The crystal took Gojo first, mostly because he walked straight up to it without waiting to be invited, radiating the easy confidence of a man who had never once doubted he’d come out ahead in any transaction.
[Guest: Gojo Satoru] [Six Eyes — 15,000 Void Points.] [Limitless / Infinity — 20,000 Void Points.] [Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue / Reversal: Red — 10,000 Void Points.] [Hollow Purple — 15,000 Void Points.] [Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void — 25,000 Void Points.] [Total Assessed Value — 85,000 Void Points.] The room went dead silent for a beat, and then erupted.
“Eighty-five thousand,” Sheldon said, in the flat, wounded tone of a man recalculating his entire worldview in real time.
“I sold my doctorate for two thousand.
Two thousand.
This man just got paid the equivalent of my entire life’s work, forty-two and a half times over, for being extremely good at not getting hit.” “That’s rich,” Naruto said, staring at the number with something between awe and personal offense.
“Money,” Gojo said cheerfully, tucking his hands behind his head, “isn’t really something I’ve ever had to think about.
Guess that’s still true here.” He turned his blindfolded gaze toward Mary with a grin she could feel even without seeing his eyes.
“So what’s a guy do with eighty-five grand around here?” “We’ll get to that, Mr.
Gojo,” Mary said, with the strained composure of someone determined not to let this particular guest fluster her.
Levi went next, arms crossed, entirely unbothered by the number that had just reduced a grown physicist to muttering.
[Guest: Levi Ackerman] [Ackerman Bloodline — 6,000 Void Points.] [ODM Gear Mastery — 2,000 Void Points.] [Total Assessed Value — 8,000 Void Points.] Levi glanced at the number, unimpressed.
“Tch.
Cheap.” “It’s a respectable figure for a lower-level world, sir,” Mary offered.
“I fought titans with my bare hands and a set of blades.
Eight thousand.” He said it the way a man says something he’s already decided not to argue about, because arguing about it wouldn’t change it.
Sheldon, however, had opinions.
“Wait.
Wait.
He’s worth less than the wizard’s bloodline, and considerably less than the fox kid’s, for what sounds like a genetically engineered superhuman combat lineage?
That doesn’t track.
Magic outranking a bloodline makes some sense.
But raw physical enhancement losing to it by that margin—” “It’s not about how many people have it,” Ai explained, choosing her words carefully.
“It’s about how much a single bloodline can actually do.
The Ackerman line makes someone faster, stronger, harder to kill — extraordinary, but still fighting within the rules of an ordinary body.
A wizarding bloodline opens the door to an entirely different set of rules.
The crystal isn’t just about physical strength.” Sheldon opened his mouth to argue further, thought better of it, and settled for a deeply unsatisfied silence instead.
Levi, for his part, looked entirely unbothered either way, which somehow made Sheldon’s protest feel even more pointless.
Tanjiro stepped up next, hands folded, oddly nervous for someone about to be told his own worth in numbers.
[Guest: Kamado Tanjiro] [Water Breathing — 3,000 Void Points.] [Hinokami Kagura (Sun Breathing) — 12,000 Void Points.] [Enhanced Sense of Smell — 4,000 Void Points.] [Total Assessed Value — 19,000 Void Points.] “Nineteen thousand,” Tanjiro repeated softly, looking almost apologetic about it, as though he felt he ought to have been worth less and was slightly embarrassed to have been worth more.
Robin’s turn came with far less ceremony, the crystal’s light settling over her with the same unhurried calm she gave everything.
[Guest: Nico Robin] [Hana Hana no Mi — 18,000 Void Points.] [Archaeological Expertise (Poneglyph Literacy) — 6,000 Void Points.] [Total Assessed Value — 24,000 Void Points.] “A fair price for a devil fruit and a dying art,” Robin mused, entirely pleased with herself.
“History does pay better than people expect.” And then, last of all, Anya climbed up onto the little step someone had thoughtfully placed in front of the crystal for guests her size, and the light gathered around her.
[Guest: Anya Forger] [Telepathy — 10,500 Void Points.] The number appeared easily enough.
What came next did not.
Every guest crowded near it went very quiet, staring at Anya with the particular unnerved fascination of people who had just watched something invisible and slightly unsettling happen in front of them.
“Worry not,” Mary said carefully, before the silence could stretch on too long.
“Telepathy doesn’t function inside Void City.
None of your powers do, actually — not fully.
It’s part of how the peace here is kept.
Nothing that could genuinely hurt someone or invade one’s privacy works at full strength within these walls, unless the System itself allows it for something specific.” Gojo’s easy grin faltered for the first time since he’d arrived.
“Wait, hold on.
My Infinity doesn’t work either?” “It works enough to keep you safe, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mary said.
“But no, you couldn’t use it offensively here even if you wanted to.
None of you could.” A slow, uneasy quiet settled over the newcomers at that — the first genuine crack in the confidence most of them had walked in with.
• • Behind the scenes, entirely unaware of the ripple she’d just caused, Ari was occupied with matters of far greater personal importance.
[Message from City Lord, to Ai: Find out if Gojo and Levi are married.
Or seeing anyone.
Casually.
Don’t make it weird.] Ai read the message twice, glanced up toward the general direction of the private feed camera with an expression that suggested she found this request extremely weird already, and set about her task anyway, because it was, technically, still a request from her employer.
She drifted over to Gojo first, under the entirely reasonable cover of walking him through his balance.
“Before we get into spending — I do like to get a feel for our regular guests.
Do you have anyone waiting for you back home?
