“What . . .” Topaz recovered from her emotional outburst quickly, moving from overly sorry and apologetic to complete shock as she grabbed the phone from Nick’s hands. “What the heck? I thought they were after me because of the money.”

  “The money?”

  Topaz winced. “Well, umm, you see—”

  “Is this related to that hospital bill? Did you really go to them to borrow money?!” Nick couldn’t help but feel exasperated and upset when he heard that. He knew this group was the Bratva, and he knew that they were the kind of group you never wanted to get involved with.

  “Look, it’s a lot more complicated than that,” she explained as she backed up. “You don’t get it. I had just gotten my alchemist class, my mom had fallen sick, and when I went to them for help, they didn’t just give me a loan—they offered to support me. They bought my lab that you were using earlier, they shared their books and information, they got me my weapon, took me into a few dungeons so I could get my first level 15 skill . . . They were there for me, and all they asked was for a percentage of my sales and some specialty alchemical work. It wasn’t until a year or two later, when I thought I had finally gotten my life together, and my mother was starting to recover from the treatments . . . They suddenly told me that the papers I had signed weren’t just contracts establishing my work for them, where I would make them potions and poisons, but they were iron-clad loan agreements. They didn’t just want me to make stuff for them; they wanted me to hustle adventurers and sell my stuff to other people too. They got their alchemist, and they got rich too. Five years of payments, and I have ten more to go.”

  “Dear God . . .” Nick could only sigh as he put his hands on the side of his head and tried to think through the situation. “How much do you owe them?”

  “About $192,000 . . . and I have to pay them $2,500 a month,” Topaz answered. “They also made me take out a bunch of insurance policies on my life and my lab too.”

  “You have to pay $2,500 a month?” Nick was stunned. “That’s like a 9% interest rate! Why didn’t you just refinance that loan and get a reasonable rate?”

  “With what credit? With what down payment? I don’t have assets as collateral, and who was going to co-sign it?” Topaz frowned.

  I am such a stupid idiot. How did I not guess this was going to escalate? Not to mention, she’s a world-class alchemist if she was able to figure out the cure for my poison when others couldn’t even identify it. Well, since I’m already sending money to Allen to help him start his business even though I’m the one who is giving him the inventions and funding Ms. Wilson to help her scale up her business, even though she was the one who was supposed to be paying me . . . why not just name myself “Sugar Daddy Gallows?” Nick thought as he pulled out his own phone and quickly sent Topaz $250,000. “You can never tell anyone about this,” he demanded as he hit the button, sending her not only enough money to pay off her debt, but hopefully enough money to also cover whatever stupid charge he imagined the Bratva would hit her with when she tried to leave.

  He knew them after all. They were as bad as real banks with their fees. If they said something was going to cost you ten dollars, then you needed to make sure you had eleven bucks before you tried to buy it.

  “Huh? Tell anybody about what? What . . . WHAT THE HELL, NICK?!” Topaz went from calm and confused to confused to outright flabbergasted as she put away Oleg’s phone for a minute to read the text message the bank had likely sent her to notify her of the massive cash influx her account had just gotten.

  “What? Not enough?” Nick asked, wondering if she had undersold her debt.

  “Nick! What the heck are you doing? Didn’t I just tell you how dumb a decision it was for me to just accept gifts from people? Why do you think I’m going to make that same mistake twice?”

  “But I didn’t have you sign any papers,” Nick pointed out. “As far as anyone can prove legally, you just had some random jerk send you money. Maybe we can say it’s to deal with the emotional distress of having to look at my face on a day-to-day basis without punching me.”

  “Punching is not what most girls would want to do to that face,” Topaz countered, her wit outpacing her sense, “But wait. Wait. Why are you doing this? I can’t pay you back. You know that. With the advent of better and better mechanically crafted potions, the alchemist class just isn’t as valuable as it used to be outside of specialized poisons.”

