NOVEL NEXT B3 - Lesson 25: “The Art Of The Deal."
Sunlight slanted through the cracked glass, painting faint, shifting patterns across the battered counter of the Verdant Crucible. Dust motes drifted in lazy spirals above the rows of mostly-empty shelves. The lingering scents of dried herbs, faint acid, and simmered roots hung in the air, undercut by the sharper tang of desperation. Outside, Halirosa's street noise hummed — a faint counterpoint to the tension swirling in the shop.
Hugo stood at the heart of the cluttered shop, boots planted wide as if bracing against a shifting current. One hand stayed tucked in his travel-worn coat, thumb absently rolling the storage ring — a small anchor against the mounting tension. Alpha's drone, little more than a glinting red eye in the half-light, perched quietly on a shelf beside a faded spirit lantern, silent as a judge.
Behind the battered counter, the alchemist never quite stood still. She moved with restless energy, sleeves rolled back, thin fingers flitting from jar to jar as if rearranging them would untangle the knots in her own mind. Each time her hair fell across her face, she shoved it away with a huff, eyes darting to Hugo with a wary, brittle edge.
"So…" Hugo started, careful to keep his tone steady.
Her head whipped toward him, wild curls spilling over one cheek. "You're still here?" she snapped, voice raw with impatience. "If you're done 'just browsing,' then grab what you want and come to the counter — or get out."
She squinted at him, suspicion sharpening her words. "Or are you another one of those vultures who think you can pull the wool over my eyes and talk me out of my own shop?" She pressed her palms to her cheeks, voice rising in a cruel mimicry: "Oh, how generous! Take this cursed little shop off my hands for a handful of spirit gems and send me packing, just like that, right?" She spat the last words, her laugh brittle. "Bah!"
Hugo didn't flinch, nor did he rush to fill the silence that followed. He waited, letting her words clatter and settle in the space between them like marbles rolling off a tabletop. The old habits of haggling came back to him as naturally as breathing: let the seller spend their energy first, see what shapes their anxieties took.
He leaned one elbow on the counter, carefully casual, his broad frame at odds with the delicacy of the gesture. "Not looking to take advantage of anyone," he said. "But I am looking for something more permanent than headache powder. Shop's got good bones." His eyes swept the cluttered interior, missing nothing. "Seems to me what it needs is someone with the right means."
The alchemist sniffed, wary and wounded all at once. "Please. You think I've not tried? I've had priests in here, I've thrown more salt than the whole west market uses in a year. If I thought elbow grease fixed this place, I'd be halfway to making it work. As far as anyone cares to tell me, there's nothing wrong with this place! Nothing!"
She turned away, starting to mutter to herself again. "That's right… all it needs is a little elbow grease. Just a bit of tender love and care. That's all…"
Hugo slipped back in front of her, all smiles. "Now, now, I'm not saying you haven't tried, Ms…"
The alchemist paused and blinked, as if confused why Hugo was still here. "…Kailin Sharp," she finally said after a moment.
Hugo grinned. "Ms. Sharp." He nodded. "As I was saying, I'm not suggesting that you haven't tried. "It's obvious you take care of this place. And the garden out back is in better shape than half the ones I've seen in this quarter. It's impressive."
Kailin blinked again and grinned. "Well, about time someone with a good eye showed their face!" She leaned in as if to whisper some dark secret. "Between you and me, a proper alchemy garden takes more work than people think. Half the plants are fussy as a merchant's wife, the rest keep trying to cross-pollinate into something poisonous." She shook her head. "Does anyone appreciate that, though? Of course not! You should have seen the state it was in when I bought the place. I swear the previous owner used it to empty their chamber pots or something. If it weren't for the foundational arrays laid by the original owner, that place wouldn't be fit to grow weeds!"
Hugo flinched internally at the memory of his mother's old garden, but didn't let it show on his face.
