Omosefe reached over to his hovering kiosk and moved the top shelf to the side. The terraced display shelves moved out of the way to reveal his storage behind them. He rummaged around the storage and pulled out a stack of eleven books. He brought them over to Luke and spread them out in front of him on the coffee table in front of his chaise lounge.

  “These are all the books I have with me today. I can see that this book and this book are duplicates of the ones you already have. No need to exchange them. You mentioned you were interested in runes. Are you also interested in enchanting?”

  Luke slashed his hands down. “Not at the moment. Runework and enchanting are different branches of the same discipline, but I choose to focus on runes for now.”

  “That leaves us these six books available for sale. Which ones would you be interested in?” Omosefe said and carefully watched him.

  Luke picked up the books and read the titles and briefly perused the books. A Treatise on Woven Runes, Runes for High Intensity Combat, Transporting the Quintet, Logic Gates and Contradictions, An Apprentice's Primer on Runes, and Portal Repair. He set down the book on sewing runes and stacked up the remaining five books. He tried to look casual, but the book on combat runes had his heart beating fast.

  “I’ll take these five books,” Luke calmly said. “What do I owe you?”

  “Four of those are cheap, only three hundred whites for the bunch. But this one on combat runes... I’m realizing now I can’t let you buy it. I don’t know if you are part of the Empire Runewright Guild. I took oaths to keep certain runes safe and I can’t let you buy it without verifying your membership. As I said before, maybe it would be best to go through official channels.”

  Luke rolled his wrist. “I already explained why I am in a hurry. You took oaths to keep runes out of the hands of the undeserving. But you can trust me. I’m part of an aristocratic family and we know how to honor secrecy oaths. Please, allow me to purchase the book and the Empire’s glory will grow.”

  The elf still seemed unsure. “What noble family did you say you were from?”

  “I didn’t. I’m not here to spend my family’s glory, I am here to build myself up so that I may earn more myself. Isn’t that what you have done? You’re not trading on your family’s merchant empire, you are building your own, correct?”

  Omosefe leaned back and smiled. He wiggled his hands, “You are correct, I am building my own consortium. But my instincts tell me this transaction would cost me dearly. Not to be uncouth, but glory is valuable in my line of work. To offset the personal cost, I would have to charge you three thousand tier one cores. Even making the offer has cost me something, so I hope you are taking me seriously.”

  Luke realized Omosefe suspected something was up with him. He probably didn’t suspect Luke was a human because that was so unlikely. But he clearly understood that he would be breaking oaths and losing glory to sell this to him. Three thousand tier one cores was a fortune.

  A quick inventory of his mana core wealth showed he could afford it. They weren’t all tier one cores, but he had the equivalent of forty-six hundred cores now. This purchase was about three fourths of his entire wealth, or about twelve million dollars if he sold those cores on Earth. The Runewright was asking for a lot.

  “I’ll take it. Thank you for the opportunity to invest in myself and my future,” Luke said humbly.

  Omosefe seemed surprised his offer was accepted, but smiled and happily completed the transaction. It wasn’t long before Luke was millions of dollars poorer and one book richer.

  He didn’t regret it for a second. This was a book specifically about combat runes. This would help him build the ultimate monster killing mech. He would be able to create weapons that were more sophisticated than just throwing elemental magic at things. He could create spell rifles that didn’t rely on magnets to work. If he was lucky, the book would even have the holy grail, the rune for force shields.

  Either way, Luke planned on putting most of the book on WikiRunes. The most dangerous runes he could pass directly onto the army. There was always a danger in disseminating new technology, particularly combat runes, but if Kalibutan ever decided to attack Earth, they would find a well prepared and heavily armed populace ready to beat them back to the stone age.

  The rest of the shopping visit was less eventful. He bought a few hundred pounds of titan bone and arranged for it to be delivered to his apartment. It was supposedly the best material for his needs. Much stronger than Rock Beetle wing casings, while still flexible enough to take a hit without shattering. It would take substantially longer to work it, but Luke felt like the extra protection would be worth the time and expense.

  “I want to leave. It is too loud here, I want a warm nap,” Jinx said.

  The statement surprised Luke for a half second. He had somehow forgotten that he could talk with her now. It had been an eventful day. He wanted to stay a bit longer, to find new things for sale that he hadn’t heard of yet. But he also wanted Jinx to be happy she could communicate with him.

  “Sure thing, Jinx. We can go now. Kruro, please pack everything up and arrange for transport back to the apartment,” Luke said.

  They had sold much more than they had bought, so it was easy for Kruro to gather everything up. Luke kept the Combat Runes book with him. He couldn’t bear to have it out of his hands. Not until he had a chance to read it.

