Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

The zombies became more crowded and restless as they approached Wanbourne, swarming in greater and greater numbers; Tok had to keep the horse at a trot and slalom around the shambling undead at a brisk pace. He was obviously exceedingly practiced at it, angling the heavily-loaded wagon deftly around obstacles and corpses alike with such precision and smoothness that Topher felt the dwarf had been cruelly robbed of the opportunity for a truly stellar NASCAR career. As the walls of the city began to become visible in the distance, the undead became fewer and fewer, then disappeared entirely; Topher guessed it had something to do with the large, shining white crystals atop the walls every so often. As the terrain became less hazardous, Tok slowed the horse to a walk, patting and soothing the beast almost constantly to get the wagon the last few miles into the city.

Topher wasn't sure exactly what he'd expected from Wanbourne, but this wasn't it; the city was clearly built directly atop shattered, broken ruins of a fantastically strange variety, and the juxtaposition of seeing a cute little stone townhouse with an elegantly manicured lawn directly adjacent to a crumbling, squid-faced statue with flying buttresses surrounding jagged, twisting stairways into darkness did not do his beleaguered brain any favors. The streets were, as usual, howlingly empty to his metropolitan preconceptions, but there was at least a person or two of foot traffic on most of the roads and trails they passed, which was still a bustling hive of activity compared to Frostford. The other striking contrast was that every single person he saw looked like they could kick his ass while blindfolded and asleep; there were hulking, armored men and women toting large swords and axes, cloaked and skulking figures flashing concealed blades, and robed folk strolling about with glinting staves that reflected the sunlight in a myriad of colors. He devoted all of his energy to looking harmless and inoffensive as possible as Tok rolled the wagon up broad, clear streets that looked as though they had once bourne some kind of liquid in a central channel; maybe this place had gondolas, he thought to himself curiously.

As the sun was beginning to reach its zenith, Tok pulled the wagon alongside some others in a large, open courtyard surrounded by several tall buildings; he hobbled the horse and put a nosebag of wet oats on it, then trucked around to the back of the wagon and did something clever to the sides of the tail-gate such that a wooden sign popped up, bearing the words "ROCKBRAND'S IMPORTS" in elegant, block-letter script. He began unloading the barrels, crates, and other containers from the back of the wagon without a word to Topher, who rushed to help but found that many of the items were beyond his capacity to lift; stupid Rank F Strength, he grumbled to himself. He finally managed to find some smaller, curiously cold and salty-smelling containers that were small enough for him to tote; he started to count them so he'd have an idea of the scope of the work, realized that he was making a horrible mistake, and glued his eyes to his feet as he carried each one over to where Tok was arranging the goods. I've made the poor guy's life miserable enough; he doesn't need me pulling a Chicken Sandwich Incident on his cargo to boot. It took them over an hour to unload everything, but Topher had plenty of MP left over from killing the zombie that had gotten him to Level 10; he cast Remove Fatigue on himself, whistled cheerfully, and looked around for something else useful to do.

"You want me to go look for inn rooms?" he asked the dwarf. "I imagine you'll be here a while, since you came all this way to sell here."

The dwarf nodded -- Topher noticed that his ears were red again for some reason. "If you want. Gonna warn you, though -- everything's expensive here, and I wouldn't recommend wanderin' off into anywhere that isn't brightly lit and full of witnesses."

Topher snorted. "Trust me, I'm very aware that Level 10 doesn't mean anything to the people here. Guessing most of these guys are what, Level 20? Higher?"

"Not all of 'em; but of the ones that actually fight in the dungeon, it's Level 20 at minimum, I'd say." The dwarf carefully opened a crate, then pulled out items to arrange for display. "Probably Level 30 or higher for the folks doing deep dives; I wouldn't be shocked to see a Level 50 here. There are more dangerous places -- older dungeons that are still around, for example, or real abandon-all-hope sorts o' places in Vorn -- but it's probably one of the top five dungeons at the moment. So stay on your too-tall human toes."

Topher nodded, then carefully walked towards one of the buildings surrounding the courtyard; unlike the establishments in Frostford, these buildings actually had words on their frontage, often accompanied by fanciful artwork or even magically-enhanced advertising. There were at least five inns, including one he could not conceptualize as anything other than a Real Hotel, a handful of restaurants, and a dizzying array of shops, smithies, breweries, and even a tattoo parlor. Determined not to get distracted, mugged, or otherwise made unreliable by external forces, he went to one of the cheaper-looking inns and inquired within for lodgings.

