The hangout for the group was a bar that was deep into the entertainment district, about half an hour to walk from his location. The outside of the bar was pretty spectacular with statues of panthers and other animal predators outside. There were stone steps leading up to a front door. Inside the bar was dark but all the fittings and furniture were well maintained and elegantly designed. Chris saw the images of panthers continued to the area around the bar, all were part of a coordinated decoration pattern.
There were several men sitting around and having a morning meal. Chris want up to the good-looking woman who was working behind the bar. Even though she was dressed in slacks and a t-shirt, Chris could still tell in the way she carried herself that she was an elegant person.
“Probably at night-time she would dress up for the job. “Thought Chris.
Chris spoke to her politely, “Is there any way I’d be able to talk to the leader of the Panthers?”
The woman casually looked over his shoulder and shouted to the group of men eating. “Jack, there’s a man here that wants to have a word with you.”
One of the men who was eating, supposedly Jack, looked up and signalled Chris over with a wave of his hand. Chris walked over to the group, only being noticed by the man who waved at him, while the rest ignored him and kept eating.
When Chris was in front of the Jack, the man asked lazily, “What do want with me?”
Replying Chris said, “I’m here to hire you for security of the shop I’ve opened in the lockout section of the district. One of my neighbours said you provide the service.”
Jack chuckled a bit. “More like we require you to use our services. I don’t normally get anybody asking for protection. What prompted you to do this?”
Chris shrugged. “We had a visit this morning from another group of men who injured my friend and offered the same services you provide. I would prefer to engage you as my protection, if you’re alright with that.”
As Chris said this all the men who were eating looked up from their meal at Jack. As the leader of the gang scratched his chin, he smirked, “This is sounding more interesting as you go along. I think we have to find out who’s taking our business first. But yes, we will provide you with protection for the usual rates.”
Chris said with a smile, “I would like to also have additional protection from anybody else. If I pay twice the normal rates, will this cover that?”
Jack looked a bit shocked, but grinned widely, “I always like more money. Sure, we can provide the extra services. I’ll send over a man to collect the money and mark your place that it’s under my protection.”
Chris just nodded, and Jack got back to his meal signalling that he was one here. As Chris made his way back to the lockup, he dropped in to at a martial arts dojo he noticed on the way back and booked himself for some lessons every day, early in the morning.
When he got back, to the lockup, Ben was starting to sell bags, as the tourists arrived in the district, walking up and down the street looking for bargains.
Chris went up to Ben, patting him on the shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
Ben shrugged as he was moving around some of the bags. “I’ve had worst beatings, so I'll survive but thanks for asking. Most people I hang around with don’t care enough to be bothered.”
Chris smiled. “I’m going to start taking some lessons in martial arts at the dojo, if you want to come along.”
Ben shook his head, “No thanks, it’s not really my type of thing.”
The rest of the day was uneventful until Jack’s gang member came over to the shop. For a member of a criminal gang, he was quite friendly to them and other store owners.
As Chris had paid him the double amount, the man shook his head in disbelief “This is a first for me, I haven’t seen anyone pay double before. And you’re even doing it voluntarily!” The guy motioned to the front of the lockout where they had planned to put the mark. “Jack asked me to make the mark a different colour than normal, to indicate that you have extra protection. He may start offering this as an actual service to other people in the area. I’ll just put the mark-up and be off. If you have any trouble just activate your mark and we’ll be around to sort it out.”
The man cut the stylised mark of a Panther onto the front wall of the lockout and then used some essence from a crystal to magically activate it.
Over the next couple of days, the work in Chris’s shop carried on as normal. The only few differences being that Chris spent an hour in the morning practicing martial arts; and new items for sale. Chris had always been into exercise, but this was his first time learning a fighting style. As he had been down on his luck, Chris had not been able to exercise the way he used to and was now glad to have the opportunity again.
Chris also started to expand their range of products, they were offering of sale in the shop. He had been able to source, with some help from Frank, cheap water bottles and containers for storing food inside. In addition, he now was ready to use one of his newly developed, inscriptions on the items he was selling exclusively in their store. These newly developed inscriptions lowered the weight of the items it was placed on. There was already magic like that in this world, but they had to have a power source, pumping energy into the inscriptions for the anti-gravity effect to work. Chris’s math-a-magical theory worked on a totally different principle of changing the nature of the space-time inside the container and its relationship to the surrounding quantum field.
With the new range of merchandise to sell and the additional magical properties, they also increased their prices. Ben was able to sometimes sell out the shop before it was closing time of the store. Chris tried to work hard on production but was falling behind. He had a plan to solve it but just needed more time, to make more money for the investment, to make his plans a reality.
---
Three days after the first gang attack had beaten up Ben, the same gang of thugs came back for another visit. It was close to mid-day and the first tourists were just starting to enter the entertainment district. Chris was in the back of the shop inscripting some bottles, when a group of five men walked up to the shop. The man who spoke to Chris last time, growled in a confident voice, “It's time to pay for your protection.”
