Tusk Town

Only nine days were left until the 16th month when the succubus finally reached human civilization. An out of the way town less than 10km away from one of the most dangerous forests in the Gorgon Domain. Tusk Town was the name and if you counted 10 people and none of them were criminals then you're probably in the wrong place.

The 'Tusk' in the name came from the the town's history where hunters would sell orc tusks they hunted from a large orc mob that had settled too close to their Domain for the Gorgon Clan's liking leading to an extermination order.

Today Tusk Town was ruled by the black market and they were the number one contributer towards the Town's economy. Carried from the Town's history is the monster materials market, but today it wasn't limited to orc tusks but included some protected monster species that the black market was happy to provide as long as good price was agreed on. So close to the forest and Plains, it had a well established smuggling network ready to offer services to anyone who has something he probably shouldn't have and needed to get it somewhere less accessible for the authorities.

This made it the perfect place for the succubus who wanted to get her business done without attracting any attention. In any other place the black cloak that covered her entire body and the poorly made wooden mask on her face would stand out like a sore thumb, but here where there are more than a few people who were doing who knows what who preferred to keep their identities secret, she didn't stand out too much.

She needed to get a more proper map she could use to update her map which had too many gaps for it to be of any practical use outside of traveling to big cities. She also wanted to get a refinement method that she could use to get her constitution to advance from mid-level commoner up to mid-level spuire. But unless she wants to get into a lot of trouble she needed money to get those things. Few places emphasize the importance of law and order more than the criminal ruled towns. It's important in these type of places.

Getting money wouldn't be a problem for the succubus, the black market would be more than happy to buy a spell or two from her, and she had memorized many. All she has to do is to convince them to give a spell disk which is usually easy and she could make a few for them, they might ask for other forms of compensation if she failed but she was confident in her abilities.

It didn't take much to find the black market, all she had to do was ask a random passerby to get a number of locations she could go to depending on what she wants.

She first had to get money so the first place she went to was down the stairs in the back room of Jid's barber to the rather large basement area which might as well be an underground hall of considerable size with numerous tunnels going who knows where, small shops built all over and a few hundred or so people shuffling around the area. This place was supposed to mainly deal with magic related stuff so most of these people should be mages.

The customers were doing more selling than buying because whatever the people were selling most likely had questionable or dangerous origins or can't be sold legally so the shop owners who concentrated at selling rather than buying were rather free so when she finally found someone who was selling spell disks she didn't have to wait for long.

"What kind of spell do you want?" asked the man behind the counter without bothering himself to look at her.

"I can copy some spells, all you got to do is pay?" she had a lot of experience dealing with the black market. They only want your money, products or services, anything else is a waste of time. She'd copied spells for who knows how long, her master demanded she know how to do this and she's been using this way to feed herself ever since she left Frost Shroud. She didn't need to give them a new spell everytime, she only needed to give them something they don't have even if someone else has it. The number of people who could imprint spells were few so the black market usually wasn't too picky about the spell. The black market never liked things that could cripple the market.

"Let me guess. You ran away from your sect but not before stealing a spell manual." said the guy now looking at her. "You'd make more money from just selling that spell manual to me and you lessen the risk of your former buddies finding it with you."

"Don't worry about my former sect. Just tell me if you want the deal or not?"

"You've done this before." said the man with a smirk, "It's troublesome to deal with a smart ass, but at least I don't have to bother myself explaining too many things. What are we using as a collateral? What you say about using the spell manual?"

"Not happening." the succubus refused curtly. She doesn't have a spell manual and they're not going to use something they can't prove exists as contingency.

"Okay, what about you? We have a well developed slave smuggling network here in Tusk Town, a lady beautiful or not is always welcomed."

"That works." She's not going to make something too troublesome so there's no way she could fail.

A wry smile was plastered on the man's face seeing how quickly she just agreed to sell herself, but he was still quite experienced and it didn't take too much time for him to snap out of his head. He stood up and led the succubus who was still covered up to the back room, leaving for a moment he came back with 10 spell disks and gave them to her.

"8 functional spells will be good, if you don't lose the other two spell disks you can keep them." said the man before leaving the backroom.

This was generally how the black market got the spells it had on the market. In a particularly large town, there may be a few people who could create spells for the black market but for out of the way places, they either have to steal spell manuals to guide whoever they can get to help them into imprinting the spell on the spell disks or get someone who had stolen a spell manual to imprint the spell for them. She fit among the latter.

The succubus took one of the spell disks and examined it. From a simple examination she could tell that it was rubbish, once absorbed it would be nearly impossible to delete a spell made from this disk without repercussions. It'd impossible to destroy it without damaging or even killing yourself so you'd most likely be stuck with it for the rest of your life. A person could only absorb a limited number of spells in her/his body, once the person is too strong for a particular spell to be of any use they usually delete to open space for a new one, but it'd be suicidal if you absorbed the spell from this spell disk. But that had nothing to do with her, all she had to do was imprint the spell and get her money.

She chose a simple spell with a lot of potential, it would create a fireball above the mage's head and launch fire lances in all directions around the mage. Making each imprint took around half an hour so by the time she was done it was already dusk. She knocked on the door and it opened almost immediately.

She dropped the ten spell disks in the man's hands and waited for her money.

The man took a short look at her and turned around with a sigh before placing the ten spell disks on a runetablet one by one. At the end, a huge smile was plastered on his face, he turned to look at the succubus.

"You're good!" with this simple sentence he threw large pouch of gold he had pulled out from a nearby cabinet to the succubus.

The succubus peaked inside and seeing a good amount of gold she was happy with herself. She was about to leave when she decided to ask the man where she could get a refinement method. She had asked some townspeople but a member of the black market might have better information.

"Nothing good here. Try a bigger town." he answered while giving her a strange look.

She pretended to be oblivious to this and left quickly, she knows the look on that guy's face. It seems like she attracted some unnecessary attention with that spell, she was too careless, she didn't expect that spell to be considered something special here. Every time she imprinted it in the past nobody thought too much about it. Seems like she was a bit careless, she didn't investigate the quality of the spells found here and just did a random one that gave her a good pay in the past.

Now she had to get a map, hope that the black market wouldn't bother her tonight and leave first thing in the morning.