VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 102: A Touch of Extortion

For her first run with creating Beans’ cultivation food, Belladonna wanted to buy all the ingredients, just so she could have a few runs of it in a safe environment. It was easier to practice with massive supply of the ingredients than without.

However, she only managed to acquire two of the components. A few shards of Tarbria Crystal and a few cuts of Shadow Infused meat, both of which were being kept in containers enchanted with magic to keep them cold - The games versions of freezers.

Because of this she couldn’t take them with her and had essentially reserved them for her use and could collect them when she was ready. This wasn’t so bad, as these were some of the more difficult ingredients on her list to get.

Especially when it came to the meat. Shadow Infusion was one that she had not learned yet, and it seemed like she would have to learn a cold infusion along the way. While the latter was easy, everyone knew about cold, infusing the essence of Shadow was going to be hard.

She had to feel and embrace the element, push its essence through her body. But what was a shadow like? It was just an absence of light, right? How was she supposed to feel that?

It was a mystery that she had some time to solve, as she still had to collect the other ingredients.

The blood would be easy, and was best when it was fresh, so buying that wasn’t something she needed to do, especially now. Corpse Berries were not kept by the tower, mainly because of the rancid smell and also because they had very little magical use.

Since they were interchangeable with the Tarbria, that wasn’t a big deal.

The Lord’s Orchid was the one that surprised her. It was common, and so they should have had a large stock of it. But when she asked the receptionist, she got a disappointing answer.

"Oh, I’m sorry. Someone just bought it all." The woman said with a slight pout before putting on her professional smile.

"Huh?! All of it? Who needs that much?"

"I have no idea, but they seemed very insistent. It was another Graceless in fact, quite the strange one at that. I’ve seen plenty of your kind in my line of work, but never one like that. So creepy..."

She scrunched her face up with disgust and shuddered slightly, before settling back into her usual smile. However Belladonna was staring at her with a deep, suspicious frown.

"Wait... I thought that you said that you’ve never seen a Graceless with a source before. So shouldn’t it just be me and this new guy you’ve seen?"

The receptionist let out a soft gasp and put her hand over her mouth in shock, before letting out a few nervous giggles and giving Belladonna a sly look.

"Whoopsie, I shouldn’t have said that. Why don’t you just forget you heard about that, hmm?"

She flashed a charming smile and batted her eyelashes, with how beautiful this woman was, it probably would have worked on some men. Especially the more inexperienced ones that could barely hold a conversation with a woman without nearly getting nosebleeds.

But the charm she was batting Belladonna’s way splatted against the cold, icy armour of her disinterest before falling to the ground dead.

"Hmm... I dunno, seems like that is a pretty important secret and my memory is pretty good. Although if I had some beast sources to cultivate with... Then I might just be a little too distracted by them to remember anything I heard."

The receptionist laughed again, giving Belladonna an amusingly impressed look. She exchanged glances with Fla’mbae, the Amodite standing in the corner, who simply gave his own snort of amusement.

Finally, she bobbed her head, before placing three sources onto the desk and pretending to look away, so she could act as if she had no idea what happened to them.

Belladonna smirked, quickly taking and stashing them in her back before turning on her heels and moving to the door. However before she left, she stopped for a moment and turned back to the receptionist.

"This creepy guy, what did he look like? If you are able to tell me that. Maybe we might be able to sort something out."

"Oh, I could never forget that face. He was all pale, even more than you, with this scraggly black hair and dramatic armour. You would have thought he was one of the warriors looking like that, not someone interested in Mystica," She said with a sigh and a shake of the head, making Belladonna blush slightly.

If that is what this woman thought of him, she could only imagine what kind of ’proper mage’ she thought Belladonna was, with her own use of armour and magical punches.

"Honestly though," The receptionist continued, "It was like talking to a corpse. Which isn’t surprising since he had two of them trailing behind them. Ugh, Necromancy is so gross and disrespectful.

I don’t know why we even let corpse diggers in here." She said with another shudder and a slight retch of disgust, before going onto mutter to herself about the smell of it all and the stains he could have left on her nice floor.

But by that point Belladonna had stopped listening and began thinking to herself. At least the reason for this guys obsession with the plants was obvious now. They were used in necromancy spells, so he must be doing something with his undead followers.

What it was, she hadn’t a clue. But if it was for progress, then there was no way he was going to give any of them up.

She was going to have to pick some more herself.

"Hey! Are there any requests or missions that are near a graveyard or somewhere I might find some more Lord’s Orchid?" She shouted to the receptionist, but the woman was too busy casting spells that spritzed the air with fragrant smells, as if just thinking about the corpses had brought back their smell.

"Check the first floor." The Amodite in the corner grumbled as he shook his head at the woman’s behaviour, "Basic material quests are always there for the lowest ranked members."

Belladonna nodded to him in thanks and pushed open the door, only to turn around and open it again, this time using ambient mana to access the first floor.