The Proposal

Mr. Thirteen appeared completely calm and casual after hearing this and simply turned around to look back at his own men. Pointing out three people in the oddly large eight-person group that was exactly three people larger than Donna's group, he says, "You kids go home, tell the others to get a fifty-man team ready. The adults are going to be talking business."

Then he sent a brief glance to Donna as if encouraging the same while his 'kids' hurriedly inventoried some food from the scattered silk sheets before jogging back around the raid territory to their camp on the north side. That was some decent discipline among the ranks. I could not help but wonder who in my own team would respond like that to a travel order.

Go's build was for speed and it would probably bring him to a fight faster, so he would probably jog or run the distance. Skooma and Conansson were new and quietly worshiped the others so they would probably try to impress, but Lil and Oleander and Agnes would probably wait on a mount to show up first. Papi and Stonewall in their new heavy armor outfits simply would not be able even with wolf agility buffs.

Merch, I had no idea what he would do. He specialized his character on stealth and magic skills so I often could not keep track of him in or out of combat. For all I know he could probably already teleport there and back and then complain about it to make someone else go.

Donna simply looked to the sword king candidate who shrugged and asked, "Any of you who are are spy for Thirteen can go home for being a spy."

"That guy looks sweaty," Little Thirteen remarks with a cheerful smile, nodding his chin toward one of the guys on the end of Donna's small semicircle of seated players.

'That Guy' was actually looking around his own group from the corner of his eye and from the corner of my eye I had already seen him pocket a few small food and drink items into his character inventory while everybody was distracted with me. Now that he was being called out at all, he actually looked pretty sweaty and worried.

"Shoo," the sword king candidate simply said, waving his hand at him from the other side of Donna in the semicircle.

"He's not one of mine, I don't need one in Duality," Mr. Thirteen assures me more than Donna after both dispatched parties were well out of hearing range. "But, now that the recipe exchange is over, it's time to get down to business. I propose we take the aggressive stance and visit each of the other clans and outright bully them. They have x amount of time to farm their lanes while we're still interested in doing so with ours and if they ever advance passed their forts it's a declaration of war."

Brutal. Absolute and complete brutality were the words that just came out of this old man's face. I was honestly pretty impressed with this proposal.

"Define bullying," Donna asks without even getting up from her seat.

"Mr. Hack here loans us one or two of the dragons guarding your camp when we state our demands," he states casually as if it were almost a certainty. "If they cower and say yes, we station those dragons at the back of their camps with a pawn from ours. If they cross the bottom line our pawns initiate the fuckening."

This caught my attention for several reasons. "Quick question," I cut in before Donna can make a retort or inquiry. "How, exactly, do you plan this to work out?"

Giving me a measuring look, he says, "I imagine it as simply and taking a bite from one or the other and you've got a patient zero. Am I wrong?"

"No, not at all," I reply honestly. "Without me there to turn it one and off, it'll happen organically. But, once you place a big ugly zombie dinosaur at the ass of their camp, do you think they're not going to station a big ugly team of heavy armors and magic in front of it? One patient isn't going to be enough. Your guy will have to be eaten by the zombie-saur to fill its stomach with enough mass to projectile contaminate their defensive unit which will then turn coats. As well, my clan does not have any pawns at this time."

"Can we set the dragons to attack the camp on order of the pawn?" Donna asks somewhat hopefully, showing that she was at least interested in the idea if not in favor of.

"I can sell you guys dragons or plague one of your personal familiars but you cannot Blood Bind and you cannot use it to spawn monsters without permission," I state mercilessly with a brief but serious glance to either person. "The price of a dragon, since I only have so many in stock, will be fifty thousand for you guys or one hundred thousand for me to create a new species with one of your familiars. Yes, they breed, but the bred monsters race change and the young come out as the lesser Infected species."

"How much did you charge Bygones?" Mr. Thirteen asks shamelessly.

"I made them pay ten thousand apiece to get fucked running backwards," I reply just as shamelessly. "Unlike you guys, I made the owners of those dragons Blood Bind. Ten beget twenty beget dozens beget hundreds the good old fashioned way. One can explode and infect a few, but everybody is wise to it by now and will spam attacks on patient zeroes before they can finish changing. My advice, choose a tanky familiar."

Considering I had already collected a few hundreds of thousands of gold from these guys already, it could be said that I was taking advantage of them. Maybe even downright bullying them considering one had taken out a loan. However, I was literally about to sell my super power.

