Men and women twirled about the center of the room with exuberant steps while trumpets and tubas and drums created a jaunty tune. Hector and Isabel gave a poor imitation of the spirited choreography around them. Neither of them knew the dance style. Neither of them cared to learn.

"Thank you for getting me away from Jerry," he finally said.

Isabel wrinkled her nose. "I was not saving you. I am supposed to feel out your willingness to work with us. One level seven man cannot terrorize all of us. Your friend has a chaos bolt as well, even if his is not so fearsome. With four maidens and you two, surely we can fend off One-Shot."

"I can travel us out of here if you fend him off once we're outside the suppression field."

"You are a porter?" The upturned lip showed just what Isabel thought of that. Apparently transit spheres were not a sexy externality. At least they didn't do it for warrior women.

"I'm willing to work with the Azure Spear Maidens."

"Good." Isabel glanced to one side where her level six sister Yan danced around a stationary Darius, making intense eye contact as she alternated between elaborate twirls and seductive poses. The eunuch's characteristic scowl was nowhere in evidence. "Your friend is being persuaded towards cooperation as we speak."

Hector raised a brow. "It appears I agreed too easily."

"I don't dance like that."

"Yeah, neither do I."

"Good. I would not appreciate your seductions. Amaratti women might appreciate your figure, but those of us from Zing do not." Isabel, intentionally or not, misunderstood his joke to be a serious statement. The day had proven his every attempt at humor inadequate.

"Do you consider yourself a Zing woman?"

Isabel narrowed her eyes. "Helvetia has been part of Zing for sixty years now. I was born in the Empire and accepted into a traditional sect."

Hector raised his hands in surrender. "I withdraw my question."

She shook her head and turned to leave him. "We can speak further at the hostel."

To avoid opening himself to another Jerry encounter, Hector walked over to line up with others in front of the burgermeister sitting at the back of the hall. It took a good fifteen minutes for him to reach the front of the line, whereupon the chubby burgermeister barely glanced at him before rendering his verdict. "You may only remain within Toll Burgh so long as you can afford to rent a room. Vagrants are not permitted in my city. That is all."

Hector offered a shallow bow before moving away. He had the impression that he'd been invited here specifically to receive that warning: don't overstay your welcome. If that was the case, he should now be free to leave. First, though, Hector raided the snack table in a form of petty revenge. He tried three different pies and a sweet bread before realizing that he couldn't eat enough baked goods to financially punish his host.

Yan still occupied the attention of Darius, so Hector snuck out by himself. When he needed to locate his friend, he'd buy the information from Eva. Who he would be seeing shortly. Hector arrived at her flour warehouse and waited with the delivery men. He heard them complaining about the quality of goods declining recently. The sugar especially was deficient, they claimed. Even worse, there was less of it on the market than usual.

That fact surprised him. Hector would have expected his delivery of sugar to have increased its general availability. Even if she was having trouble with customers expressing disappointment due to the lacking cosmic energy levels, that shouldn't cause a decline in what was available. Even if Eva mixed local and off-world sugar at equal rates, there should still be significantly more product on the market. Hector pondered on the economics of the sugar market until he found his target.

"I need to pick up something," he said in greeting. "I can pay you for the privilege or bring back something for free, but I need to leave tonight."

Eva pulled him aside. "You will owe me ten level eight cores for the privilege. The price does not need paid immediately, but I will expect you to settle your account before we transact again."

Level eight cores? Even one would be a challenge to acquire. Hector sighed. Agreeing and failing to carry through would prevent him from using Eva as a trading partner. Yet what else could he do? "I will do my best. It might take me a while."

Eva finished up her business while he waited, then brought him to the cavern.

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In minutes, he was back on Union Central. It didn't take long for him to find the individual he was looking for. Wayne was busy chatting to Esther about more ideas for the cafe. The two of them brightened at his approach. He didn't let them get started.

"Wayne, I need ideas on how to kill a level seven adversary. I'm not interested in a gun, but maybe an explosive or acid or something like that. I will need it ready in less than a day, too." Hector paused, waiting for the chemist to play 'a thousand questions' about the request.

Instead, the man clapped his hands. "See, Esther? I told you the apple seeds would have a use! You thought I was being foolish." Wayne gave a big smile to Hector. "Go fetch me water and lye from Tian. And some animal cores as well. We'll want to bump the cosmic energy level."

