Counting the spoils

Soon, the last Deepclaw Demon was caught as well. The sailors finally lowered their harpoons and caught their breath.

"One, two..." Peter crouched on the bank, scribbling in his notebook with a fountain pen.

The more numbers he wrote, the happier he became. By the end, Peter only wished Old Baz had brought a few more cages.

Unbelievable, he marveled. An adult Deepclaw Demon was worth 100 silver pounds, and ten could earn a man a tidy little fortune. Yet an ordinary hunter could not catch ten in a year. These creatures should have lived out their lonely lives in the mud, so why had they come in droves to die before humans today?

"How much?" Gordon asked.

"Hold on, I can't afford a mistake!" Peter grew happier as he calculated, savoring the process of arriving at that enormous figure.

Gordon waited for the number. He guessed at least 30 gold pounds, which would already be very good.

"...I hereby announce," Peter coughed, "that tonight, in cooperation with the Blackgill Gang, we caught six adult Aberrants, eleven subadult and juvenile Aberrants, and twenty-three other aquatic Aberrants and fish. Based on my understanding of market prices in Lundenim, that comes to 50 gold pounds in total."

Fifty gold pounds! In other words, 1,000 silver pounds, or 100,000 copper pennies...

Everyone was delighted the moment that number was announced!

The sailors straightened their backs, and Old Baz accepted the valuation too.

Praise the Blackwater River! Gordon looked out at the great river. Now everything about it pleased him.

Next came dividing the spoils.

Nobody in this world carried 50 gold pounds around with them. Old Baz immediately sent two trusted sailors to fetch the money, making them keep an eye on each other. He was more impatient than anyone. Fresh Aberrants would stink if left too long, and once they stank, they would no longer fetch that price.

A flicker of concealed greed flashed in Old Baz's eyes as he looked at Gordon.

Even now, his first instinct was naturally to refuse payment and claim everything for himself. What could these two students possibly do to him?

But Vera was there too.

The Source Substance hunter stood beside the demon corpses, grim and terrifying, like a great black dog. Anyone who dared approach would be torn to pieces.

Nobody dared provoke a Source Substance hunter.

Honestly, these people dared to refine Source Substance into their bodies, bearing that terrifying supernatural material with their own mortal flesh... what wouldn't they do?

By the time Old Baz's men returned with the money, Gordon and the others had worked out their shares.

As the man who had supplied the expertise and brought everyone together, Gordon would receive 35 gold pounds, easily the lion's share.

Peter, the intermediary, would get ten gold pounds.

Vera would also receive five gold pounds. She had kept the situation under control, making an unseen but important contribution that Gordon would not forget.

Old Baz counted the money, picked out thirty-five one-gold-pound notes bearing Emperor Albert's portrait, and handed them to Gordon.

Gordon accepted them and fanned them out in his hand.

[Gold pounds, the most universal language in Lundenim.]

[Gold pounds, the right answer they never teach you in school.]

[Gold pounds, they cannot make you taller, but they can help you look down on everyone.]

Gold pounds!

This was a fortune he could hold in his fist, slap onto a table, and use to make many people instantly change their tone when speaking to him.

He carefully put the money away.

Since crossing into this world, he had seen too many strange things: steam-powered industry, Aberrants resembling black goats, eerie and powerful Source Substance... yet these 35 gold pounds seemed more meaningful than many supernatural phenomena.

Vera accepted her thin stack of five Gold Pound notes. First, she carefully selected a pocket inside her coat for them, tucked them in, then pulled them out and looked again, as though checking whether they were real. She even held them beneath her nose and cautiously sniffed their distinctive ink scent.

Only after a long while did a subtle expression appear on Vera's face, like the look of someone who had eaten her fill.

"Now that's making money," she sighed.

Peter's hands trembled as he held his ten one-gold-pound notes.

He gritted his teeth, trying to conceal his inner ecstasy behind the blank expression characteristic of the Rus people. More than anything, he feared letting these locals think a Rus bumpkin had never seen money before.

But he failed. In fact, he had not even noticed that an outrageously smug grin, unlike any he had ever worn before, had been on his face for more than ten minutes.

No wonder some people willingly sank into depravity. If doing something could earn him ten gold pounds in one go, Peter only wanted to know the procedure.

Old Baz watched the three of them and their different expressions.

Gordon quickly regained his composure, Vera seemed dazed, and Peter could not control his expression at all. The differences in their natures were plain to see.

"By the way... Mr. Gordon." Old Baz's manner toward Gordon had changed completely. "I'd like to know, do you have any more of this 'bait'? Will you sell it to me again? Just name your price."

"We'll discuss it next time," Gordon said calmly.

"Why not now?" Old Baz gave that particular chuckle people used when trying to get friendly.

"Because what you've seen here is only a sample," Gordon said with a perfectly straight face. "Once I improve the formula, who knows what it might attract?"

As Old Baz listened, excitement gradually kindled in his chest.

So this was only a sample...

Old Baz had heard of Potent Demon-Luring Incense that could attract Aberrants, but he had never expected to witness it today, let alone see it attract Deepclaw Demons, creatures with such unusual ecological habits. It had certainly opened his eyes.

"Let's go." Deciding there was nothing else to do here, Old Baz waved his great hand and left by river with his men and cargo. The still-living Deepclaw Demon in the cage pressed its face against the bars, its gray-white fingers picking repeatedly at the latch. Nobody paid it any attention.

Every secret of the fishing trade came down to keeping the catch fresh.

Peter left too. He walked strangely, clutching his money as though wealth had become a branding iron that sucked away his reason.

"If anyone asks, say we were conducting an experiment." He headed back to the East District, without the slightest idea what to do with the money.

The commotion receded, leaving the riverbank empty.

Gordon sighed. His tense body finally relaxed, and the mental pressure gradually faded.

Everything had happened so quickly: luring the catch, hauling it in, killing it, settling accounts, dividing the money...

The bank was a mess of water and blood.

Gordon gazed silently at the river. It seemed to have returned to its usual unpleasant, mysterious self.

Vera had not left. She stood on the bank, turning over a piece of remains that had been left behind with the tip of her sword, like someone searching the dining hall for a piece of meat nobody wanted.

"Are you planning to eat that?" Gordon asked. "That's the same look you give bread."

"It's the same look I give you, too." Vera looked down at him from above. Gordon could see only two magnificent hemispheres.

"That's different. My meat's sour."

Not far away, Charlotte had been watching them for a long time.

At first, she had taken issue with this bloody hunt. Then she discovered that this pile of filthy things was worth 50 gold pounds, and she found it unbelievable.

Yesterday, when Gordon had declared, "We're going to get rich," she had thought something was wrong with him: exaggerating the facts, dismissing the risks, and plunging in for a little profit, just like the speculators her father despised.

The investments she knew were far more orderly: stocks, trade, shipping... respectable affairs with gentlemen in suits, precisely worded contracts, and endless meetings.

Yet what lay before her needed neither black tea nor pleasantries, only a few schemes and a few pairs of hands willing to wade into the water. But this was actually more natural, more real. The wealth of the Logris Empire had been built on brutal plunder in the first place. As long as you made money, who cared whether you followed the rules?

She recalled her father's original assessment: "You can associate with him. It will do you good." Now she felt that he had considerably understated the case.

Charlotte suddenly wanted very much to talk to Gordon.