A wife, a partner?” Gojo blinked behind his blindfold, then grinned slowly and wide, clearly delighted by the question in a way that suggested he’d caught exactly what was actually being asked.
“Nope.
Single.
Very single.” He leaned in slightly, conspiratorial.
“Is that a required field on the form, or is somebody asking for a specific reason?” “Just standard hospitality,” Ai said, with the flawless, unbothered smile of a professional who had lied more convincingly than this on far smaller stakes.
“Uh-huh,” Gojo said, clearly not buying it for a second, grin widening further.
“Well, tell whoever’s asking I said hi.” Levi’s version of the same question went considerably worse.
“Are you married?” Ai asked, doing her best to make it sound like an offhand detail rather than the entire point of the conversation.
Levi looked at her for a long, flat moment.
“Why.” “Just standard hospitality,” Ai said again, with slightly less confidence this time.
“No,” Levi said, and left it there, arms still crossed, expression giving away absolutely nothing.
He did not ask why the question had been asked, which was somehow more unnerving than if he had.
Ai reported both results back to Ari’s interface with the weary efficiency of someone who fully intended never to be given this particular assignment again.
Behind her camera feed, Ari sat very still for a moment, absorbing this information with the focused seriousness of a woman receiving quarterly earnings.
• • With the assessments finished, the buying began, and Ari — watching from the comfort of her sofa with the focused attention of a woman who had temporarily rediscovered her work ethic purely for the sake of profit — did not waste a single opportunity.
Gojo’s eighty-five thousand points bought him, among other things, two lightsabers he absolutely could not resist and a small mountain of everything else Sheldon had been too poor to afford, purchased with the careless enthusiasm of a man who had genuinely never had to budget for anything in his life.
Levi, with considerably less to spend, bought exactly what he needed and nothing else — a set of all-weather clothing, inspected first for cleanliness, and nothing more.
Tanjiro lingered near the pill shelf for a long while, and Robin bought a small stack of books on worlds she’d never heard of, a few other things.
Every single sale relisted itself on the shelves within moments at the shop’s usual markup, and Ari, tucked away and utterly shameless about it, watched her balance climb with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who had just turned an afternoon of mild effort into an obscene profit margin.
“Capitalism,” she said to no one, popping a snack into her mouth, “really does taste good when you’re the one doing the exploiting.” [The System agrees, host.
KPIs trending favorably.] “Don’t get used to it.” • • Dinner, as always, drew everyone toward Tsukasa’s kitchen, and the new arrivals settled in around the table with the same wide-eyed reverence the first batch had shown five days earlier — a fact that did not go unnoticed by the veterans of the group.
“Told you the food was insane,” Naruto said around a mouthful of something he still couldn’t name, jabbing his chopsticks toward Tanjiro like this was a personal victory.
Tanjiro, however, had a more urgent question weighing on him than the meal in front of him.
He turned to Mary with the careful, hopeful seriousness of someone almost afraid of the answer.
“The pills you mentioned — the ones that cure illness.
Could one of them cure my sister?
She was turned into a demon.
I’ve been trying to find a way to change her back.” Mary’s expression softened, and she chose her words with visible care.
“I’m afraid not, Mr.
Kamado.
The Health Pills cure ordinary illness — surface wounds, fevers, infections, that sort of thing.
What happened to your sister isn’t an illness in that sense.
It’s a transformation, and transformation isn’t something our shop currently offers a cure for.” She hesitated, then added, more gently, “Though I wouldn’t say never.
The city is still growing.
It’s simply not there yet.” Tanjiro nodded slowly, disappointment plain on his face but not despair — the look of a boy used to hearing not yet rather than never, and choosing to hold onto the difference.
Across the table, Gojo had already moved on to matters he considered considerably more important.
“So,” he said, leaning toward Ai with the easy, shameless charm of a man who had never once been told no and didn’t expect to start now, “does being devastatingly handsome get me a discount around here?
Feels like it should.
I’m doing the city a favor just by showing up.” “The pricing is fixed, Mr.
Gojo,” Ai said, entirely unruffled.
“Worth asking,” he said, unbothered by the refusal.
Sakamoto, seated a short distance away, said nothing at all, but the faint, knowing curve of his mouth suggested he privately agreed the question had merit.
• • Down at the children’s end of the table, a rather different kind of bonding was already well underway.
Anya had attached herself to Harry and Naruto within minutes of the crystal scene, drawn by the easy, unguarded warmth the two of them seemed to radiate toward anyone smaller than themselves, and by the time dinner was properly underway, all three of them were deep in a conversation only children could sustain with this much enthusiasm.
“You can’t read minds at all in here?” Naruto asked, clearly fascinated.
“That’s so weird.
What’s that even like?” “Quiet,” Anya said, with the profound, faintly betrayed solemnity of someone robbed of a superpower she’d only just gotten used to having.
“Anya doesn’t like it.” “I dunno, might be nice,” Harry offered.
“Not knowing what everyone’s thinking all the time.” Anya considered this with the seriousness of someone weighing a genuinely difficult philosophical question, then shrugged it off entirely in favor of what actually mattered.
“Do you have peanuts here?” “Tons,” Naruto said proudly, like he’d personally stocked the pantry.
“Wait ’til you try the ramen.” By the time the meal ended, the three of them had already claimed a corner of the childcare center as their own, and Cinderella, watching from the doorway with a fond, tired smile, found herself with one more small charge to look after — one who, unlike the other two, was already fast asleep against Naruto’s shoulder before the story she’d started reading was even halfway through.