Black Market

The pet shop, on the surface, was just a tiny little hole-in-the-wall pet shop with a few rows of harmless, but still special creatures. Most customers would be fooled into thinking the pet shop was just a small shop and all the pet shop's sales came from there.

In actuality, the pet shop was actually a wide underground space with hundreds of dangerous and expensive animals of all varieties. Ria was situated in that underground area, and her enclosure sat at the four-way intersection in the middle of the pet shop, meaning Ria saw practically everything.

The way her enclosure was set up meant that her pond was situated in the farthest corner away from the intersecting walkways. There was a small pile of rocks in the corner to the left of the pond, nearest to the walkway where the stairs were.

If you were walking in using the stairs, Ria's enclosure would be on the left. If you kept walking forward, there was a hallway which led into a place Ria named the 'danger zone'. The door was big and thick for a reason, just opening the door would assault your eardrums with animalistic noises you would expect to hear from the ninth level of hell.

On the left walkway, there was a door with multiple locks on it. From watching the workers, Ria could tell this was some sort of kitchen slash storage room area, mainly used for storing and preparing food for the hundreds of caged animals here.

And finally, the right walkway was supposedly where workers usually came in from. Ria guessed that there were multiple entrances and exits, and the employees usually used the one on the right as a sort of office area before heading into the main pet shop.

There were a few things that Ria wasn't very sure of however. For example, almost all of the animals here were trapped in very cramped cages, but Ria the only one who had an open enclosure.

Actually, she was one of the most harmless creatures in the underground pet shop. Most animals in the pet shop had collars of some sort on their necks or feet, but Ria didn't. The most harm she could do was make someone's shirt soggy, but that was it.

Then again, she was only two months old, but it was still pretty harmless. For this, Ria had a theory. She has special circumstances which caused her to need an open enclosure so she could develop properly, and the reason she had no collar was because she was harmless and she grew too fast.

After all, keeping her in a cage would only make her outgrow it in a week, so giving her a proper enclosure ensured that she wouldn't have any growth issues.

Ria was jolted out of her thoughts by a voice above her. "Meal time, you stupid turtle." Galdon said as he threw an assortment of vegetables into her enclosure and walked off.

Ria was once again reminded why she hated Galdon so much as she stared at the vegetables, which were now covered in a nice layer of sand. Seriously, this guy had some major anger issues.

She resigned herself to her fate and dragged the vegetables into her pond, which had been refilled while she was asleep. Ria clumsily washed the vegetables by absorbing a small amount of water from the pond and lightly spraying it onto her food.

Ria loudly crunched her food, munching each piece off in one satisfying bite. She watched Galdon feed all the herbivorous creatures with the vegetables inside his bucket. Her eyes lit up like lights on Christmas day whenever one of the creatures successfully bit his fingers.

Actually, Ria noticed that almost all of the tips of Galdon's fingers were gone. Even if he wore two pairs of gloves, the creatures in this place weren't gentle little bunnies. It was a pet shop for the rare and special after all.

Ria could spend a week to list off each and every one of the creature's traits and still have more to spare. There were just too many weird creatures and not all of them had the exact same traits. Each creature had a special mutation which made them unique from one another.

Thankfully, each walkway could fit three grown men walking shoulder-to-shoulder and still have a bit of room to spare, and the some of the most dangerous creatures in the main underground pet shop were mostly housed in the two middle cages, which was about stomach to chest level.

Although, Ria knew the actual most dangerous animals was hidden behind the thick danger-zone door.

There were only about four to five cages stacked on top of each other, and the bottom cage was raised off the floor so they wouldn't be able to attack a worker's feet.

This meant that the most harmless creatures were housed in the top and bottom shelves, and the dangerous ones were in the middle. Fortunately, the more dangerous creatures in the main underground pet shop, the larger and sturdier the collar they had on.

From what Ria saw, these collars could restrict a creature's ability, but not their strength. For example, Ria had the ability to absorb and shoot water out of her mouth, but the other creatures couldn't do that because of their collars, which seemingly restricted their abilities.

"Ugh, I want to quit." Galdon grumbled as he walked off into the left hallway, where the kitchen and storage area was with an empty bucket in his hand. Although Ria still couldn't completely understand everything he was saying, she knew what he said because it was one of the things Galdon constantly said.

Ria flipped on her back in boredom, watching her little turtle feet dangle in the air. Since she was probably going to be here for a while, she decided to name a few things so as to not confuse herself.

She was going to name the hallway where the customers came in 'the stairway', since that's what they used to come here. The stairway was the one closest to her pile of rocks in the corner.

The left hallway would be named the kitchen hallway, the right hallway would be the office hallway, and the hallway in the center would be the danger zone.

"Ptui." Galdon spat into Ria's enclosure as he was walking from the kitchen hallway into the office hallway. Seriously, Ria hoped her ability would become stronger so she could shoot a jet of water into his mouth and watch him choke to death.