"It's just—I know you're very capable."
"But I still need to leave for a while." Lucien had decided to follow fate's guidance, at least for now.
"You think I can't protect you?"
"No, no, that's not it." Lucien denied it quickly, then cobbled together a reason. "It's just that I was already planning to leave for a bit, and this is my own business anyway. I don't want to drag you into it."
That part was true enough. Lucien was not the sort who liked owing people favors. And even if Mrs. Griffin looked confident, what if something went wrong? She was old. What if she could not actually beat the other side?
If he was not here, then even if the silver-haired woman came looking, she probably would not take the risk of going after an unrelated old woman. Grudges had a source, and debts had a debtor.
Mrs. Griffin looked at him for a long moment, then nodded.
"Fine. If you want to go, I won't stop you."
"But don't worry about me. No one can hurt me inside my own house." That confident smile was back.
"When are you leaving?"
"Probably tonight?" Lucien did not sound certain.
"Then keep your footsteps light and don't wake me. Go on, do what you need to do. I'm going back to sleep." She turned and shut the door.
"Uh. Goodbye."
Back in his room, Lucien checked the time. He and 'Bottle' had agreed on eight thirty tonight, and it was barely noon, so there was plenty of time to kill.
He decided to use it testing whatever the potion had actually given him.
"Huh. My strength seems to have gone up a little?" Lucien slid his left hand under the desk and pushed. The whole table lifted with one arm.
"Yeah, that's definitely stronger. Neither the old me nor the original L* could have done that."
[*L is for Lucien ]
The change was not limited to his arms. His whole body felt sturdier, like the baseline had been quietly raised.
He was not thrilled about it.
"Stronger, sure, but still nowhere past what a normal person could do." He ran the numbers in his head. Several hundred pounds for this small a bump was a terrible deal.
"Spiritual perception far beyond an ordinary person's. How exactly am I supposed to test that?"
He fished a one-penny coin from his pocket, flicked it into the air, tracked it to its peak, and flipped his hand over to trap it against his palm as it came down.
"Heads."
He opened his hand. Heads.
He flipped again. "Tails."
Again. "Heads."
After half a dozen tries, every guess landing right, he finally understood what "spiritual perception far beyond an ordinary person's" was supposed to mean. At least for now, it read as abnormally accurate intuition.
"Maybe I could make a living as a gambling god. Dice sizes, cards, that kind of thing should be child's play with this." He muttered it to himself without much enthusiasm.
He finally felt a little like a Beyonder, but the feeling did not last.
For one thing, the ability was too soft, too intuitive. It did not suit a STEM guy like him at all. For another, it was not tangible. There was no weight to it, no sense of holding actual power in his hands.
"Strange. Why am I this tired?"
He glanced at the mechanical clock on the wall.
"It's already past five?"
He had burned almost the entire afternoon on coin flips. He pulled himself together in a hurry. Eight thirty with Bottle was not far off, and once travel time was counted in, it was about time to head out.
———
"Hey! Watch it!"
Lugging a leather suitcase and with a bag slung over his shoulder, Lucien scrambled out of the path of a carriage barreling past. That made three times today.
It was not really his fault. Loen's keep-left rule was deeply counterintuitive for a transmigrator, and the streets were nothing like as wide as the ones he had grown up with.
He stood there a moment, watching the crowd flow around him, the sunset warm on his face, and felt a sudden, quiet melancholy. As if he were the one piece in the whole world that did not fit.
Something inside him seemed to shift, loosening.
Never mind. Don't go there. He pushed the feeling down and kept walking toward the Grizzly.
By the time he reached the bar, the suitcase made him look badly out of place, but he ordered a drink the same way he had last time and found 'Bottle' in the innermost room on the second floor.
"I want to leave my suitcase and bag with you. I'll pick them up when this is over."
"I'll pay a storage fee," Lucien added, watching 'Bottle's' face.
"That works for me." 'Bottle' nodded.
"Also, I want to buy some weapons."
'Bottle' looked him over. "What do you want?"
"A pistol and bullets to go with it."
He had not needed a weapon this badly before, but his situation had changed. He was completely unarmed, the "Monster" potion had given him nothing offensive, and buying something for self-defense was the only move left on the board. Bullets might not do much against a Beyonder, but they would at least give him something to hold on to.
"Three pounds." 'Bottle' named the price. "A revolver, sixty rounds, and I'll throw in an underarm holster. Trust me, that's fair. If you weren't a regular, I wouldn't go this low."
Lucien thought back to the prices he remembered, then nodded. "Fine."