"I see," he said. "It must be stressful, what with trying to run the storefront yourself, brew potions and pills, and maintain such an impressive garden all on your own. My mother always said there's no such thing as bad soil, only tired hands and the wrong seed."
"Of course it is, fool!" She snorted and rolled her eyes. "But you think just anyone can be an alchemist?!" She whirled and jabbed him with a finger. Hugo raised his hands and took a step back.
"You adventurers think you're so great, just because you can beat some poor beast's head in with a club like a barbarian."
Hugo took another step back, Kailin following with another jab.
"Let me tell you what! You don't know what REAL struggle is until you've tried to formulate a second-tier pill using scraps and well-wishes!"
A third step, and Hugo bumped into a shelf. A sealed clay pot fell and shattered. Both Kailin and Hugo froze, watching small blue pills scatter across the floor. They turned back to face each other, and Kailin blushed, taking a hasty step back while coughing into her hand.
"Well, right. Anyway. If you think I'm desperate enough to just give this place away, you're out of luck. The garden alone is worth a year's profit in a good quarter. And the bones of the place are solid. Old, yes, but sturdy." Her fingers tapped the counter in a staccato rhythm. "I paid good coin, and I'll not accept anything else."
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Kailin's fingers drummed a staccato against the battered counter, her eyes never quite meeting Hugo's. "So, if you're here to make an offer, then make it. I'm tired of circling like a vulture over my own store. Just name your number and let's get this over with, before I start thinking you're one of those curse-chasing spirit hunters."
Hugo took his time, letting his gaze wander over the shelves — what was left of them — then to the sunlit patch where the garden's green reached for the window. He measured his words carefully. "You're sure you want to sell? Seems to me, for all your complaints, you still care." His tone was mild, but behind it ran something steelier — a thread of wariness honed by a lifetime of haggling and half-truths.
Kailin's eye twitched. "First you try to get me to sell, now you're trying to talk me out of it?" Her laugh was sharp, almost brittle. "Care? Of course I care! But caring doesn't fill the coin box, does it? Caring doesn't keep the ward lights burning when the city council hikes the fees — again! And it certainly doesn't make customers line up when everyone says your shop is cursed!" She flung her hands wide, nearly sending a jar of dried nightleaf tumbling.
Hugo nodded, keeping his expression calm as a pond at dawn. He had learned long ago that some sellers needed to talk themselves into a sale. Kailin paced behind the counter, muttering under her breath about greedy landlords and useless exorcists, her hands gesturing wildly as she relived old arguments with invisible rivals.
Finally, she turned back, cheeks flushed and eyes wild. "Seven hundred," she blurted, as if the number might burn her tongue. "Seven hundred spirit gems. That's my price. Not a gem less. It's what the last idiot said he'd pay before he vanished and left me holding the keys. The garden's worth half that on a bad season, and the location —" she jabbed a finger toward the door "— is prime. I won't be robbed."
The figure hit Hugo like a slap. After his mother died, and the debt started piling up, Hugo had barely managed to sell the place for a third of that, his hands shaking so badly he could hardly sign the contract. Seven hundred spirit gems? It was a minor fortune for most, and yet Kailin named it as if it were a last defense against being devoured.
Hugo masked his surprise, letting out a low whistle. "That's a stiff price, Ms. Sharp. A lot of coin for a place with so many… stories."
Kailin crossed her arms, defiant but not quite able to hide the tremor in her jaw. "Then go. Go on, try to find another garden this size in the inner ring for less. Try to find another shop with arrays that strong. Or —" her eyes darted toward the floor, where the blue pills from earlier still lay scattered, "— another seller desperate enough to take less. I'm not that desperate. Yet."
For a long moment, Hugo simply looked at her, letting the silence stretch between them. He didn't reach for his pouch. Didn't threaten, or bargain, or plead. Instead, he asked quietly, "If the place is worth so much, why hasn't anyone stayed? Why not just hold out for a buyer who'll match your price and your hopes?"
