In a small sitting area in the middle of the night, two men sat drinking cocoa. One of the men, With messy brown hair and piercing Blueish Silver eyes set into an angular but malnourished face, was young and fresh into his manhood, sitting confidently in his chair, although it wasn't clear if it was the confidence of experience or arrogance of youth.
The other man was older, and more mature, with greying hair and wrinkles around his brown eyes. He was well-dressed and perfectly polite and well-trained for his job.
Currently, the older butler was reeling as his mind struggled to reconcile what he was hearing with what he was seeing. This was supposed to be an inexperienced youth, but here he was asking for the Recruiter to deliver to him a sacrifice for him to murder.
"Young man, I understand that you claim to need to kill to get stronger but surely you would not kill a defenseless person just to get more powerful" The Butler replied to the somewhat outrageous demand.
"I don't want to," Oliver replied, his eyes displaying his frustration, and in a strange mix of emotion, his enjoyment to see the subtle shock evident in the Butlers body language.
"I'm not a monster I don't enjoy the idea of it, But if this is how I grow stronger then so be it. I have to be strong enough to survive the Colosseum, and when it comes right down to it, I value my life far more than anybody else's life. I'd do much worse for my well-being"
They both sat for a time to absorb what had been said before the butler once again spoke up.
"So you would be willing to kill a defenseless person for your benefit? Why would I let you? let alone help you by bringing you a victim?" The older man lay on the shock and innocent routine thick, doing his best to make it seem like some horrible and massive thing to ask of him.
"Because you care for their life even less than I do, And your bosses care even less than you. You want to profit, you want to be entertained, and among the thousands upon thousands of realm rats at your disposal, there must be some who do not serve that purpose, some who you have invested in, and that investment failed to pay off. This would allow you to get rid of a problem and give me just enough power to entertain everyone in the arena"
Oliver lay it out to him clearly, cutting through the pretense and false morality in seconds. He could mince words with the best of them, but at this moment the pretending was only in the way.
Removing yet another layer from his facade, the butler sighed heavily "Even with that being the case, we cannot simply hand over an investment to you to kill without profiting from it, what are you willing to pay in return?"
It was Olivers' time to fall silent, truthfully he had thought of this since the bell tower, wracking his mind for what he had to offer in return for such a hefty request.
"I won't pay anything extra for being allowed to kill them, but these are people who you won't regain your investment on anyway, so what if I simply took on their debt in addition to the debt that I will incur from being hidden and the combat ability page you will provide."
As far as Oliver was concerned this was as good of a deal as he could offer, and while he could probably have haggled for a price and perhaps even gotten a better deal, he didn't want to waste the time and energy
However, id like options, if I'm going to be paying for their debt, I want to ensure that what I gain is proportional to what I end up paying. Perhaps a small description of their ability, affinity, and size of debt"
It was true that the Butler, as well as his bosses, didn't care about the lives of their indentured. Instead, they cared for profit, however, if word ever got out about this then it would make it much more difficult to get access to Realm Rats. For now, the Rats come voluntarily, but if word ever got out they would be afraid to be killed and they wouldn't be so willing.
"Very well, that sounds satisfactory, now for the contract," the man says and he opens his Tome once more, already thick and powerful, part of the thickness was with other contracts. He begins to manipulate the soul energy within the Tome to create a new contract.
The book is of course delivered to Oliver once the contract is made and he begins to scan it.
The terms are pretty simple
- Hiding from the gangs= 1 Game
- Hiding from the guards= 2 Games
- Recieving an attack ability page= (undetermined)
- Being delivered the life of another TomeBearer on a silver platter= (undetermined)
Of course there are other aspects to the agreement such as a portion that ensures Oliver was telling the truth about his ability. There was also A non-disclosure agreement to ensure he doesn't tell anybody about the shady aspects of the deal they were making.
Next there were parts that may be triggered at a later date, like the cost of medical services in an emergency
3 minor injury healing= 1 game
1 nonlethal dismemberment, or 1 major nonlethal injury healing= 1 game
1 healing from near death, or mortal injury= 2 games
Then parts outlining the procurement of services and goods from the Colosseum which can be bought with gold or by increased indenturing of one's self. Each item or service would have a set price and that would be added to his contract.
The same was outlined for the spare TomeBearer he had requested. As well as the ability page.
With everything as he had expected it to be, Oliver readily agreed to the terms and felt his own Tome(deep within his soul) grow warm as it gained a contract page. Oliver took a moment to lament the fact that he could so easily gain a page for a contract, which took no soul power to manifest as a page, but that it wasn't so easy to do the same for ability or item pages since they required soul power to manifest pages for.
Once everything was finished and signed and discussed, the Butler stood up, his previous innocent butler act once again restored.
"Alright, now that that's finished let me show you to your room, sir," he says, and Oliver stood and followed him down a hall into what appears to be a study. The Butler asks him to close his eyes, which Oliver does, after closing his eyes he hears a creaking as though an old spring was stretching.
"Alright, you can look," the Butler informed, and revealed a bookcase that had opened into a secret passage "At the bottom of the stairs you'll find your room, it will have a bathing room, a bed, and a change of close, please feel free to use all of them, nobody will find you here."
Descending the stairs, Oliver saw that the butler was correct, it was a cozy little apartment, one room, a bit bare bones, but for one night it was quite nice, nicer than most of the places he had slept in his life. He quickly stripped out of his grimy nasty sweaty clothes and grabbed the dark blue linen clothes from the bed and took them into the bathroom.
One long relaxing bath later, he slipped the clothes onto his now clean body and sank into the bed. He would have liked to have been alert and careful, but truthfully he was too tired, mentally and physically, and he simply drifted to sleep before he even realized it.