"Not buying anything else? These Bluecap Mushrooms are fresh as can be. Chew one and you'll feel the kick. Every Duergar who's tried them says they got absolutely blasted..."
Renato had no interest in those suspicious mushrooms, and he had no way to verify whether the supposedly precious materials were genuine.
Flori insisted that these purple scales had fallen off a Purple Worm, and he wanted dozens of gold coins for them. Why didn't he just claim they were dragon scales from Tiamat?
But a piece of blue-black ore caught Renato's attention. As his sensitivity to shadow energy grew, he could sense the shadows in the surrounding space faintly converging on it.
The ore was about the size of a fist, its shape so regular that it seemed artificially forged. Its surface had a metallic sheen with a deep, dark-blue luster.
Flori couldn't explain where it came from, either. He had picked it up deep in the mine, in an abandoned side passage.
It was so hard that even a pickaxe couldn't break it, and it looked unusual, so he had brought it back on a whim.
The Duergar bared a mouthful of yellow teeth in a fake smile.
"Tell you what. Buy two more Bluecap Mushrooms, and I'll give you a discount. Five gold coins for the lot."
Flori clearly wasn't a professional merchant. His sales skills were mediocre.
"Don't even think about it." Renato held up three fingers and said firmly, "Three gold. Not a copper more."
They went through several rounds of haggling, during which Flori tried bundling his wares, appealing to sentiment, and even slipping threats into his words.
In the end, however, Renato still bought the strange ore for exactly three gold coins.
Once he held it, he found it much lighter than expected. Its