Kailin glared, but her voice faltered. "Because hope is all I've got left, and it's running out." She looked away, wiping a streak of dust from her cheek with a trembling hand. "Besides, you're not just buying the building. You're buying the plants out back. Plants I put sweat and blood into, and now won't be able to harvest properly! Seven hundred, and it's yours."
A quiet buzz hummed in Hugo's ear — Alpha, a low note of digital amusement. "I think that's the best you're really going to get out of her. Don't push her too much more."
Hugo almost smiled. Instead, he leaned in, voice low and steady. "I don't mind a challenge, Ms. Sharp. But I think you're right — this place's bones are good. Even if they are cursed."
He extended his hand across the counter, meeting her gaze without flinching. "Deal?"
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Several hours later, the last slant of sunlight faded from the windows, leaving the former Verdant Crucible painted in long shadows and quiet gold. The shop, once cluttered and bursting with Kailin's frenetic energy, now felt hollowed out — jars and tools packed away, counters bare save for a few streaks of dust and a forgotten strip of drying root. The only real evidence of the day's chaos was the faint scent of bruised mint and ink lingering in the air, and a stray blue pill wedged under a splintered shelf. Where the excentric alchemist had gone after leaving with her storage ring and spirit gems, Hugo didn't know, nor did he particularly care. His mind was elsewhere.
Hugo stood in the center of it all, boots planted on the old, worn boards that had once creaked beneath his mother's hurried steps. For a long moment, he did nothing but breathe, letting the hush settle over his shoulders like an old, familiar cloak. It felt different — emptier, colder — but also somehow right. Even stripped bare, the bones of the place were still there: the low ceiling where his father once hung the harvest charms, the stained glass window patched with lead where a neighbor's boy had broken it years ago, the faint scrape on the counter from a long-forgotten kettle. Every piece was memory, layered and quietly persistent.
Above the counter, Alpha's drone pulsed to life. Holo-emitters flickered on in the gloom, and a cascade of light spilled through the darkness: floating blueprints, wireframe sketches, swatches of color, and shifting overlays. Countertops reshaped themselves in ghostly lines; shelves unfurled along the walls, stocked with digital phantoms of spirit jars and alchemical vials. The garden, rendered in luminous green, blossomed anew — rows of medicinal herbs, hexagonal beds for rare cultivars, a small workbench tucked beneath a potted peach tree.
Alpha's voice, low and precise, drifted through the space. "Let's start with something practical. Main counter here. Display shelves along the east wall for premium goods — MUD tokens, relic tinctures, the sort of thing adventurers drool over. Garden access at the back — separate entrance for suppliers and deliveries. Gonna have to start tunneling out this way. I wonder how deep we need to go to get an access tram to the back? Storage room split in two, one cold-warded for perishables, one shielded for hazardous stock. Thoughts?"
Hugo didn't answer at first. He moved slowly, running his palm across the battered counter as the digital light danced through his fingers. His eyes took in every line of the plans, but they kept drifting back to the walls, to the old window, to the patch of floor where his mother used to kneel sorting tea leaves.
"I never thought I'd see this place again," he said at last, voice thick. "Not like this. Not as the owner." He managed a wry smile, the weight of years falling away with the admission. "You know, Alpha, when I was a boy, I'd hide under that counter every time a customer came in. Swore I'd never be caught behind it. Guess I lied to myself."
Alpha's red eye flickered in the dim, a small gesture of understanding. "We all lie to ourselves sometimes. It's how we survive." The drone drifted closer, casting shifting blue shadows on the walls. "But this is a good place, Hugo. Good bones, like you said. We'll fill it again. Make it something new."
The words hung between them, gentle and certain. Hugo let himself stand still for a moment longer, surrounded by memory and possibility — the hum of the city outside, the shop's old ghosts, Alpha's bright digital future painting the air with hope.
He nodded, finally, letting out a slow breath. "Yeah. Let's build something worth remembering."
And as Alpha's projections danced around him, tracing new walls over old, Hugo turned his gaze toward the window — toward the city and the future beyond.