"You free in three days?" Lucien nodded, and 'Bottle' glanced up at the clock on the wall. "Then come find me here, same time. I'll take you."
"I'll ask around in a few other circles for you in the meantime. Three days, and I'll have everything for you then."
Lucien thanked him, did not linger, and left the Grizzly at a brisk pace.
It was nearly midnight by the time he made it back to 69 Rose Long Street. He had stayed out too long and missed the last public carriage, and whatever carriages were still running at this hour charged prices that were frankly insulting.
Walking was the only option that did not cost him anything. Not that he had ever gotten used to this era's bone-rattling carriages anyway.
He crept back into his room, washed up quickly, shed his coat, and went straight to bed. A full day of running around had wrung him dry.
———
A few days later.
In a narrow alley near his home, Lucien was hurrying back with an armful of groceries.
He shifted the canvas bag to his left hand. In his right, two small fresh fish swung back and forth with each step.
The bag held bread, vegetables, and a small half-loaf of ham.
With no income coming in, eating out every day was a luxury he could not afford, so he had bought ingredients and decided to handle his own meals.
The original body had been a young master who had barely set foot in a kitchen, but Lucien, as a single university student, knew how to put together a few basic dishes.
"Two fish, eight pence. Vegetables, four pence. Bread..." He did the math under his breath. Enough food to last him several days.
The only thing that annoyed him was the lack of rice in the market. Bread with every meal was going to take some getting used to.
Maybe I can try making steamed buns or something.
"Hm?"
An orange-yellow shape had been trailing him for a while now.
A cat?
Lucien turned. An orange cat was staring fixedly at the fish in his hand.
"Hungry too, huh." He slowed his pace. The cat immediately backed off two steps, the tip of its tail twitching against the ground, but its meows only grew longer and more plaintive.
"A stray? Fine, you can have one." Lucien tossed it a fish.
The orange cat retreated half a pace, nose hovering and trembling over the fish. Then its front paws pinned down the tail, a low rumble started up in its throat, and it did not even bother shaking the bits of bone and crumb off its whiskers.
Something in Lucien softened at the sight. He crouched down and reached out, running a hand gently along the cat's back.
The cat trembled once, but nothing more. It let him pet it, quiet and docile.
The thought of adopting it crossed his mind. He was alone now, and a companion would not be the worst thing.
He just had no idea whether Mrs. Griffin would allow a pet.
Maybe he could move somewhere a little bigger.
"Sigh. No money." The thought deflated him.
It was not that he had not spent the past two days trying to think of ways to use his transmigrator advantage to make some money. He had. But—
Lucien cursed Emperor Roselle in the privacy of his own head.
That man was absolutely a transmigrator. Whether he was the book-transmigration type like Lucien, that part was less clear.
But a decent person he was not. He had walled off every road a transmigrator could walk.
Politician. Scientist. Inventor. Emperor. He had done all of it.
He had even done the literary plagiarist routine.
He had taken famous novels, anime, and quotes, dressed them up in an otherworld skin, and published them as his own work.
Steam engines that boiled water, flintlocks, machinery of every kind, clothing designs, even underwear and underpants. All of it, copied.
Not a shred of senior-transmigrator courtesy. If he was going to use every bit of knowledge from earth, the least he could do was leave something for people coming after him, but no. And he had called himself Caesar, of all things, copying even the title. Why not go all the way and call himself the Emperor of Mankind?
Because of him, half of Lucien's own ideas were dead on arrival. The plagiarism, cough, the borrowing that transmigrators traditionally relied on to get their start, was completely off the table.
Before transmigrating, Lucien had been an electromechanical engineering student, but this world had no computers. It did not even have electric lights. In university, all his 3D modeling had been done on a computer. He had almost forgotten how to draw mechanical diagrams by hand, and in his own era, purely mechanical work had been obsolete for decades. Anything without electronics in it had no market.
But this era had mechanics and no electromechanics. Pure mechanics were worth more than anything with a wire in it.
"Maybe I can write a book." The idea of becoming a literary plagiarist began to take root. Roselle had copied plenty, but there were always gaps.
I remember the original Lucien was pen pals with a novelist. Lucien lowered his head and started digging through the details.
A female writer, he was fairly sure. The original body had been writing to her since before she was famous. He liked to use her books as proof of his own refined taste.
He did not actually enjoy her work that much. It was a social talking point more than anything. But they had exchanged a good number of letters, and at least on paper, the relationship was a friendly one.
