"Twenty-five thousand orange cores. Five thousand up front, which should cover things on your end. The rest on delivery."
"And an additional five thousand as a high-volume fee. I know you don't plan to come back here," Whiteclaw said, pressing his advantage.
"I want information about this continent and a map. Also, any methods or skills you have so I can blend in."
"A crash course in our culture and basic skills for us beastkin. Fifty thousand cores," he said, and my eyes went wide. "Before you object and get excited, I know you have at least that much."
"And you are the only one who can provide such information…,"
"Exactly," Whiteclaw said with a small smile. "We can break it up however you want. It will take time to put together that much food. I am guessing spatial storage."
"Yes,"
"I will have it broken down into specific containers. Unless you have one of your own?"
"No. I don't have any containers of my own."
"A shame. But I will handle the cost of the metal for these containers."
This transaction was a robbery, but there was no alternative. The beastkin would not normally deal with outsiders .
"There will be no issues?"
"You will stay here in my building. I have a guest area that is secluded. Beyond my two guards, Gartooth, and myself, no one will know. My guards won't talk, and Gartooth won't if he knows what is good for him."
"Consider this a down-payment," I said and pulled out ten bulging cloth pouches from my spatial storage, each filled with a thousand orange monster cores. I set them on the table between us.
Whiteclaw pulled one over and opened it up.
"I am surprised that your settlement is doing so poorly, since you have enchantments to help grow food and produce heat."
"Harsh conditions make us lose people to the cold. Right now, it is the end of the warm season. When it becomes dark all day long and the wind increases, it is brutal."
"But with the dungeon, you should be able to increase skills and grow this place."
"The losses in the dungeon are high. Unlike you humans, we don't have a large legacy of skills. This transaction will eat into the emergency food reserves. While we will grow a lot more thanks to all of this, it takes time to make the enchantments and grow what we need."
"My apologies if I overstepped with my questions."
"It is fine. You are paying extra to learn about the beastkin." Whiteclaw got up and moved the pouches into a large chest behind his desk. "We are insular people. There used to be a hundred clans. The Great Alliance, a force that could shake the world."
I could hear the pride in his voice.
"Now we live in the ruins of what once was. Of a hundred clans, we are down to a handful that still carry that mantle. The Wolf, Fox, Bear, and Cat clans are all that remain. Several clans have come together over the centuries. I was in the White Fox Clan, which is no more."
"My condolences."
"Bah. It is ancient history. Clinging to the past has kept us down. This is the home of the Fox Clan, where most fox beastkin live. The other clans control settlements leading from here to the coast."
"Is that the same for the entire continent?"
"There are wandering groups who go out there to find something in the ruins, but beyond the four major settlements, our people are but a remnant of our former greatness."
Whiteclaw got out a map and put it on the table.
"The End of the World, where we are. This settlement." He pointed to what I presumed we were at on the map. "Supposedly it survived because of hiding in the mountains or not being important enough. Who knows nowadays?" My father would if I ever spoke to him again. "Then the other clans — the Wolf, Bear, and then Cat on the coast. There is a canyon that the Wolf Clan uses for their settlement. The Bear Clan lives under a volcano, which is risky, but they seem not to mind. And the Cat clan has the coast and is the most prosperous since they can fish for food all year round."
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"And the political and social structure?"
"The strong rule in each clan and don't bother the other clans. We trade iron for food. The Wolf Clan has decent crafters, and the Bear Clan has Alchemists. Cat Clan has excess food, so they trade it for resources. But there is never enough, and the iron runs low even if we dig deeply and widely."
"And you can't spread out along the coast?"
"You came from this direction, the White Waste?"
"Yes, why?"
"Because you wouldn't find anything there. No Mana, no monsters. But at many former settlements, the entrances into the dungeon have opened quite wide. We kill the monsters, but they will come back out. There is also spatial damage, blending the surface with the dungeon itself."
"Impossible. The dungeon is completely discrete. The layers are spatially separated."