  “Even so, you’ve been paid. If you wanna pay me back, just keep making me what you make me and doing what you do, and you know, work out with me a bit more.” Nick really didn’t want to make a big deal of it. He already had plenty of ways to make enough money to cover what he’d just given her in no time. He even knew what portals were going to break next and had already planned on taking out more insurance on the next three dungeon neighborhoods.

  “So . . . So this is it? It’s over?” Topaz stared at her bank account in disbelief before tapping her phone screen a few times. “I did it. I did it. I’m . . . I’m free!” She was practically in tears from relief as she threw her arms around Nick’s neck and held him so tightly he thought she was trying to squeeze him to death. “Thank you so much!”

  “Hey, umm, not to interrupt your touching moment there, but what are we going to do about these guys? And my car?” Will, whom Nick had thought was at the farmhouse, asked as he pushed his way through the cornstalks and came out next to the dead body.

  “How did you find us?”

  “You two are making way too much noise to be asking that question,” Will answered. “And look, boss, I called the cops and your guild the moment I could, and they both said they’ll be here any minute, but don’t worry about proving your innocence. Fire or no fire, I got a black box dash cam that satellite loads everything, and I already sent it to both the police and a reporter friend I know just in case the police try anything funny. You never know who paid off who if they can afford to kill people in broad daylight.”

  “Thanks,” Nick replied, quite surprised to find out that Will had taken care of everything so quickly. “But I wonder what the heck they were doing here.”

  “Yeah, they had your info,” Topaz whispered.

  “I can hear you, you know?” Will said. “And you don’t need to hide anything from me. They just blew up my baby. Do you know how long Vicky was with me?”

  “Vicky?” Topaz asked, somehow not understanding that some men named their vehicles.

  “My Crown Victoria! That was my baby! Those features on it did not come standard either! Your boy here was drinking plain water and eating bread for months to save up for those leather seats with the built-in heating and cooling function!” Will went from calm to furious incredibly fast as soon he got to talking about his car.

  Topaz rolled her eyes. “Easy man, I’m sure you at least had insurance on it and—”

  “Insurance?! You think insurance is going to cover that? If you buy a fifty-thousand-dollar car, you’d be lucky if insurance gave you thirty-five for it the moment you drove it off the lot. You can forget about features too!”

  “Fine, fine, I’ll cover the damages since your thoroughness saved my rear,” Nick replied, remembering how the simple practice of keeping a window breaker and seatbelt cutter had helped him escape and then subsequently free Topaz.

  Before they could continue, they heard police sirens in the distance. Will sighed and nodded before walking back to his ruined car to wait. Nick and Topaz followed suit. The police had parked their cars near the overturned vehicle and armed themselves for a gun fight, only to find Will, Nick, and Topaz strolling out of the cornfield with their hands up.

  The police quickly gathered up whatever evidence they could find before questioning the three about what had happened. After giving their statements, Nick, Topaz, and Will each received a clean bill of health from the EMT, who seemed amazed that they had survived such an attack relatively unscathed. Then they were released, and with another Ober rideshare called, Nick, Topaz, and Will left.

  Nick thought it was highly suspicious that they weren’t questioned more and that every time he’d brought up the idea that the men were related to the Russian mob, the officer questioning them veered off to another topic. But he was also glad to have just been able to leave so quickly and not involve the family lawyers. More than anything, Nick was annoyed that he’d have to make all that food again for the orphans.

  Chapter 5

  Semion Serebryakov rapped his tattooed fingers across the table at his home office as he listened to his right hand man finish filling him in on the details. Three dead, two enforcers and a mage. Two solid enforcers of their level wouldn’t be that difficult to replace, but the mage would.

  “And do you know what they were doing and who killed them?” Semion asked the person on the other line, but as soon as he asked the question, he could already see the answer.

