Chapter 83 The Underground Market I

A/N: Yeah, I know, I took a long ass break.. but I’m finally done with exams! Thank you for the kind words, I really appreciate. I’m really sorry for the unhealthily long break, it was just necessary. At least now I have some time, like two weeks before I leave for SIWES(or IT, or Internship, or Industrial Attachment, whatever it’s called, I think the last one’s for engineering students though), so in the next four or five days, I’m going to push myself and write much so that I can try and do a little mass release, it’s much needed. After the mass release, updates will continue like 3 – 4 times a week, as the IT will start in 7 days after tomorrow, and I won’t have lots of time then too. But, at lest it’s not exams, so I can write in my free time.

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Name: Larry

Age: XXXX

Level: 69

Health bar: (Health Bar)

Mana bar: (Mana Bar)

Physical: 130

Ability: Flame Control (B), Fire Armour (C), Reinforce (D)

..

The other legion members also had more than one ability at this point, and Victor was quite impressed with the outcome. Though it took more materials from different humans before Larry could gain just these two skills, it was worth it.

As for getting more intelligent subordinates, Victor had a plan for that, and he actually wanted to test it out next time he went out for a raid.

For now, the available money would only be able to get Victor information about the black/underground market, and maybe after he sold what he had, he would have enough to pay for info on the location for another dungeon. Curse Larry for placing too much trust in the banks and stashing everything there. If only the guy left some reasonable amounts of money around the house, things wouldn’t be this hard. Really, Victor couldn’t thank the heavens enough that he didn’t need food and normal necessities.

‘Come to think about not needing every day to day necessities, I don’t remember myself taking my bath…’

FUCKING SHIT

The mere fact that he had been walking around with an incredible stink coming from his body was just mind shattering, if only he wasn’t a zombie. ‘I never thought of that. Not like I mind, but it would be better to walk around smelling better.’ Victor thought in his mind while checking himself.

Turns out he didn’t actually stink the way the thought, figures. With his heightened senses, he would have noticed if he did, stupid. ‘You would think I had become more calculative with everything, can’t believe I can still make such mistakes. Maybe it isn’t rooted in being human?’ He thought, but then quickly discarded the thought as more important things clouded that thought.

As a zombie, Victor didn’t need sleep, but it didn’t mean that he was unable to sleep altogether. Now, when he tried to sleep to pass time, it just felt like slipping into something of an unconscious state while he could still tell a bit of what was going on with him, but not too much about what was happening around him. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all bad. It was a good way to pass time as while in that state time seemed to flow faster, as what he thought was just a couple minutes turned out to be something of about a couple hours. Really interesting discovery.

‘I guess that would be possible. After all, I can still eat, but, I’m pretty sure I would never be able to shit again.’

Just like that two days came by and Victor left to meet the Informant again. This time before leaving home he made sure to take an extended bath and also use some body spray and perfume to smell good, at least. What he found out was that even though he didn’t smell rotten or anything like that, he still had a particular smell around him. He wasn’t sure if this was something that came with his race, but he managed to think of a possible theory.

Seeing as he does not sweat, it meant the smell was something that stuck to his very flesh, meaning it would be ever present. He remembered the days he spent on the first floor of his ‘birth’ dungeon, and he could clearly remember the stench that was ever present. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make one’s nose react at least once when they entered. After he evolved and became a Zombie Lord, he reckoned the smell of rot reduced greatly since he was no longer some walking dead body, and this only reduced further after he gained the second Innate Ability, the Infernal body. ‘At least now the odour is almost nonexistence, compared to how it was back then..’ He said in his mind as he put over his head the hood of his jacket.

From the amount of money Victor had left, he couldn’t afford to pay for both information about another dungeon and one for where he could access the underground or black market from, so he went with the market. That way, he would be able to make more money and then the issue of money would be solved.

After the meeting was over, which didn’t take long, nothing above five minutes and they were done, Victor was glad he made the choice of getting information on the market. If he was to try and find out about the market himself, he would have actually succeeded in finding one, but that would be the normal one where every thug can access, and it wasn’t completely secrete at that. The one he was given information on was one that was at a deeper level, one where the top dogs operated in. It was quite clear that the amount of money he had wasn’t worth this level of information, but the informant made an exception. Suspicious of her, but welcomed.

“Since this one is a secrete market that even those in the secrete market don’t know about…” It was literally a secrete hidden within another secrete. Victor could tell that even if the informant had other motives when giving him such information, it would be worth the risk for him to go there. ‘She could have easily led me to the normal surface secrete market, but then she actually gives me this.. Well, let’s see how it goes then.’

Since this particular underground market was a special one where the big dogs trade, it meant these big dogs didn’t have time to be there 24/7, so the official market day was on Saturdays 11:00 pm. Of course, that was the date when they would all come to check the stock over the week to pick what they wanted, so Victor didn’t have to wait till then before he could sell his stock. If he ever had something he deemed to be very special or precious, then he could wait for the Saturdays to come and try pitching it to the big dogs himself, and this was also when the best goods were released , so-

‘Today’s Thursday so i have just one day before Saturday reaches.’ Victor thought to himself. Not like he had any business with these so called big dogs, at least not for now. There was really no reason for him to wait for the designated market day, so he asked to meet the informant the very next day.

Before the day ran out, he visited the secrete market, accessing it through one of its ports, as it was called.

‘And as it would happen, it just had to be inside some random public toilet… Really, movie tropes you think no one would use.’ Victor said in his mind as he appeared inside some kind of hallway. Behind him there was no door, just a dead end as a wall stood in place of where a door would normally be. As for how he got here, it wasn’t as difficult.

The inform ant did well to provide him with the necessary pass, and so when he got to the designated toilet, all he had to do was place the special piece of paper on the wall facing the door, and it slid sideways to reveal a small room within the same size as the toilet, then from there all he needed to do was step in and alter a specific phrase to activate the teleportation whatever within that brought him to where he was now.

‘Does this mean there’s something like magic in this world? Something that isn’t limited to just the use of specific skills?’ Victor thought. Honestly, the teleportation stuff and the pass needed to open the room was kind of above something Victor thought a simple ability would be capable of. Either that or there were abilities that granted people with a very wide range of versatility.

Victor did well to account for the existence of inhumanly strong abilities, after all it would be stupid not to think that after all these years not a single type of such an ability was in existence, but what he didn’t account for was that there would be abilities that would offer the user a wide range of versatility. For example if some had the ability to use magic, that would mean they could use fire, ice, wind, teleportation, transformation, etc.. and all from one ability. ‘Hmm.. I have to think of this world as something similar to the mutants in the X-men world. I could remember there were people there with quite simple abilities that were not as strong, then there were people with world ending abilities.. right?’ He never read the comics so.. the movies were the greatest reference.

“I hope my theory is wrong though, such a world can only head towards oblivion someday soon, and I don’t want to be dragged into something like that.. really.”