The novel she had written was called Stormwind Mountain Villa, if he remembered right.
"Stormwind Mountain Villa is quite a best-seller. I might write her a letter to ask for some advice."
"Yowl!"
"What?"
The orange cat eating the fish suddenly puffed up its fur and let out a low growl. Lucien, who had been deep in thought, felt his chest tighten for no apparent reason.
"I heard you want to become an 'Assassin'."
An ethereal and seductive female voice drifted over.
She was a strikingly beautiful woman. By the standards of this era, her looks were almost unreal.
"Uh, ma'am, I, I—" Lucien's throat bobbed. He had no idea why, but he felt flustered.
It was the first time he had seen a woman this beautiful in this world. Silver-white hair. Tall. And a complexion that was, well, snow-white.
Lucien, who considered himself a proper gentleman, forced his eyes away. Something felt off. He was not usually this easily thrown.
Is it because of the transmigration?
"You don't need to be nervous." The woman across from him let out a soft laugh at his 'adorable' expression.
"So kindhearted."
"I like that in a person," the silver-haired woman said, glancing at the orange cat beside him.
"Huh?"
She lifted a strand of hair away from her face, and Lucien could see beads of sweat on it.
"I heard you've been asking around about the 'Assassin' potion."
"You want to become an 'Assassin'?"
Lucien nodded. He did not deny it.
"Why? Because the name 'Assassin' sounds cool? Powerful?"
"Isn't it?" Lucien shot back.
"Fufufu*.*"
Her smile widened at his answer, brightening with genuine amusement. It had been a long time since she had met a boy this naive.
"I have it."
"What?"
"I have the 'Assassin' potion." The silver-haired woman said it plainly.
"How much?" Lucien turned his head slightly, avoiding her gaze. Something about her made his skin crawl.
"You don't need to give me any money. You can have it for free."
"What!" Lucien's face was full of disbelief.
He did not believe in free lunches, there's always a catch. And a Sequence 9 potion cost several hundred pounds. That was enough money to keep an ordinary family fed for over a decade.
This isn't some transmigrator bonus, is it? Like an NPC handing out starter gear.
"Of course it's free. But there is a condition."
"A condition?" That word actually made Lucien feel better. Something without conditions would have been far more suspicious.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, her soft lips parting and closing slowly, her tone carrying the full weight of an experienced older woman.
"That's right. I can give you the potion, but you also have to join our organization."
"Are you with a church?" Lucien asked, uncertain.
"We're much better than those stingy people in the churches."
"What's your organization called?"
"Join, and I'll tell you."
Lucien did not agree right away. He lowered his head in thought.
"There are plenty of pretty older sisters in the organization, just like me." Seeing his hesitation, the silver-haired woman added another line.
"Huh?" That made the organization sound... not entirely proper.
Is this some otherworld cultivation sect? Recruiting innocent young men to—
"I can give it to you in advance." The woman produced a bottle of clear liquid from somewhere.
"This is the 'Assassin' potion." She stepped forward, closing the distance until she was right in front of Lucien.
Lucien jerked back in surprise, and the groceries in his arms scattered across the ground. The woman pressed the bottle into his chest, and he caught the scent of her perfume.
"You…you're just giving it to me? Just like that?"
"Mm-hm."
"I haven't even said I'd join."
"No rush. I told you it's an advance. You can think of it as our trust in you."
"Your organisation is that generous?"
"Not normally. Today is just your lucky day."
"How do I know this is real?" Lucien had not let the excitement go to his head. He asked the question calmly.
"There's no reason for me to use a fake. If you're not comfortable, you can give the potion back to me."
"Or do you think a lady of my stature would lie to you?" The silver-haired woman's eyes curved into a smile.
"I..." Lucien did not know what to say. But he did not let go of the potion in his arms.
Her smile brightened at his reaction, as if she had already decided he would drink it.
"Alright then. The potion is yours. If you've made up your mind, drink it. I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow night at eight." She turned to leave.
She was confident the occult novice in front of her would not be able to resist this kind of temptation. She still had to hurry off to digest her own potion.
Wait... wait a minute." Lucien reached out to stop her, but a sudden wave of dizziness washed over him. By the time he recovered, she was long gone, like a mirage in the desert. The only proof that he had truly run into such a beautiful lady was the potion still firmly in his grasp.