Chapter 612 (2/2)

“Not yet Mama,” Naffur said, forcing a wooden smile onto his face.

Congratulations! Your Skill “Deceitful Words” has reached Level 33!

Mama Potter made to pinch him again, and he sidestepped around it easily. Frowning at him, she opened her mouth, then went pale. “You… do you have a lottery ticket?”

This time, Naffur’s smile was genuine. For whatever was going to happen, Naffur was still going to get the chance to pretend to be someone else for a day. For a while… he wouldn’t be a poor NCC. He could be…

“Yea Mama. Exciting right? Now don’t try and convince me to give it up! A man like me just needs one chance to impress those bigwigs. By this time next week-”

Mama Potter enveloped him in a hug. “What part of you is a man, my Sweet? But I’m so happy… I’m so, so, so happy…”

Naffur felt a twinge in his chest, so much so that his Deceitful Words wouldn’t come. Because tomorrow night, Naffur would be playing a role that he had never played before. For one night, he would be a supervillain.

After he left, Naffur climbed up onto the roof and peered around the Old District of the Orchard. The buildings were all connected with a series of trellises and metal pathways that had been added after the fact, as the money in the Orchard moved elsewhere. What was left looked something like a steampunk beehive, with people crawling along the outsides of the buildings about as much as they moved inside of them.

Walking quickly, he soon reached the small shack built on top of a covered walkway between two buildings. It was high enough off the ground that a fall would probably injure someone who hadn’t put a lot of points into Physical Defense stats so no families wanted the space. And the covered pathway was skinny enough that no one with any clout would fight him for it. It was the spot only for the desperate.

Ever since Naffur had found it two months ago, he had really started to love his little lean-to.

Once inside, he removed the clothes with great care and put them into a pile in the clean corner of the shed. The clean corner was the corner that wasn’t the door, the bed, or the chamber pot. It still made Naffur somewhat leery, so he wrapped the clothes in plastic for extra protection. Then he sighed and left for a meeting.

He was late, due to his enjoyment at Mana Potter’s, and being late only meant one thing.

“Jesus, fuck me,” Naffur gasped as a fist struck his abdomen.

Congratulations! Your Skill “Feign Injury” has reached Level 50! Congratulations, the Path of Cowardice I is open to you!

The notification stopped Naffur’s fake moans in their tracks. It felt… it felt like the System was criticizing him, and that pissed him off so much. The two men beating him seemed almost relieved and continued to smack him around in silence.

‘I didn’t want this,’ Naffur thought, curled up into a ball with tears in his eyes. ‘Do you think I picked this Path? This is all there is…’

But still, that spark of fury didn’t die. And as one of the two men threw a careless overhand blow, Naffur lashed out with his foot and caught the man in the groin. He went down like a house of cards blown over.

Congratulations! Your Skill “Cheap Shot” has reached Level 40!

This extended his beating for several minutes but was ultimately worth it. At the end of it, he was hauled up and made to stand before a rather unfamiliar man with a thinning hairline. One of the thugs, the one he had kicked, twisted Naffur’s arm painfully behind his back and pushed him forward.

“Say hello to the big boss, he came in special from the West for this job. So scum like you don’t fuck it up.”

Wincing, Naffur stepped forward and considered the man before him. The gang he owed money to was the Haveheights, who mostly just ran the brothels and casinos on the outskirts of the Orchard. They were rough men and women who cared about coins and fists. But the man in front of him seemed… different. And not in a good way.

The man seemed equally nonplussed at Naffur. “This… this is the best we can get? Well, it ain’t your fault kid, but that just means you are gonna need to work that much harder.”

The man extended his hand. “The name is Ricky Stain. A pleasure to be working with you.”