Not just the singular aspect of a race or species evolution to boosted stats and buffs, but the ability to spawn an army.

Everybody present was somewhat silenced with my own proposal and the reveal of how much the ten dragons were sold for. They equaled a hundred thousand between them in that sale and here I was making them pay that much between them or twice as much for new plagued species. The only people making any noise other than breathing while watching Little Thirteen and Donna were my party enjoying the finger foods.

"We do not have anyone present at a high enough rank to receive either of those presents and as a retiree consultant I cannot accept them on behalf of the corporation anymore," Mr. Thirteen informs me with the same lack of shame as before despite its obvious self-deprecation. "However, I can invest my personal finances in Donna's acquisition of two more dragons on top of her own purchase. The corporation will get mad at me, but I told them from the start that I would favor friends and reciprocate discourtesy freely."

Was this supposed to imply that this guy ever held himself back in the past? I have no recollection of it. Ninety percent of the time, he was mild mannered until someone ruffled his feathers. In all my memories, once ruffled twice as ruthless and I had even been on the receiving end of it a few times.

Assassinations in monochrome were not just part of the game but a game in itself between upper echelon players. When and where at the funniest and most inopportune moments were the favorites. It was also part of how I met Merch.

"I only have four familiar slots and all of them are taken by healers," Donna informs both of us. "I can let you take your pick for which one would be most suitable, but only if it will not disable or diminish their healing abilities. All of them are bound by blood so I cannot get rid of them either."

I actually had to open my menus and go through layers of appraisals in my skills and titles to see what magical affinities and dislikes would be inspired. It was like looking at evolution paths for different animals except that it canceled further development. However, except in some cases relating the weaker ice affinities the cordyceps to not both magic.

They actually grant affinities to earth and dark elements which I do not remember receiving. However, dark element usually conflicted with healing. Right?

After glancing at my own imp demigod that had started as a healing dark elemental familiar, I simply disregarded this idea.

"No, the controlled and stabilized forms of the plague like the dragons should only boost stats and receive a mild aversion to cold and increase to nature and dark," I reply openly, taking the risk of trusting the people they trusted by reveling this information to their groups. Their aversion to cold was my own aversion to cold. These plague beasts were not just super powered mounts but also my personal information.

After a few moments of closing her eyes with a look of concentration she opens them again and holds out her arm. From the layers of robes and sleeves she wore slithered out what looked like a snake or worm made of twisted roots or vines. "This is the only familiar I have with me, it is the child of a guardian spirit in the south eastern tropics and I named it Inkvine because it produces a variety of healing and poisonous saps. If this is no good, my humanoid familiars are on their way."

I could only silently ask for a cheat by using Melpomene's embarrassing blessing.

[It will be fine and the parent should be pleased, cordyceps are an undead fungal parasite, the evolution in the guardian figure's species will only be beneficial. Her humanoid familiars would be fine as well, but this creature is already her strongest and will receive the most benefits. As a semi-divine entity, it can also control its cordyceps to the point is exclusion from its personal products]

"No, Inkvine will do, but I want some saps. I'll discount two percent per each of its heals and poisons," I offer quickly, hoping that the vine snake only had around ten overall or at most ten of either. If it became too much, I really would run the risk of ruffling Mr. Thirteen's feathers.

Of course, how could I not expect for such a thing to already happen? Little Thirteen shot me a dirty look and asks, "So are you trying to screw me or her running backwards this time? I happen to know a bit about that little elemental because I parted out the litter and have the eldest. Hers is sheltered so it is lacking venom but its anesthetic healing abilities are probably on par with your dryad, Ms. Oleander. Is minus two thousand gold really worth it per product?"

Well, at least he was arguing in the young lady's favor. "For one-time small scale samples which only I can use and one-time only, yes. This familiar will be permanently evolved into an entirely new species, a branch of which was probably never originally intended or developed in the game. My own abilities are somewhat like that. What I am was somewhat intended and incorporated, but what I made was entirely new and profitable. You'll know what I mean soon enough."

Speaking up for herself, Donna reaches into her other sleeve and withdraws over a dozen long and slender crystalline vials that looked like their contents could be measured in drops while saying, "I have eight healing ointments and five poisons for three percent apiece."

Thirty-nine percent discount? That was one percent shy of my upper limit right then and there. I could accept that, I suppose. "Thirty-nine thousand off of two hundred grand, deal," I say by way of agreement, holding out my hand for the crystal vials she was clutching oddly tightly. I wanted those vials before I started doing anything else.

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