65 Identity 2 - Winner? (1/2)
It has been almost two days since Stigma entered the market and a lot of events had happened, other than meeting some trustworthy people, a serious mass murderous investigation was secretly taking place outside.
But that didn't stop the market's Top merchants to continue with the following festivities, especially with today's event. In total, seven events will take place for the following seven days with an auction on the final day, right now a large lottery event will take place in the middle of the market.
The sound of over twenty or so beating drums continued to reverted all around the market, but all were played with a reason, to start the lottery event the Top had organized with over a three hundred or so vendors providing the prizes.
Three areas were used for this event; a reserved private areas where Stigma's group was heading, the wide grassy ground for the majority, and the center stage.
The private areas had to be reserved ahead of time, but a personal will be stationed and would be responsible in receiving the prizes, so they would just wait it out until their numbers are called and the attendant will handle cataloging the already taken prizes and show them the prizes they had won.
To help with their choices they were all provided with a catalog books each with the exact same prizes, so there was no need to stare at a flyer. This was provided so if they indeed won, they would wait right here and the attendant will be the one to deliver to them.
Their group separated when the girls volunteered to buy food and would meet up afterwards, Hans was the one who reserved the place and told his sister so there was no problem where they would meet up.
Along the way he saw that there were three archers surveying the crowd like they were part of security. They didn't appear as though they want to draw the attention of the crowd and covered their head with hoods, but the people were aware and ignored them as though they were the subordinates of the top.
When Hans and Stigma got to their tent, a young woman in her twenties was standing by the side with a tag signifying her role as the attendant, she greeted them with a smile and followed them inside. Even without his skill, Stigma noticed she had some Zen energy but compared to his reserves, the woman apparently only had enough to defend herself from being attacked.
The tent had no walls, but the furniture were all facing the stage, so there was nothing to note but the sofa's were high class and the table was around Han's waist height. Dusk followed and stood behind Stigma all the time like a loyal dog, Hilda remained silent and Kirin's injuries were healed so his bandages were removed and was sleeping inside Stigma's robe peacefully.
As Han placed Stigma down, the attendant explained the rules of the event, so they had to listen carefully for the girls to understand when they return. When Stigma pointed out she had Zen energy Han wasn't surprised, he seemed to have noticed already and didn't seem appear to care.
”There are those who can use Zen energy even is small amounts, but their control in them would only be a fraction to what we can do as we progress, I heard a handful of people can be born with large reserves but those are rare jewels that are hard to find.”
Han's then told Stigma that hidden experts would try and recruit disciples in that level, but had no luck as they can't distinguish a talented one to the one with large reserves. Talent is one thing, but finding future monsters that would spread their name is what most experts want to spread their techniques fame.
He wanted to continue on but the attendant was coughing at them to pay attention, she was well aware that between the three of them, she was far too weak to antagonize them. Han was technically the strongest Cultivator she had met so far so she had to tread carefully, Stigma was still stronger that her so she had to remain passive.
Continuing on to what she said, the event has a total of five categories for each prize, between six and ten will be counted as one category, four and five will be another, and the last three numbers will each have a category. As the numbers decrease, the chances in gaining valuable prizes was possible, at the same time, winning them will be one in a thousand possibility.
Each time a number pattern is shown, the attendant will write down the numbers to avoid confusion and they can recheck if they won, however some of the tickets they bought are only to make the lose numbers so there might be a chance they might not get to win anything.
There was also a mystery black box event for the randoms numbers, in where a ten random set numbers will be chosen and those lucky winner would obtain a mysterious black box with a random prize. They can still use the excess tickets as form of a ten percent discount coupon for any of the stalls who agreed with the event, so there was no need to throw them right away.
The list of prizes from the wagon were just a sample of how valuable each treasure in each category will be, so there was still a variety of prizes to pick from so there would be more winners. Because reading the list would take to long, Stigma ignored in account none of the them items caught too much of his attention.
Majority of the items were for the rich anyway, excluding necessities such as clothes, books, and meal tickets there was nothing to note. There was some bags filled with small elemental stones but those were filled random stones they had lying around when the attendant pointed them out, but Stigma would pick that anyway, he was also curious about the contents of the black box were.
