Joji did not know what to say about Lena. She was a scheming woman, shaped by the hard guts of the Arican Dream.
Against that, Daisy, for all her talent, was no match. The little magician sat there fidgeting, half-poisoned by the very novels Lena had once written and by the fantasies those pages had fed inside her head.
Joji gave Lena a look then. A serious one. The sort that said he was not fucking around.
At least not in this matter. Lena caught it at once and raised both hands as though she had been accused before the trial had even begun.
"I’m not gonna do anything to her, alright? You know magic, Joji. I ain’t gonna ssing around," Lena said.
"We’ll talk about these things when we have ti," Joji replied.
He took out the list the duchess had given him. True, he was not getting any of it for free, but he was not stupid enough to ignore the family discount either.
He was not so fool protagonist from a stage play, too proud to use the advantages placed right into his hands.
Even with a system, Joji had known from the beginning that this world was not built fair.
So creatures were born monstrous in privilege. Dragons, for one, could begin life already standing at Rank-3.
Then there were the old horrors who had survived so long they had beco part of the world’s balance itself.
The Lady of the Swamp was one such being. She might be kind to him now, but if ever he drew her ire, she could drown cities in ruin without breaking stride.
One of their destinations that day was the warehouse attached to the Everhart Auction House.
A manager was waiting within. Fufu.
He was a dark-skinned man with a an look about him, the sort of face that seed born with judgnt already resting on it.
His brows were always slightly raised, and his dark brown eyes had the habit of weighing people the mont they stepped into view.
Yet the instant he caught sight of them, his whole expression lit up.
He strode forward, glanced around once, then greeted Daisy with a social kiss.
"What are y’all up to?" Fufu asked.
Daisy explained that Joji needed materials. Fufu looked him up and down, took his asure as though pricing livestock, then snorted.
"Go on in. Tell your boyfriend he’d better know what’s good for him," Fufu said.
Joji knew Fufu well enough, and he knew the man, too, was queer.
Even that, in its own strange way, had roots stretching back to the First Patriarch.
The old founder of Everhart had been notorious for sowing his seed far and wide.
A womanizer to the bone. One of his more cynical beliefs had been that hiring strong queer n reduced romantic competition within the household by a great margin.
Joji had found that little piece of family wisdom in the private library while searching for ditation techniques.
As he walked deeper inside, glass displays revealed row upon row of monster materials.
Joji’s mind was already set on what he wanted.
Sothing that could improve healing, aura recovery, mana recovery, or, failing that, sothing that gave a straight increase in strength.
He drifted first toward the Rank-3 section.
That was his price range for now.
There was plenty to choose from. Materials harvested from wolves, snakes, and bears.
Others taken from harsher stock, ogres, goblins, even kobolds.
Joji moved slowly along the displays, the Monocle of Sir Decipher already set over his eye.
Then sothing caught his attention.
A material.
{Wood Assassin Chaleon Skin}
{Ability: Surround Blend}
{Rank: C}
{Details: Your visage takes on the hues of what lies about you, bleeding into your surroundings. Yet this alters no depth nor dinsion, and so your shape may still be discerned.}
{Estimated Cost per Activation/ Deactivation: 0.1 Mana, 0.1 Aura}
Joji then checked the product identification tag and compared it with the list the Duchess had given him.
[Price: 175,000 Gold]
[Discounted: 140,000 Gold]
Joji let out a quiet sigh.
This one was beyond his range for now.
Daisy caught the look on his face at once, that brief drop of the eyes, that small disappointnt already trying to right itself before it could settle into anything unbecoming.
She followed his gaze to the item in the display, and even she had to swallow.
It was expensive for good reason. In this world, sensible parents simply hired their own children.
Duchess Rosalind was one of those parents, though much of the money stayed in her own hands, for she, too, needed resources to advance her arcane path.
Fair or not, it left the young pair, Daisy and Joji, nearly dirt poor.
Daisy felt helpless. She wanted to help her man, but she had little more than twenty thousand gold to her na.
Better not to ntion it and sha herself. So she only coughed softly and explained to Joji why the skin was so expensive.
"Wood Assassin Chaleons are notoriously difficult to find. They did not prey on large beasts, nor did they linger where stronger creatures road."
"Anything their own size, humans included, was enough to send them slipping back into concealnt."
"They survived by avoiding notice so completely that even seasoned hunters could pass within arm’s reach and never know one had been there."
Joji nodded to Daisy, stared at the leather a mont longer, then forced himself to look away.
His eyes moved on, returning to the next item that had stirred his interest.
{Cloud Marsupials Special Bladder}
{Ability: Body Lightness}
{Rank: C}
{Details: You may beco as light as a feather, and at your will return to your proper weight.}
{Estimated Cost per Activation/ Deactivation: 0.2 Mana, 0.2 Aura}
This ti, it isn’t from one animal but a thousand of them. It was a small sphere with veins.
"That’s sothing similar to the concept of knight core’s, they grow as you grow strong, but these Cloud Marsupials had them the day they were born," Daisy explained with a smile.
It was aweso, to be honest. He can float up, then charge from above. With his armored body and a bow, wouldn’t he be invincible?
[Price: 105,000 Gold]
[Discounted: 92,000 Gold]
It was not the most expensive thing in the room, but the price still hit hard.
This was not spare coin. Not so idle noble’s whim. This was the worth of a common family’s als, proper als, taken three tis a day for five full years.
Joji felt that weight clearly enough. He swore to himself that one day he would co back for such things when his purse could bear it.
For now, they had no choice but to go lower. They descended to the second floor.
