Chapter 86: Affordable?

[Bonus Chapter thanks to castle from Chronotitan <3]

"Show me the best Vestigem Cards you have." Jaxir leaned against the counter while Luxy smiled and swept one hand through the air, only for that confidence to disappear when rows of cards and prices unfolded in front of him.

Jaxir stared at the numbers for several seconds, then narrowed his eyes and read them again. Either Luxy had blinded him with that little display of hers, or he had forgotten how many zeroes were normally supposed to follow a number.

He cleared his throat and closed the screen. "Alright, let’s try that again with something a little less ridiculous."

He really should have expected this. Vestigem Cards didn’t have Levels like equipment did, which meant an Ultra Card wasn’t something a player simply outgrew after reaching a higher region.

The Card’s Grade determined the complexity and strength of what it could produce, while the mana poured into it determined how much of that potential could actually be expressed. It was the same reason even Common Cards could remain useful long after a player left the tutorial regions, and if that was true for Common, an Ultra Card was obviously going to cost a fortune.

Unfortunately, Luxy’s prices had taken that logic personally. Some of the numbers he’d just seen made the bounty on his head feel cheap.

"Just show me the Epic ones."

Luxy obliged, and Jaxir immediately regretted assuming that would help. The cheapest Card he found still cost tens of millions of copper, and the first one within anything resembling the lower end of the list did nothing more than keep his equipment clean of dirt, dust and blood for a month. And that one cost 1,200 gold or 12,000,000 coppers he didn’t have.

Jaxir stared at the price before looking over at Luxy. "I’m supposed to spend over 10 million copper so I don’t have to wash my clothes?"

Luxy chuckled and folded her hands over the counter. "You asked for Epic Vestigem Cards."

"Just ridiculous..." Jaxir swiped the list away and shook his head. "Show me Rare."

That finally brought the prices down from completely insane to merely offensive.

Most of the Rare Cards sat somewhere below a million copper, but the useful combat Cards were all just over that mark. He remembered thinking 150,000 copper for an Uncommon Twinkle Card was ridiculous, but compared to this, those prices suddenly looked friendly.

"I bought Uncommon Cards from you for 150,000 each." Jaxir pointed at one of the Rare prices hovering near 900,000. "What exactly happened between those two Grades?"

"You bought Twinkle Vestigem Cards inside Twinkle Village." Luxy’s smile widened when Jaxir’s expression changed. "There is a territorial discount for items closely connected to the region, and even then, those Cards would usually sell for two or three times what you paid. I’m actually showing you the discounted amounts right now. Vestigem Cards are usually even more expensive than this."

Jaxir rubbed his forehead while Luxy continued explaining that the difference between Grades widened as they climbed. Rare wasn’t simply a slightly stronger Uncommon, Epic represented another much larger jump after that, and according to her, Ultra made Epic look like child’s play.

"Wonderful." Jaxir glanced back toward the prices. "I was worried money might start becoming useful again."

Then another thought pushed through his annoyance.

"Wait, discount? What if I wanted all the Glimmer and Sparkle Vestigem Cards you have?" Jaxir looked toward Luxy. "How much would that cost me?"

Luxy’s smile became suspicious before she waved her hand again, and several new rows unfolded in front of him. Jaxir expected Commons, Uncommons and maybe a few Rare Cards, but the list kept going until Epic and even Ultra names appeared among them.

"Fuck." Jaxir leaned closer to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding what he was seeing. "I didn’t know those went above Uncommon. I thought the village mana Cards capped there."

Luxy shook her head, and the amusement slowly disappeared from her face. "The Path of Naturals is impossibly deep."

Jaxir’s attention snapped away from the cards. "Naturals?"

Luxy’s mouth twisted. "Those three harlots are not worthy of the titles they carry. Sparkle, Glimmer and Twinkle were never theirs to begin with."

Jaxir straightened, the strange tribal warrior immediately returning to his thoughts. "You’re saying Twinkle, Glimmer, and Sparkle existed before the three sisters ever touched them?"

