Orknodi Is Not a Bad Child
My connection with the Dark Cult proved unexpectedly useful.
"A Blood Stone, is it? Have you taken an interest in insidious, cruel arts that borrow the forbidden power of blood magic to slip past mana detection?"
"I just kind of came across it, but I don't really have a use for it, so I'm looking to sell. Could you hook me up with a decent buyer?"
We stood in the Dark Cult's secret meeting place—a dusty, abandoned chapel belonging to a long-ruined sect where nobody ever set foot. The 3rd-year senior from the Dark Cult club, who exuded the distinct aura of an active serial killer, had chosen this location after I requested an audience.
Every step across the floorboards elicited an ominous creak, and tattered scriptures lay scattered beneath our feet. The atmosphere was so thick that if someone told me they were secretly raising a demon somewhere in the church, I would have believed them without hesitation.
He might look terrifying, but this senior is actually pretty reliable.
After all, hadn't he warned me that the sophomores were furious over their illegal Red Teeth Mushroom farm being ruined? Underneath that frightening exterior beat the heart of a rough-hewn, surprisingly considerate rogue.
"I will take a commission. Are you fine with that?"
"Yep!"
Since I had just engaged in a massive brawl with the 3rd-years, approaching them directly to hawk my wares was out of the question. Slipping the Dark Cult between buyer and seller as an intermediary kept my identity concealed and guaranteed my safety.
"There is a rather ruthless fellow among our cult's apprentice members who possesses a deep affinity for blood magic."
"Ooh. How does that senior handle blood magic?"
Just as necromancers commanded corpses and elementalists bent elements to their will, blood mages wielded blood. Blood magic without blood was like a pyromancer who couldn't light a campfire or a necromancer who couldn't raise a skeleton—utterly useless dead weight. Unless you were a vampire capable of manipulating the blood coursing through other people's veins, getting started in such magic was notoriously difficult, so my curiosity was naturally piqued.
"I heard their original class was a Tamer."
"Whoa. Did they pioneer a 'Crimson Tamer' class that harvests blood from their own pets?"
"No. It is a creature who pioneered the 'Mosquito Mage' class after realizing how to tame mosquitoes to gather blood."
Good grief. How could such a horrifying profession even exist in this world? That was far more vile than any vampire.
Still, points were innocent. Until that Blood Stone changed hands, this person was a precious customer!
"Step inside the confessional."
"Okey-dokey."
"The buyer will arrive within thirty minutes."
The confessional booth barely offered enough room for a single person. If someone were to nail wooden planks over the outside, it would be no different from a coffin. Trusting a senior who subjected Red Teeth Mushrooms to near-abusive farming in cramped quarters and walking into such a contraption was undeniably nerve-wracking, but my greed for points completely overpowered my fear.
"Is it you? The one looking to sell a Blood Stone."
"You found the right place."
"Show me the goods first."
On the opposite side of the confessional partition, the foul Mosquito Mage took their seat. The silhouette cast through the translucent frosted glass was entirely unexpected. I had braced myself for an unkempt barbarian covered in wild facial hair or some pot-bellied freak, but my counterpart possessed fair, immaculate skin visible beneath heavy robes—an undeniable beauty.
My favorability toward this Mosquito Mage, which had started at negative thirty, immediately reset to zero. When dealing with beauties, a person ought to remain objective. So, being thoroughly objective, I tossed my distaste right out the window. Man, I'm way too fair-minded.
"What is the weight of the Blood Stone?"
"Thirty-five hundred grams."
"Then its luster probably isn't very pure."
"If it were high-grade enough to be crystal clear, I'd be selling it to a professor."
"...Hmph. So you're not completely clueless."
The buyer named their price.
"One thousand points."
"No deal."
As I rose from the seat to exit the confessional, the buyer hurriedly interjected.
"Plus another thousand points!"
"Care to try a bit harder?"
"Damn it, two thousand points for a raw Blood Stone is generous enough! Just how much are you trying to squeeze out of me?"
For ordinary undergraduates, two thousand points was the kind of windfall you could only earn by finding a lecture tailored perfectly to your aptitude and raking in massive grade bonuses. At the academy, that amounted to four hundred standard meal vouchers. If you ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, it would vanish in a hundred and thirty-three days—roughly a semester's span of four months and twelve days. Yet countless students failed to earn even that much, scraping by on two meals a day or foraging for wild mountain herbs in desperation. Clubs didn't advertise their guaranteed food supply to prospective recruits for nothing.
"Haven't you heard the news that a new blood magic professor is being invited to the academy?"
"What? How could you possibly know that?"
"I'm just giving you a friendly tip out of the goodness of my heart. Don't buy it if you don't want to."
"W-Wait a second. I heard a rumor yesterday that the Headmaster dragged some professor in from outside... Could that really be...?"
"What's it gonna be?"
"Four thousand points. Not a single point more. I don't have anywhere else to squeeze points from."
The price had doubled from their second offer and skyrocketed to four times the opening bid.
"Deal."
Not a bad transaction at all.
Through your cunning schemes, you drastically raised the value of the Blood Stone and sold it.
[Bargaining EXP +5]
[Bad Child EXP +1]
At this point, seeing Bad Child EXP go up didn't even faze me. With most game functions, you just hoard points without knowing what they're for, until eventually a situation pops up where you go, Aha! So that's where this gets used! There was no need to wear myself out trying to figure it out ahead of time.
Even so, watching that stat tick up constantly like a persistent damage-over-time debuff was hard to ignore entirely.