Romen didn’t look like much. Rags for clothes, a scowl that seemed permanently stitched onto his face, and a wooden box strapped to his back nearly three times his own size.
"You gonna help me with this thing, or just stand there staring?" He jerked a thumb at the box. "Digestive juices ruined half my stock. Damn frog didn’t even have the decency to chew."
Logan blinked again, then found his voice. "Sorry. You’re... a merchant?"
"Magiko Merchant. Mystery merchant, whatever works." Romen unstrapped the box and let it thud into the mud. "Wander around long enough, get swallowed by something big enough, and eventually some fool kills it and lets you out. Great system. Real dignified."
"So when this map was generated, you were directly inside the frog?"
"Exactly! I’m pretty sure the other fellows arrived at far better locations! Tsk."
He popped the lid, and shelves folded out from inside it in ways that shouldn’t have fit.
Rows of bottles, folded cloth, and things Logan didn’t have names for yet lined every level.
"Take a look, take your time, and don’t touch anything you’re not buying." Romen crossed his arms. "Prices are prices. I don’t haggle."
Logan scanned the shelves. A curved dagger that hummed faintly. A cloak folded so tight it looked like it weighed nothing. A jar of something that glowed sickly green and probably shouldn’t be opened indoors.
Then he saw it, sitting alone on a shelf near the back, small enough to fit in one palm.
```
[ Class Change Crystal (Mysterious) ]
Deletes current class. Grants a new class of random rank.
Class generation influenced by the buyer: write any two words in it before using it. Class level will reset.
Cost: 100,000 Tower Points
```
Logan stared at it a long moment.
’A new class. Any type I want, as long as I keep it to two words.’
His own class flashed through his mind unprompted. Caretaker. Normal-rank. The joke of his graduating class before Boundless Genesis had even shown up on his status screen.
The rank would still be random. He could end up with Normal again, no better than what he already had. But even then, he’d have picked it himself, instead of getting whatever the trial chamber decided to hand him.
’Support. Genesis, maybe. Or something built around Restore, since that’s already carrying half of what I do.’
He didn’t need to decide today. He needed the points first, and he was nowhere close.
He checked his own total out of habit.
Nowhere close.
He looked over the rest of the shelves anyway. Weapons that hummed with stored enchantment, each one priced in the thousands. Armor plated thick enough to stop a cannonball, priced about the same. A cloak that Romen swore could turn a person invisible for thirty seconds, priced high enough that Logan didn’t bother asking twice.
None of it tempted him the way the crystal did.
’I don’t need to buy power. I can build it.’ He thought of Solveig, of Juggernaut, of a Tier-1 summoning circle that had already handed him three Legendaries in one sitting.
Give him enough Tower Points and enough patience, and Boundless Genesis could make almost anything on these shelves obsolete.
He could have Legendaries and Mythic units that can work way better than these items. He could have production-type create gears and various items.
This battlefield was for him to conquer with his army of Legendary and Mythic summons using Boundless Genesis.
The crystal was different. It touched something Boundless Genesis couldn’t reach.
"So," Logan said, "do you have a permanent spot? Somewhere I could find you again?"
Romen looked him over, then grinned, showing a few too many teeth for comfort.
"You planning on buying that crystal? I can smell a shit class on you. And the earlier you change it, the better since class level reset."
"Yes. I want to buy that crystal."
"Then I’ll stay right here." Romen dropped down onto a half-sunk log as he owned it. "Nice spot. Quiet, pretty, frog’s dead so the ponds won’t kill me in my sleep. I’ll set up shop here for whoever else wanders through too."
They left Romen counting his stock and picked up the compass trail again.
The direction hadn’t changed since the last time Logan checked it, a steady pull northeast, past the ponds and back into deeper forest.
The monsters they crossed barely slowed them down anymore.
A pack of boar-like things with tusks like curved knives broke from the underbrush once, and Juggernaut walked through them without breaking stride, Crush Charge scattering the whole group before they’d finished deciding to attack.
Something serpentine tried an ambush from a low branch an hour later and lasted about as long, Vex’s claws finding it before it finished dropping.
Neither fight earned so much as a full stop. Logan barely looked up from his own status screen most of the time, watching the number in the corner of his vision climb steadily higher with every kill.
By the time the trees thinned out again, hours had passed, and the number had climbed a long way.
```
Tower Points: 18,490
```
The compass had led them to an old tree, wider around than Juggernaut’s whole body, its bark half swallowed by a curtain of thick vines.
Logan pushed the vines aside since the compass was glowing for the first time, indicating he had arrived at the spot.
Past the vines, beneath them, a hole opened into the trunk itself, dark and just barely wide enough to walk through.
’That’s not a tree. That’s a door.’
He looked back at the group, then at the hole, and felt the same pull he’d felt at the mouth of the Crystalroot Hollow.
’Only one way to find out.’
Logan looked at his summons. "The hole is wide enough. All of us are going in."
"It’s so dark..." Stonewing felt cringed.
"I like it." Vex shrugged. "Should I go in first?"
"Hehehehehe~" Stitchgrin stepped forward, summoning some Toys he had devoured on the way here. All at level 10 Epic-rank.
Suddenly, Solveig moved.
From the sky, a massive ice crystal came hurling.
"Careful!" Solveig swung his sword, activating Dawnbreaker Slash as his arm blurred, splitting the attack into four pieces as they split apart.
"A player." Stonewing’s sharp eyes narrowed.
In the sky, atop a giant icy bird stretching 10 meters long with 25 meters of wingspan, an eighteen-year-old boy with brown hair stood.
"Tsk, I missed. Let’s bolt. Those summons look damn powerful." The player flew away as wind gathered from his talent, increasing the speed of the Epic-rank ice bird.
Logan’s eyes sharpened. "Follow him, Solveig, but don’t let him discover you. I want the location of his base."
"Understood."
Solveig left, his Radiant Wings giving him a 100% speed boost as he disappeared into the clouds.