Chapter 98: Special

For a second, even the leader forgot to breathe.

The leader looked at Kael with eyes wide enough that one would think that it went beyond shock and into the realm of insanity.

The shop felt smaller. The neon felt sharper. Even Baltak’s expression, normally locked into that professional, smug deadpan, twitched like a man trying not to smile at a joke he’d been waiting to hear.

“Ah, a Medium core. I wonder where you found this,” Baltak smiled.

There it was. Interest. Real interest. The kind that wasn’t just about profit, but about story. About a low-floor climber walking in with something that shouldn’t exist in his hands.

“Just tell me how much…” Kael asked.

“That’ll be two hundred cores. Since it’s unprocessed. If you had processed it and cleansed it from that,” Baltak said as he pointed at the swirl of darkness inside the core. “It would fetch at least a thousand Cores.”

Kael watched the darkness swirl, and for the first time since he’d picked the thing up, he felt its weight properly, not physical, but value. Hidden potential. A kind of currency that had a second layer.

“How can I process this?” Kael asked.

“That’s only possible on the upper floors,” Baltak shook his head.

“Good enough for me.” Kael said, as he turned to the leader, “So, got anything else to buy, or are you simply loitering?”

It wasn’t even an insult. It was a casual flick of a blade. Kael didn’t raise his voice, didn’t posture. He just let the question hang there like an unlit fuse.

Baltak looked at the leader and said, “He is right, if your business is over… then leave.”

The leader’s face tightened. His knuckles went pale around his box.

“Fucker, you better not spend all of that. Once you’re out, I’ll have your head!”

“Sure, sure,” Kael said as he turned to Baltak.

The leader was forced out and began hollering something at his members for not killing Kael too fast.

His voice faded into the outside noise, still loud, still furious, still impotent.

“Quite noisy,” Baltak said as he snapped his fingers.

The whole shop turned completely quiet but for Baltak and Kael.

It wasn’t a gentle quiet. It was the kind of silence that had edges. Like Baltak had pinched the world’s throat and decided he didn’t want to hear it anymore. Kael could still see mouths moving outside through the glass, faces contorted, hands gesturing, but the sound was gone. Deleted.

For the first time since the mob appeared, Kael’s shoulders loosened.

“Now, what are you going to use this ’wealth’ for?’”

The way Baltak said wealth made it sound like a vice.

“Obviously, I’m intending to pay my dues.”

“Good, I like it when a client pays their debt fast, though I prefer it if it stacked more…”

“Wouldn’t you love that…” Kael smiled back.

The exchange was thinly playful, but underneath it was a negotiation between predators. Baltak wanted profit. Kael wanted survival. Neither of them was under any illusion that friendliness mattered.

Baltak immediately deducted 55 cores from the tally. Leaving Kael with 145 and the 48 cores he had left from the dungeon.

The numbers settled into Kael’s mind like a ledger tattoo. I’m not in debt anymore. The thought should have felt freeing. Instead, it just felt like he’d cleared one chain and found another waiting.

“By the way, now that I have the needed currency to leave the tower, how can I leave?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious? You have to pay for the Portal that appears once you kill the floor boss…”

Kael’s stomach sank again, slow this time, like a man watching the bottom fall out of his plan.

“Ah… the Ifrit?”

“Well, you’d know best, you woke it up after all…”

“Now I understand why there is a Floor boss, and why we were asked to gather the cores… They were merely a key, where we needed to find the door ourselves…Shit…”

The curse came out flat. Not angry. Just tired. Like every time he solved a problem, the Tower handed him the next one wrapped in barbed wire.

“Why are you so surprised? Haven’t you managed well so far?”

“Yeah, but all I have is a fire rune…”

“That’s going to be rather useless.”

Baltak turned to the door. Someone was knocking, but it wasn’t audible.

Kael saw the motion: a fist hitting glass, desperate and insistent, like the person outside believed money could buy them permission to breathe.

“What?” Baltak asked.

“I’m here to sell stuff!” one of the people from the Snake clan said.

He looked scrawny and quite skittish when he entered. It almost felt like he was forced inside. His eyes darted to Kael once, then away, like making eye contact might get him killed later.

“What are you selling?” Baltak asked.

“You can finish your business first. I’ll wait after this client leaves.”

Kael immediately understood what this meant; they wanted to use their own cores to force Kael out.

If they kept sending one after the other to buy random stuff, Kael would eventually no longer have enough currency to buy anything else and would be forced to leave.

And the second he left, the mob would collapse on him like a guillotine.

“I’m fine with it, I have all the time in the world, and the cores to spend. Go on ahead,” Kael said, “Sell your stuff.”

The words were calm, almost lazy, but his eyes stayed locked on the scrawny Snake like he was watching a fuse burn.

“N-no”

“Are you wasting my time? The young man here already bought materials and has more cores to buy other things. If you’re wasting my time, you won’t get out of here.”

Baltak didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The threat was in the certainty, the absolute confidence that the shop’s rules weren’t suggestions.

“S-sure! Wait, I have something!” he said.

He fumbled in his inventory too fast, hands shaking like he was afraid the item would vanish if he hesitated.

He pulled a pentagonal stone from his inventory and handed it over to the store owner.

Kael noticed it first.

Not because it glowed, but because of what it meant.

The Imp didn’t look at the item, but at Kael.

He wanted to see his expression, he wanted to see his greed, he wanted to see if Kael wanted that thing.

After all, it was the item the map no longer showed once it was in someone’s hand.

A Rune.

And a Rune that is very special.

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