Chapter 40

Aster moved through the Market District beneath Galamad with his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets while students, merchants, couriers, and entirely too many aggressively wealthy teenagers flowed around him in glittering streams of commerce and casual violence.

The district buzzed with life.

Not normal life, obviously. Astral life. Which meant somebody nearby was selling bottled lightning beside a pastry stand while two cultivators argued over tariffs on imported monster marrow.

Aster stepped aside as a carriage carved entirely from translucent crystal rolled past overhead, suspended by floating script arrays. Inside sat a girl roughly his age reading a book while eating strawberries that probably cost more than his entire childhood.

"...Cool," Aster cursed. "Just got wealth-mogged by a carriage."

His thoughts drifted back toward the duel almost immediately. Because of course they did.

It had been just over a month since Lena nearly beat him unconscious teaching him how to stop treating the Prediction Glyph like weaponised anxiety. A month ago, Cassian had looked unbeatable because Aster didn't understand cultivation. Now Cassian looked unbeatable because Aster finally did.

He activated his NOOTROPIC DISPLAY:

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[ ASTRAL VESSEL: NOOTROPIC DISPLAY ]

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NAME: Aster Elchen

RACE: Human

TYPING: Spirit (Sahasrara) ◈

CULTIVATION: Initiate — Silver Bloom

CULTIVATION TYPE: Symbio-Cultivator

PROGRESSION TIER: 1 — Aware

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⚙️ CORE STATS [-]

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🌌 GATE ALIGNMENT [-]

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🔶 VESSEL INFRASTRUCTURE [-]

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• occupied ○ empty

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📜 PHYSICAL SCRIPTURES [-]

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POINT BURST · F Tier · Spirit · 42%

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📜 ARCANE SCRIPTURES [-]

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N/A

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📜 MERIDIAN CONSTELLATIONS [-]

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POINT BURST CONSTELLATION · Air — Spirit · 34% [forming]

⚔️ ARTEFACTS [-]

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N/A

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⚙️ VENERATION [-]

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FAITH BALANCE:

Blue — 4,200

Yellow — 11,800

Red — 890

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🔒 RESTRICTED ENTRIES

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▣ 6 entries restricted. Fate Index: [NULL] ◈ Chrysalis: [LOCKED] + 4 entries locked.

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That was the irritating part.

He had improved. Objectively. His Point Burst Scripture no longer felt like self-inflicted industrial sabotage. The Prediction Glyph had finally stopped trying to feed his nervous system through a woodchipper every time somebody moved aggressively nearby. He could now survive several exchanges with Lena during training instead of immediately folding like ethically sourced laundry. He'd even earned his Lead-Tier artificing license.

Progress. Real progress.

And yet — now that he actually understood what combat looked like at higher levels? Cassian had somehow become even more terrifying.

A group of academy students passed nearby laughing loudly while carrying polished weapon cases engraved with family crests.

Aster watched them disappear into the crowd.

Right. That too. Because cultivation wasn't just about talent. It was about the infrastructure around it. Money. Materials. Inheritance. Techniques passed down across generations by people rich enough to weaponize nepotism into a spiritual discipline.

Meanwhile Aster had spent most of his childhood learning exciting survival techniques like: How To Identify Which Instant Noodles Taste Least Like Depression.

The gap between him and someone like Cassian wasn't a staircase. It was an economic abyss.

Which brought him directly to his current plan.

Artificing.

Not destiny or chosen-one nonsense. Money. Reliable. Beautiful. Capitalism — the one universal language humanity had apparently been spiritually evolving toward since discovering barter systems and emotional suffering.

Aster adjusted the small satchel hanging at his side.

Inside rested the dagger from his practical examination. His first completed artifact. Still technically academy property until formal registration cleared through the Guild. Still alive too, which remained deeply unsettling in ways he hadn't fully unpacked yet.

The thing occasionally felt like it was trying to cuddle when he held it too long. Like it recognised him.

Which was either beautiful or profoundly concerning depending on how optimistic one felt about sentient weaponry.

Aster rounded another corner — and stopped.

"...Holy shit."

The Artificing Guild sprawled across nearly an entire district sector beneath the lower mountain terraces. Calling it a building felt disrespectful. The structure resembled somebody merging a stock exchange, a cathedral, and a military-industrial complex before handing the design process over to a civilisation experiencing a collective psychotic break about metallurgy.

Massive forge towers rose into the air trailing smoke laced with glowing runic embers. Bridges connected entire subsections suspended above open-air smelting pits where colossal refining arrays pulsed beneath restrained Aether pressure. Freight constructs hauled containment crates overhead along glowing rail systems.

And everywhere — movement. Students, workers, artificers, merchants, couriers, contract brokers, teams of exhausted assistants hauling carts stacked with tagged monster remains while scribes screamed inventory numbers across floating ledger displays.

One side entrance erupted briefly as a containment barrier flashed violent red. Several nearby artificers didn't even look up.

Aster heard someone sigh: "Spirit rejection again."

A second voice: "Told him not to pair volcanic cores with adaptive avian spirits."

