--IF FOR ANY REASON YOU ARE SEEKING TO BE A BOUNTER, KNOW THAT YOU MAY NOT SURVIVE PAST THE FIRST WEEK. ON THAT NOTE, WE HERE AT THE REGISTRY HELP YOU ALONG BY THROWING ALL WE'VE GOT AT YOU. IF YOU SURVIVE, WELL, GOOD ON YOU. IF YOU DON'T, WELL, YOU SHOULD'VE STUCK WITH ETHERWORLD GAMES.--
The Bounting registry office.
CHAPTER GLOSSARY (some words in Eresh are hard to interpret into English because they don't mean the same thing but I will try to give you the closest thing in English with which to associate them with for imaginative purposes)
Etherworld games – a popular game company that utilizes a combination of virtual reality and video games where players of any game play it on scene, right inside that game.
Ora - Hour (80 nods)
Phakh - F*cK
Shtakh - Sh*t
Dial - clock
Turn - day (16 oras)
Set - seconds
Nod - minute (80 sets)
Cart – Small locomotive vehicle, one of the old brands that are still land-based.
One moment the small lot was quiet and dark as I surveilled my bar dwelling quarry in relative anonymity.
The next moment the cart before the one I was hiding behind exploded with so much force I, and the cart were both thrown almost twenty feet away.
I hid the rough asphalt and slid till I hit the rail separating the parking lot from the eastern face of the Ergan Sea.
When did he even have time to plant a fracking bomb?! I have been watching him for phakhing oras. The car stopped about ten feet before I did but not before splitting my lip open and giving me a blinding headache by slamming into my face.
Phakh! phakh! phakh! That hurts so much.
My back was burning and aching so bad and I had to grit my teeth very hard to work through the pain as my healing amulet kicking in. The ground had definitely scratched through my shirt. I can't believe I left my erda coat behind, of course, the one time I decided to go without it this shtak happened.
My mask was still firmly on my face and my long braid which I'd pinned around my head had protected my skull from kissing the ground. Thank the gods.
I didn't want to scream but it was getting really hard not to. I blinked a stray tear out of my eye before I felt brave enough to see if my back would let me move out of the open.
Nope.
I fell back on the asphalt and stared at the blurry sky, three of Athoren's seven moons gazed down at me. Thankfully at this ridiculously early ora, none of the villagers in this small farming village was up yet.
The familiar chime of a dial echoed from afar, I paid attention and counted how many. Four. It would chime again in an ora, signifying the oraly passage of time. Four chimes meant It was four oras into the new turn and I had been tracking this phakher for almost three turns.
I groaned in frustration. I needed to get the phakh up! One would think that a person like me, with erdsteel for bones, would muscle through an explosion.
But I couldn't, because last I checked I still had regular skin, and yeah, it inconveniently broke open at times and caused me a shtak load of pain but that was a little (maybe a lot) price to pay for having bone that couldn't ever break.
Some parts of the skin on my back was touching the ground and the psykik impression of thousands of walking feet and moving vehicles began to resound in my head.
The psykik impressions encompassed me for a minuite and it completely toned down the noise of my present environment which I really couldn't afford to be deaf to right now. Phakh, another reason to despise the curse of psykomitry.
I gritted my teeth tighter and reinforced my mental walls, slowly the sounds of the burning car lot began to filter in again.
The bar was a small place but it the only one in the small town so all the drinkers convened here, it also had some rooms for rent and my quarry had taken advantage.
I heard footsteps approaching. I mentally checked my body to confirm if the healing bracelet had finally done its job.
Not by much, but enough that I was able to I half-crawl, half-wiggle on the ground till I was safely ensconced behind the cover of yet another cart nearby cart that hadn't been so seriously affected by the blast. The only other one, I noticed after looking around. The rest were dirt cyckes.
These rural types enjoyed driving on the ground. In the bigger cities, one literally couldn't afford to do that. I mean, when one's business was thousands of feet up in the sky what help would a land-bound locomotive be?
I forced my self to sit up while I was at it. the pain ebbed away noticeably and a small tingle from my right wrist told me the charm in the tattooed amulet was drained. I leaned back and relaxed against the car as a small smile came to my lips.
A year ago, I would've been obsessing over how much repairs to my uniform and a tattoo charm refill would cost, but now? Now, I've got to finish just this one job, and I would've finished paying a debt worth eleven million Crowns.
And I will also finally be able to leave Bounting for good. Don't get me wrong, the job wasn't that bad. But there were other things I'd rather be doing than chase scum down.
Of course, that wouldn't happen unless I got off my ass and dealt with the phakhing bastard that picked the wrong day to be a demolitions expert.