Chapter 85: From Business Plans to Breakup Plans

Uriel and Galatina walked side by side toward the inn. The evening vendors were packing up around them, and the setting sun stretched their shadows long across the paving stones. He had already shifted to the numbers.

Seven million, two hundred thousand a year.

He ran the figure again in his head. That was enough to buy an entire commercial street in the middle of the capital.

Or he could just leave it in that storage vault and live off the daily interest. Never think about money again for the rest of his life.

...I should buy out a commercial street in the capital. The thought escaped before he'd decided to say it out loud.

It brought the billboard man back to mind immediately. If he owned the block, at least he could give the workers decent contracts. Eight-hour workdays. Benefits.

Galatina nodded.

She reached over and rested a hand on top of his head — measured pressure, perfectly judged, not a single paper bag swinging into him from her wrist.

"Little Uri is so smart. Already thinking about investments at your age. Buy a commercial block, collect the rent, let money make money —" Her voice carried the genuine warmth of someone who was actually impressed. "When I was your age, I hadn't even seen a ledger. And you already understand compound interest. I still get confused by that part, honestly."

Uriel stumbled half a step forward from the headpat, the tips of his ears going faintly warm. He reached up and moved her hand off his head.

"That won't work, though." Galatina withdrew her hand and re-secured her three packages. "Eight million is the vault's storage cap. Nothing more fits inside."

Uriel paused.

Then nodded once.

Right. There's a cap.

The luxury commercial street he'd just started building in his head was scrapped before it even got a name.

Eight million gold was the hard ceiling. It generated two thousand per day, and anything past the cap sat inert. Compound growth wasn't an option. But two thousand a day in passive income still cleared the annual household income of roughly ninety-nine-point-nine percent of families in the capital, so he couldn't call it a loss.

His thoughts drifted sideways.

If he ever told his mother about his previous money situation — the years of careful scrimping, the calculated frugality that had become second nature — she wouldn't laugh at him.

She would look at him with those bright eyes and tell him he was very responsible, and very clever for saving, and that she was proud of him. Without a trace of irony.

That was, somehow, worse than mockery.

He decided she would never find out. Not this lifetime.

"Where'd the vault come from, anyway." He shifted his two packages to the other arm as they walked. "And all that money — that was from the Hero days?"

Galatina's pace slowed by half a beat.

"The box." She started after a moment, choosing her words at a slightly slower rhythm than usual. "There was a mimic in the Demon Realm. It swallowed Mom's holy sword. Mom knocked on it a few times, and it spat the sword back out."

Uriel went quiet.

He parsed it, one clause at a time.

A mimic.

Swallowed the holy sword.

Knocked on it a few times.

Spat it back out.

Each word made sense on its own. Every word made sense. Somehow, the whole thing didn't.

Am I in a fantasy world or a Tom and Jerry cartoon?

He reined it in and thought it through. A mimic capable of consuming the holy sword — the Blessing of the Holy Sword didn't care what the weapon was, a tree branch worked the same as a legendary blade, so the sword itself was largely symbolic. But it was still the holy sword. Something that could swallow the Holy Sword whole had to be at least Four Heavenly Kings level.

"After that it just stayed small." Galatina held up one hand and sketched a compact rectangular shape in the air with her fingers. "Shrunk down to about this size. Lid opening and closing. Started following Mom around like a little duckling — hop, hop, hop. Couldn't shake it no matter where she went. So Mom figured, well, might as well keep it."

Uriel absorbed this.

It tracked. Fenria had also just sort of followed her home one day. At this point it was a statistical pattern.

A monster that could swallow a holy artifact had been bonked a few times, spat it back out, turned into a tiny box, and decided to follow Mom around.

Apparently, that was just how Mom made friends.

He had long since stopped questioning the world's internal logic. This just confirmed he'd made the right call.

"The money?"

"Right." Galatina took on a thoughtful expression. "When Mom was the Hero, there wasn't much to spend it on."

"There wasn't?"

"Food — the villagers would share. Clothes — the church provided them, the tailors wouldn't take payment. Lodging — inns wouldn't charge. Weapons —" she paused, "— Mom didn't need weapons."

Uriel waited.

"I'd take commissions from the Adventurers' Guild for things no one else could handle, collect the reward when it was done. But if I passed someone who needed help on the way back — the money usually ended up with them instead." She tilted her head slightly. "Eventually the Guild said I was going to starve at that rate and opened an account on my behalf. Started depositing directly. I'd come back from a job and check the balance — it had gone up. Come back again — gone up again. There wasn't really anything I wanted to buy."

