We had found a place for the night, a tavern tucked into a shadowed alley at the far edge of town, decidedly secretive yet luxurious all the same. I’d normally have balked at the prices, but Anabeth had insisted she had enough, counting Kohns as if they were pebbles. In the end, it cost three times what I would have spent anywhere else.

  She still hadn’t answered my question.

  Anabeth had already made another excuse, and I was waiting for her to return. “I left a few vials back near the Grand Library,” she’d said with a casual shrug, and her grin had been infuriatingly convincing. I knew better than to press.

  To be fair, I had more urgent matters to take care of now.

  First, the Aura Market.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and rested my elbow on my knees.

  “All right,” I muttered. “Ceralis. Aura Market, please.”

  The familiar pressure gnawed at me, and once again the apparition showed up.

  The market mushroomed into my vision.

  Calling it a ‘market’ was an insult to itself. This was a sprawling, layered expanse of glowing letters, branching paths, rotating constellations of icons and categories stacked upon categories. They read: Skills; Enhancements; Passives; Modulators; Frameworks, and so many more. Entire architectures of growth spiraled out, some locked behind opaque seals, others merely waiting, patient and predatory.

  This wasn’t a shop.

  This was an ecosystem.

  I stared at the section closest to me. I focused, and the interface obliged.

  Node? What a bizarre word.

  I skimmed the description instead.

  Ah. Health.

  Why didn’t it just say that?

  Upgrades branched downward, each one more expensive than the last.

  The numbers rocketed after that. Vitality, apparently, did not come cheap, nor did it tolerate dabbling.

  Another category drew my attention.

  That, at least, used words I understood.

  And beyond that, the costs spiked into territory I didn’t even want to contemplate yet.

  Nonetheless, the rewards were staggering. Simply by winning a shout match, I’d gained 127 Aura to immediately expand my AP threefold.

  There had to be one for RES as well, no? Aetheric resonance was too fundamental not to be represented.

  I searched.

  A result appeared almost immediately.

  I felt a brief, irrational flash of satisfaction... until I actually read it.

  I stared at the words for a long moment.

  “... Of course it is.”

  This meant that for anything vaguely magical, I was still going to need Anabeth. That realization sat poorly with me.

  It seemed possible to gain points for other attributes, though.

  I narrowed the market’s scope, filtering for Attribute Allocation. The response was quietly alarming.

  Each attribute followed the same pattern. The first point was almost charitable.

  Beyond that, the entries were still visible, but the numbers stopped pretending to be reasonable, and this was true not only for STR, but END, PER, and even INT (if I ever wanted to torture the local populace even harder).

  I studied the progression for a long moment.

  The curve wasn’t accidental. It wasn’t even subtle. The first point was practically an invitation, but this would never replace training. Ceralis hadn’t built this to create prodigies overnight. I should only snatch a few early points to smooth out deficiencies, and then try to grind out the rest. That was, if I could grind them out like I could skills.

  Upon further inspection, it seemed like that was the case.

  I studied the numbers for a while.

  I definitely needed more STR. Ten was rather insulting to the Knight Order. Any heavier armor, any larger weapon, any prolonged fight, and I’d feel it. Still... thinking back, I hadn’t actually met a single STR check. Plenty of attack options existed that didn’t care about STR at all, like Static Surge and simply having a better weapon.

  DEX, on the other hand, had already betrayed me.

  There had been DEX checks. And unlike STR, the skills I’d just reviewed scaled off Dexterity, and the penalties also scaled down from the original DEX. The higher the base, the more everything else benefited.

  With that line of reasoning, I exchanged 20 Aura for DEX. It seemed like a small enough investment that I wouldn’t regret later.

  Then I shifted focus instead toward the sections marked Skills.

  My primary affinity, Lightning, was listed near the top. I selected it.

  Spells, techniques, augmentations—some locked, some merely expensive. I tapped the first one that looked familiar.

  I already had that.

  Ceralis did not care.

  I scrolled.

  Another entry sat just beneath it.

  That made my eyebrows rise. A longsword was a rather heavy object to swing successfully, resulting in either slow but precise strikes, or less slow but laughably sloppy strikes. This skill could bypass that weakness altogether.

  The cost was 50 Aura, though. If I spent this amount now, I would not have enough for much else.

  I lingered, then continued down the tree.

  Surely there would be ranged applications. Lightning wanted to travel. It begged to be released.

  I found it.

  I selected it.

  I stared at the notice.

  Change class? After everything I’d already worked towards? After Saint Merin, the armor, the blade, the path I’d already been walking?

  No.

  I closed the entry without another thought.

  If lightning wanted to move, it would move along steel.

  There was one more skill I wished to find: the accursed Appraisal. Sure enough, it was LOCKED. Apparently, this skill could only be unlocked by classes such as Scout, Attuner, and Aetheric Appraiser, the latter two sounding way too bureaucratic for me to ever get into. There were two things I could do to unlock better readings of other creatures, however: leveling up (as most attributes were obscured if you were over 5 levels apart) and upgrading your PER to see the opponent’s high level skills. Both were in theory attainable, so I wasn’t too bothered.

  I spent 30 Aura on 5 AP first; there was no reason not to.

  As tempting as the other choices were, this one barely qualified as a decision.

  I stared at it.

  Then I scrolled down.

  This wasn’t a build choice. It was a literacy test.

  It was practically holding up a placard that read Have You Been Paying Attention?

  Anyone who skipped this deserved to be poor.

  I confirmed the purchase.

  I was about to close the Market.

  Then a skill sat half-buried in a subcategory I hadn’t bothered to expand yet:

  That alone was enough to make me pause.

  I focused on it. The entry slid forward.

  1 Aura? This skill was practically begging to be unlocked. I despised probabilistic effects, and this would only ever be used for aesthetic-based terrorism.

  Yet... If a higher level allowed for actual control over when you could decide to peacock, this would undoubtedly be a very useful skill.

  I expanded the progression tree.

  The Market, smug creature that it was, obliged.

  Oh. I could control when to set forth the visual effects. And of course it’d cost 200 times more than the Rank I version.

  Self-Narration? I had no idea why I would ever need atmospheric condemnation while explaining my own actions. Still... I could picture it. A ridiculous, impossible image: me stepping into a hall, already explaining why this course of action was inevitable and correct—and the sky agreeing. Thunder rolling like a closing argument. Lightning flashing not to strike, but to emphasize.

  Fine. I redeemed the skill. It’d be annoying for a while, but with enough practice, I’d become the master of SELECTIVE fear mongering.

  That was that for now. I was just about to pull up the Bounty Board—whatever fresh absurdity that was going to be—when the door creaked behind me.

  Anabeth slipped in without ceremony, as though she’d never left.