Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

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****

Aldrich didn't know what happened or how he died this time. It was his first death since becoming a Crestmaster.

He could not even imagine what happened, he simply died suddenly, quickly and without any struggle. He just died.

He never felt like this in some time, the feeling if being completely helpless, unable to even defend himself. But Aldrich wasn't completely bothered by it.

He wasn't even sacred of that teddy bear. He encountered opponents who made short work of him before he became a Crestmaster.

He was going to visit that teddy bear after he advanced again and see how it goes.

It was a crude way of thinking but he was fully convinced, strong enemy? Just get stronger than them!

In the real world, morning had come and Aldrich was just finished with breakfast. Which honestly felt like lunch since he woke up late and devoured an entire full imperial breakfast.

He wanted to go and tell Ayemon about Keld and what happened with the Night Scales as soon as possible but it looked like he would have to wait.

He had an appointment with city hall and then a meeting with Yasbel, this time he definitely had to get some information.

If not then he might have to use Echo, the information guild recommended by Ayemon to find out exactly what is going with her.

****

This time Yasbel brought several potential targets to his attention, unfortunately they weren't as convenient as Dane's coffee house.

But that was not as big of a deal, Aldrich had a massive amount of wealth at his disposal currently, unlike how he was in the past.

So it was obvious that these hinderances were not financially related.

The key point about the whole operation is that whatever business he took over must be profitable for him to get his money back.

First he decided to target several manual laborers like barbers and cobblers, their case was not hard nor was it too different from Dane's coffee house.

They were start-ups who came from elsewhere and set up shop here but they were late on rent or too deep in debt. This investment only cost him ten gold only.

Aldrich wanted to more but he shouldn't do too much of the same thing at once so he focused on another kind of business.

A distillery.

This one was tricky because this distillery was shut off many years ago after a freak accident killed twenty workers and the owner at once. From then on it was abandoned and no one wanted such an ominous distillery.

The remaining workers scattered everywhere. It was not hard to see why. Right now the family of the previous owner wanted to sell it for thirty five gold coins.

Aldrich reckoned that it could be negotiated down to twenty perhaps. The problem was the workers needed to operate the distillery.

"This is going to be troublesome…"

Aldrich muttered.

"Troublesome? Why?" Yasbel asked, while looking at him like an idiot.

"Obviously we would have to go through so much trouble to recruit the workers and managers above them, we don't have someone like Fizznick to rely on."

Yasbel rolled her eyes, "and you said you weren't a country bumpkin anymore… tsk, tsk."

"… get on with it. Please enlighten me, I'm not as good as you." Aldrich replied with a warm chuckle.

Yasbel looked repulsed and shivered, "that's not like you…"

"What do you mean? I obviously acknowledge I am not as experienced as you when it comes to these things." Aldrich nodded.

"Which reminds me, that is in fact the reason I hired you to begin with. Hey do you remember when I hired you and gave you a lifeline? Man, time just passes so fast."

Aldrich lamented.

Yasbel's face twisted like she just swallowed a fly, "ehem! What was I saying? Ah, yes. Actually you don't have to trouble yourself with any of that."

"These days you can just hire a law firm to take care of the hard work in your stead. You just provide the money and the rest pretty much takes care of itself."

"Oh, I didn't think of that." Aldrich was impressed, Yasbel was indeed capable in her field.

"The only complication we face is the old rumors about the distillery, most people simply wouldn't want to work in such a place…" Yasbel replied, curling her lips in deep thought.

"Hmm, why are you concerned so much? We can invite a priest to purify the place, in fact one of my friends is a legitimate cleric, he will do the job. Even if there really was something wrong he can deal with it."

"That's hood but superstition is not so easily dispelled, Aldrich. People will still be hesitant."

"Then we'll send a cheque to our friends in the press and have them write something nice about it along with the requirement advertisement."

Aldrich pondered a bit more on this, "you know what? We can also raise the wage a copper or two for them. They will come in begging for work, trust me."

"B-but wouldn't we lose money like that? I think that's going a tad too far." Yasbel advised.

"It's as you said, it's difficult to dispel deeply rooted beliefs. We will lose only a fraction of profits anyway. If the recruitments fails we will lose our investment entirely."

Aldrich didn't care about losing some pocket change for now, his goal was profits in the long run and not now.

But he noticed a curious fact, Yasbel should know this better than him yet when it came to losing even a little bit of money she became extremely reluctant.

It would have made sense if it were someone else, but for the business-savvy Yasbel it was a critical slip-up.

It was like a hair on a grilled tomahawk steak plate.

Aldrich watched as Yasbel bored a carriage and left, then he walked into a corner and came back covered in a long white cloak.

This was the [cloak of shadow] which he once loaned to Cole when he infiltrated the bandits camp and gave them a special 'seasoning'.

It had the power to reduce his presence, and make people around less likely to notice him or what he was doing. But obviously if bumped into someone that person would react and notice him.

This was an incredibly useful magic item that he wasn't using nearly enough.

Aldrich followed Yasbel but the more he followed her the more he was bewildered. He noticed that she dropped off the private carriage and took a public one and then walked quite a while.

This place was not a good neighborhood, it was still better than Lunsken but still. Beggars and tramps everywhere, Punks and thugs walking around with crude swords and knives.

This was not the kind of place he expected her to live in…

Yasbel walked naturally and was about to enter one of the decapitated buildings when Aldrich notice one of the nearby drunkards followed her and was about to smack her ass.

Aldrich rushed in. He may have his problems with Yasbel but at the end of the day she was one of his people and he wouldn't allow this kind of behavior to pass.

But before he could reach them, Yasbel suddenly turned around and swung her fancy purse smacking the punk in the face and putting him down.

"Fucking bastard," Yasbel roared at the fallen man and stomped on his face, spilling blood, "do you know how much these clthes cost? Huh? Answer me dickhead!"

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp!

Aldrich:….

Aldrich stopped in his tracks and flinched, that was not much a high-heel she was using but it was still sharp it drew blood.

And what the fuck did she have in her purse? A fucking brick?

"No… f-forgive, I will give you all the money I have… please let me go."

Stomp! Stomp!

"These clothes are still new and you had the gall to try and touch me?! I get that you're drunk but this here is more expensive than your whole fucking existence! Now get the fuck out of here!"

The poor fella crawled away. Yasbel glared at him all the way like she wanted nothing more than to kill him. After the he left she breathed a sigh of relief.

Aldrich nodded in understanding, she must have been putting on a strong front.

Aldrich closed the distance between them and heard her muttering.

"Ooh, that was really goooood! I can feel the stress leaving me. If only there were a few more assholes here…"

Never mind.

Aldrich retreated and decided that he saw enough. He was sure that Yasbel was not short on money, she could easily live in a much better place just based on her salary from the bank.

Not to mention her cut from Dane's coffee house for the last two months. It was hard to tell if this was just a part of her personality or something else.

It looks like he had to make that trip to Echo after all.