“Hold on. Hold your horses,” Aaron raised his hands and attempted to calm the crowd. It had gotten a little large and rowdy. “You’ll all get your turn.”

  Well, maybe… hopefully…

  He was already running low on soul-repairing food, but they didn’t need to know that. Not yet, at least.

  “How much for the Rejuvenating Spirit Touched Slug Sashimi?” A man said, waving his arms.

  “That one? Ahh… I… umm…”

  “One hundred thousand SC!” Clem interjected.

  “A bit steep, isn’t it? It’s just one meal! How do you expect me to pay a price like that?”

  “Do you want your soul to recover or not? We’re running a business here! Besides, the trials aren’t going to last forever. It’s up to you, though. But this could be the difference between completing more trials and not. I’m sure missing out on a Title isn’t that big of a deal, right, Aaron?”

  “Ahh, well, I’m–”

  Clem elbowed Aaron’s side.

  “Right, Aaron?”

  “Yeah, right,” he nodded.

  “Fine. You’re a bunch of thieves,” the man growled, but transferred the SC nonetheless.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, too,” Clem smiled.

  “Is that wise?”

  “Meh,” Clem shrugged. “Probably never see them again anyway.”

  Aaron wasn’t sure if that was true, but he couldn’t really argue with the results. He was earning significantly more than he had expected to.

  “You know, I never expected my cooking to be in such demand. I figured only ogres would be game enough to eat this stuff.”

  “Well, not everyone can do what you can. But you should probably keep the feet stuff to yourself. If people knew you stirred the broth with your toes, then maybe they’d be less likely to buy.”

  “You do what?” Someone in the crowd said.

  “I said, if only people knew you purred the cloth with your nodes!” Clem smiled.

  “What does that even mean?” The person said, looking confused.

  “Next!” Clem called, ignoring their utter bewilderment.

  “You have quite the way with people, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been doing this for a while. How can I help you?” She continued as a lizard person stepped up.

  “Soul recovery. Preferably something for dizziness, if you have it.”

  Clem handed over another dish and charged accordingly.

  They continued serving the remaining customers until Aaron was out of spirit-touched food to sell, and were forced to wave away the remainders.

  “Thanks for your help, Clem. I really owe you. I’m new to selling things, as you can probably tell. Having your expert help really made things a lot easier.”

  “Well, my door is always open for soul-strengthening dishes,” she whistled.

  “I should’ve seen that coming. But sure, I’ll cook you up something when I can.”

  He knew he had to be a little careful when it came to making such promises. Soul-strengthening food was rare, and he wasn’t entirely sure how easy it would be to get on the outside. After all, he still needed to push toward his D grade racial evolution himself. But he had some time to worry about that. It would make him somewhat stronger, but as long as he reached it before the Class and Profession bottlenecks, he wasn’t overly concerned.

  Either way, thanks to Clem’s help, he was sitting pretty with a little over two and a half million SC after selling through all of his stock. And he still had the best ingredients saved for himself.

  However, he was planning on using said ingredients to make new and powerful dishes that could help him grind out the remaining trials, and as such, he probably wasn’t making any more credits anytime soon.

  Still, he had plenty to work with, and his System store was already at level 8. Since it was upgraded with the Trial of Dominance, he wanted to fully upgrade it anyway, but since he hadn’t visited it since first unlocking it, he was desperate to check it out.

  Stepping into the System store, the purple elephant behind the counter waved.

  “Hey, umm.”

  “It’s Nigel,” the assistant smiled.

  “Oh, right. Sorry, it’s been a while.”

  “No worries. How may I assist you?”

  “I got some credits to spend. I was wondering if I could take a look around.”

  “Of course. I will warn you, though. The catalogue is quite extensive. It’ll be a lot easier for you if you tell me your price range and what you’re looking for.”

  “Umm, okay. I guess my price range is around 2.5 million SC, and… actually, well, I’m not entirely sure what I want.”

  “I see. Well, we have the usual. Weapons, armor, recipes, blueprints. Domination items, even spaceships, if you want to go sightseeing in the stars. Anything take your fancy?”

  “Um, all of it, to be honest.”

  “Well, how about just telling me where you’d like to start?”

  “Weapons, I suppose,” Aaron shrugged. He hadn’t come planning to get a weapon, but it seemed like the most obvious answer.

  Nigel glanced at the plated gloves on Aaron’s hands. “Fist weapons, huh? I’ve got a few pairs that are better than what you have. Unfortunately, they’re nothing particularly special. There is one exceptional pair, but they’re not available to you yet, and are very expensive. However, I do have some nice materials. Maybe you could make your own pair? Say, do you have an affinity? I’ve got a lot of materials. I can find something perfect for you.”