The displays there were fewer, the arrangent less crowded, but that did not make the place any less valuable.
Quite the opposite. These were Rank-4 materials now, and rank at that level was no longer a matter of simple numbers.
It was a change in quality.
Automaton Fourteen had proved that much.
That thing had possessed a knight core, and because of it, its aura had never truly bottod out.
Not the way Joji’s would. Not the way Alaric’s would.
Against an opponent like that, they could not afford waste.
They had needed to fight with sense, with timing, with hard decisions made fast, asuring every movent and guarding every drop of aura as though it were blood leaving the body.
Joji adjusted the Monocle of Sir Decipher over his eye and swept his gaze across the gallery once more.
Then, little by little, his attention returned to the items that had stirred his interest.
{Tundra Sand Trent Sweat Gland}
{Ability: Never Thirst}
{Rank: B}
{Details: The nature of your sweat glands is changed, so that they draw water from the air and restore its moisture to your flesh.}
{Estimated Cost per Activation/ Deactivation: Body Function (No Cost)}
Joji thought the ability was excellent, the sort of thing that could change the shape of a fight.
So he returned to it once more. But when he rummaged through the list in his hand and compared it against what he actually needed, all he could manage was a wry smile.
[Price: 890,000 Gold]
[Discounted: 840,000 Gold]
If Joji killed Walter, he could gain three million in an instant.
But that was not his way.
The system had explicitly given him a quest involving Walter, and Joji had long since co to see the system as sothing close to a godlike existence.
In his mind, the logic was simple. If a god told a man to marry a certain woman, then one could assu with near certainty that the woman held great value.
The sa principle applied to Walter. If the system had singled him out, then the man was worth more alive than dead.
Even so, Joji was frustrated.
He had swaggered in here thinking fifty grand would be enough, perhaps a little more at worst.
Now the numbers laid bare before him had stripped that confidence down to the bone.
So he sat on a bench and fell silent.
The two won with him said nothing.
Both knew the sense of timing that separated a useful companion from an irritating one.
They understood when to speak and when to keep quiet.
As Joji sat there, his eyes wandered.
He noticed a logbook on a side table. Beside it sat a trash can.
For a mont, he only stared. Then the thought struck him.
"Trash. Trash. Trash. Yes, that’s it."
He rose at once and stepped close to Daisy.
"Daisy, these things have a shelf life, right?" Joji asked.
"Right. There are special magic circles here that keep the products almost exactly as they were after harvest, and each one is tailored to the material," Daisy said. She tilted her head. "Why are you suddenly curious?"
"What happens to the ones that spoil? Or, say, degrade in value?" Joji asked.
"That happens too," Daisy said, studying him now. "Why?"
"Co on. Let’s check."
Daisy led the way to another room.
This one was lined with steel boxes upon steel boxes, stacked in ordered rows like forgotten coffins.
It was clear at a glance that this was the clearance section, the place where value ca to die slowly.
"Joji, these things might underperform compared to what you’re expecting," Daisy warned, concern plain in her voice.
Each steel box, no matter the size, had a small glass peephole set into it, just enough to show whether the product within was still there.
Joji went from box to box and began rummaging through them with growing intensity.
One after another, he checked them all, patient and thodical, as though panning through mud for gold no one else had thought worth taking.
An hour passed before he finally finished.
When he stepped back at last, he could feel it in his bones.
This was a treasure trove.
{Heart of Troll Chieftain}
{Ability: Passive Regeneration}
{Rank: C}
{Details: It draws upon stamina alone. By its virtue, broken bones, torn skin, rent muscle, severed sinew, and damaged joints may be made whole. A body well rested and a belly well filled shall strengthen the healing it bestows}
{Estimated Cost per Activation/ Deactivation: Body Function (No Cost)}
{Ability: Active Regeneration}
{Rank: B}
{Details: It consus great quantities of mana, prana, and aura to restore what has been lost. Ruined organs, pierced hearts, and even the sundered column of the spine. Yet it cannot regrow a missing head. A severed head, however, may still be rejoined, provided a third party does the work within a quarter hour.}
{Estimated Cost: 50 Mana, 50 Aura, 50 Prana}
Joji was genuinely stupefied that sothing like this had been left lying around.
Even so, he had no intention of taking advantage of his stepmother Rosalind for the sake of imdiate gain alone.
That sort of greed was too shortsighted, even for him.
"What’s the catch with this Troll Chieftain piece?" Joji asked.
Daisy could only offer a wry smile. She lifted a finger and pointed to the purple marking etched across the material.
"That is a curse tattoo," she said. "Use it, and you’ll beco a troll."
At once, Joji understood why no one had claid it.
Yet even then, his thoughts did not stop. They spun faster, not slower, for he already held a trump card against sothing like this.
Joji voiced his interest, and Daisy called Fufu over.
Fufu gave him a long look from head to toe, as if asuring whether madness had already taken root.
"What, you’re ready to turn into a troll?" Fufu said. Then he snorted. "A hundred thousand for that. If you don’t have the coin, go raid a dungeon or sothing."
He turned as though to leave, but Joji stopped him.
"I’ll take it," Joji said.
At once, several people looked his way as though he had lost his mind.
Joji raised a hand and reassured them.
"Relax. I don’t plan on becoming a troll anyti soon. And by the way, I have a coupon here." Joji stumbled, then corrected himself.
"A written letter for appropriate pricing. The Duchess is assisting in my future endeavors."
"You say this and that. All I see is a stay-at-ho son-in-law," Fufu scoffed.
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