Hector couldn't follow the conversation, so eloquently requested clarification. "Huh?"

"I kept the seeds from the apples you brought," Wayne explained. "Against Esther's wishes, I might add. But now we have a use for them. You want to kill someone and I know how to extract and concentrate the cyanide. I need water and lye from Tian, though. The cores… well, you can add those later if you can't get them right now. We want to make the solution look like an elixir."

Esther laughed at Hector's confusion. "Just go get the ingredients, Hector. We're going to charge you out the nose for the cyanide, of course, but you can afford it."

Hector gaped at the two like a fish. "You're just going to make me a poison potent enough to kill someone with body enhancement? No questions asked?"

Wayne rolled his eyes. "I want to make a profit on the apple seeds. Besides, if you of all people want to kill someone, they must deserve it. I have memories from Tian. It's the law of the jungle there, so I'm surprised it took you this long to find someone you need to take out."

Esther gave him a tight smile. "We need Riley and Darius back, so do whatever it takes."

His next stop, one he hadn't planned on making, was to the estate of Lord Zara. Her servants escorted him to her office without question when he claimed to be a porter with a message. Zara sent the servants away and shut the door.

"Do you have anything to report?"

"I gathered information on places to search. Another treasure hunter has become an impediment, though. He needs to be handled."

Zara held up a hand. "I cannot enter Stein to assist you."

"Actually, Lord Zara, I came here to procure lye."

The lord blinked at him in confusion. "The ingredient for making soap?"

"I believe so." Hector didn't know the uses of the chemical, but if she knew the word 'lye' then he assumed it was the right stuff.

Zara's confusion morphed into concern. "You surely don't expect to burn someone strong enough to be an impediment to your own strength using lye. Do you?"

Hector cleared his throat. "I don't know if you want to hear the details of how I'm going to use the lye. It relies on Jinn methods." As the words left his mouth, he found himself suddenly understanding the reason behind his recruitment and the cagey way Zara avoided directly addressing her seemingly unfounded belief that he could succeed where others had failed. He had always been intended to use foreign means during the treasure hunt.

"I have no need to know such details. Is there anything else you need?"

"Cores, if you have them."

"I'm not providing you high level cores," Zara said.

"Level four or five would be sufficient. I am disguising a poison as a silver plasma elixir."

Zara's eyes lit up in appreciation. "Like I said, I don't need details. I will provide a handful of level four chicken cores. They're only useful in cultivation for children, anyway."

He managed to snag a pitcher of water on his way to the locked storage where the cores were kept. Zara didn't comment on his casual theft. In fact, she looked moderately amused by his antics, hiding an ironic smile by looking away. Hector did his best to ignore the attention and its potential implications. He was on a mission and didn't have time to worry about offending a lord. Or catching one's eye….

Back on Union Central, Wayne snatched the lye powder, water pitcher, and bundle of cores away from Hector while stabbing his finger at the air in the way people often did while interacting with the System. Wayne grumbled the whole time. "A sealed laboratory hardly seems necessary. I can rig up a fume hood with the kitchen fan and some cardboard. The fine for a safety violation is… damn, too high. Looks like I'm renting lab space. This is stupid."

After Wayne disappeared, Esther closed the cafe for the day and took Hector down to look at the cosmic chamber. The thing had been disassembled into neat stacks of stone block. There were scuffs on the concrete slab flooring and even a couple of spots where chips were missing. "When you bring the new stone, I want rid of the old stuff. Disposing of it on Union Central would cost too much."

Hector put a hand to his forehead. There were too many things happening all at once. The last thing he needed was a reminder of one of the many missions he was failing to complete. "When I get a chance," he promised.

There were so many more critical items to address at the moment. Wayne was making the cyanide solution for him, which was great. But Hector hadn't figured out how he would trick One-Shot Jerry into taking it. Simply handing the man a supposed elixir would be far too suspicious. Maybe he could get Eva to act as a middleman? Requesting her assistance in a murder seemed like an awful big ask, though. Her fee would be astronomical if she was willing to assist at all. Which… he couldn't even transact with her until he paid the ten cores.

Then he had the mission to find the Mother Elixir. Should it still exist – and he had to assume it did, no matter how unlikely that might be – then he would need to use his true advantages as a foreign hunter. Pretty much all he knew of the Mother Elixir was it involved tea and tasted sour. Fortunately, he knew someone with a sensory insight.

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