The interior of the building was wood-paneled like the Frostford inn had been, but the difference was stark; where the other establishment had had splintery, rough unvarnished pine boards, this place (apparently called the Gilded Shovel) looked more like the sort of thing one sees in a very glossy brochure dispensed by someone possessed of tremendous vigor in trying to sell you a home renovation at a budget of roughly six times your annual income. Every floor, wall, table, and chair were positively drenched in varnish and lacquer; Topher wanted to take his shoes off and just soak up the expensiveness.

A prim, elegantly coiffed half-elf man wearing an actual pair of pince-nez glasses strode up to him as he entered, looked Topher up and down, and coughed delicately. "May I be of assistance, sir?"

Topher felt himself judged and found wanting, but decided to avoid embarrassment by donning the powerful shield of American Tourism; he nodded and smiled. "Sure. I was wondering how much a room goes for in this place? And whether your food is any good, I guess." He didn't need to spend money for food with his Create Food and Drink spell, but he'd probably be willing to part with some money for a chicken sandwich. Or a cheeseburger, he supposed. Life's gotta be lived, after all.

The elf blinked slightly, but managed to recover before the sneer that was forming across his lips could metastasize. "Of course, sir. Our rates are, I assure you, quite competitive; we may not be the most... extravagant... inn in the borough, but I feel that we make up for it with our own unique charm." He bowed; Topher rated the mockery content of the action at a respectable four out of ten. "Would you be looking for a single room, sir, or a double?"

Topher smiled at the thought of the awkwardness involved. "Let's say I'd like the price for each, eh? I like to be informed." Not that I plan to room with Tok, but if it's a big savings, it might be worth the discomfort. I already know he doesn't snore.

"Of course, sir. Our standard rate is ten gold per night for our single-occupancy rooms, with a surcharge of seven additional gold for a double occupancy; we also offer complimentary laundry services, wake-up calls, and use of our bathing facilities, including our one-of-a-kind mineral spring soaking tubs." The half-elf fussed with his glasses slightly, then returned to an attentive pose. "Shall I put you down for a room, sir? Or two?"

Sweet Jesus, ten gold a night?! Topher managed not to wince, but it was close. "Not yet, thanks. I have to shop around." He made a show of writing the prices in his Ledger, just so the guy would know he was a mage and not a hobo, before thanking the attendant and nonchalantly strolling back out. He walked around between all the inns slowly, taking deep breaths, and carefully checked the prices at all of them; most of them were even more expensive, with the hotel-looking place costing an outrageous hundred pieces of gold per night (although that one looked like your room came with prostitutes, so he didn't feel as scandalized as he might have otherwise). The cheapest-looking inn, which still looked outrageously sumptuous relative to anything else he'd seen in this world thus far, was five gold for a single and seven for a double; it didn't have floors that looked like pools of honey atop redwood planks, but it did have an open bar for guests, which Topher figured was a better value proposition for a dwarf anyway. Feeling insufficiently prosperous to really be allowed in this area, he couldn't help slouching a little as he returned to Tok, who was in the middle of selling a crate of salted chickens to an orc; Topher didn't want to intrude, so he simply leaned on the wagon and waited until the dwarf had no more customers.

"Find anything you liked?" the dwarf commented, hauling an empty crate to the wagon and tossing it inside.

Topher sighed. "A lot, but most of it was a little out of my price league. The Restful Boneyard seemed like the best deal for the money -- it's still a ruinous five gold per night for a single and seven for a double, but everything else was worse."

Tok nodded. "Usually stay there anyway; free beer buys a dwarf's business pretty reliably." Topher noticed Tok's hands were shaking slightly for some reason, and his ears had gone red again. "Still, I guess a double might save us a few gold. Not like we haven't been sleeping near each other for the past week or so."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Don't worry, I'll keep my hands to myself." Topher smirked a little; Tok seemed a little put off, but hesitantly grinned back. Maybe he's stressed out. This is probably almost as dangerous for him as it is for me, if everybody here is even higher-Level than he is. "About how long do you usually stay out here selling before you turn in?"