When he asked about the five archers outside, she was surprised and told him that those five were hired by the top, identities aside she can't distinguish who they are but all she can say they belonged to one family and were hired after the storm due to some 'incidents' as a security measure.
From what Stigma remembered, a long storm that lasted for days is the reason why they were pushing the event to make up the lost profit, along with pulling the leaving customer to return. It was a gamble but the plan had the market buzzing with life again and brought word to more investors.
'That would also mean the murders must have been found, when they checked the damage after the storm, that greatly shorten my list.'
Preparing all the material would take time as well as finding capable personals to handle each task, so Stigma questioned whether or not the market had already found the bodies but choose to kept quiet about it or tried to use the festivities as a cover up to lessen the damage.
When he told the three about this theory before, they all said that it was possible, but without further digging from the Top's themselves it would be a waste of time.
So Stigma had to find some way to cut the list of suspects by a wide margin, the one who harmed Kirin are still within the vicinity of the market but chose to kept quiet, so he had to get his hands on someone who keeps track of all the residence who had left the two days before.
From what Stigma can gather he had arrived exactly two days ago, so excluding yesterday morning, this leads him over the people leaving within the day before or the people who left recently. He obviously cut of this morning's time in account that a merchant babbled out he saw a beast covered in lighting was found in the night, which make him believe that Kirin was hurt between the morning or last night.
But to shorten the margin, he would need to figure out who were the ones who had left and returned and he can get that from either interviewing the guards or getting the list he saw this morning from the guard post.
Leaving the market is one thing, but finding out who returned or entered are his prime suspects.
Excluding non - cultivator combatants like hunter or mercenaries, they would have no way in harming Kirin unless they used multiple traps which was also unlikely, risking the lives of their customers who wander around is never allowed or their reputation would be hit. Also if they were employed to the Top, news would spread about Kirin's Origins and a large bounty would appear for its capture, but Stigma ruled it out over two possibilities.
One, why harm a rare creature if they plan to sell it to the highest bidder, they would give up the moment they heard it was hurt and avoid endangering the market in whole if they thought Kirin had a mother with the same element nearby.
Second, hiring an expert within the market was impossible, from what Veil told him hiring a cultivator even within the lower Tier would hurt the pockets of any merchants based here since they are looking for profit, and the highest Tier employed here was a Second Tier.
Another would be the Top would want to find it in secret and keep Kirin for himself or sell it in an auction, but that would also correlate to the first two in happening.
Stigma was confident that Kirin would outrun any Cultivator in the forest, unless he was outnumbered with a coordinated team it was impossible. So that led Stigma to believe, the person had no connection to the market and was a third party who wanted to make a living from Kirin's capture, but he most likely gave up when he saw the cave of bodies.
However Stigma couldn't rule out the one who harmed Kirin may also be the perpetrator of the murders and found Kirin by accident when he was trying to hide the bodies, thus he fought Kirin leading him to injure it in the process. But because Stigma told Kirin to wait in the cave, it followed his wishes and return to stay there despite it's injuries, waiting for Stigma to find it.
If the theory was true, then the one who attacked Kirin would take base in the market, waiting for any news about Kirin's whereabouts, as the market does his work. So Stigma had to figure out who attacked Kirin or he might be targeted next.
Seeking revenge wasn't the only reason why he wanted to catch the perpetrator, he also wanted to experience himself actual combat. Taking a life was one thing, but what would happen if Stigma were to experience the same thing with battling someone with Wade's caliber.
When Han noticed Stigma's face, he grabbed him by the neck with his arm and lightly choked him as he hoisted Stigma's body up then he ruffled his hair, with a smile he told him to enjoy the festivities first before thinking about the difficult future.
Without Stigma noticing, the girls came back but had brought enough food to fill the tables when they sat down, if he were to guess the amount would be considered a buffet if they went into a normal restaurant. Though Stigma was told this was their lunch, which greatly shocked him yet the sister had already started with a large bowl of noodles before he knew it.
He was about to explain the rules, but was ignored when the leader heard the sound of a cymbal echoed and an announcer came to the prebuilt stage with a glass bowl, some assistance followed behind carrying a bulletin board with twenty or so wooden plates.