"Yeah, well, now the forge is bleeding again."

"Skill issue."

This wasn't mystical artisan nonsense. This was industry. Metaphysical manufacturing. Entire supply chains built around harvesting monsters, refining concepts, and selling violence back to civilisation at profit margins large enough to make religions blush.

Something ugly and fascinating twisted quietly in his chest.

Because for the first time since arriving in the Astral Plane — power suddenly felt reachable. Not reserved exclusively for bloodlines and prodigies. Built.

Aster smiled slightly despite himself.

He reached the main entrance. Two enormous statues loomed above the gateway, depicting artificers mid-strike over a half-formed blade while script arrays spiralled around them like orbiting constellations. Below them, carved into polished obsidian:

CREATION IS THE DOMINION OF CIVILIZATION.

"...Subtle," Aster muttered.

He moved through the stalls slowly, letting his attention drift until it caught on a side stall — older than the others, less polished, less ashamed of it. Recycled frames. Scratched display glass.

His eye caught a particularly radiant core the size of a grapefruit.

Even dormant, the thing radiated presence. Where the other D-Grade cores were priced around fifteen to sixteen thousand Faith, the pricing plaque beneath this one read:

D-GRADE Tornado-Toad CorePRICE: 48,000 FAITH

Aster stared. "...You're joking."

"Not joking," said a dry voice nearby.

The stall's owner — a wiry old man built out of smoke and sour wine, glaring at him like he'd just asked for a discount on sacrilege.

"Hope you're well," Aster said, with his best I'm not here to steal voice.

The man glared harder.

"I'm new to the Artificing Guild," Aster continued, soldiering on. "What makes this core so much more expensive than the others?"

The old man exhaled through his nose like the concept of explanation was a personal insult.

"Tornado-Toad," he said, like that should’ve been enough. "It lives in violent island systems in the cyclone marsh belts. Not your soft little pond creatures. These things sit inside storm systems and help conduct them. They use their croaks as pressure events to store highly compressed Air-Aether in their cores, creating a particularly dense layered resonance."

The man leaned forward slightly.

"This specimen was harvested close to evolution, with some interesting mutation clusters. Doesn't just produce considerable Air-Aether output. It stabilises continuous discharge. No energy spikes. No unexpected decay curves. In the right artifact it'll beat almost any similar-tier core in output and charge — acting as both stabiliser and sustained output engine."

Aster nodded slowly. Then the practical part of his brain — the one that had survived most of his life by being aggressively realistic — cleared its throat.

"I've got... significantly less than the listed price, is the price negotiable" he said.

Silence.

The old man's expression changed immediately. Not anger or disappointment. Something lower.

Classification.

"Oh..."

The word landed like a door locking.

Aster added, carefully, "I was just curious."

That earned him a longer stare than anything else.

"Get out of my stall."

Aster blinked. "I haven't—"

"Out."

The old man gestured sharply, like shooing off something that had mistaken itself for a customer.

Aster left.

He didn't look back. He was used to being priced out of rooms before he finished standing in them.

The Registry Hall sat at the centre of the Guild like the bureaucratic heart of a living organism. Loud, overcrowded, vaguely hostile, and somehow smelling simultaneously of molten metal and administrative despair.

Dozens of artificers moved through the chamber carrying crates, contracts, spirit containers, and enough weaponised paperwork to destabilise a lesser government. Floating boards rotated overhead displaying active commissions:

URGENT: D-RANK REFINER REQUIRED — CORE INSTABILITY

REQUEST: THIRTY-SEVEN REPLACEMENT INSCRIPTION PLATES

PRIVATE COMMISSION: ANTI-SPIRIT RESONANCE CASKET — DISCRETION REQUIRED

One contract appeared to simply read: NO MORE EXPLOSIONS.

Honestly, the specificity inspired confidence.

Aster joined the shortest line near the central registration counters while trying not to stare too obviously at the tavern built directly into one side of the hall.

Apparently artificers had looked at their profession — a discipline involving explosive materials, semi-sentient weapons, and reality-altering runes — and decided alcohol would improve the process.

Functional alcoholism. The backbone of civilisation.

The clerk who eventually waved him forward looked exhausted in the way only career bureaucrats and battlefield medics ever truly achieved. Five pens pinned through her hair like emergency weapons.

Her eyes flicked toward him briefly. "Registration documents."

Aster handed over the brass case. The woman opened it, scanned the artificing seal, then raised one eyebrow slightly.

"Recent certification."

"Very recent," Aster agreed.

"Congratulations. Statistically most first-time applicants either fail practical synchronisation or set something important on fire."

"Important specifically to them or in general?"

"Yes."

She slid several parchment sheets toward him without enthusiasm.

Aster signed and the clerk stamped the final document. A pulse of Faith moved through the contract. The Guild seal flared once.

Registered.

Huh. That should probably feel more dramatic. Instead it mostly felt like accidentally becoming taxable.

"Contracts are available through the central board or local commission archives. Higher-risk contracts require sponsorship or performance history. Repeated failure rates may result in suspension."

"By suspension you mean—"

"Temporary guild restrictions."

