Chapter 50

A plan started to form in my mind. Viewing the different levels as buildings with multiple floors would give us more room to work with, it also would allow us to create hidden areas to grow the crops while not looking suspicious. At least I hoped so. Growing all these plants won't do me any good if the invaders found them.

"So how should we go about renegotiating with the company?" I asked.

"We shouldn't need too." Candice told me.

"Huh?" I asked stupidly.

"The sensors on the orb are a lot better than you think they are. The company has a pretty good idea what has been going on." Candice informed me.

I looked over at Zephirah who just shrugged. "This is my first time out of that orb, I have no idea how effective it is. I could have sworn that I blocked their feeds."

"You did, but it didn't take long for them to get suspicious. There seems to be a secondary method through the dungeon network." Candice told her.

Zephirah sighed. "Can't block that." she agreed.

"So?" I asked.

"They are willing to continue providing the basic seeds just like they have so far. They will even expand the list to include plants from other affinities." Candice told me.

An image appeared in the room. It was partly see through and wavered at the edges. The image itself was of a woman with dark blue hair pulled back into a tight bun while wearing a very professional suit. She was attractive, but her pure white eyes were hard to miss and sent shivers down my spine. Worse, I immediately felt that the woman seemed to be looking down on us despite being four and a half feet tall at best.

"Hello." the image said politely. "As your conversation has turned to the company I felt now was the best time to introduce myself." she told us.

"Our new handler?" I asked curiously.

"I dislike that term. I prefer company representative." the woman told us.

"What do you give the odds?" Firenne asked quietly leaning towards Vanessa.

Vanessa frowned then looked at the image before replying, "Ten percent." she replied.

Firenne frowned, "For or against?" she asked.

"For." Vanessa replied. "Miss Noralin it is a pleasure to meet you again."

"Noralin is fine Vanessa. The company was appalled when it was learned what you had been through at the hands of one of our agents. While we admit that a woman like you does represent a considerable value if passed on to the right customer, our company has never participated in the trade of intelligent beings." Noralin the company representative told us.

Vanessa nodded. "I am aware, but so was Seth. I was never given the chance to expose my situation." she replied then shivered.

Noralin nodded. During the entire conversation, she never lost her calm composed professional appearance.

"So to what do I owe the pleasure?" I asked.

"Given your previous conversation I wanted to confirm with you what the company is willing to offer and what they would like in return." Noralin told us.

I frowned but it made sense. The company had a reason for offering us the seeds. It did them no good if we sold the plants to others instead of them.

"Alright." I said leaning back in my chair. I was curious as to what they would want. Especially as we did have an alternate source of seeds from the dungeon exchange, they were just more expensive, with a smaller variety.

"We can provide seeds of all the basic and uncommon plants available to us." Noralin informed me.

"What does basic and uncommon mean?" I asked.

Noralin paused for a second as she looked at me. "They are terms that represent the difficulty level of growing. Blue grass, red grass, amber mint, and winter vine are all basic plants. There is little issue in growing the plants beside finding an area that suits them, and those areas aren't usually difficult to find or set up. White ice rose is considered borderline uncommon as it can not be grown without a special source of ice mana. While those aren't hard to find the extra need boosts the difficulty level." Noralin explained.

"I see, but that is only borderline uncommon, how much worse are actual uncommon plants?"

Noralin smiled, "I am sure Vanessa can fill you in on such details." she told me deflecting my question. "My time is limited so I would like to discuss what the company expects in return." she told me.

I nodded feeling apprehensive, I was getting the feeling this meeting was going to go well for us but I waited for her to continue.

"The company wants your guarantee that all the plants grown from the seed we provide will be sold back to the company." Noralin informed me her eyes seeming to focus on me intently as she spoke, though honestly it was hard to tell.

Sometimes I hate being right. "No." I replied simply. Selling all of the plants back to the company would provide us with currency, but it was too strict. Even with the plants we already had, I needed the roots from the winter vine to grow the white ice roses. By not selling the roots to the company I would have violated the agreement. One hundred percent was impossible, and that was before I took into consideration that Selia needed the plants to practice her craft.

"Those are the companies terms." Noralin told me narrowing her eyes.

"They are impossible terms." I replied then looked to Zephirah "Bring me that orb."

Zephirah gave Noralin a glare then disappeared from sight.

"The company is willing to allow you the use of some of the plants as long as it benefits the company." Noralin told me.

There was the caveat, I could use the roots to grow roses, but the roses would have to be sold to them. They might even allow Selia to practice her craft, but the results needed to be sold to the company. I bet there was some wiggle room there, but I didn't want to operate within the wiggle room.