"Sundown, usually. Have some deliveries to make tomorrow, though; expect to be here for about three days on most trips." The dwarf paused to speak to a customer who had approached; Topher felt highly superfluous and sat in the wagon's seat for a while, working on his calculations and spinning his pen. He had a great deal of trouble concentrating, as he'd expected he would; he desperately wanted to explore the city, but knew that even the possibility of getting mugged or butchered in an alley was too great of a risk to be worth anything he might find. Instead, he dismissed his Ledger and Stylus, then hopped down from the wagon and began to explore the few shops which were adjacent to the plaza; he figured staying within line of sight to the wagon was about as safe as he could be without actually clinging to Tok's pant legs.

The first store he investigated had a large, very plain wooden sign which had clearly been recently made; he could still see spots where the varnish was curing. Heading inside, he found it not too dissimilar to Jerp's shop, albeit less gnome-enabled: wooden floors and walls, wooden shelves, and a large counter where a bored-looking middle-aged human woman sat and doodled on a scroll. As he entered, she looked up and commented, "Welcome to Dead -- err, to Dungeon's Delicious Draughts. Potions and suchlike." Blushing, she put her head back down, but Topher wandered over anyway; he couldn't contain his curiosity.

"Sorry for asking, but you started to say a different name? I'm just curious."

She blushed even harder. "I'm sorry. We used to be called Dead Man's Drink, but there was a naming dispute with a pub on the other side of town, and they won. We've had to rebrand everything, and I'm still getting my feet under me."

Topher nodded, sympathetic. "Brains get stuck, yeah. You run the place?"

"Oh, me and my husband." She gestured to a picture on the wall; he could see a framed portrait of a younger-looking version of the woman and a bookish-looking halfling, who was standing on a stool in the portrait; the detail charmed him a little. "He's a brewer, you see. He's been trying to flavor potions, but it's apparently tricky -- the flavor's part of the effect, and if they don't match..." she shrugged. "It's all over my head. You can't even make potions unless you have the Alchemy Skill anyhow, and my Class is Dancer. I wouldn't know a thing about flavors or magic; I just mind the shop so Rex doesn't have to spend too long away from his brewery."

Topher felt a smile attempting to spread across his face, and fought it down -- the whole thing was so ridiculous he couldn't stand it, but he didn't have time to sit and listen to the story of their meet-cute, adorable as it probably would have been. Probably give me diabeetus anyway. Instead, he nodded and mumbled his thanks, then went to browse the shop's wares. As he'd suspected, everything was outrageously expensive compared to Frostford; most of the potions were hundreds of gold, and a few had prices listed in platinum -- even basic potions like the one he'd had to buy from Oguro were twice as expensive here.

You didn't buy that potion, whispered the distant part of his mind, but he squashed it and soldiered on. Bury the past. Doesn't matter who bought it.

He was just about to move on to the next shop when a small endcap display caught his eye -- it was in the "Miscellaneous" section, which carried non-potable liquids like oils, unguents, and similar things. Next to a bottle labeled "sovereign glue" was another, much fancier bottle labeled, in rainbow colors, "NEW AND IMPROVED -- SOULBOND GLUE" with a little stick-figure drawing of a man suspending an anvil from a ceiling, standing underneath it with what Topher felt was a highly inappropriate expression of cheerfulness, and then removing it. Curious, he picked up the bottle and brought it (very carefully) to the front counter. "Hey, sorry to bother you, but I was curious -- what's this stuff? Some kind of super-glue?"

"Oh, that's Rex's newest obsession." The woman laid her chin on her folded hands and smiled dreamily; Topher managed not to retch. "You're familiar with sovereign glue?"

Topher started to shake his head, caught himself, and shrugged instead. "Humor me and pretend I'm not, so I get a clear picture."

She chuckled. "Well, it's a magic glue -- you put it on something, stick something else on it, and it bonds them together permanently -- can't be undone without another, equally magic solvent. But Rex was experimenting with, I don't know, some kind of scented oil base and a little healing potion mix-in, and he came up with this stuff." She flicked a finger at the bottle. "It bonds two things unbreakably together just like sovereign glue, but the person who does the bonding can also separate them at will. I gather it was supposed to be very clever -- he's always going on about the uses in security and such -- but most of the people who come in here just want healing potions and lots of them. We've had to price it below the regular stuff just to get it off the shelves; I think that's the last bottle."

"Really? How much is it?" Topher tried to recall if he'd seen a price on the endcap, and couldn't remember.