"...And not execution…?"

The clerk paused.

"...Not at your level."

Wonderful.

The Contract Wall dominated the far side of the chamber.

Thousands of commissions overlapped across glowing boards, updating, disappearing and rearranging themselves according to rank, deadline and whatever other criteria bureaucracies used to disguise the fact that somebody, somewhere, had made a spreadsheet.

It resembled somebody skinning administration alive and nailing the remains to a cathedral.

Aster stopped beneath it.

Right.

This was the part that mattered.

Not the forges. Not the statues. Not even the deeply reassuring tavern positioned within staggering distance of several industrial accidents.

This.

Money went in.

Artefacts came out.

More money came back.

And, if everything went according to plan, some of that money could eventually be converted into something capable of punching Cassian Vale through a wall.

Capitalism with achievable objectives.

He started near the centre.

No point looking at rewards first. That was how casinos worked.

His eyes moved instead to the requirements.

ASH DRAKE GAUNTLETS — REWARD: 55,000 FAITH

Aster stared at the number.

Fifty-five thousand.

Enough to buy the Tornado-Toad core with change left over.

For approximately three beautiful seconds, his brain began spending money he did not possess.

Then he opened the material requirements.

His optimism suffered a workplace accident.

Ash Drake tendon.

Two treated marrow plates.

Refined Fire-Aether conductor.

Four inscription lattices.

Core stabiliser.

Binding catalyst.

And, because apparently financial ruin required accessories, a Grade-D spirit-compatible housing.

Aster added the numbers.

Then added them again in case arithmetic had recently developed malice.

Even buying conservatively, he'd need more Faith than he currently possessed just to begin.

And that assumed nothing failed.

Which was adorable.

One cracked inscription plate and the profit margin disappeared. A damaged marrow plate and he'd be borrowing money. A failed spirit integration and he could spend six months explaining to creditors why his kidneys were not technically liquid assets.

There it was.

The difference between him and whoever usually accepted contracts like this.

Not skill.

Starting capital.

Someone with forty thousand Faith sitting in a storage ring could make fifteen thousand.

Someone with four thousand could admire the opportunity from a respectful distance.

Aster stared at the contract for another moment.

So even making money required already having money.

Nice to know civilisation had achieved metaphysical consistency.

He moved on.

The next commission required venom extraction from something called a Screaming Death Leech.

No.

Not because he was afraid of leeches.

He simply believed anything evolution had felt compelled to name Screaming Death deserved its privacy.

Another requested the binding of a Lesser Storm Spirit into ceremonial armour.

Aster read the specifications twice.

Apparently somebody wanted him to convince an intelligent weather phenomenon to accept an unpaid internship inside a breastplate.

Ethically questionable.

More importantly, the containment deposit alone would consume almost everything he had.

Pass.

He kept moving.

Contract after contract.

Some paid absurd amounts but required materials he couldn't afford.

Others required equipment he didn't own.

Several wanted prior Guild performance ratings, which was an impressively efficient way of requiring work experience before allowing someone to acquire work experience.

Then—

Aster stopped.

50× POISON SPIKES — REWARD: 1,100 FAITH PER ACCEPTED UNIT

He opened the specifications.

Standardised dimensions.

Lead-tier inscription tolerances.

Basic toxin reservoir.

No spirit binding or core integration.

Materials available through Guild wholesalers.

Individual payment on accepted pieces.

Aster went still.

Then read the last line again.

Individual payment on accepted pieces.

Oh.

That changes things.

He didn't need enough capital to manufacture all fifty.

He needed enough to manufacture the first batch.

Sell ten.

Use the payment to buy materials for the next ten.

Again.

Then again.

The contract wasn't fifty-five thousand Faith.

Not really.

It was a ladder.

A boring, repetitive, poison-filled ladder.

But Aster had spent enough of his life discovering that most ladders were privately owned to appreciate one when he saw it.

He checked the projected material costs.

The margin wasn't spectacular. Once materials, Guild fees and wastage were accounted for, each spike would earn considerably less than the number printed at the top.

Didn't matter.

The materials were cheap.

The process was repeatable.

More importantly, failure on one spike didn't destroy the entire production run.

No exotic monster organs.

No sentient weather.

No single catastrophic point where forty thousand Faith could become smoke.

Low capital.

Low variance.

Reliable return.

Aster felt something warm and deeply inappropriate stir in his chest.

Financial stability.

God.

Was this what arousal becomes in your twenties?

He pressed his thumb against the contract seal.

The parchment flashed.

One hundred Faith disappeared from his reserves with all the warmth and compassion of a tax audit.

CONTRACT REGISTERED.

50× POISON SPIKES.

Locked.

His first Guild commission.

Aster stared at the confirmation.

Four thousand two hundred Blue Faith.

Fifty poison spikes.

One artificing licence.

And approximately three months before Cassian Vale attempted to turn him into an educational example.

It wasn't much.

But for the first time, the distance between what Aster had and what Cassian had no longer looked entirely like a wall.

It looked like arithmetic.

That, at least, he knew how to fight.

His smirk barely had time to form before —