Eventually the market lottery event started with a huge uproar, many shouted with joy when they remembered the list of prizes written on the flyers, but the commentator first started explaining the rules similar to what the attendant told him.
Because the leader wanted a large sum of gambling money for tomorrow, she ended up buying a handful of tickets by hunting down about seven sellers and buying what was left of all the tickets that was up twenty percent. In total, they have about one hundred to two hundred tickets in total, and the majority was from the leader.
They agreed that any items with value will be sold and any item that they fancy will be kept, simple as that. But the leader told them that if they help her in finding the prize in her pile, sixty to seventy percent of the money earned will belong to her, as she bought most of the tickets thinking she had the most chances to be a winner.
With not much choice, Stigma went along and bought a total of twenty tickets, but was given an additional ten tickets from Veil's pile, since she only wanted some jewelry or prized stones if she ever won, so she gave up her tickets and volunteered to look after their winnings.
Han's had about twenty five tickets, other than rare liquor or armor none of the prizes seemed appealing to him when he double check, so he gave them all to the leader and sat by his sister's side like a guard.
Stigma didn't notice but Han was staring at a certain tent, the person standing by was someone who fit the description in his memory so he followed the procedure and watched from a safe distance.
They haven't seen or meet up with Felix's group, so Stigma assumed they weren't going to involve themselves and had other plans. Stigma eventually asked why was the food bought in large amounts, no matter how he looked at it they can't finish everything in one go, they have space rings, but those have a limited capacity and his was almost filled with nothing but what they bought.
Stigma was told that Cultivators in all aspects are superhuman, not only do they have superhuman strength and speed, but that would also indicate that they waste ten times the amount of energy than a normal person could make, so equal consumption must be made.
So having a high liquor tolerance or a voracious appetite is normal, and it was not unusual to see Cultivators eating or drinking in large quantities in restaurants. There are some that chose to eat minimal amounts in fear their weight would increase, but that was only a myth from female Cultivators, but some still eat in moderation.
”Cultivators tend to drink a lot because they can't get drunk easily, so they either brew their own strong liquor or find and collect rare booze to enjoy in one go.” - Han
'So that's the reason why I ate all that meat as if it was nothing, I suppose Kirin would be the same to too.' With that in mind, he asked if there was possibility to be poison by food if they weren't careful like alcohol poisoning, he was concerned unneeded but he asked it anyway.
”Being poisoned by food would be possible, but at our level of strength two gallon of weak leveled poison or cheap booze will be needed to affect us, but do you expect us to be that gullible enoughto drink obvious poison without fear.” - The leader
”But that doesn't mean we are totally immune to alcohol poisoning, there are still some poison that affects us if it was strong enough, but Zen energy suppresses the effect to some degree. Meaning the higher a Cultivator's Tier mean's the lesser the effects of the said poison would take effect.” - Veil
”Well, unless a certain Cultivator believed he was invincible and drank a whole bottle of paralyzing poison without fear, then he would be some fool who would voluntarily want to be a vegetable.” - Leader
Stigma soon noticed Han was bowing his head, while Veil was covering her mouth as she giggled for some reason. Eventually Stigma guessed that Han was the fool from her story, apparently he stayed like a vegetable for one week and missed training, so he suffered ten times the amount of pain and difficulty to make up for lost time.
The leader spoke about with a smile as if it was a joke, then grabbed a steamed bum and finishing it in a few bites, Han's didn't care anymore and grabbed an over-sized grilled chicken leg covered it black sauce and stood with a moping expression. The sister followed with eating eating a barbeque with vegetables and handed Stigma a plate filled with shumai, minced cabbages and spicy dipping sauce.
Stigma grabbed a piece of ham on the table then hid it inside his robe as Kirin ate it with great relish, eventually Stigma gave it a whole bowl filled with meat, since it was enough for Kirin as his lunch. There was enough to feed them all and they can hide the leftovers in their individual space rings, so there was no need to worry.
Before Stigma had a chance to take a bite out of his shumai, another set of drums and cymbals were played but this time the commentator was finish with his explanation and began the event without delay, making every person in the crowd shout with joy.
While the leader was more like a rabid dog with a meat at hand, so the Veil had to restrain her with a leash. With the exact words, Veil said: