Relarid was struggling with the constant demands of his boss, how is he supposed to get more than ten thousand eggs in only ten days anyways? Be it the spiritual or normal chickens, all of them had already given their eggs and were used already by themselves, the restaurant Silver Breeze, and their competitors. "There is no more eggs in the market! Why can't you understand it?" He screamed, grabbing his short hair in frustration and slumping on his desk at the manager's room.
"...Manager-"
"What?" Relarid yelled at his stupid worker that entered his room without knocking.
"There is a man with strange animals behind the restaurant claiming to be able to satisfy our needs of ingredients. I thought it would be good to notify you about it." The servant said trembling.
"Why didn't say sooner?" Relarid took his obese body from the chair and went running to the mysterious man despite hating to run and with sweat appearing because of the light exercise.
Passing through the white door of their three-story restaurant, he saw a man wearing all black and even a scarf to show his eccentricity, talking calmly with what appear to be his pets. The first impression Relarid had of this man was of excellence and that he could take care of anything thrown at him.
Relarid's hopes rose about attending his boss' demands. "Nice to meet you, mister. My name is Relarid, I am the manager of this restaurant."
"Nice to meet you too, Mister Relarid. I'm Roland. Sorry for making someone so grand like you have to come here at the restaurant's back, but you and I know how important my commodity is, so I can't take risks of someone vile knowing I came here." Roland put the airs of someone rich and well connected, or at least tried to do so if the stories his father read to him were right about how rich people act stupidly and flashy.
"No problem at all." Relarid began to make small talks to warm the man until the main subject is touched upon, his hopes rising as Roland talked in the way he expected him to do so.
Roland couldn't by himself answer properly all those small questions without making Relarid suspect him, so he is saying what August is telling him to say telepathically.
Those small and probing questions were a piece of cake to someone so used to deal with noble people like August.
"So mister Roland, did you care for me taking a look at your merchandise or could be you forget of bringing them since I can't see nothing around you?" Relarid said what was in his head since first meeting Roland.
"Of course, I had brought it. You need of eggs, don't you?" Roland discovered it between the conversation he had with the manager.
"Yes, and I need of at least ten thousand of them. Would your company suffer to deliver that despite the demands? I can assure you I will pay the triple of whatever other offers you have."
August sneered at his heart for the fat man already showing his cards and necessity of eggs, in a negotiation the first one to do that always loses.
Roland swiftly brought from the Endless Bag an egg, he decided to not hide the bag and make it another of his selling points to his future buyers, a decision he will come to regret but his masters won't tell him this because it will be funnier to them in this way. "Please confirm its quality before we continue."
Relarid at first didn't think much about Roland bringing an egg from the bag until a hypothesis based on his boss' items came to him and he respectfully picked the egg from Roland despite not seeing any runes on the bag to confirm his hypothesis. "You two, make a simple boiled egg now." He gave the egg to two of his workers with chef clothes.
They immediately summoned a ball of water floating in the air and put the egg in there while their hands got red with the heat they were emitting. Both of them trained in elemental techniques and were in the fifth layer of Essence Reformation like Roland is.
The moment their hands touched the ball of water, it sizzled and vapor began to appear with the intense heat they were capable of producing. It only took two minutes to the egg be ready to be eaten after they carefully took off the eggshell and presented it to Relarid. Unfortunately, because Relarid is too impatient, they didn't dare to use their abilities as chefs while making the egg since they take too long and Relarid doesn't like the needles they use sometimes.
"So orange!" Relarid exclaimed in his head. "And it smells better than the spirit eggs we normally have. What about the taste?" Eating the egg, Relarid let out a moan of satisfaction with how good the egg is.
He then coughed to hide his embarrassment when everyone was looking at him. "Mister Roland, we have a business here. How much can you provide and the delivery's time?"
August and Roland were having only a thought when smiling at Relarid actions. "Man, you are so easy."
Roland went into the specifics with Relarid of how much will be delivered and surprised the fat man when he pulled out from his bag all the necessary eggs, confirming Relarid's suspicion about the brown bag.
Receiving his money from Relarid, Roland made the night his new best friend and went to all restaurant to sell his products using August to discover the needs of the restaurants, and using that against them.
That resumed the simple plan he made in which instead of selling only one ingredient to all the restaurants, he sold everything thanks to August being used to deal with avaricious people like restaurant's managers.
Soon enough the bag and Roland's name spread out through the city, and even the Societies caught wind of the ingredients' provider capable of satisfying the entire city's needs to the Autumn festival, although they only cared for some moments before ignoring the mortals' rumors.
Roland's Essence Shards already reached the staggering amount of two hundred thousand and it continued to grow.
Seeing all this, Lucy and August madly laughed in secret. "Now there is no way our disciple won't have his first battle to the death of his life. A disciple of ours that hasn't his hands stained of blood isn't a true disciple." Their shadows danced on the moonlight and grew bigger as power related to Fate and Death flowed through them, rejuvenating them. "Come, starving hyenas from the restaurant, Blue Light, do you really think we don't know how you looked to Roland? And don't come alone, call your others friends too, if not, it won't be good enough to be stepping stones of our precious disciple!"
***
"Sir, are you sure about this delivery?" The postman asked with all the packets guarded behind him. He found weird with how all the products with exception of Essence Shards are always in double.
"Yes, please deliver them to these addresses," Roland said with his notebook which has all the information about who he stole in hands.
It's finally time to pay back everyone he stole from with exception of the Golden Society.