  He didn’t have an affinity, but Aaron had thought about them recently. He knew he wasn’t ready for one just yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pick materials that might help his specific style of fighting.

  Leaning over the counter, he whispered. “Spirits are kind of my thing. Got anything like that?”

  Nigel’s brows perked. “Oh, spirits, huh? Don’t get many of your kind in here. But actually, I do. I got this healthy chunk of shimmer stone. It’ll set you back two million, but it's the good stuff and should make you at least one item. Good for armor or weapons, and perfect for anybody who uses spirits and their power.”

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  Aaron hummed over it. If he could make weapons or armor with something spirit-related, that was certainly something he wanted. But he would still need it crafted for him, and he wasn’t sure how much that would cost. Besides, he didn’t want to just pick the first thing he was offered. That felt a little too impulsive.

  “Let me think about it. What else do you have?”

  There were many, many items for sale. Including some very interesting ones, but many of them fell into the realm of not knowing when exactly they would become useful.

  For example, he didn’t even have a settlement yet, and didn’t know if he would even go that route, so buying stuff for one seemed kind of silly. He felt similarly about space-related stuff. It was cool, but not immediately useful.

  In fact, he quickly found himself dismissing anything that wasn’t immediately useful within the trials. Sure, he wouldn’t be here much longer, but buying things for after the trials felt a little like he was skipping a step. After all, right now, he was focused on beating Mo’han. And anything else was a distraction from that.

  “Just give me the shimmer stone,” Aaron finally said.

  “Here you go, valued customer.”

  Smiling, he took the stone. It had punched a serious hole in his savings, but hopefully it would prove its worth.

  The shimmer stone looked as one might imagine it to. It was basically a big rock that shimmered and was partially transparent.

  “One moment,” Nigel said as Aaron turned to leave.

  “You’ll need a metal to bind that to.”

  “Wait, seriously? Couldn’t you have said that before I bought this?”

  He was a little annoyed that he had spent so much on something that was useless without more materials, but quickly calmed down.

  It turned out metal wasn’t as expensive, and whilst he couldn’t afford the absolutely best metals in the multiverse, he could afford a particularly useful one. For 300k, he purchased a few ingots of vampire iron.

  Even though vampire iron wasn’t the strongest metal around, it was famous for giving items crafted with it a unique link to the person whose blood they consumed.

  All Aaron had to do was cut his hand open and pour blood onto the metal. When he did, ichor poured out, making the bonding even more unique, and it bubbled for several seconds before being absorbed by the metal.

  “That’s something,” he murmured, eyeing the strange metal.

  It seemed to call to him now, like he had marked it as his own, and he felt strangely connected to the metal.

  Alright, let’s go see if I can’t find a blacksmith.

  There were undoubtedly enough blacksmiths in the trials that he was confident about finding one. But there was no need to go asking around when he had someone who likely knew exactly who to go to.

  Making friends with Clem proved more and more useful, as she was permanently in the crafting station, and the moment he asked her, she led him straight to a smith she was friendly with.

  Tog was a golem with a flat face and thick, stony chin. He wielded a hammer like none other, and seemed entirely unbothered by the radiating heat coming from his forge..

  “This is my friend. He’s looking for a smith. Reckon you could give him a hand?” Clem asked with Aaron in tow.

  Tog looked up at Clem as he hammered a red-hot stick of steel. “Hey, don’t I know you? Yeah! You’re that guy who dies all the time, aren’t you?”

  Wait, that’s the reputation I have around here?

  “Yeah,” Aaron groaned. “That’s me.”

  “Pleasure to meet you. How can I help?”

  “I got some materials. I was kind of hoping to get a new pair of fist weapons.”

  The golem looked at Aaron’s fists. “Yeah, those gloves are pretty weak-looking. I could make you something that will last a little longer. It’ll cost you a fair bit. Unless you bring your own materials, then I can work something out with you.”

  “Lucky me, then,” Aaron said, and pulled the materials out of his scabbard. “I got a shimmer stone and some vampire iron.”

  “Oh? Good stuff. There’s a problem, though,” Tog said.

  “And that is?”

  “Shimmer stone is odd… It seems to require absurd amounts of energy to properly bind with other materials. I can’t just hammer them together. If I try to use it, the recipe would almost certainly fail and waste the materials.”

  Aaron tilted his head. If energy was needed, he was fairly certain he could handle that aspect of the job. Besides, he had bought this to help him complete the trials and beat Mo’han.

