Gleam [Karma Cultivator Isekai] - Chapter 33: Baba

Chapter 33: Baba

The door creaked shut behind Chance and he walked inside, careful to keep his arms close as he studied the shelves. Vial upon vial full of pills sat within them. Some shelves were arranged in an orderly fashion, while others looked like they’d been stuffed full of everything they could hold, and the slightest nudge would send everything within them crashing down.

There must have been hundreds of pills on the first floor. Fortunately, all of them were labeled by a scrawl of black ink across faded parchment that was pinned beneath almost all the pill vials.

Unfortunately, Chance couldn’t read a single one of them. He suppressed a curse and approached the old woman, stopping several feet away from her desk. She didn’t look up. Glass tubing and containers covered the desk before her.

A golden flame flickered beneath several beakers, causing the multicolored liquids within them to bubble and hiss. Plumes of colored smoke rose from some of them and was sucked into the flared ends of the glass tubing. It ran along the desk and up the wall until it vanished through the window.

Chance stared, enraptured, as the woman picked up a vial of boiling purple liquid. She attached it to one of the tubes and twisted a small metal valve. Droplets separated from the surface, flying through the glassware and depositing themselves in another vial that was already full of a shimmering, blue substance.

It didn’t look like the woman was going to finish anytime soon. He looked around the shop, but there weren’t any chairs or spots to sit where he was confident a small movement wouldn’t mistakenly bring the entire shop crashing down on top of him.

Chance considered clearing his throat to get her attention, but he dismissed the idea. She was clearly busy, and distracting her would be rude. He carefully crossed his legs and sat down in front of the shop.

The angle was considerably worse, but the desk was so short that he could still see some of the work the woman was doing. That was better than just sitting bored, so he settled in to wait. It was pretty interesting, and it wouldn’t hurt to sit around for a few minutes.

Time ticked by. The woman’s wrinkled fingers moved deftly as she shifted vials around, continuing to extract just a few drops of liquid at a time from them to add to her mix. Chance wasn’t sure how long he sat around, but it was around fifteen minutes when the lady finally glanced up at him.

“What are you still doing here?”

“Sitting. I didn’t want to bother you while you were working. I hope my presence wasn’t obtrusive.”

“I didn’t think you’d stick around this long. Don’t you see the sign?” She pointed over his shoulder, where a sheet of parchment was pinned to the wall. Below it was a small wooden box. “The prices are on the labels. Just take what you want and put the pay in the box.”

“Ah. I can’t read,” Chance said. His face reddened and he cleared his throat. “I can’t read the language here, that is.”

“Ah. A new arrival that couldn’t be bothered studying,” the old woman said, her back straightening slightly so she could peer at him from beneath the brim of her hat. “And you have nothing better to do than sit on my floor?”

“It would have been rude to disturb you while you were working.” Chance rose to his feet and brushed the dust off his pants. “And it was only a few minutes. I was enjoying watching you work. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The woman’s dry lips split into a grin, revealing yellowed teeth as a short chortle slipped out of her mouth. “I’m glad my work is appreciated. Well, you’ve waited here long enough. What can I do for you?”

“I’m mostly just here to browse,” Chance admitted. “But I didn’t think about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to tell what anything cost or what it did.”

“So you need old Madam Baba to read for you? To be your eyes? Do you even plan to buy anything?”

Chance cleared his throat. “Uh… probably not yet. I guess it depends on what it is and the costs, though.”

“Figures,” Baba grumbled. She grabbed a cane from the ground and pushed herself upright with a grimace. Chance couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t any taller standing up than she was when seated. If possible, she might have actually lost some height.

The old woman tapped her staff on the ground, pointing at several shelves. Vials lifted into the air and floated over to her. There was a loud creak as a piece of wood peeled itself off the ceiling and bent itself into a table, dropping down between them just before the vials settled on top of it.

“I might as well show you the basics, then,” Baba said, tapping the leftmost vial with a wrinkled finger. It was full of small, green pills, akin to–

“These are healing pills,” Baba said, just before Chance could announce he suspected he knew what they were. “They’ll heal most flesh wounds you get. One gold for the bottle. They’re filthy easy to make.”