Chris walked from the back of the shop to confront the man. While the men were focusing their attention on Chris, Ben moved to the wall with the Panther’s inscription and discreetly activated the mark. As the help message was activated, Chris discretely tried to delay them until hopefully, help arrived. He hoped it would be soon as the thugs might destroy the store and injure Ben and himself, before they even arrived.
Chris said in a submissive tone, “Right then. What is the price for the protection services?”
The man grinned happily and gave Chris the price of protection. Chris went to the back of the shop and started searching for some money. Chis was taking as much time as possible but after some time the man at the front shouted, “Hurry up, we haven’t got all day!”
Chris delayed a few moments longer until he heard the sound of a group of charging footsteps. As Chris looked back, he saw about seven men from the Panther gang running towards the other thugs. The lead fighter of the Panther gang stopped at about two meters distance away from the five thugs and made a sudden movement with his gloved hand. Out of his hand, a bolt of electricity shot out and hit one of the five. The bolt at first, fizzed over some protective clothing without effect and then the thug who was the target started to spasm in pain. The man finally collapsed onto the ground, and the electricity stopped, as the gloved Panther made another hand gesture. With one down the four thugs were attacked using stun rods, two of the thugs that were left activated the inscriptions on their clothing to flare with the absorption of power but were eventually taken down by the sheer overwhelming force of all seven Panthers. All of the Panthers were well armed and protected by magical devices that glowed with use.
The conflict between the criminal gangs, was quickly over and the lea
der of the Panthers pulled out a farseeing device for instruction on what to do with the other gang members. Soon a magical hovering platform arrived, and the rival gang members were loaded on to it. A large sheet was then used to cover them as they were taken away.
The lead fighter of the seven Panthers walked over to Chris, looking him up and down. “That saved me the trouble of having to tracking them down. Jack told me to give you his thanks. It's not good for business to not let this kind of behaviour go on for too long.” He looked around satisfied. “We'll be off then.”
Chris quickly gestured back to the shop “Before your team goes, each of you can take something from the shop. There are things you won’t get anywhere else.”
The Panther thugs seemed to be pleased with that. With Ben and Chris’s help, they all selected an item. Most of them were amazed by the inside being larger than what could be seen on the outside and the carry-weight being lower than normal. All went away happy with the magical bags or containers.
---
Several weeks passed, and Chris’s stall had a constant stream of buyers for the merchandise the two men were producing. Over the weeks more and more orders came in from other market vendors for inscriptions to be able to sell their products with the space and mass magical effects. As Chris gained more money, he would soon be able to start the expansion of his business. For further expansion he needed to invest in some additional magical equipment. From his time in the magical start-up business before being homeless, he knew that in this magical world a method to mass produce magical inscriptions was to use a stamp of metal that had the inscriptions engraved on the bottom. The magical powers, for the stamp came from the math-a-magician, infusing the required pillars of magical power, into a crystal that was inside the stamp. The amount of power infused, only gave the stamp a limited number of uses before it needed to be recharged.
Chris had ordered a whole range of magical inscription stamps that he had engraved with the required magical scripts. It was late in the day as Chris and Ben were inspecting the quality of the magical inscription stamps.
Ben looked to Chris with his eyes raised in a curious expression. “So, what’s the plan with all these stamps, are we going into mass production?”
Chris muttered while inspecting the quality of one stamp, “I did think of that first, but then I thought, what do we actually do that actually adds value to a product we sell?”
“It’s really the magical effects that you are able inscribing onto them.” Ben said with a smile.
Chris looked up. “That's exactly it. My first idea was to go into the mass production business ourselves, but that would take a lot of our time in administrating it. I need to be developing more inscriptions and extending my math-a-magical theories. So, my idea is creating a library of inscriptions stamps. These will be charged out at a costs per use. As I’m the only person that can recharge them, anybody that used them will have to come back to use for the recharging.” He looked up from the stamp he was inspecting. “Does that sound like a good idea to you Ben?”
Ben looked a bit dubious about the plan, “What about me? Will you still need me, since we won’t be producing anymore bags?”
Chris looked up at Ben with a comforting smile, “Listen, as long as you want to work, and we have some money, I will always make sure you have what you need. It doesn't matter what you do or not do. But there will be plenty of things for you to work on with this new plan.”
Ben looked like he felt more relieved after that. The next day they started to rent out the stamps to producers of bags and other containers. The first day of the new business was not very busy, as word had not gotten around that the new service was available. Frank was the first business man to come by to enquire what they were doing with their stall. Chris explained the concept to him and the pricing.
