The Third Portal: Chapter Twenty-Five

Convincing the attendant to tell me who was providing the pearl-light pumpkins for sale had been surprisingly easy. The man was one of the leaders of a small guild called the Glowing Soil Guild, with only about a half a dozen members, and was immensely unpopular – which frankly made sense. 

Figuring out an exact conversion ratio for points to silver was difficult. Things like land were going for a lot less than they would have in Mossford proper, at least when buying small and medium sized plots for personal housing or constructing small to medium businesses. On the other side, single use field kit like healing potions, mana restoratives, and disposable enchantments were running at practically exorbitant costs when purchased in points instead of silver. Meanwhile things like natural treasures, spiritual tools, and my own Druid potion seemed to fall between those two extremes, with some variance. 

Ostensibly, that was why the pearl-light pumpkins were so expensive – they could be consumed to help restore someone’s mana, almost like the universal mana restoration elixir that Mallory’s mom had tossed me, but they were reusable. 

Except that they grew slowly, and in bunches depending on the season, and unless you were a plant mage, you’d have a hard time speeding that up. Even as a plant mage, without dedicating my entire mana-garden to becoming a farmer, I would struggle to do more than speed it along. 

It was like the difference between producing a burst of sharp force from my blademoss versus growing a mana apple from my red star tree. The apple was much more complex and delicate, requiring many layers of energy manipulation, and a very different proposition from flooding a specific part of the plant with power. I could speed it by regularly stimulating the natural production, but I couldn’t just create one when I needed it. 

Bearing that in mind, him charging just shy of three thousand points for them was ridiculous. 

Meadow tapped my arm as we arrived at the guild hall, and smiled. 

“I’ll wait out here. It’s best you learn to do these things on your own, rather than leaning on the power of people like me or Orykson. Still, I’ll keep an eye out, just in case he does more than throw around his power.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed, then swept my senses and eyes over the Glowing Soil Guildhall. 

It was a rough earthen construction on the edge of town, sitting next to what looked to be a field of random crops and flowers. The building was long, low, and squat, clearly erected quickly through spellwork, rather than being a welcoming and cheerful business center, but I could feel three presences burning inside. 

The guild leader was a false Arcanist telluric and life mage, while the other two felt like peak third gate and early fourth gate, both also life mages, though the third gate did also have  time magic. 

The field of flowers and vegetables was far more interesting to my mind. I could feel dewdrop feverfew, breath aster, and sunset marigolds, alongside some other flowers I didn’t recognize specifically, but could feel the healing arrays nested within. There were also leaves of spirit-balm and other spiritual healing plants, some spiritual resistance plants, and loads of mana sources for every possible mana type. Life seemed the most abundant, but I caught some of everything, and even some mixes. 

But the fact that it was almost entirely full, when plenty of people needed mana, and the Hyacinth Heart guildhall had been full of injured people set something off in the back of my mind. Keeping a portion of the field for personal use was one thing, but there were at least four acres of farmland, bursting with resources. 

The guildmaster stepped out of the house, and squinted suspiciously at me. He was handsome in the classic sense, with muscles and a well sculpted jaw, but there was an air about him of something… slimy. I couldn’t point to anything specific, but it was just an air that he gave off. 

“Are you the one who scanned me?” he asked, his voice tight, but polite. “How can I help you?”

“I am,” I said, then smiled. “I was hoping to discuss the pearl-light pumpkins price.” 

“Non-negotiable, I’m afraid,” he said. “They’re a critical component in making universal mana restoratives, and are in high demand, especially with our healing hall burning mana at a prodigious rate.” 

“Oh, I see,” I said. “Then you’re open to selling to the Hyacinth Heart guild at a reduced rate, to help them keep their mana topped off for surgery and the like?” 

If he truly was selling them to the alchemist and healing guild to keep everyone on the island safe, and just trying to make a profit on a couple of excess bags of seeds, then I could live with paying him a decent price, but if he wasn’t, I’d fleece him for everything he was worth. 

The man’s face flickered for a moment, fast enough that I almost wasn’t sure it had happened. He glanced at my tail, then his mana senses focused more sharply on me. I bled my life and beastgate mana into the air intentionally, trying to make it seem like I was a half-human, like Kamal. 

“I already refused the right to sell to you lot,” he said flatly. “Elio can mandate reduced rates to healers, but he can’t force me to sell.” 

I raised an eyebrow and watched him silently. He stared back, then barked out a laugh. 

“Get out of here. You aren’t getting your hands on the seeds, even if you pay double the price now.” 

I glanced down, then took two steps back, so that I was standing on the road of forged gemstone mana, instead of on his property, then I locked eyes with him. 

“This is harassment,” he snapped at me. “Get out. Leave. Go away.”

“I am not a member of the Hyacinth Heart guild, and I came here to buy them for personal use, since I need them to empower my staff,” I said flatly. “I am, however, amazed at how corrupt you are. You would rather make more points and let people suffer than lend a helping hand and make smaller profits.” 