  Yulian, who was sitting on the other side of the table, started to turn even paler than the snow in Antarctica. It was a horrible trait of his, one he got from his mother. If he couldn’t even hide his guilt from his own father, whom he could practice with daily, how was he going to hide it from a stranger?

  “I’ll call you back,” Semion said, hanging up the phone and staring at the incompetent son across from him.

  “Who was it?” the boy asked nervously, shifting in his seat. Another obvious sign of guilt.

  “Who do you think it was?” Semion glared.

  “Look, I don’t know what Oleg told you, but—”

  “Oleg is dead, boy.”

  “What? Umm . . . what do you mean?” Yulian’s shock once more betrayed his emotions, grinding against Semion’s nerves as he had to remind himself that the boy’s mother, Zoya, was why he tolerated the child’s antics. When he was a kid, he never would have lived to be Yulian’s age if he had made such obvious mistakes one after the other.

  “You failed, boy.” Semion cut through the nonsense, not wanting to take the time to listen to the excuses. “Do you want to tell me, at least, how you failed before I decide what to do with you?”

  “Well, you see, that girl I like, Jenni—”

  “Zhou?”

  “Yeah, she, umm . . . She got a new fiancé and—”

  “You tried to kill her new fiancé using the family’s resources?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” Semion leaned back in his chair. He had thought the child had wasted his men on some worthless venture, but Jennifer Zhou was far from worthless. Her family’s historical ties with the right people on the Chinese mainland could open up entirely new avenues for their organization.

  “Atyets,” Yulian began, using the Russian word for “father” and hoping for leniency, “I swear I didn’t know they would die. I thought that Gallows kid was just a—”

  Semion backhanded the twenty year old. Yulian flew across the room and crashed into the wooden wall, the mirror hanging there shattering and falling to the ground from the force of the strike. Semion hardly noticed as thoughts of just how to eliminate the Gallows boy without incensing his family swirled through his mind. It would be a risk. But taking risks is what got him where he was today.

  ———

  Despite the protests by the Walters, Seo-ah, Topaz, and even Allen, Nick had still gone to class. He found it a little funny that, for a group of people who had no problem taking him to a dungeon, where he’d spend his entire day almost being eaten alive by monsters, they freaked out the moment he almost got killed once outside a dungeon. Elizabeth had even tried to go to school with him, but Nick had managed, after much convincing, to assure her that he wasn’t going to get attacked by the mafia on the way to school.

  He sat in Mr. Taylor’s Dungeon Biology class, his head down and eyes resting rather than worrying about when he would be attacked again. He was instead far more concerned with trying to figure out why he had been attacked in the first place. Looking at everything objectively though, he could only come up with one reason: Evan. He hadn’t interfered with anything the Bratva had done, and they weren’t connected to the insurance company he’d gotten paid from. If he died, they wouldn’t get any of his money, which left the inheritance-hungry Evan as the prime suspect.

  Thunk.

  “Is it another attack?!” he blurted out instinctively as his eyes shot open and darted back and forth, looking for monsters. After a couple of seconds, he finally processed what had happened to him: Mr. Taylor’s famous chalk throw had struck him in the head yet again.

  “You finally make it to school, and the first thing you do is try to sleep through my class?” Mr. Taylor griped, glaring at Nick. “But, since you’ve once again written my lecture off as an unnecessary waste of your time because you’re oh so knowledgeable about the topics I teach, then why don’t you help the rest of the room once more? When and why might one choose to focus on improving their aura instead of magic, and why might one choose to avoid putting points in it altogether?”

  Nick blinked as he looked at Mr. Taylor in confusion. Did he just . . . Did he ask me an easy question? Would this have been difficult for the old me? Nick thought, half expecting Mr. Taylor to try and trip him up with a difficult one or embarrass him like he usually would.