The woman shrugged. "I think he had it priced at a hundred, but to be honest with you, I'd let it go for twenty-five. Just seeing him be happy that someone bought it would be worth at least that much gold to me."

Topher paused. That was a massive chunk of his gold, but something in the back of his brain was telling him that the halfling had made something incredibly useful here and this might be his last chance to get his hands on it. Should he haggle? What if it was a scam? "Do you have a return policy?" he hedged.

The woman laughed, loud and long; Topher felt embarrassed but stood his ground. "Honey, if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back and then some. I'll always bet on Big Rex's work." Her smile was knowing and confident; Topher had a deep suspicion he was being scammed, but just couldn't bring himself to walk away. That's gonna get me into big trouble real soon, I can tell.

Smiling and doing his best to be cordial, he paid the shopkeeper and scurried out before he could get himself into any more trouble; the next shop was adjunct to a smithy and sold only weapons and heavy armor, so he didn't linger long in there. The third shop, however, destroyed him.

It was called simply Curios, and he wasn't sure if that was a description of the sold goods or the name of the proprietor with the apostrophe missing. As soon as he opened the door, he knew he was in trouble; the place was a mage shop, with wands and staves and orbs and spellbooks and robes and censers and scrolls of all kinds. There were mummified hands and claws on necklaces, gems mounted in circlets, sealed boxes covered in wards, and all manner of things that looked expensive and deadly; Topher's brain itched like his thoughts were fiberglass.

The place was also stupidly high-class; everything was locked and sealed in cases of marble and glass, usually with glowing runes to boot. The floors were cold iron covered with fetching rugs that looked like they could come alive and eat you if you misbehaved, and two massive, towering humanoids with red skin and eyes watched Topher's every move. He noted in passing that they had tiny red horns, like Oguro's secretary had.

The shop looked untended at first, but eventually he caught sight of a Stone Elf pottering about with a vase that looked like it would destroy the world if it fell over; the vase was cracked and rattling with some malignant force from within, and the elf looked both gorgeous and terrifying. His black skin was silky and supple, and his long hair fell almost to his waist in cascading waves of pure white softness; Topher pulled up the hood of his robe and cursed his baldness. Not that I'm that bald. Still got plenty of hair. Just not in the front. The mage looked at him, sniffed, and looked back down at his work; Topher couldn't blame him. Looks like a busy guy.

He wandered around the shop, careful not to touch anything (the big red guys did not look friendly or understanding). As he'd expected, the prices here were beyond exorbitant: the cheapest thing he saw was a wand for two hundred platinum, and things went downhill from there. Still, looking was free, and Topher liked having general knowledge; he still didn't know what wands and staves were for, had never even seen an orb or any of these necklaces, and was keen to discover what else existed within the parameters of the possible. He turned the corner --

Directly in front of him was a large spellbook, bound in blue leather with gold filigree; it was open to a page near the middle, upon which a diagram in red ink was inscribed. It looked a bit like a cat's cradle of yarn, or a dreamcatcher; but around the edges, Topher could see each of the sixty-four base runes, with lines that ran from one to another in a criss-crossing, overlapping pattern like the petals of an unfolding flower. And, as the eye moved towards the center of the shape, more petals emerged, smaller and smaller, as the connections became more and more intricate... he was vaguely conscious that he was summoning his Ledger and Stylus. Gotta write this down. Is that Zom connecting to Viex, or Viex connecting to Ozi? And what's...

Jesus.

They're all connected.

Topher fell into infinity.

His mind burst into a pinwheeling starscape, each rune expanding vertically into an infinity of fractal perspectives like a tower of stars from the depths to the heavens of a complex plane; and between each rune and each other rune, an infinite graph expanded, joining each node to each other node in a flash of infinitely-dense webwork that filled all space but left infinitely more space between each connection. The power wasn't in the easy connections, he intuited; it was in the distance involved in the connection, such that disparate perspectives had to overcome the resistance equal to the square of the relative differential but resulted in power equal to the limit of the resulting value between --

Something hit him, hard; he was abruptly on the floor, blinking, while one of the big red men screamed something at him. He couldn't hear, and his ears were ringing. His back hurt. His head hurt, and his vision was blurry. He tried to ask what was going on, but he couldn't hear himself talk.

