This is a whole new world.
When am I ever going to get home? From what i remember the original story is a transmigration one.
Speaking of which, did the original protagonist ever make it back home in the end?
Lucien turned the questions over for a moment, found no answers waiting for him, and set them aside for now.
What caught him off guard was how different this place was from the Victorian era he knew from Earth. The whole street carried a cleanliness that felt ahead of its time. It wasn't that the streets were spotless. It was that they were missing the filth he associated with the Victorian era, the flying grime and the streets paved in excrement that his memory insisted should be there.
He followed the route he remembered for a few steps and arrived at the door of a coffee shop. It wasn't a large place, but it was close by, and the interior was clean enough. The original body had come here regularly for breakfast, so he and the owner were reasonably familiar.
"Oh, Lucien. What'll it be today?" The owner, who doubled as the waiter, came over to greet him the moment he walked in.
"Uh, I'll have a cup of the good coffee, and a... black bread." Lucien glanced down at the menu.
"Black bread? I thought you only ate oat bread!" The owner looked puzzled.
"Ah! Then make it oat bread."
"Alright, four pence."
Lucien pulled four coins from his pocket and handed them over.
"Wrong amount. These are five-pence coins." The owner spotted the mistake and pushed the coins back.
"Ah, sorry. I was spacing out." Lucien took the coins back, then dug out four separate one-pence coins and handed those over.
The owner took the money and headed for the back kitchen, muttering as he went.
"What's gotten into that kid today? He's acting strange."
The food arrived shortly after. Ravenous, Lucien didn't bother with manners and dug in with his hands.
As for the taste, to someone raised on modern industrialized food, he could only call it not bad. It was still a long way from what he'd call good.
With a full stomach, Lucien finally had the mental room to think about what came next. He had roughly fifty pounds to his name. Even counting the emergency stash he'd only touch as a last resort, it came to under a hundred.
There were also the shares his late father had left him, but the munitions factories weren't officially profitable yet, so no dividends were coming. Miss Hall's fund was closed-end, which meant no cash from that in the short term either.
The truth was, Lucien had originally had several hundred pounds to his name, and the original body had poured all of it into the potion formula and its ingredients.
From what Lucien could recall, once you had a bit over three hundred pounds, you could park it in a bank and live comfortably off the interest alone.
Which made it very easy to complain about the original Lucien. He'd had an easy life within reach, and he'd thrown it away on a gamble. And not just any gamble: he'd bought a potion with the frankly ridiculous name "Monster."
If you were going to gamble, at least buy the "Assassin" potion!
Then again, looking at it from another angle, the original body's luck hadn't been all bad. Formulas and ingredients were the easiest things in the world to counterfeit, and yet the original body had actually found a reliable merchant and walked away with the genuine article.
After turning it over from every side, Lucien settled on following the video's advice and choosing the "Assassin" pathway.
Assassin. Assassin's Creed, come on.
The video had also said Assassin was good for staying alive, and for a transmigrator who might get branded a heretic by the Orthodox Churches, a survival-oriented ability was about as fitting as it got.
He planned to visit the place where the original body had bought the "Monster" ingredients and ask around, see if anyone could point him toward the formula.
As for money, worst case, he'd sell the "Monster" potion and trade it in for "Assassin."
———
Cherwood Borough, Backlund.
Lucien pulled on a black trench coat, added a flat cap, and gave himself a once-over in the mirror before heading out. His destination was a bar called the Grizzly.
This was where the original body had bought his potion ingredients. Today he was here to try his luck again, and see whether the place could point him toward the "Assassin" potion.
The door was heavy, and the man standing in front of it looked like he had been built specifically to discourage people from coming inside. Lucien did not give him much time to object. He pushed the door open and walked in.
The bouncer sized him up and let him pass.
Tobacco smoke and spilled alcohol hit him in one wave as the door swung shut, and Lucien's nose wrinkled on instinct. He looked toward the center of the room, where the noise was coming from. A boxing ring. Two fighters were going at each other hard, and a crowd was packed around the ropes, screaming themselves hoarse.
Lucien had no interest in watching. He straightened his cap, curled his fingers into a fist around his pocket, and swept his eyes over everyone within reach. He had very little money on him, and he was not about to lose it to some pickpocket with quick hands.
He let the crowd carry him toward the bar and glanced at the menu board.
"A Southville beer."
"Seven pence." The bartender barely looked at him before answering, the way you did with a regular.
Lucien counted out the coins and slid them across.
The bartender turned and set down a glass of golden liquid.
"Grain prices are up lately, so beer's gone up with them." The bartender said it unprompted.
You didn't have to remind me.
The thought of the grain the original body's father had lost to the bank put a small, sharp ache in Lucien's chest.
He took a sip. Bitter first, then sweet, and surprisingly crisp on the way down. Nothing like the green-bottle stuff he remembered from before the transmigration.
"Is 'Bottle' in? I've got business with him."
The bartender looked up at that, gave him a slower once-over than before, and then jerked his chin toward the ceiling.
"Innermost room on the second floor."
"Thanks." Lucien started to leave, then stopped himself and drained the glass in one go. At this price, the beer was worth roughly two days of his breakfast, and he was not going to waste a drop of it.
He found the door on the second floor and gave it a light push. It drifted open a crack.
A man the size of a wardrobe was standing inside with a glass in his hand, and the look he gave Lucien was not a welcoming one.
"I'm here to see 'Bottle'." Lucien added, before the man could decide what to do with him, "I was here a few days ago."
"Let him in." A voice came from the shadows at the back of the room, and then the speaker stepped forward.
Graying hair. A face that looked like it had been carved out of something tough and then hit a few times for good measure. He wore a wine-red checkered high-collared cotton vest over dark gray wool twill trousers, and he stood a good meter seventy-five, which in this era made him a tall man. His eyes were sharp, and they carried weight.
Looking at that face and that build, one word came to Lucien's mind: Feysac.
By this world's standards, the man had the look of a textbook Feysac.
The wardrobe-sized man said nothing. He turned and left, pulling the door shut behind him.
'Bottle' looked Lucien over twice, placed him, and spoke.
"So it's you, kid. What do you want this time?"
"I'm here for information. Do you know anything about 'Assassin'?"
"Assassin?" 'Bottle' blinked, caught off guard. "Who do you want killed?"
"Not an assassin. It's... like the formula I bought from you before."
'Bottle' dropped his chin and thought about it.
"No. I don't have anything like that here. But I can ask around."
"Alright." Lucien's disappointment showed. There was no point hanging around if the man had nothing, so he turned for the door.
'Bottle' stopped him. "You paid up clean last time. I'll take you somewhere. You might find what you're after there."
A place where I can find potion formulas?
A Beyonder gathering?
That got Lucien's attention. He nodded.
"Alright. Sorry for the trouble."
'Bottle' nodded back and made a gesture at him.
"Cough, hack, cough cough cough."
Lucien did not understand it, and did not move.
"Two pounds!" 'Bottle' said, when Lucien stayed where he was. "Two pounds for the introduction."
Lucien caught on and handed over two one-pound notes. The pain was physical. Two pounds, by purchasing power, was nearly two thousand yuan.
'Bottle' took the notes and looked him over one more time.
"You're a strange kid."