Her finger moved down the line, settling on a vial of pills that were a mixture of green and blue. “These are antidote pills. They’ll cure any low grade poisons. They aren’t going to do shit for anything stronger. One gold.”

“Low grade?” Chance asked. “How do you know if something is low grade or not?”

“Depends. If you do your research on a monster, you’ll know what it can do,” Baba replied. “And if you don’t, you’ll find out when it kills you.”

She cackled, then moved along to the next vial. This one only contained a small handful of them, rather than being filled to the brim. “These are popular. They’re full of a bunch of stuff you don’t want to know about. All that matters is they help you cultivate.”

“Now that you’ve said that, I want to know what’s in them.”

“No, you don’t,” Baba replied. “These are fifty gold per bottle.”

Chance’s eyes widened. “Fifty gold? That’s quite the jump.”

“Anything that makes you permanently stronger isn’t going to be cheap,” Baba said with a cackle. “Just don’t take too many. What rank are you, boy?”

“Squire, but not officially.”

Baba snorted. “Like I give a shit what the Shikari want to approve and what they don’t. Outside the walls of Gleam, nobody cares about if you’re an official Shikari or not. What does matter is that you’ve got a Gate, so these won’t kill you. Still, it’s not possible to completely purify Essence through anything other than your Gate. Take too many of these and they’ll stick to your impurities, building up and eventually making it impossible for you to improve.”

She went over several more pills, each more expensive than the last. Their effects ranged from stamina and Essence recovery to temporarily granting someone the ability to fly. Chance wasn’t sure how a pill was supposed to do that, but considering Essence was a thing, he decided not to question it.

All of them were well out of his budget at the moment. Even if he did have the gold, he wasn’t going to be buying anything until Pete let him know how much money it would cost to locate his parents, if they were even on Centurion.

Chance thanked Baba for her time and promised to return when he had enough money to buy some of the more interesting pills. He was particularly interested in the cultivation enhancers, but he wanted to consult Pete and Yamish before buying them.

The street was still busy when he stepped back outside. He took a turn down a less busy side road and glanced up at the sky as he strolled. There were still several hours left in the day, but he wasn’t in any mood to meditate.

A thought struck him, and Chance glanced at one of the small alleys lining the side of the road. He wasn’t even close to where he’d first entered the Old City, but it clearly didn’t follow any of the normal rules.

He strode up to one of the dark pathways, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his urumi. Peering into it revealed several crates leading up to a dead end. Chance pursed his lips and stepped into the shadows.

“I’d like to hunt,” he whispered, feeling like some of the crazed people he’d seen on the Boston’s streets back when he was on Earth. “Old City? Can you hear me?”

The wall rippled. Chance cursed, nearly tripping over his own feet as stone melted, giving way to cracked bricks. A thin alleyway formed before him, turning off into the darkness after just a few feet.

“Shit, I didn’t think that would work,” Chance muttered. He glanced over his shoulder, than stepped into the alley. He wasn’t sure if it was safer or more dangerous to enter the Old City without Yamish, but there was only one way to get stronger, and he couldn’t take jobs on his own. Not yet.

Chance drew his urumi and held it before him as he walked into the alleyways of the Old City. His footsteps echoed eerily through the thin paths, but he was surprised to find that he didn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable as he probably should have.

The Old City still felt off, but it didn’t feel… malicious. It simply was. At least, Chance hoped that was the case. It would have been really embarrassing if the stupid thing just killed him after all of this.

Shadows flickered in the corner of his vision and Chance moved instinctively, sending his urumi flying out. It punched into a young Soothound just as it leapt at him, pinning the monster into a wall.

He ripped the blade free and the Soothound flopped harmlessly to the ground. Grimacing, Chance flicked the blood from his urumi and continued deeper.

“I’d like to fight something that would challenge me, but preferably not so strong that I’ll die in the process,” Chance said aloud. After all, why not? The Old City was clearly capable of understanding him. He’d use it for training, and it would use him to get rid of monsters. Win-win.

The alleys changed again, forming a new pathway for him. Chance grinned and headed into it. Several more Soothounds attacked him on his way, but he cut them down. None of them were fully grown, and he was starting to get used to how they moved. The monsters weren’t as much of a threat as they once had been.