Suddenly, there was a flurry of confused motion; when he came back to himself, he was sitting sprawled on the cold metal floor inside of what looked like a chalk circle of some kind. The Stone Elf mage he'd seen before, now giving Topher his full attention, was peering into his eyes with an expression rather like a food critic examining a meal before taking his first bite; Topher kept blinking. What's going on? Did I give myself another concussion?

Eventually, the ringing in his ears receded; he realized that the mage had been trying to speak to him for some time, but he couldn't make it out. He held up a hand. "Sorry. Wait... sorry. I can't really hear you. Ears." He looked around, dazedly; was he in some kind of back room?

The mage frowned, then nodded and said something Topher couldn't hear to one of the big red men; they growled visibly, but moved back. The mage picked up a small stool, moved over closer to Topher, and sat down; he appeared to be waiting patiently for something. Finally, Topher managed to blink away the more tenacious afterimages and coughed out, "Okay. I think I'm okay."

"A bold assessment of your situation," the mage rejoined; he had a smooth, silky voice with just a bit of a gravelly undertone to it. "Would you like to explain why you were tearing up my place of business?"

"I was doing what, now?" Topher frowned. "Look, I was just checking out your spellbook, and then I was on the floor. I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

The mage held up a small, cylindrical object; Topher recognized it as his Stylus. "So you're telling me you unintentionally discharged Class Four akasha using a nonmagical object, from looking at a nonmagical illustration in a spellbook behind a Level forty-five warding spell?"

"I guess?" Topher shrugged. "Like I said, I don't remember." He had a vague memory of something similar happening with Varissian in Frostford and winced. "It did happen once before, I guess, with a stick. I was thinking about runes at the time."

"I take it you are not a classically trained mage." The elf put Topher's Stylus down slightly distastefully and leaned forward, looking searchingly into his eyes again. "What is your name, human?"

"Topher. Topher Bailey." Topher resisted the urge to hold out his hand for a shake; he didn't know what would happen if he tried to leave the circle of chalk, and he didn't want to find out the hard way that it would be something unpleasant like immolation or amputation.

"Well, Human Mage Topher Bailey, I regret to inform you that practicing the arts arcane in this city is quite forbidden without a permit." The mage pursed his lips, looked at Topher again, and sniffed. "However, since nothing was damaged -- thanks, of course, to my wards, without which you would have doubtlessly incurred hundreds of thousands of platinum of damage -- I will be merciful and neglect to mention your offense to the city watch." He tapped one finger against his teeth, pondering. "What is your Class?"

Topher sighed. "It's Clerk. It's really embarrassing."

The mage laughed. "Well! If that is your Class, you should have no trouble filling out the required forms for a permit, should you?" He grinned -- it was not a kind smile, but its nastiness was at least not directed at Topher. He could tell the elf was annoyed about something that had nothing to do with him, and was just taking his frustrations out on a little light mockery; nothing Topher wasn't used to. "But I will warn you -- magic is not a toy, round-ears. This time, you emitted a little akasha and got a bop on the nose with a rolled scroll; but most of your kind eventually attempt to cast a spell beyond their Level and end up grease stains -- or worse, open portals to places with more tentacles than tenderness." He daintily reached out a foot and scuffed the chalk line, breaking the seal. "If you're going to continue to practice magic, I suggest a good tutor. Or a good life insurance policy."

Topher clambered to his feet tiredly. "Decent advice. Know any?"

The elf cocked his head. "Life insurance agents?"

"No, tutors." Topher chuckled. "The last mage who tried to teach me anything was an elf named Varissian; he knew about three spells. Good guy, but not exactly King of the Wizards."

"I should expect not." The elf tossed his hair haughtily. "But this is hardly the place for such studies; Wanbourne is a city of action, not of education."

"You're saying there are mage schools, or something?" Topher's view of standardized education was dim.

"Of course. But a human only lives a few years, and you do not seem young -- if you'll pardon my assumption." The elf sniffed again. "Among my people, it can take several decades of instruction to be considered even an apprentice mage; you would doubtlessly perish of old age long before you reached anything remotely resembling competence."

Abruptly, Topher was angry; memories of Varissian's stories of elf castes flooded back into his mind, and he crossed his arms. "Probably not. But I taught myself transforms into Grand Runespace off the strength of an overheard conversation and a beginner mage book; maybe that's crap to you, pal, but I don't have the luxury of just giving up and resigning myself to mediocrity." I don't? Why not? The anger flooding through him felt like it was coming from somewhere else, some black and bloody wounded thing deep within himself that he didn't recognize and shied away from examining; he didn't have time to sit here and listen to an elf tell him how pathetic he was and always would be. He had shit to do. "I appreciate the advice and your understanding about... well, about whatever happened out there. But you'll forgive me if I'm not ready to go off and die quietly simply for the sake of your assumptions."