"Long before." Luxy’s lip curled. "The three of them found fragments of an ancient path belonging to the Natural Race, copied what they could understand, and dressed themselves in stolen comprehension."

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed. "So they didn’t create any of it."

"Create?" Luxy gave a quiet scoff. "They just took what already existed. Then they named the pieces after themselves. No, they did even worse than that. They named themselves after them and then allowed generations of fools to believe those paths began with them."

"Then the Naturals are the real source."

"One of the oldest sources still walking this world," Luxy replied. "Their path is far deeper than the scraps those three managed to steal, which is why you would be a fool to assume Twinkle ends with what you’ve already seen."

Jaxir thought back to Rovan and the bear beneath him, especially the warped field that had hidden them from ordinary detection. That level of control suddenly made much more sense if the Demi-Goddess had only ever been working with a shallow piece of something far older.

"The Natural Race," Jaxir murmured, remembering Rovan and the bear beneath him. The absurd control that creature had displayed over Twinkle Mana suddenly made considerably more sense.

"Her Holiness was different." Luxy’s expression softened when she spoke of the Goddess of Light. "She studied what already existed because she wanted to understand it, improve upon it and eventually create something greater, while her sisters were satisfied stealing what others had already made."

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed. "Then how did they become Demi-Gods if their own comprehension wasn’t enough?"

Luxy’s expression turned ugly again. "They stole something else."

Jaxir already knew where that sentence was going. "Pieces of the Goddess of Light’s Divinity."

"Small pieces, yes." Luxy nodded once. "Enough to help them cross a threshold they could not reach on their own."

Jaxir accepted that answer without much trouble because he’d already felt the connection himself. His Light Mana still lacked the clean direction Twinkle possessed, but when the two came into contact, Light could suppress it, manipulate it and pull apart its structure with a clear ease.

That also explained why Rovan could use Twinkle Mana without having anything to do with the Demi-Goddess supposedly tied to it. She wasn’t its origin at all, and neither were the other two sisters the true beginnings of Sparkle or Glimmer.

Something sour settled in Jaxir’s stomach as the pieces came together.

Gravity had stolen the Goddess of Light’s seat, while the three sisters had stolen pieces of her Divinity after taking their paths from another Race. Every time Jaxir learned something new about them, the disgust inside him grew stronger, but the intensity of it still bothered him because it felt like more than anger over someone else’s history.

It felt personal in a way he couldn’t explain.

Luxy watched him for a moment before gesturing back toward the cards. "I cannot give you treasures without payment, but the Cards tied to these three paths are different. For anything Rare Grade or below, I can offer you a much greater discount."

Jaxir looked over. "How much?"

"Fifteen thousand copper each."

"I’ll take all the Rare ones." The words left Jaxir’s mouth before his brain had even finished processing the price, and Luxy’s smile widened as he immediately caught himself.

Jaxir had only a little over 800,000 copper left, and even at 15,000 each, buying for all three paths would eat into money he might need very soon. More importantly, one copy of each wouldn’t help nearly as much as repeatedly experiencing the same Card through Encore until he truly understood what its circuits were doing. He had needed two just for the Uncommon tiers, how much harder would grasping the Rare versions be?

"Actually, hold that thought." Jaxir sighed and dismissed the cards before reaching into his Inventory. "Buying everything just because it’s cheap is probably how people convince themselves they’re saving money."

A familiar orb appeared in his palm, the Gravity Blessing shifting inside it as he set it between them. Jaxir rolled it once beneath his fingers before looking back at Luxy.

"Do you have anything that can let me absorb this faster without weakening the effects?" His eyes narrowed slightly before he added the part that mattered most. "And I mean something I can actually afford."

If Luxy could give him discounts on the cards, that might mean that anything tangentially related to the Goddess of Light might get extra discounts. So... wouldn’t Gravity fall beneath that umbrella?