Well, not everything went the way one wanted in life.
Gio haggled to the best of his ability. When it ca to skills from his past life, talking was one he developed long before the Tower of Babel. He was confident in his skills, but maybe he'd forgotten how stubborn people could be.
At the end of the day, he did get that vendor to lower his price, but he was only able to get it down to 55,000. It was close to what he was looking for, but wasting 5000 credits hurt his soul.
He had to be satisfied with what he had. He was still roughly on budget, so he couldn't complain too much.
'I've co here a couple tis since I ca back to Gastle, but I never looked for the materials I needed. I was more focused on getting the materials I needed to scavenge, since I was certain I could get all three toxins at the sa ti today.'
It was why he ca near the end of his hunt. Now, when he had 120,000 credits in storage, was the perfect ti.
After tapping a black card against the man's holowatch and transferring the funds, Gio begrudgingly walked away.
The toxin in his hands ca from an aquatic mutated snake species called Whirpool Serpents. When they bit, they released a toxin that would paralyze their prey and put them to sleep, completely shutting down their nervous responses.
This kind of toxin could be used in many ways. It had countless dicinal uses, it was used in small quantities in so cuisines to create a tongue-numbing texture, and, of course, it was used to paralyze and kill.
For most, the sleep-inducing property was sothing to be removed to enhance the paralysis property, but Gio has the exact opposite plan. In order to enhance the soporific properties of the toxin, he was using the easiest thod.
'Addition.'
His eyes scanned the stalls as he continued down the street until he found the second toxin he needed. It ca from a mutated jungle snake species called Vine Crawler Boas. In a similar fashion, they put their prey to sleep before consuming them, but their toxins were much more aggressive and directly destroyed the body's connection with the nerves.
He was able to find it for 50,000 credits even, which was exactly what he wanted. In total, he only had around 20,000 credits left, but...
'If I'm lucky, I can find a defective product. The last thing I need is Rose Toxin from the Garden Rose Snake. It's usually distilled into Spectrum, a psychedelic drug that's pretty popular, but I need the sa toxin with its psychedelic properties reduced as much as they can be.'
Psychedelic properties were the last thing he needed. Rose Toxin should have been on the sa street as the other monster and beast byproducts, but it was in a different section tucked away from the rest.
It was located along with other byproducts used in drug creation. If there was one benefit to beasts and monsters, it was that their bodies were filled with goodies that could be used in all types of ways.
'Co on...'
There were only three stalls for these drug-related goods. It wasn't that there wasn't a market for them, but rather these three stalls would buy those goods from others and curate them for custors, making them the ones who beat out the competition.
They usually only stocked the best of their product, but they were also aware that so buyers had more unique needs. As such, they dedicated a section specifically for defective goods.
Gio searched through it to no avail. There were many good products available, but none of them suited his needs.
"Is there sothing specific you're looking for?"
A voice snapped him away from the stall. He looked up to see a man standing not behind the stall, but next to him.
His eyes widened slightly.
"Seb? What are you doing here?"
There stood a man with brown hair and blue eyes. Even though he had a mask on, the scraggly beard on his chin and his signature voice gave him away.
The protections a mask could offer unless one used special technologies weren't much, after all. Gio wasn't the only one who recognized the person he was talking to.
The man nad Seb grinned, patting him on the back.
"It's good to see you, kid, but since when did you have the money to be shopping at Nightreign? And, for stuff like this, too..."
His eyes drifted to the products in front of them. Needless to say, they weren't ant for teenagers.
Gio grinned slightly.
"Relax. I haven't developed any bad habits. If you're here, the Old Lady should be here too, right?"
Seb shrugged.
"She's here, but I don't know where she ran off to. You know how she gets when she sees good materials."
Gio nodded in understanding. She was always a person who seed to have far more energy than anyone else. It was hard for anyone to keep up with her, even if those people were her own protection detail.
Seb was one of the only people who could manage her antics, so he naturally had a high position in her camp. As for how Seb knew Gio, well, they spent more than enough ti together when Gio was much younger.
Seb was sothing like an uncle to him back then. He was also the one who first helped him get into scavenging.
"She's been wanting to see you, you know? It's been over a year, right?"
"It's been a lot longer than that," Gio joked.
"I was planning to co visit soon, but as you can see, I have so things to take care of."
"Right..."
Seb looked back at the stall. He caught sight of the owner and quickly ushered him over. Though he wouldn't usually answer to a custor so easily, different people deserved different treatnt.
"What were you looking for?" Seb asked.
"I need defective Rose Toxin with as few psychedelic properties as possible."
Without doubting why he was asking, Gio told him exactly what he wanted.
He knew that only a few words from Seb were necessary for the shopkeeper to search through his entire stock to find what he needed.
And, of course, with such a guarantee, there was no way the price would be a scam either.
It was a chance eting at the marketplace, but one that Gio was more than happy about.
He took his attention away from the stand as Seb spoke to the vendor. Looking around the marketplace, he waited for that person to show up.
The fact that she had white hair made her seem older than she was on paper, but she was a strange person who was born with naturally white hair, likely due to the effects of her trait.
She asked people to call her the Old Lady, but they called her the Witch Doctor because really only she could see herself as an old person.
Only the people closest to her called her as she wanted. After all, she didn't give her real na out to anyone.
She had bright blue eyes that looked like aquamarine crystals and a face that looked no older than 30. Truly, she was a beautiful person, but her external appearance ant nothing.
The heart beating within her chest was what made her beloved.
As if she was responding to Gio's thoughts, she appeared in the midst of the crowd that he was looking into. She was unavoidable. Even though she could afford to get a better mask that disguised her hair color and made her look more ordinary, she couldn't be bothered with such useless spending.
She was looking around at the various materials around her with an expression that constantly shifted as she judged each and every thing. It was only after a long while that she lifted her head and spotted Seb, along with, of course, the child standing next to him.
Her eyes lit up as she moved through the crowd like a speeding bullet to reach them.
Gio could only smile wryly and turn around like he wasn't involved.
She was exactly the sa person she'd always been.
There was so small comfort to be found in that fact.
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