No matter what Roland did he couldn't find a place that sold Rank 6 medicines. August that is a master of Medicine Alchemy and Soul Tampering said he had money enough to buy two Rank 6 Invigorating Qi medicines though.
Now he just needs to find the right opportunity to buy them in some way, maybe going to one of the Societies would the way to find the medicine.
Walking away from the people, he entered an alley and began to burn all the first eight pages from his notebook. "With this, I'm closer to my dream, 'ashes to ashes, debts sought, debts paid. Only after absolution, happiness will come,' right? Grandpa." Now only the ninth page of his notebook was remaining to be burnt and Ronald will finally be able to begin to search for his own family, and buy a patch of land after or before reuniting with his father.
Roland waited for the fire to die out and continued to deliver the final ingredients to the restaurants and other marketplaces, after today his buyers can still call him for ingredients and probably will because of his ingredients' quality but their emergent need because of the festival will end today.
"They never asked before to be left alone, what's happening?" Roland asked himself, remembering his masters wanted to be left alone in the inn he is sleeping after giving him his Soul Spirit which he kept at his bag.
It turned out Roland could easily put his Soul Spirit in any place, the only disadvantage in doing that instead of letting it on Lucy's body is that it won't be constantly be nurtured and will even lose a bit of Vital Energy if left for too long in the bag.
"Could they be plotting against me? Maybe another grueling training? But they can just talk telepathically without me knowing, why to take all the work to be left alone?"
"Unless…" Roland shook, memories about his training coming to him. "The only times they didn't follow me was when I went to the dangerous jungle to train and they only followed me after I annoyed them to d-"
Roland immediately turned around to flee to the inn when an uncanny situation presented itself to him. At night near the festival's day, there wasn't a single person near him in the whole street. He didn't perceive this until now because he was thinking about why his masters weren't with him.
"I'm fucked up, aren't I?"
Roland came to this obvious conclusion a little too late and almost paid a price too high for that.
His life.
At the moment he turned his body to leave, an arrow flew past him and embed itself on the ground, creating a big hole there.
Roland ghastly looked at the arrow and perceived it was actually a silver arrow reinforced to the third layer with runes meaning poison and speed inscribed on it.
Considering his upper body isn't reformed yet by Qi, that arrow would undoubtedly kill him in only one hit.
One second after the first arrow failed to kill him, more than ten arrows flew towards him in a speed he thought wouldn't be able to react when he noted they were actually slower than the beasts of Magic Foundation he escaped from in his training.
Using his reformed legs, he with high deftness jumped and rolled around without any shame of his desperate display. He evaded almost all of them and only one grazed his legs, but because they were reformed the arrow didn't do much damage.
Perceiving this, Roland looked at the fallen arrows and saw they were actually just normal iron arrows in wooden shafts. "So this is why it was so easy to evade them, they are normal arrows. The enemy probably only had one of those special arrows or didn't want to waste more of them on me after the ambush failed. Anyways, I need to leave from here before they began to take more seriously." He thought.
However, before Roland could flee he found himself surrounded by men and women in discrete clothes and demonic masks. They were everywhere, at the two ends of the street, at the houses' roofs, they were even at the river.
The ones at the roof had bows but didn't nock the arrows, they were just looking silently to all this and Roland observed they seemed a level higher than the others enemies, their masks, for example, had horns and were black.
If Roland was sensitive to Essence like Carmen was or higher level than them, he would notice the ones in the roof that shot him were actually Magus Rank 1, and moreover, they were extremely used to bloodshed and assassinations. It was a shame Roland perceived the street's strangeness too early for them, they were thinking of shooting him only when he became distracted with a noise they were preparing to make, but he suddenly turning around gave a fright to the enemy's leader and he had to risk using the arrow gave to them by their boss.
So now they don't know what to do, their orders are only to give the initial shot and if Roland survived that, they are supposed to let the ones on the ground clean the mess and kill Roland or determine if the famous ingredients' provider is worthy of joining their organization.
Someone at only the fifth layer escaping from a precious Earth tier arrow reinforced to the third layer isn't something to be trifled be it because of luck or instinct, and being able to dodge almost all arrows shot by Magic Foundation experts with only one grazing his strong skin is just as impressive as the former.
The enemy's leader sighed thinking all this and made the signal to the people from Blue Light, Kirin Feast and their contracted thugs at the sixth or seven layer of Essence Reformation attack Roland to kill him. "Young man, curse your luck and your stupidity of finding and showing a Bag of Holding, an interspatial object, to greedy men and also having too much wealth on yourself to be discovered after they search your soul for answers about where you pick your ingredients."
The leader made up his mind and let the chaos began, if Roland survives this he will be scouted despite his high age, if not… "I will pick for myself the bag, in the Forsaken Lands such items are rare. I'm sure the boss will understand my decision and it's better to limit the number of people from outside our lands to join anyways." He shrugged and sat down to watch the mayhem, not caring too much for any result.
If Roland had actually been the target by any of the abilities of the enemy's leader, he wouldn't be able to escape no mattering what, but because their boss is interested in him they just used arrows instead of their real powers to test him.
But even if Roland knew about this, he wouldn't be happy about their 'kindness'. Test or not, it didn't change the fact they tried to kill him and are considered enemies in his heart.
The only problem now is if he will have one day a chance to enact vengeance in them with how bloodthirsty the people at the ground and river were. He will probably die here without accomplishing anything.
"Why send so many people to only one person at the fifth layer of Essence Reformation?!" Roland cried in his heart as he struggled to avoid the shower of attacks on him.