Chapter 368: What It Cost

Chapter 368: What It Cost

"Could I have a minute?" Jin asked.

The shopkeeper waved towards the cabinet. "Take your time."

Jin moved aside, keeping his phone close. Its familiar disguise would hide the Engine from a casual glance, but he still angled the screen away from the counter.

[Ancestral trace: Rimeking lineage — Ice]

[Hidden Potential: S — Engine-dependent]

[Development requires compatible ancestral traces and support through the bound Engine owner.]

[Engine-supported bloodline development draws on the owner’s blood reserve.]

Jin read the last line twice.

Below it, a short appraisal note linked his earlier depleted condition to the unavailable development reading. His present blood reserve was sufficient for the Engine to identify the possibility.

The egg hadn’t changed in the cabinet. What Jin could enable had changed, and the appraisal was showing him that future alongside what the beast was now.

He looked from the screen to the small blue-grey shell.

You were here the whole time.

He’d walked past so many eggs while searching for Elsa. Some would have been ordinary regardless. Probably most of them. But he’d started thinking that Glitch and Flicker were two absurd strokes of luck he couldn’t hope to repeat.

This egg had given him the same disappointing result. He remembered it clearly enough to know that something had been missing from the scan.

Now he knew where to look.

His thumb hovered over the blood-expenditure line. He wanted to inspect the ice lineage first, to see what sort of beast might be sleeping inside that shell.

Instead, he opened the cost information.

[Lives offset Engine-mediated blood expenditure, including expenditure unrelated to avatar death.]

[Coverage activates automatically. Available Lives offset the cost; any uncovered portion is drawn from the owner.]

[Related record: Abnormal Bond Event — Highmarch]

Jin’s mouth went dry.

He opened the record he’d checked so often while recovering.

[Bloodline-development event: Glitch]

[Associated emergence: Draconic Will]

[Engine-mediated blood expenditure: substantial]

[Contribution to owner collapse: confirmed]

[Life System at time of event: locked]

For a few seconds, the shop’s humming cabinet seemed much too loud.

He remembered Glitch in the arena, injured and still trying. The emergency Sync. The fierce clarity through the bond when Draconic Will emerged, and the terrifying strength of what came afterwards.

Then the hospital ceiling, and how much effort it had taken to sit up.

He’d known something was wrong with that collapse. He had experience with the Engine taking blood, and he’d tried to be careful. Nothing he’d understood at the time explained how badly the arena incident had emptied him.

This did.

The Engine had helped something in Glitch awaken, and part of the cost had come out of Jin.

He leaned a shoulder against the cabinet, careful not to knock it.

You could have told me before I ended up in a bed.

The record remained open. No apology appeared beneath it.

Jin let out a breath through his nose and read the Life explanation again. One Life could offset part of a large expenditure. Several could cover more. Enough could protect him completely from that Engine cost, but the record offered no number for Highmarch.

He couldn’t buy safety for Glitch that way. The drake’s injuries had been real, and the temporary combination had strained his own body. Jin still remembered how carefully everyone had handled him afterwards.

Lives would have addressed the blood the Engine took from Jin. Glitch would still have needed treatment.

His thumb moved to the reserve display.

[Life: 2]

He thought of Glitch’s protected avatar death after their breakthrough. The respawn had spent a purchased Life, and Jin had waited for the familiar weakness without feeling it.

He hadn’t experienced an unprotected death since reaching Rank Two. He didn’t know what one would cost now, and this was a miserable way to be reminded that guessing could put him back in hospital.

Two was starting to feel comfortable yesterday.

He closed the record without dismissing its meaning. The reserve needed to grow.

Beyond his screen, the egg sat under its plain shop label. Jin had come here thinking about his family. He wasn’t leaving that thought behind just because the Engine had frightened him.

He returned to the extended appraisal.

Glitch carried S potential too. He was already a Gold drake, and Jin had felt only a fraction of that old draconic presence become real. He couldn’t translate the letter into a promised Quality. Still, when he pictured Glitch’s future, Gold never felt like the end of it.

Now this ordinary-looking water egg had the same letter.

Elsa would ask questions. She’d ask why a penguin, whether it needed a pool, whether Breeze would bother it. Jin almost smiled imagining her holding it, then noticed the condition he’d nearly hurried past.

Development through the bound Engine owner.

If Elsa contracted the egg, Jin couldn’t assume the future he saw would follow it into her care.

He checked the ordinary projection beneath the condition.

[Without Engine support: species-normal development.]

Breeze was Gold Peak already. Without that hidden future, Jin would be offering Elsa a lower-Quality beast with an affinity less suited to her talent. She might love it anyway, but that wasn’t the same as giving her the opportunity he’d imagined.

He rubbed a finger along the edge of his phone. Elsa had spent enough time worrying about him. He wanted to bring her something she could be excited about, without leaving her to solve a problem he hadn’t understood before buying it.

He opened the available options.

[Intrinsic Enhancement]

[Converts Engine-dependent potential into potential intrinsic to the beast. Subsequent development does not require the Engine owner.]

[Eligibility: beast bonded to a direct blood relative of the Engine owner.]

[Current status: no eligible bond.]

[Cost: 1,000 Lives]

Jin stared at the number.

One thousand?

He checked the purchase price of a Life, though he knew it perfectly well. Ten thousand Coins. A thousand of them meant ten million.

He made a small sound before he could stop himself.

"Everything all right?" the shopkeeper asked.

"Yes," Jin said quickly. "Just checking a cost."

The man nodded and returned to his paperwork.

Jin held the phone in both hands. Ten million Coins was so far beyond what he’d saved that, for a moment, he wanted to close the panel and pretend he hadn’t seen it.

Instead, he opened the explanation beneath the option.

The enhancement would make the potential the beast’s own. It wouldn’t hatch the egg, supply its training, or carry it through future development. Elsa would still need to raise it, and the beast would still need appropriate resources.

He liked that part more than he expected. Elsa would have her own beast to bring along, the way she was already working with Breeze. She wouldn’t need Jin standing nearby with his phone every time it had to grow.

But the egg wasn’t hers. It wasn’t even his. The eligibility line stayed grey, and the cost remained enormous.

Jin saved the appraisal before closing it.

He could record the egg’s details. He could ask what keeping it would involve. Those were things he could do today, even with two Lives and nothing close to ten million Coins.

He put his phone away and walked to the counter.

"The Brinecoat," he said. "How long could you hold it for me?"