For some reason, Kylie and Sadie had both seemed mortified by the prospect of approaching random strangers and asking if they could sell goods to their bosses. Even after Ashtoreth had insisted that things were fast-moving and hectic here by nature, and that people probably showed up with goods to sell but no clue how to sell them all the time.

Ashtoreth, though, had no problem with questioning everyone she saw about where they could sell their stuff. It took her almost an hour of dealing with vendors who were variously annoyed, confused, or happy to help, but finally she managed to get them out of the crowded, multihued streets and into a meeting room.

It was a tranquil, pleasant interior space, with warm, low lighting and very faintly trickling fountains that filled long pools at both sides of the room. Two tables had been laid out at the center, and behind these sat a demon in the form of a gigantic slug with six arms. A long, resplendent robe embroidered with adamantium cloth and studded with tiny diamonds had been draped over his body and splayed across the floor below him.

This was Master Guthuk, the very man she had come to trade with. Two devils flanked his seat, both of them on their knees and bowing so low that their foreheads touched the ground. Both of them wore collars, and their upper backs were exposed to reveal scarred stumps where there once had been wings.

Guthuk's people began their dealings with a sort of ritual, one that Ashtoreth found wonderful and fascinating.

In keeping with Master Guthuk's clear love of symmetry, two dwarven slaves entered the room bearing a huge glass jar that was almost comically large, easily taller than both of them. This they placed on a stand in the exact center of the room, so its base was level with the two tables.

Then they left and returned with a varied assortment of highly valuable goods. Glimmering rubies, adamantium ingots, translucent coins she didn't recognize, the sparkling pelt of a frost fox, the teeth of what she was fairly certain was a dragon…

Soon a diverse line of wealth was arranged on the table before her, a set of items whose overall value she could only guess at.

Then an elf in a gold-embroidered black gown appeared from the doorway behind Master Guthuk, strode out into the center of the room, and dropped a single grain of sand into the massive jar.

Master Guthuk fixed Ashtoreth with a posed look that she understood clearly despite his slug-face.

He'd just pulled off a major flex.

She guessed that the wealth laid out before her in trade goods was supposed to be the grain of sand—and the empty space making up the rest of the jar was supposed to represent what he could have filled, if he'd wanted to.

Whatever the case, the slug-demon across from her was clearly very proud of himself. She did her best to look suitably impressed as she stared at the tiny grain of sand.

Then, sensing that it was her turn to start showing off the good, she reached into her bag and pulled out the first of the many things she'd brought: an unopened box of cling-wrap. It was the sort used in professional kitchens; the roll inside was a full yard wide and 2000 feet long.

Conscious of the fact that unboxing was a critical part of the experience, she gradually pressed the cardboard in along the precut dotted lines, using slow, firm motions so that the sound of breaking cardboard filled the room.

It wasn't until she'd opened the flap and pulled out the thick roll of plastic wrap inside, however, that Guthuk leaned forward slightly in his seat, pulling a pince-nez out of a robe pocket and peering through the lenses at what Ashtoreth held.

She tugged the edge of the plastic wrap free, setting it on the teeth of the metal strip that ran along the side of the box before putting the roll back into its proper place. The plastic wrap was ready for use.

Then she tugged at the end of the roll, slowly pulling out one long, smooth, shining sheet of plastic and letting the signature noise of the plastic wrap unpeeling itself from the greater roll fill the room.

As it unrolled, she heard Master Guthuk let out a sharp intake of breath. He drew back with an intrigued expression, but kept the pince-nez in front of his eyes.

Ashtoreth removed her satchel, set it in the middle of the sheet, and then broke the plastic away from the greater roll and wrapped it around her satchel much the way she might wrap a present. Then she raised it and showed each side of it to the fascinated Master Guthuk.

"Bring me that bagl," he said in a gravelly voice. "I must touch it, feel it, examine this strange new textile… closer."

For a moment, she thought he was asking her. But then a collared dwarf appeared at one corner of the room, approaching her to take her bag and bring it to his master.

Guthuk took the bag from his servant gingerly, handling it with multiple arms while still holding the pince-nez before his eyes. He struggled to unwrap the bag, getting much of the plastic wrap wadded up over his hands, then committed all five of his free arms to straightening out the whole sheet. He poked several holes in it, then stretched it a little to test when it would break.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

All the while he made sounds of approval, and Ashtoreth had to hide a smile. The humans had apparently been right about their plastics. Its apparent value wasn't just something that bade well for them today, but for Earth on the whole, going forward.