“You can’t judge me about my own business practices!” the guild leader said, his voice half a shout. “If you’re so generous, why don’t you spend the time hunting down all of these, cultivating a field to grow them in, and pouring countless hours of work and mana into them, then give them away for only a one percent profit?”

He made a good point, and I added that onto my checklist. I didn’t have literal acres of mana sources and flowers, but I did have an expansive garden in Dusk, and we had grown out my flower field considerably. I could happily donate that to the Hyacinth Heart guild – it just hadn’t crossed my mind to do it until I saw someone refusing to help. 

I was tempted to tell him that, but the silence and pointing out the amorality of what he was doing seemed to be doing well to ratchet up the pressure on him, so all I did was raise an eyebrow. 

“Really?” I asked. “You’re not making enough money? That’s your excuse?” 

The man unleashed his full power and slammed his mana senses down on me, trying to crack me under the pressure. It wasn’t an attack, not a legal assault, and he hadn’t conjured an attack spell, but it should make a normal person uncomfortable. Someone who had never bothered to open their gates, or who had only opened one, might even experience physical discomfort. 

He’d chosen the wrong target to try and intimidate with mana senses, though. 

I ran my mana though my multiple sensory spells, boosting the power of my mana senses to its limit and slamming back against the false Arcanists, and we were on almost even footing, with him at somewhat of an advantage. I had what I was guessing was three times as many sensory spells as he had, but he was still a false Arcanist, and had more raw power to throw behind him. 

If he had been a real Arcanist, with their massive boost to senses, much stronger resonance, and ability to infuse their resonance into senses, he’d have wiped the floor with me, but he wasn’t. 

I could borrow an Arcanist trick of my own, though. 

When Orykson had been training me to infuse resonance into my mana senses, it had been difficult, and using all of my spells in conjunction with the technique had been counterproductive. 

Now, though? 

All three of my truths sang in harmony, and I drew my staff out, gripping it tightly in one hand, as I stared him down. The power rang through the spells in my spirit, and I was suddenly matching his senses. But I needed to do more, I needed to infuse it into resonance itself. I let out a slow breath, and matched the pattern of the resonance to the power of my own spirit as it rushed out around me. 

It was slipshod, nowhere near the mastery that Orykson had used to crush me with raw resonance infused senses, but it worked. My senses slowly cracked through his, and within a few seconds I was pressing down on him, rather than just holding him back from me. 

I cast Impel Senses. 

My mana senses solidified, and having fully encased him and pressed down, his own senses were completely smothered, encased in the sensory equivalent of a brick wall. 

He shattered it after a moment, using his raw power as a false Arcanist to overwhelm my third gate spell and smirked. 

“Good trick, but…” 

He frowned, as he realized he was still trapped in a bubble of my own senses, pushing down on him, and I cast Impel Senses a second time. He broke it, but he was still surrounded by my senses. I didn’t bother casting it a third time, but instead pushed my mana senses inside of him, looking deeper, doing exactly what he’d tried to do to me. My eyes sparkled, and I felt both my winds whip around my spirit as I locked eyes with him. 

His mana senses surged one more time, pushing me a few inches back, before they collapsed back in on him. 

“There’s no need to keep veiling yourself as a mid-third gate,” the guild leader said, taking a step back and laughing nervously. “If you’d just told me you were an Arcanist, I’d have happily invited you in, and we could have talked this out.” 

I teleported behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, then drew my staff back into my spirit and retracted my senses, then started scattering mana in my veil, blending into the environment. With so many rich mana sources hanging around, it was actually easier than I’d experienced before, and the guild leader pressed his lips together. 

“You were in the market for some pearl-light pumpkin seeds, weren’t you?” the man asked. “I can get some. I think that three hundred points is a reasonable price, don’t you? The thousands, that’s just for those who can’t… well. You know.” 

“I do,” I agreed, a plan starting to enter my mind. 

I purchased the seeds, tossing them into Dusk’s realm, near the red star tree in the autumnal parts of her realm, where the spirit gourds were growing together. With that done, I Foxstepped as far down the street as I could see, and made my way to the Hyacinth Heart guild. 

Meadow arrived a little bit later, warping space around her as she did, and I glanced at her, offering my hand to help her catch her balance.

"Thank you dear," she said. "You did well, for getting something for yourself, but... What do you do now?"

"I don't like it, but he was right that Elio couldn’t force him to sell, and I can’t either," I said. "But I'm going to make him regret not choosing to sell when he could have."

I could have tried to lean on him more, but I wasn’t sure that would work, and even if it did, there was a good chance it would come crumbling down the instant that I’d revealed I wasn’t an Arcanist. 

His mistake had been in selling me any of the seeds, though. I wasn’t a businessman, and I didn’t care how low my points return was. I was Benevolent, I was a Guardian, and I shared some commonality with a Druid.