  If it failed, and he wasted the materials, that would suck. But what if it didn’t? What was the risk he was taking? If he got some powerful weapon, maybe it would help him knock out another trial or two?

  It’s a risk worth taking.

  He wasn’t the richest, but playing it safe was dumb, especially with Titles on the line.

  ***

  Tog had tried repeatedly to talk the stubborn human out of it, but he simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. The risk seemed stupid to him. Shimmer stone was quite valuable. Sure, he didn’t know how to work with it, but he was still E grade, and barely knew how the multiverse worked.

  In Tog’s mind, it made sense to hang onto it. Surely once everyone returned to their worlds, plenty of smiths would figure out how to use materials like shimmer stone, and such valuables wouldn’t go to waste.

  It wasn’t just a theory, either. Tog knew it was almost certainly going to ruin good materials. But the human was insistent and had offered to pay 200k SC, not a figure he could just turn down so easily.

  He looked up at the human again, who blasted back with two thumbs up, and reluctantly got to work.

  First, he heated up the vampire iron and began to hammer it into position, ready for the shimmer stones.

  The human had also provided a recipe, Majestic Gauntlets of the Cosmic Horror, which was Legendary rarity, and Mana Sensitive Tungsten Spikes, of Epic rarity, further increasing the risk of failure.

  The problem was that all these things weren’t meant to go together. It was a big risk, but with any luck, combining them wouldn’t ruin the original recipe.

  Still, Tog was the big winner. He had to consume the recipe to use it, and having a Legendary recipe was worth a huge amount in and of itself. But still, he didn’t want to create bad work.

  As he hammered the vampire iron, he folded it into place, prepared it for the shimmer stone, and placed the tungsten spikes nearby.

  Tog really didn’t understand how Shimmer Stone worked. He had worked with a much smaller shard of it previously. Someone in his Tutorial had gotten their hands on it, and he had attempted to craft it into something.

  But nothing took. He could feel the shard’s demand for energy, as was common when crafting with rare materials. But no matter how much mana he poured into it, nothing happened.

  In the end, it shattered and was a complete waste of materials. It was frustrating, and the arrogant human thinking that somehow he could change the outcome irritated him further.

  The human watched over his work and seemed to believe he could somehow provide help, despite not knowing the first thing about smithing. But it was his materials, and his credits, so Tog went along with it. Reminding himself that it was just business.

  If it had only been 200k, he might have refused for the sake of his reputation, but the recipe was simply too great to refuse.

  “We doing it now?” The human asked, and Tog sourly nodded.

  “Yep. Get ready.”

  It was a formality. He knew this wasn’t going to work. But if the human wanted to try, then so be it.

  Taking the shimmer stone, he placed it into the heart of the metal he was molding into the gauntlets, and began to hammer it into it, all the while pouring his mana into the item.

  But as he worked, something strange happened. The air around him began to shimmer, and not because of the stone.

  He glanced over, and the human’s eyes had gone completely white. He could feel something in the air as well, though he wasn’t certain what it was exactly.

  But then suddenly, to his utter surprise, the shimmer stone thudded with energy as if activated, and his eyes widened.

  He had no idea how it was possible, but it was humming with weird energy he could not comprehend. But if Tog knew one thing, it was smithing, and he knew he had to take advantage of the rich energy rippling through the stone and the metal, and he began furiously hammering.

  And bit by bit, to his absolutely bewildered amazement, the shimmer stone was binding to the vampire iron of the metal gauntlets. Then, when he hit it again, a flash of blinding light shot out, almost sending him toppling backward.

  The stone had actually split, but it hadn’t lost an ounce of power. No, it was even stronger than before. But now there were two perfect white, shimmering oval stones cast into the center of the metal.

  “How… incredible…”

  He had to shake the amazement away. The metal and the stones were overflowing with energy, and he had to work fast to make the most of it.

  Nodding to himself, Tog got to work, bending and forming the metal. He hammered, heated, and cooled. The forge roared hotter and hotter as he pumped the bellows. The metal was split in two and shaped into a form.

  When it was starting to resemble iron gauntlets, he cast the tungsten spikes into it and folded the metal around them.

  Hours passed as he continued to shape it to perfection, and throughout the entire process, the human never left his side, and pupils never returned to his eyes. It was a little creepy, but somehow Tog knew that the human was helping him somehow.

  He had no idea what the human truly was, but he couldn’t deny that he was impressed.

  And finally, the finishing touches were complete, and Tog lifted the gauntlets up above his head. The results were better than expected.

  “This… these are amazing. Human, what in the mountain’s pits did you do?”

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