"No." I told her again more firmly as I dropped my polite attitude. I had expected them to set the bar high so we could negotiate it down, but this wasn't even reasonable.

Zephirah appeared again with the orb in tow behind her. She flew straight through Noralin's image on her way to me.

I grabbed the orb from the air then looked it over. Like before, I wasn't able to make out anything from it surface but the moment I activated my mana sight I could clearly see the runes on its surface and the multiple layers that made up the orb.

"What are you doing?" Noralin asked.

"If you are going to be unreasonable, I don't see any point leaving you access to my dungeon." I told Noralin.

"Don't forget who gave you this dungeon!" Noralin said her voice sounding heated.

I looked up and glared at the woman, "Don't worry about that, I haven't forgotten how I ended up here, and I have no intentions of doing so." I told her angrily.

Noralin seemed to take a step back, though it was hard to say as he image didn't move from the spot it was in. Even if she hadn't actually moved she showed a moment of fear which was a like a crack in her unemotional armor. I didn't know what it was that was making her afraid but the fact that I could make her show fear, even if for a moment made me feel a bit better.

I returned my attention to the orb tracing out the different rune pattern within it.

"You aren't going to be able to alter that. It took several of our brightest geniuses to create it." Noralin said haughtily.

'Zephirah, I will drag this on as long as I can, I need you to make a few extra rooms and fill them with as much food as we can get from them.' I silently messaged Zephirah.

'They already cut off my access.' Zephirah replied to me silently.

"Well that sucks." I said aloud looking up at Noralin coldly.

Noralin smirked at me.

"Guess that means there will be no way to turn it back on once I shut it off." I told her with a smile.

"There is no way you were able to understand it in such a short time." Noralin scoffed.

She was right. There was no way I was going to be able to understand the orb. The runes that I learned to reach Rune Lord was similar to learning the alphabet and memorizing vocabulary. I could create the spells and even understand how to piece them together and alter them a bit like changing letters to make a new word. The orb was several levels above that. Forget forming simple or compound sentences, paragraphs, or even an essay. The orb in front of me was like a technical manual in its complexity and difficulty understanding. Even knowing the language didn't mean I would be able to understand it.

I shook my head. "I admit I can't understand it, but that doesn't mean I can't break it." I replied.

"What?" Noralin asked confused.

"I don't need to understand how it works to break it beyond repair." I reiterated.

Noralin seemed to hesitate for a moment before she narrowed her eyes at me, but before she could say anything she disappeared.

"Oh is it time for the good cop now?" I muttered to myself.

Vanessa chuckled having heard me. "I am sorry Jason, I didn't think they would do this." she told me.

"Neither did I." Candice added, "this is not what they conveyed to me before I arrived here."

"Either someone got greedy, or someone else is calling in a favor." I told them.

Candice cursed colorfully which made me smile a bit.

I sighed, if we didn't have access to the food from the company, my game plan would have to change dramatically. We wouldn't be able to put up our defenses to hold back the swarms, not when we needed to leave to find food for ourselves. Which meant leaving the dungeon.

The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence. Especially since we didn't have the living water heart to boost the magic in rgw plants increasing our odds of getting enchanted or better crops.

I frowned as I remembered something Zephirah had told me. The dungeon could reproduce anything it received a sample of, all it would cost was energy. The more complex and powerful the creation the more energy was needed, but how much energy was there in a cheeseburger?

I looked over to Zephirah ready to ask her to get samples of every kind of food she could from the dungeon exchange she could. I stopped when I saw the smug look on her face.

"I did tell you that I had a user whom the company tried to use food against." Zephirah reminded me. "Once I had access to the dungeon exchange I made sure we had plenty of samples of premade food and ingredients in case you want to cook it yourself." Zephirah told me.

I let out a sigh of relief. "You can thank me later." Zephirah told me happily.

"I will, but you could have told me sooner." I told her.

"It was just a precaution, I never expected them to do this." Zephirah replied.

"Still saved us." I replied. "Was that a part of why you were worried about the overseer?" I asked.

"No, that kind of stuff is cheap and wouldn't have affected us much." Zephirah replied. "Besides, now the problem is solved. If you had known, they would have known and they would have had to find something else to use against us." Zephirah added cheerfully.

"They will still use that something else against us." I pointed out.

"Yeah, but now we have warning." Zephirah replied.

"So we're good?" Candice asked.

"Food wise, yes." I replied. "Do we give them a chance to reconsider or are we done with them?" I asked looking at the orb.