The elf laughed -- a cruel, nasty laugh that had the same energy as his smile, with bitterness and hatred directed not at Topher, but at something Topher represented to him. "Well, I cannot fault your courage, human. Go then, and explode messily from a botched spell elsewhere." He tossed Toher's Stylus over to him; Topher caught it and unsummoned it with a flourish. "But do me a favor; don't return here unless you're going to buy something, yes?" He swept over to a large iron door and held it open for Topher with a smirk. "If you can."

Dimly, Topher understood he was being both challenged and encouraged; that the elf, in his own way, was reaching out from under some harsh, bitter cultural weight of which he knew nothing to extend a vanishingly small sliver of potential respect and motivation to him. He started to make his way over past the mage through the door, then stopped, a few inches in front of the elf's face; the elf's smirk intensified, his eyes hooding as his expression of superiority blended ineffably with something else, some kind of weird masochistic paternal thing he couldn't remotely understand or identify.

Topher took a deep breath. "Thanks. Whatever your name was." Then he remembered. "I mean, whatever name you use here."

"I see you do know something of my people." The elf shifted a little, facing Topher slightly more head-on. "In this place and context, I am known as Dakath Xyrmaer."

"Great. Let's see how much you know about mine." Topher shoved his hand out for a shake.

The elf inspected it, curiously; Topher knew, in a flash of insight, that he suddenly had the upper hand here. Either the elf knew nothing about the cultural significance of a handshake and would have to admit it; or he would know that a handshake was simultaneously a bond of trust, a challenge, and an offer of friendship and be forced to either accept or reject the terms explicitly, rather than implicitly. You're supposed to be all wise and old and shit, huh pal? Prove it.

Abruptly, the elf grabbed Topher's hand and grasped it; Topher gasped. The elf was astoundingly strong; his grip felt like it could crush Topher's bones to powder. I thought mages were supposed to be frail! Gritting his teeth, Topher summoned every ounce of his resolve and squeezed back as hard as he could; the handshake went on for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only about five seconds.

Finally, the elf released him; Topher did his best not to clutch his burning, aching hand and instead simply nodded. "Be seeing you." He turned his back on the elf and headed for the shop's exit.

"Human Topher."

He half-turned, surprised. "Yeah?"

The elf's expression was strange; impassive and unreadable. "Your... previous tutor. Varissian. Do you speak of Varissian Leafwind?"

Topher crossed his arms. "Brother of Cailu, yeah. Why?"

The elf shoved his hands into the pockets of his robe; Topher realized, startled, that he was sulking. "How does he fare?"

Topher grinned. He couldn't help himself. "Just got married to a human girl. Acquired an inn in a business deal." Then, abruptly, his grin faded. "Probably saving up for Cailu's funeral."

Dakath sighed. "I cannot say I am surprised. May I pass the news on to his family?"

"Huh?" Topher blinked. "Sure, whatever. How do you know them?"

The elf shook his head scornfully. "Humans." He looked up. "I may not be King of the Wizards, as you put it, but Kelfir Leafwind, father of Cailu and Varissian, would have a fairly competitive claim to the title. He is Archmage of the Golden Tower in Pal'kandu."

Topher gaped. "Seriously? And he treats his kids like that?!"

Dakath's expression soured even further. "It appears you are not as versed in our culture as I had hoped. Elf children must prove themselves, human -- fallen-caste children such as Cailu and Varissian in particular are expected to rise above their circumstances, not to wallow in them. We are not like your kind, who spoil our litters and produce lazy, entitled nobles fit only for waste and corruption."

Topher had to laugh. "Damn, that's good. Couldn't agree with you more." He gave the elf the crudest, cockiest thumbs-up he could. "So I guess you won't have jack fuckin' shit to complain about if I rise above my short-lived, stupid, pathetic human circumstances, huh?"

The elf smirked again and nodded. "Then begone from my store, human. And don't come back without a grand story of victory, yes?"

Topher grinned and gave a two-finger salute, tapping the hood of his robe as he turned to leave. You fuckin' bet your ass.