He handed over three pound notes, then produced two soli notes. "Storage fee." He passed his luggage across.
'Bottle' took it without a word, but the moment he lifted the bag, it moved.
"Alive?" 'Bottle' asked, puzzled.
"My pet." Lucien's eyes slid away. He did not elaborate.
Though it's a Beyonder pet, technically, he added silently.
"Wait here." 'Bottle' carried the luggage out.
Left alone, Lucien's gaze drifted to the card table beside him. The cards looked close to the ones he remembered, and the game played almost exactly like the Dou Dizhu from before his transmigration. Different name, though. They called it Fight the Evil.
Roselle again? The thought surfaced before he could stop it.
Five minutes later, 'Bottle' pushed the door open with a small wooden box in his hand.
Lucien opened it. Inside lay a revolver with a black barrel and a mahogany grip, new enough to gleam under the light, and beside it, sixty brass-yellow bullets.
He picked the gun up and turned it over. He had no idea how to test it. Neither he nor the original body knew the first thing about firearms. It took a prompt from 'Bottle' before he managed to get the cylinder open and peer inside.
My gut says it's fine. He set the gun down. Now that he was a Beyonder, he figured he might as well trust his intuition.
'Bottle' watched him fumble and asked, "You know how to use that holster?"
"Uh..." Lucien shook his head, embarrassed.
So 'Bottle' walked him through it, and after a few minutes of fiddling, Lucien had the gun and bullets stowed under his arm.
"About time. Come with me, kid." 'Bottle' checked the clock and moved for the door.
Lucien followed him out the back and into a lightless alley. Several turns later, they stopped in front of a house with no lights in any of its windows.
'Bottle' pulled a mask from inside his coat and handed it over. "Freebie with the gun."
Very professional. Lucien took it and put it on.
Once he was ready, 'Bottle' stepped up and knocked in a rhythmic pattern. Ten seconds passed. Then a small wooden panel in the door slid aside, and a pair of brown eyes looked out through the gap.
The eyes behind the door studied Lucien for a long, uncomfortable moment before the door finally swung open.
A man in an iron mask stepped out, handed Lucien a hooded robe, and turned to 'Bottle' with a voice like gravel: "Next time, come earlier!"
Then he shut the door and led Lucien through a dark living room into a ground-floor sitting room. A single candle burned on the tea table, its weak yellow light throwing shifting shapes across the walls.
Over a dozen people sat in chairs around the table, all of them robed and masked, exactly like Lucien.
He found an empty seat and sat down, then started looking around.
Before long, an old man with the unmistakable air of a scholar spoke up. "It's about time. Let's begin."
The moment he finished, a reedy voice piped up from somewhere in the room.
"Um... I'd like to ask everyone a question. I'll pay for the answer."
"If someone drinks a potion from one pathway, is there still a chance to choose a different pathway?"
I was going to ask that. Beside him, Lucien brightened. Someone had raised it first, which meant he wouldn't have to stick his neck out.
"Ha. Stupid question." A burly man sneered. "Got more money than sense? Here to give it away?"
He looked ready to keep going, but the scholarly old man cut in first.
"No payment needed. I can answer that. The answer is no."
"Once you choose a pathway and drink the potion, there is no going back. That's why the choice matters so much. If you drink a potion from another pathway, what waits for you is either loss of control or death." The old man added the second part as a bonus.
"Thank you for your generosity, Mr. 'Eye of Wisdom'." The reedy voice had deflated.
So had Lucien's mood. He had been quietly hoping that if switching were possible, he could find a way to trade the Monster pathway for something else. Instead, he got a door slammed in his face.
So I'm stuck as a 'Monster'. He sighed internally.
The answer had been free, but it had cost him something anyway. He also could not help noticing that 'Eye of Wisdom' had delivered it with a faint air of showing off.
Lucien thought for a moment, then spoke up.
"I'd like to know anything about the 'Assassin'. Does anyone have information? I can offer a satisfactory reward."
The silver-haired woman had handed him the 'Assassin' potion, which made her very likely a Beyonder of that pathway. And his orange cat had drunk the same potion. Paying a little for information on that pathway was money well spent.
Shame she never told me the organization's name. I could have asked about that too.
He had barely finished the thought when 'Eye of Wisdom' turned his way.
"I know that as well. I can tell you. Ten pounds. How does that sound?"
The man had jumped in so fast that Lucien could not shake the impression he simply enjoyed being the one with the answers.
After a moment's thought, Lucien nodded. "That works."
"Then stay behind when the gathering ends. I'll tell you privately."