The image materialized in his head with painful clarity: a young Galatina standing at a Guild counter, freshly paid, already distributing the entire purse to whoever needed it most in the vicinity, while a Guild accountant sprinted behind her with a ledger trying to keep the books from combusting.

He almost laughed out loud in the middle of the street.

"Eventually I figured it wasn't doing much sitting there, so when I got the box, I put it all in." She lowered her gaze from the sky and looked at him, blinking once. "Does little Uri want spending money?"

"No."

"Really? Mom can give you some."

"I don't need it. I'm with you every day — there's nowhere to spend it. And carrying cash is a liability. Someone could try to take it."

Galatina blinked.

She was quiet for a moment.

With you every day.

It had been tucked inside a practical sentence, delivered quickly, like an offhand observation. But she'd heard it. She nodded to herself, settled by some internal calculation she hadn't shared.

Right. Little Uri was with her every day. Of course he didn't need spending money.

Uriel noticed she'd gone quiet and was smiling at nothing in particular. He wasn't sure why. She'd nodded, which he took as the topic being closed, so he let it go.

There was other business to think through. Seraphina.

The extraction had gone cleanly. Lumina had confirmed it: she'd made it home safely, picked up by her cousin Estella in person. And Uriel was, technically, still her boyfriend. Nominally. For reasons that had made sense at the time.

The reasonable next move was a visit. Some fruit, a gesture, a few appropriate things to say. And then the real problem: how to open the breakup conversation.

He hadn't planned for this part. The relationship had been a cover — mutual convenience, no illusions from either side. With the Academy gone and the Curse Cult's local network dismantled, the operational justification had dropped to zero.

In theory it was simple: find a quiet moment, have the conversation like two rational adults, close the chapter.

In practice, he had no idea how to start.

Use the kidnapping as the pivot point? — You nearly died, and it made me realize this arrangement is putting both of us in danger. Better to end it cleanly. — Seraphina would probably respond to this with her signature flat affect: "Oh. Is that so." And then it would be done.

Blame the cousin? — Your cousin is terrifying and I'd rather not be in her orbit. Nothing personal. — Seraphina might actually say "She, mm, fair enough." But if she ever mentioned it to Estella — if she ever went to verify it with Estella—that Level-70-plus siscon who was basically a walking natural disaster with a sword — that story fell apart immediately. He'd be baiting a one-woman natural disaster for no reason.

Neither option was clean. He shelved both.

"I'm going to go check on Seraphina. Come back with me, drop the clothes, then come out again to help me pick up some fruit?"

"Can't we go now?"

Uriel raised both occupied hands in answer.

Galatina considered this for roughly one second. Then, with the air of someone who had just had an excellent idea, she straightened up.

"Oh — just put them in here. We can take everything out again when we get home."

She tucked her three packages into her storage space with one smooth motion, stepped out empty-handed, and extended both arms toward Uriel with complete naturalness, reaching for the two he was still carrying.

He handed them over without thinking.

He was already working out the logistics — buy the fruit now, bring it back with everything else, much more efficient —

Then something snagged.

He stopped walking.

"Mom."

"Mm?"

"What have we been carrying this entire time."

Galatina blinked.

They looked at each other.

Uriel studied her expression — open, untroubled, and absolutely without guile — he felt the unmistakable fatigue of watching his own logic crumble in real time.

She's contagious. I've been infected. My critical thinking is degenerating to match her frequency.

He let it go within approximately three seconds.

Anyway. If he followed that thread too far, the next question was why they hadn't used a transfer portal to get home. Or why she hadn't just cut the clouds open with a blade to stop the rain.

The answer to both was: keeping a low profile.

Right. Obviously.

"Little Uri."

"Yeah."

"Grapes. Doesn't Seraphina like grapes?"

Uriel blinked back to the present.

He was standing in front of a fruit stall. He had absolutely no memory of walking here.

The stand was orderly — apples, pears, citrus in a row — and off to one side, a small basket lined with thin paper holding a cluster of deep purple grapes.

He looked at the grapes. He looked at Galatina.

She had already leaned in close, lifted one cluster, and brought it to her nose, eyes half-closed, entirely absorbed. Her nose nearly brushed the skin. Then she began examining the individual grapes with the methodical focus of a quality inspector who was not going to approve a single substandard fruit.

Breakup logistics could wait. He watched his mother happily inspect the fruit, and sighed. One crisis at a time.

"...Yeah. Get some. Get plenty."