"Maybe on the human continent. But here, the dungeon is a mess outside the current settlements. We try to reclaim land, but the risk is incredibly high. If we send anyone strong, there are demons."
"Demons? Thinking monsters?"
"Yes. They control large numbers of monsters in the ruins of our cities and towns. You came from the White Waste… There is nothing there, and there isn't much around here. It is rare that anything comes all the way to bother us in the mountains. But we can defend ourselves. Beastkin like Gartooth go out looking for iron and possible iron veins."
"Are you locked in a stalemate with these demons?"
"They are smart enough to know when to run. Any place outside the settlements is a frozen hell. The closer you get to the coast, the greater the chance of a monster attack. We endure and try to recover our civilization, but it has been a struggle. We want to, but we have depleted and lost our strength and knowledge."
I didn't understand how they could lose against demons and the dungeon yet survive. It seemed odd that there was some kind of stalemate and that the beastkin didn't do everything they could to take back their continent.
But it was a war, not a single fight or battle. The continent was a large place and knowing where to concentrate their forces was half the problem. Putting myself in their position, I could see how a sort of exhaustion would creep in if there were a couple of major failures.
Unless a supreme legend rose among the beastkin who could single-handedly turn the situation around, it was doubtful that legends could do anything. At least I had a better understanding of the dangers of this place.
"What about the other side of the White Waste? I notice the coastline keeps going."
"The water freezes and unfreezes. That's why people label even the water as the White Waste. This isn't called the End of the World for no reason. This is as far as we beastkin have settled. There have been expeditions into White Waste, but it is nothing but ice and snow until you hit the ocean. There is no land to settle on."
"I need to make preparations. Show our guest to his room. My guard will bring you food."
"I look forward to our cooperation. How long should I expect it to take for you to prepare all that food?"
"A month."
"A month? That long?"
"It isn't a simple matter of collecting the food to deliver it to you. I must plan how to draw down various reserves, pay bribes, and prevent anyone from questioning who is buying up such a large amount of food. Probably buy out most of the food of the next trade caravan that arrives as well. Five thousand fists worth of good isn't easy to gather without questions being asked."
"I understand. Thank you for being willing to work with me."
"I should thank you. The amount you are paying is a lot. I will update you tomorrow, and we can discuss beastkin society and the skills you would need to blend in."
I nodded and followed the guard out of the office to another room in the back of the building, built into the stone. I noted the lighting was quite poor outside of the main entry and Whiteclaw's office.
This place felt more like a hovel than the headquarters of a crime lord, which is what Whiteclaw clearly was. I estimated the population of this place to be around 20,000 beastkin, which would be the size of a large town on the Eldarin Continent.
The beastkin were a struggling race on the verge of dying. The cold and harsh climate didn't help things. Food would be a huge bottleneck. Even if they could convert Mana into food through enchantments, it would take time, materials, knowledge. With setbacks, low resources, and monsters on the surface, I understood why their civilization was so weak.
Knowledge of skills and skill groups has clearly decreased in this civilization. They had no place like a College from what I could tell. Their civilization had regressed to an apprentice or squire-type teaching system. There was no systematic learning of skills and knowledge.
It was tempting to help them, but that would be a long and thankless task. The hatred of other races was too deep. Whiteclaw was charging me so much was a clear sign of this. If I were a beastkin, I would have gotten a far cheaper price.
I wasn't upset. In fact, the large amount he requested was comforting in that he was clearly aiming to fleece me, not kill me. If he were planning to kill me, Ozy would be a surprise that would be quite powerful.
Escaping wouldn't be easy, but I had Danger Sense. I knew the beastkin specialized in stealth, but I had no choice but to trust Whiteclaw to arrange for the food I needed. There was no other way.
Once I got all that food, I could survive for years. As for space, I wasn't worried about my spatial storage. It would get full, but that was fine. Better to have too much food than too little. If I couldn't take it all, then that was fine as well.
Monster cores were useful for earning money back on the Eldarin Continent, but here I would gladly spend it to survive.