  In short order, they boarded a rental flying hexagon and flew back to Momoh’s apartment building. Luke gave Kruro instructions on how to handle visitors and then locked himself in a bedroom to focus. Jinx ignored the implied request for privacy and walked through the door to plop down on the bed nearby. Luke chuckled and turned back to his goodies.

  The first thing he unpacked was the strength potion. As soon as he downed the bottle, he would have two extra points of strength. Apparently it would only work once, otherwise he would have bought more. He grimaced at the swirling brown and yellow liquid. Then he closed his eyes and downed the whole thing in one go.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He felt the potion drop into his stomach and spread out from there. It was like a gentle warmth spreading through his body.

  Then it stopped being gentle.

  His calves cramped up and Luke fell to the floor. He groaned in pain, and then the pain got worse. His biceps cramped up, then his deltoids. One after another, all of his muscles started cramping.

  Jinx hopped off the bed and nudged his groaning body. Her ears laid back. She growled out, “What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”

  Luke’s world was agony, but he heard her and couldn’t bear the idea of her being afraid. He forced his clenched jaw open and said, “It’s fine Jinx. I’ll be fine in a moment.”

  Despite what he said, the pain continued. Waves of pain washed over him time and time again. After the longest thirty seconds of his life, the cramps ended and he rolled over on his back, limp.

  “Are you fine now?” Jinx asked.

  “Yes, all better now. Sorry if I scared you. I wasn’t expecting that potion to hurt so much,” Luke said without even opening his eyes.

  “Good. I would hate to lose my servant now that you finally understand me. Come, groom me,” Jinx said.

  Luke opened his mouth to say he was too tired for pets, but found that wasn’t true. He felt great. He hopped up. He looked down to see that his muscles had grown. They were slightly bigger now, but also like coiled wires. He had expected extra magic in his core to handle the change, but the potion had made his physical body stronger instead. That was the best result, really. He would be stronger even if he was deprived of magic.

  He leaned over Jinx’s panther sized body and gave her fur long strokes. Time passed where he basked in the sounds of her rumbling purrs and his newfound strength.

  Eventually, his new toys called his name. First on the list was his level up. The runebooks were tempting, but he had put off his threshold advancement too long. Now was the time to level up. He settled into the bed and got everything ready. He pulled up the system notice and accepted the level up. As soon as he did, a new popup appeared.

  Luke reached out and touched the screen only he could see. He could move the slider on the bottom of the screen and select anything from 10% up to 100%. He imagined this was a difficult question for anyone born with a glory sense. Much of their culture, how they saw people as good or bad, was tied up in that sense. Most of them would hesitate to sacrifice half of their glory. If they sacrificed it all they would feel the loss keenly and be ostracized until they could build it up again.

  That wasn’t a problem he had to worry about. He wouldn’t feel the loss and already had plans to visit the undercity again to build up more glory. He went ahead and slid it all the way to the right and finalized his choice.

  Luke felt something leave him, like a wisp or half a breath. Then his core started growing. He felt fuller and fuller, like he was going to pop. It stopped and Luke felt like his personal core was tier four now.

  A feeling of peace washed through him. All was right with the world. With the universe. He felt a floating feeling that faded away. A quiet chime rang, echoing through his soul. He felt good, really good. There was no denying it now. He was addicted to the rush that came with level ups.

  Luke saw four more screens pop up but didn’t read them yet. Instead, he re-read the notice. The System Smiles on You. That sounded pretty good. Apparently most people didn’t sacrifice all of their glory and the system was giving him a rare reward. Nice. The only thing that gave him pause was the mention of his choices using up skills and the choose wisely part. It made him think of Indiana Jones and the guy that chose poorly and died.

  He shook his head at the morbid thought and read the first of four choices.

  Damn. He wanted all of those. Every skill choice was awesome. Jetpack would give him and his allies flight. Hell yes. Vehicle Bond meant that he could eventually control an entire fleet of tanks on his own. A one man army. Repair War Machine was the return of his old favorite, Repair Craft. But it was way better. He would be able to repair and rearm any vehicle, without having to save a repaired state first. Apex Machine was the most badass sounding. It was rather similar to Summon Vehicle, but stronger and better. The only worry there was the mention of temporary. It might cost him more mana to maintain these better summons.

  He wasn’t sure which one he wanted to pick, particularly since he knew that if he picked one of them, that would remove that merge choice for his other skills. For example if he picked Vehicle Bond, then he wouldn’t be able to use Repair Craft to enhance a different skill, like Armor Adjunct, where it might synergize better.

  He resolved to read all four screens and choose the best combination of merges to get the most out of this threshold level up.