  “Well, that’s actually pretty easy,” Nick began. “Magic is what most people think of as the stat necessary for spells and what most mages specialize in, as it’s the stat that increases one’s mana and increases the intensity of the mana-based spells that one casts. The spells range from small to large, but they are all either immediate like a fireball or have very short durations like a fog or blizzard call-down. Aura, on the other hand, focuses on magic that uses one’s health instead of mana to cast and focuses on imbuements, spells that can improve an item, oneself, or an ally for hours at a time. So with this in mind, one might choose to pick aura if they want to focus on helping those around them and having enough hit points to spare, or one might avoid the stat altogether if they don’t have a lot of hit points, or they can’t rely on a healer and plan to fight on the front lines of a group.”

  Mr. Taylor shook his head. “Nick, you’ve made a mistake. You’ve already pointed out how long the imbuements from aura last, often an entire dungeon run, so even in the case where they can’t rely on a healer, it still makes sense to grab aura. A simple health potion at the beginning of the dungeon can make up for the points spent on aura.”

  “But not all health expended in such a way can be recovered using a potion. Some aura buffs don’t just require health during the casting phase. They require you to sacrifice a portion of your health that doesn’t return until after the buff has ended,” Nick explained. “Those are the cases I meant, given that they form the majority of higher-level aura imbuements.”

  Mr. Taylor’s eyes narrowed for a minute, and then he sighed. “You’re right. In those cases, fear of incompetent party members is a good reason not to focus on aura abilities. I was going to say that a more important factor might be that some buffs do not improve even if aura improves, so rather than focusing on the stat, it is easier to focus on constitution or just ignore aura altogether.”

  Seeing the semi-defeated look in Mr. Taylor’s eyes, Nick couldn’t help but feel a little guilty as he nodded his head. “That’s a very good point,” Nick said, half out of guilt for having likely embarrassed his teacher. “Thank you for the lesson. I’ll try to focus more next time,” he added, hoping to help the man recover a little of his dignity.

  The lecture continued, but Nick had a harder time focusing and was relieved when the bell rang. After he got up to go to lunch, he saw Seo-ah and Allen in the hallway waiting for him.

  “Hey, Nick!” Allen called out, running up to him. When he reached Nick, he swung his backpack around and opened it, revealing a half-finished keyboard with an integrated monitor. “I’m almost done with that special project you gave me those schematics for. I’m just amazed at the innovative circuit designs . . .” Allen continued gushing about all the special characteristics of the advanced miniature computer system Nick had given him plans for. Nick couldn’t help shaking his head at his friend’s enthusiasm for something post-apocalypse Allen had whipped up to help him with his artificer design work and occasional hacking.

  Nick would have continued walking with his friends towards the cafeteria, listening to Allen praise what were essentially his own designs, except that he noticed that Seo-ah's eyes were lingering on his hands and neck. He tensed up, realizing that all the bruises and scrapes he'd obtained from yesterday's adventures had yet to heal. That’s why Mr. Taylor asked me such an easy question. He must have seen the injuries and felt bad, Nick realized as he moved his hands instinctively to cover the fresh bruises, burns, and wounds from the attack.

  "I’ll ask for the next period off to escort you to the nurse’s office," Seo-ah told him matter of factly as if Nick didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  “Are you sure?” Nick couldn’t help but chuckle, feeling a very strong sense of déjà vu. The first time he saw Seo-ah during this timeline was when she got stuck escorting him, begrudgingly, to the nurse’s office.

  “What? Of course, I’m sure. Did you seriously not go to the hospital yesterday?! Look at these wounds! You have burn marks and—”

  “Miss Seo-ah! Indoor voices!” Mr. Taylor cut her off, yelling from inside the classroom before stepping out himself.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Taylor.” Seo-ah looked at the ground for a moment, clearly uncomfortable with being scolded by an authority figure.

  “Well, you may have been loud, but you were right. Nick, I don’t know what happened to you, but you do need to go to the nurse’s office. I’ll inform your next class’s teacher of your injuries and let them know your friends are accompanying you,” Mr. Taylor said before shaking his head and walking off down the hall.