilda handed to me. It consisted of 12 throwing knives, one dagger, one spear, one shield and one simple steel sword.

Hilda handed me two eggs, the Night Falcon egg and one of the Featherfire eggs.

"Put them in the beast world. They will hatch when the time is right." Hilda told me, and Jasmine told Esy. Hilda also gave me the three books she bought for me.

After everything else was taken care of only the Sky Panther cub was missing.

Hilda looked at Freddy: "The Sky Panther cub is missing."

Freddy smiled, "No it is not." He snapped his fingers and the plate that was hovering above the manastone shone and a small sleeping kitten appeared on top of it.

The Sky Panther was basically a normal panther just that he had a pair of wings attached on his back that enabled him to fly, and he had feathers instead of fur.

"It was hidden from sight but not missing." Freddy said while his smile became bigger.

"Thorus, take the cub. I trust you to take good care of it in the future." Jasmine said to me and I picked the little one up.

"It is always a pleasure doing business with you." Freddy said after the floating plate was empty.

"I have a question. Are there manuals or something like that where I can learn how to take care of," I stopped to look at my new pet, "Is it male or female?"

"Your Sky Panther is a girl. Here are your manuals" Freddy waved his hand and produced another stack of books, 6 to be exact. These were the Manuals for Beast tamers for the beasts we just bought. One for Night Falcon, two for Featherfire, one for Sky Panther, one for a Shield Turtle and last but not least one for the Earth Shark.

"Because you caught me trying to scam you are allowed to ask one question that I have to answer truthfully." Freddy said with a smile.

"How old are you?" It was the first question that came into my mind. Only after I asked this question did I realize that I could have asked a million other questions regarding magic.

"Oh," Freddy's smile dimmed down, "The answer is a secret so make sure not to tell anybody. I am 325 Years old and I am not going to die anytime soon."

It was hard to believe that he was this old. It also opened my eyes to what a powerful mage was capable of.

With a ring on my finger, gloves on my hand and a Sky panther cub in my arms I walked out of 'Freddy's Magical Wonderland'. The others followed, Mick patted me on the back: "You are good, kid."

This morning was very eventful and the day wasn't over yet. We walked home, it was still too early to eat lunch so while everyone dispersed to work on their own stuff I started to examine the things I got more closely. First I opened the book about Sky Panther. The little girl was still sleeping so I placed her on the desk and started to read the manual.

The manual explained that a Sky Panther was a delicate thing in their youth. It also explained the common abilities they had. Sky Panther have near human-like intelligence, and are able to use magic. The most common affinity among the Sky Panther is the Storm affinity. It is a mixed affinity and consists of water, wind and lightning. They do not have all the abilities the these three affinities normally grant, just parts of them.

Other often seen affinities are Ice or Fire. Darkness is also known but so rare that they are basically unknown. Something like Earth or light are completely unheard of and the book calls them impossible to appear.

After that part I activated my magic vision and looked at the small girl in front of me. What I saw made no sense to me. I saw a sphere of purple light that changed color at the edges. I saw blue, red and green at the edges. My guess was that it was the Storm Affinity the book talked about. It would have been too awesome to receive not only super cool gloves but also an extremely unique mount.

The night Falcon was rare yes but it still needed years to hatch so it didn't count as instant gain. The Featherfire is a common beast that can be found in every environment with a lot of fire Mana. Their swarms can reach hundreds of birds in no time. They have the potential to become B-Class at best. A Sky Panther if taken care of properly can reach the S-Class or even become a Behemoth.

Beasts have a similar ranking system as the Manastones. They classify from G-Class, which are magically enhanced animals and peak as Behemoth. A Behemoth is feared everywhere. They can generally level a city without effort. To kill a Behemoth a team of S-Class Mages is necessary.

While I am at it Mages and Knights are ranked the same way just that we have no one that could fit the Behemoth level. To become a Behemoth level Mage or knight you need to prove that you can defeat one in a duel. The test is complicated and just a waste of space if I were to describe it here.