Frank had a look of excitement in his eyes and said, “That's great! I’m finding that as many magical items that I have with your inscriptions on, I can always sell them.” Frank gently hefted one of the stamps in his hands. “Now, I should be able to increase production without you two being a bottle neck, ah no offence. So, what is the cost per use of the stamp?”
Chris smiled and said, “As per our original agreement you, I will only charge you, about half the estimated profit cost. The other buyers will pay more, we based the charge on what is most realistic price to charge for their inventory.”
Franks was happy with his original deal again and said, “Right, I need a space increasing magical inscriptions stamp with a thousand uses for now.”
Chris nodded and selected the correct stamp for Frank and told him the rental cost and the amount for a deposit on the stamp.
Frank frowned, “I don’t carry that amount of money on me at the moment, can I take it now and pay for it later?”
Chris shook his head smiling as he said, “You know me Frank, I want the money up front in any deal.”
Frank argued for a while as he always did but eventfully went and got the money for the stamp rental. For the rest of the first day, Ben was in the front of the store selling of any remaining stock the two men had remaining to the tourists.
Chris was up very early on the following day, he still went to the martial arts dojo first thing in the morning to exercise. He was still very much a beginner but had completed some of the initial Katas in the dojo. He was now starting to use magical techniques in his fighting. He found that certain inscriptions in the air with a part of his body or a weapon could have a magical effect. This also required the mental focus of the magical pillar. All of the effects were to do with the four original pillars of magic. In the last few days, Chris had started to be able to project a small flame from a finger. Some of the more advanced students and masters at the dojo could produce fire ball or jets of fire. He did have an advantage over most of the other students, as he had a high level of education in all the fundament theories of magic. For most of the students the martial art aspect of the training was easy, but as some of them did not fully understand the theories of the magical pillar, they were limited in what they could do. Chris, high level of education, was an unusual as he had studied at the best university and also had a doctorate in math-a-magical theories. With this as his background, Chris had to work to be able to develop the martial art techniques, but the magic came easy.
Another aspect he enjoyed about his martial arts training was that his body was starting to get back into shape. He was starting to look like his normal fit and trim self. He still had a beard and cheap clothing that hid his good looks, so he was mostly ignored by women. Which was actually okay with Chris at the moment as a romantic attachment was not in his plans for the moment.
As he arrived back at the lockup, there were a group of merchants waiting for service. Chris did not even change his sweaty clothing but started serving the group. As each of them were served, Chris deposited the cash into a safe box, he had developed with the Ether barrier inscriptions. He was confident this was a safe place as he was the only one with the power to open it to get out the money. Because of the high value the magical inscriptions stamps had when they were full of elemental power, one of the more dubious merchants tried to steal a stamp from the store. As he attempted to move through the transparent field at the front of the store, the stamp would not pass through. His pulling caused the pocket the man had the stamp in to tear, and the stamp fell cleanly to the floor.
Chris just said calmly, “If you still want that now, you will have to pay double the price.”
The man came back to protest he was innocent, but Chris wasn't interested about anything the merchant had to say. He just insisted on the man paying twice the cost for renting the stamp. As he turned back to the customers he was serving, Chris reminded them that if the stamps were not back within three days, then the next purchase, of a similar value, would be twice the amount.
After the initial morning rush of customers, Chris got Ben to take over while he showered. Ben was being very diligent about putting th
e money into the safe box. Chris had set up a one-way drop, device which only allowed you to put money in and not take it out, unless you altered the inscriptions. After Chris was showered, he got fully dressed in some cheap clothing from the market stalls around him. He wrote down all the information about the purchases today and who they were made to. Chris had gotten into the habit of keeping detailed notes of all his transactions as he did not trust anybody’s word in business anymore.
By the end of the day they had rented-out half of their stamp's magical inscription collection. Seeing as they didn’t have to cater to the late-night tourist crowd, they shut the lock-up early. As this was the first bit of free time Ben and Chris had since they had started working, they went next door for dinner.
Hilda, the owner of the next-door eatery, greeted them warmly as they came in, “You two are finished early tonight, what's new?”
Ben sat down and looked over the menu, “We’re trying a new business model and hopefully it should work out and give us some more spare time as well.”
Chris nodded in agreement and said, “What do you suggest for eating tonight?”
Hilda said, “The spicy noodles with chicken is popular and it's also cheap.”
Ben chuckled with a smile, “Cheap is where our hearts are at the moment. I’ll have one beer with the meal.”
Chris closed his menu handing it back to Hilda, “The same for me but without the beer, I’ll have just some water.”
Chris and Ben ate their meal quietly for the next half hour, when it was served. After the meal both of them discussed, the fact that they had been working practically all the time since they opened the stall in the entertainment district. Chris wanted to have a walk around at night to see what it was like away from their small street. Ben was not keen as he did not want to go into a drinking binge, which would be likely if they went into a lot of the bars. Chris decided to have a wander, while Ben decided to just go back to the lockup.
Into the Ether Page 5