"I am no duplicitous huckster," said Master Guthuk. "I need no dishonesty or duress to gather wealth. When I see value, I acknowledge it without reservation." He continued to pull at the plastic wrap with five arms: rolling it up, unravelling it, pulling it taut and pressing it against his face…

"And truly, you have brought a great treasure today," he said.

The dwarf took her satchel and returned it to her. Ashtoreth watched Guthuk play with the plastic wrap, satisfied.

His fascination wasn't entirely a surprise. They'd brought many types of wares, and made sure to bring enough of each that if even just one thing was decently valuable, they'd have a good chance of walking out with the wealth they needed for the soul map.

And while everyone had come up with their own ideas for what might fetch a high price in a transplanar marketplace, Dazel, Ashtoreth, and the Eldunar had all been quite insistent about stocking up on one particular thing.

Plastic.

The cosmos at large was lacking in polymers. Compared to Earth, it was essentially destitute. They had little reason to pursue the material sciences as thoroughly as humanity. They simply hadn't happened across the many wonders that there were to be discovered in disciplines such as chemistry.

After all, mana was everywhere in the inner world. If you really needed a piece of material to have a certain set of mechanical properties, you just enchanted it to have them.

If you needed something that was easily deformed and set into a specific shape, you could just get a mage to tell whatever piece of metal or wood you had on hand to do that.

If you needed mass-produced clothing in unlimited supply, you… probably cast a healing spell on a sheep a lot, or something. Or got a druid to go absolutely hod-wild with growing cotton or flax.

And so human chemistry was like human conventional weaponry, human power generation, or human information exchanges. With no need for any of these disciplines in their rudimentary forms, the inner worlds had never developed them across the generations that would be needed to get to the parts they might have used.

In Hell, the only materials that Ashtoreth had ever seen resembling humanity's synthetic polymers had been treated as highly rare, highly valuable materials, and they'd been created by alchemists and transmuters, not chemists. Affixing anything but the most costly enchantments to them was considered a terrible waste.

And that was because they, like the humans' synthetic polymers, had an extraordinarily potent affinity for anti-magic enchantments. The fact that humans generally considered such clothing a cheaper alternative to natural textiles like wool had always been a conversation piece among the invading infernals as they studied up on their prey.

But now that the initial invasion had failed, the humans were holding some highly valuable resources. Or at least, that was the hope.

She'd also brought some musical instruments, some cd roms, some religious texts, and a very large number of seeds, mostly for fruit-bearing plants. All just in case the plastics thing didn't work out.

"Tell me now," Master Guthuk said after a short struggle to disentangle himself from the plastic wrap. "How many such sheets can your…" he gesticulated "—anti-magic dispenser produce?"

"Its total length is two thousand feet," she said, indicating the number of the side of the box. She waited a moment to let Guthuk process whatever arbitrary-seeming number of units the system translation had given him, then spoke again. "This single roll could wrap that satchel five hundred times over. More."

"And how many such rolls have you brought to trade?"

"Three."

Again, Guthuk drew back slightly, seeming to almost bristle with anticipation. "I'm sure I can produce an offer for all of them that you'll find most… agreeable," he said. "Oh yes."

Ashtoreth pulled a notepad out of her satchel, tore a page from it, then wrote two prices on it: one in chitt and the other in cores. She folded the note, then passed it to the dwarf servant as he came to take it from her.

She waited until Master Guthuk had read her price before adding, "I would, however, be willing to drive that price down to as low as a quarter of what I've asked… if you can provide me with information."

"Oh?" Guthuk said, pressing himself back on his massive chair and spreading his arms into a relaxed posture. "And I must have some information from you as well."

He'd want to know where she got them, and how rare they were. She was hoping he would at least still be interesting in buying if she didn't tell him the former: the price she'd given him was a bargain, after all.

"But first tell me," he said, "what is it you wish to know?"

Ashtoreth resisted the urge to smile. Her first deal of the day, and already she'd gotten this far. Surely a well-established merchant would know enough people that setting up a meeting would be trivially easy for him?

"One of my companions has an interest in cosmic history," she said. "We're searching Arc Enival for beings old enough to have lived through events long past. If you can point me to an old entity, one older than five thousand years, that's worth a little. If you can get me a meeting with them, that's worth a little more. But if that meeting proves fruitful… then we're really talking value."

Master Guthuk considered this, removing his pince-nez to peer at her with his naked eyes. He let out a short sound that might have been a laugh. "Yes," he said in a low grumble. "Yes, I think that a… fruitful… meeting can be arranged…"

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.