Negotiations are such a hassle

"What do you want?" Leynel asked, clearly not willing to waste any time on such a hassle as negotiations.

'Come on, man!' Leon thought, raising his eyebrows by just the tiniest bit. 'Not only it says a lot about what do you really think about this mission but it also gives me way too much advantage right off the bat!'

The bloodmancer took a deep breath, all for the sake of holding his emotions bottled up inside.

'You might be a good officer, but a haggler you are not,' he thought, only to move his attention to the topic of what he actually needed.

"First off, I need weapons," Leon said. He then threw a look around the tent.

The officers inside didn't wear anything outside of their personal weapons. And while it made it harder for Leon to guess their usual equipment, he could still figure out a lot from their clothes alone.

"I will need an arming sword, a short spear, and a bow," Leon then said. The corner of his mouth then quivered a little. "And that includes arrows for the bow as well, of course."

"Done," Leynel replied without even a moment of hesitation, all to Leon's dismay.

"Tsk," he openly clicked his tongue as he looked away. "You are taking all the fun out of the negotiation," he complained.

"You speak as if you expected to get less than everything you really wanted from the beginning," Leynel countered while giving Leon an exhausted stare. "It will be faster for both you and me if you just tell me what you want so that I can tell you what I can accept."

"Straightforward from the very beginning, aren't you?" Leon muttered only to shake his head again. He then lowered his eyes and brought his hand to rub his chin.

"Enough money to survive for a week in the nearest city." Leon raised his eyes at the officer.

"Done."

"Either a recommendation letter or an escort to the city so that I won't have any trouble entering it," Leon added in the same, monotone voice he used when bringing up the money.

"That's..." Leynel muttered, raising his left eyebrow as he looked at Leon with curiosity in his eyes. "What makes you think it's necessary?"

Leon tilted his head to the side.

'That was just a random guess,' he thought, only to put a small smile on his face.

"This realm is about to enter the state of a massive war," the bloodmancer said. "There might not be official information about it going around, but the signs of it are everywhere. And they are even more obvious for outside like me," he stated.

"Which makes you believe it might get harder to get into the cities," Leynel finished up the explanation, falling for Leon's trap for the second time since they first met.

'And that's how you fool smart people,' Leon thought. 'Let them tell your story for you.'

"You brought up chaosbringers. And I'm someone that no one knows and someone who knows very little about the details of the lives of people in this state," Leon added. "Without a recommendation, I would be taken for a chaosbringer right away."

"That's... That's true," Leynel admitted, shaking his head only to then go and slap his own knee with his hand. "Consider this request fulfilled as well. Anything else?"

"Two more things," Leon replied with a smile. "It might be secret information for you, but I need to know what I'm looking for. So, everything you know about what I'm supposed to look for in the forest, I need you to tell me."

"That's reasonable," Leynel agreed without much thought. "And the last thing?" he then asked.

"Nothing much," Leon smiled. "That girl you saw me with, she is likely to venture out of the village and look to visit the city soon," he stated, recalling the state he left the girl in back at the village.

'She is either going to drop all that pretense from before or she is going to seek the wider world around,' he thought. 'And after I left her like that, giving her a hand for the first steps on her journey... it's the least I can do.'

"And you want us to give her a recommendation as well?" Leynel asked, raising his eyebrows in genuine surprise. "Contrary to you, she has a proper backstory. I don't see any need for her to need someone to guarantee her," he pointed out.

"I want her to have a safe passage to the city," Leon said, fixing the officer's misunderstanding. "I will be okay because there is hardly anyone who can stand against me in this sorry world," he said.

Leon's words weren't just empty, self-centered praise. There was a bit of immense confidence that he had in his skill in those words... But they were also meant to reinforce Leynel's idea that picking him for what appeared to be a tough job was a good idea.

'In the end, I still don't know enough about this world to move comfortably around,' Leon thought, putting his teeth just close enough to make his jaw feel as if they were gritting against each other. 'So it's better to make them believe I'm some sort of an elite if it turns out that this forest... is even less welcoming than it seems it is.'

"But she isn't you," Leynel once again finished Leon's story for him. "The highways are mostly safe, but I can see where you are coming from," he said, pursing his lips as he looked down at the map. "If she won't pay us a visit before we will pack up, I will leave two men and an officer to escort her," he then promised.

"Then we have a deal," Leon stood up and extended his hand over the map and towards the man...

Yet, rather than shaking it, Leynel only looked down at it with a weirded-out expression.

"Back where I come from, shaking one's hand is a gesture of accepting the deal," Leon quickly hurried up with some basic explanation.

Yet, at his heart, he couldn't help but feel weird.

'Wasn't this gesture supposed to be a universal one?' he thought. 'A gesture that everywhere back home came from the idea of showing that you are unarmed and thus mean no harm. How come it's not known here?'

"I see," Leynel closed his eyes and nodded his head. He then stood up from his seat before reaching out and awkwardly grasping Leon's fingers. "It's a deal, then!"

The two men shook their right hands, only to quickly pull it back a moment later.

"Now then," Leon raised his eyes back on Leynel's face. "Tell me everything about the people you want me to hunt down."