An Encounter

Arjuna walked into the alchemy guild again. He yawned tiredly and placed his large basket full of herbs on the counter. The receptionist already had his money ready. Arjuna looked at the money and asked

"shouldn't I only get 2 silver for this? why are their 3?"

The receptionist answered

"its a bonus for working so hard for us, please accept it and continue to work hard!"

Arjuna nodded and took the money. He then walked to the dawn alchemist building next to the alchemy guild. From what Arjuna had heard the dawn alchemists and alchemy guild were almost the exact same organization. Except that the Dawn alchemist was a specialized branch of the alchemy guild.

The master who had approached and recruited Arjuna was from the dawn alchemist branch which was why he was taught there. Plus the dawn alchemist were one of the best alchemists in the entire city of dawn. Arjuna didn't really know why they recruited him, but he was going to try his best anyways.

While Arjuna was walking to the building he could briefly hear some noise from behind the alchemist guild. One was a familiar voice, the voice of the receptionist he had just talked with, it seems she was talking to superior judging from the way she addressed him.

"master, he had finally delivered the batch of herbs!"

A gruff voice that Jason assumed to be the superior of the receptionist answered

"good, our stash was almost completely depleted of herbs, his constant influx of herbs is almost one of the only ways we are getting any herbs now thanks to the army taking away the rest of our sources, even if we sent out 20 of our disciples out to gather herbs, he could still gather more then them combined and at a constant rate too! "

"master, should I bring some of the herbs to the dawn alchemists?"

"yes, bring a few over to them, they are currently teaching some young talents sent by rich families and we don't want them to complain"

Arjuna heard shuffling noises that lead to the building that he was heading too. He was taking the main road, by going out the entrance, so he was separated by the people who had the juicy conversation by a wall. Arjuna continued walking down to the building without really processing the conversation, thankfully Boops happened to check on Arjuna and had heard the conversation.

Arjuna could hear Boops muttering to himself

'huh, so the alchemy guild and dawn alchemists aren't in the best shape right now and are desperately trying to get more materials.... this can be taken advantage of, hehehehehehehehehehhehehehehehehe, I HAVE AN IDEA'

Arjuna suddenly had cold sweat going down his back, but he couldn't ask Boops since he had already left and gone to Jason to talk about something.

Jason stepped into the courtyard nodding to the guards who respectfully nodded to him. Around this time Boops came back, but Arjuna had totally forgotten about the incident before.

The courtyard was just like how Arjuna had seen it before. Clean, empty, and kinda old. Some weeds were growing in the corner of the courtyard, but they could only be noticed if you looked closely around the place. Jason entered the wooden building, the moment he entered the hallway he encountered a fellow disciple about his age walking down the highway with two other servants walking behind him.

He walked proudly with his chin up and strode through the place like he owned everything. He had beady eyes and a round face. His chin was sticking out a bit, reminding Arjuna of a deformed banana. He was overall pretty fat, and he took up half of the entire hallway as he walked across. The two servants behind him walked with their heads down acting completely subservient to the disciple.

Boops did notice one of the servants look up briefly, he had a sly look in his eyes and a grin that made him nervous about something. The servants looked much older than the disciple, but they treated the disciple with lots of respect at least that was what he could see from how they followed him.

The moment the fat disciple saw Arjuna, he grinned in a condescending manner and addressed him.

"oh my, if it isn't Arjuna, the commoner disciple"

The moment he said with a grin that didn't have good intentions, Boops started to cringe

'aww its one of those types of people isn't it, frick me'

Arjuna had no idea what Boops was talking about. He just greeted the servant politely like how he was taught by his master.

"Hello, Fei pang, how are you?"

Fei pang snorted

"now that I have laid eyes on you, I'm not good"

Boops shouted in Arjuna's head

'ALRIGHT FATSO PREPARE TO FIGHT!'

Arjuna had to devote his mind to convincing Boops to not do something to Fei pang even though he had no idea what Boops could do.

Arjuna was silent and didn't answer because of that and Fei pang answered by snickering to his servants

"see, the lowly commoner can't even respond, look at his dumbfounded face, this is probably the first time a noble had even talked to you. In fact, you should be bowing at my feet right now"

Arjuna again tried to calm down Boops who got even more upset at Fei pang.

Arjuna was now in a dilemma, he was told to bow to this person, but he wouldn't do that even if every bone in his body was broken, he only bowed to his master, and his master hadn't even asked him to do that. But Fei pang was so fat that he couldn't pass by the hallway, especially with the two servants behind him.

Arjuna stood there quietly thinking about the possibilities of getting around Fei pang, while Boops kept on shouting at Arjuna to take out his bow and shoot some holes into him.

While Arjuna was thinking earnestly, Fei Pang and his two servants were laughing at Arjuna for being seemingly dumb. The servant with the sly eyes walked to Arjuna and raised his hand to slap him. He shouted

"master Fei Pang told you to bow, so you bow trash!"

and saying that a hand struck Arjuna's cheek. But it then deflected back almost hitting the servant thanks to Arjuna's high defense and level.

The three of them were lucky if any of the people related to Arjuna were there if Boops had a physical body at that time. Noble or not they probably would have been slapped back into orbit.

Boops when Arjuna got slapped stopped talking. He went completely silent, there were no more loud shouts or lashing out at the trio in Arjuna's head, it was just silent as Boops silently watched thinking thoughts that only he and Jason would know. But if anyone thought he was giving up, he would crush them into bits.

The servant raised his hands to slap Arjuna again. Arjuna didn't feel much so he was fine taking a hit.

But right before the servant struck a hand that was covered in burn marks and had a white rob covering his arm caught the servant's hand. Arjuna looked up to see his alchemy teacher Cadmus Nycodus gripping the servant's hand so hard that the servant started to squeal in pain. He said coldly while looking at the servant with almost murderous eyes.

"you hit my disciple"

The servant nervously tried to back up, but his hand was still being crushed by Cadmus. He repeated this time with his voice increasing in volume

"you hit my disciple"

Fei Pang nervously called out to Cadmus.

"Sir, I will take this to guild master Draroth if you injure my servant"

Cadmus looked at Fei Pang with eyes wanted to crush the person in front of him. He gritted his teeth in anger, and his other hand went to the pouch on his waist.

But Cadmus spotted a necklace on Fei Pang's large neck. It softly glowed making Cadmus able to see it, his eyes widened and his hand stopped reaching for his pouch.

He let go of the servant, giving a final squeeze that wouldn't break any bones but was enough to leave a large bruise.

The servant quickly ran away holding his throbbing hand, he retreated behind Fei Pang until he was completely behind him.

Once he was behind him, Arjuna noticed that his face changed into one of scorn and despise.

Fei Pang tried to leave, he couldn't do anything to Arjuna while his master was right in front of them.

"well, we must be going now, Pao Hui, Tou Ming lets go."

The left passing Arjuna and Cadmus, but Boops caught the expression of scorn Fei Pang gave Arjuna as he squeezed past him.

Arjuna and Cadmus waited until they were gone before they started to walk to the workshop. Cadmus said in a low voice

"I couldn't hear the hallways creaking and making noise so I came to investigate"

Cadmus passed by the workshop that they should have stopped into, and instead kept on going until they reached Cadmus's research room that doubled as his office. He motioned to a seat in the corner.

"sit, we have to talk about something"