Ari was, by any honest measure, having a wonderful time.
The system shop turned out to be far more entertaining than she had any right to expect.
Most of what filled its endless shelves was either wildly out of her price range or entirely useless to a woman whose grandest ambition was an undisturbed afternoon, but reading the descriptions cost her nothing, and she’d discovered there was a particular pleasure in scrolling past items with no intention of buying them at all.
Some were plainly useful.
Some were strange enough to make her tilt her head and reread the description twice.
Some left her wondering, with mild and pleasant curiosity, exactly what kind of world could have produced something so specific and so bizarre.
She was halfway through the description of an item she was fairly sure served no practical purpose whatsoever, comfortably slouched against the sofa with her drink balanced on the armrest, when the familiar chime interrupted her.
[Host.] [It is time to send your first invitation.] Ari paused, one eyebrow lifting at the panel.
“Already?” [Void City has completed its initial establishment.
The recruitment of personnel has been completed.
The next step is to welcome guests.] She turned that over for a moment.
Guests meant customers.
Customers meant transactions.
Transactions, presumably, meant the slow and steady accumulation of Void Points, which she was rapidly discovering she had a use for after all.
“Okay,” she said, and sat up just enough to give the panel her proper attention.
A new section unfolded in front of her — rows of invitation cards, each tier more elaborate than the last, and each, predictably, priced accordingly.
The higher the level, the stronger and stranger the world it could reach into, and the more it cost to reach that far.
Ari glanced at her balance and confirmed what she’d already suspected.
[Current Void Points: 900] Poor.
Very poor, as rulers of dimension-spanning cities went.
She scrolled straight past the tempting higher tiers without much regret and settled on the option she could actually afford.
[Basic Invitation Card ×5 purchased.] [-500 Void Points] [Remaining Void Points: 400] [Basic Invitation Card: 90% chance of connecting to a Level 1 world.
10% chance of connecting to a higher-level world.] A gamble, but a cheap one, and five chances were better than one.
Ari had never much cared for games of chance in her old life — she’d found them exhausting, mostly, all that hoping — but this felt different somehow, low-stakes enough that losing cost her nothing but curiosity.
Before she confirmed the batch, a thought occurred to her, the kind that came from six years of quietly resenting how little anyone ever explained about how money actually moved through a company.
“System.” [Yes, Host.] “How do guests earn Void Points?
They can’t exactly bring points from their own worlds with them.” [Correct.
Guests may obtain Void Points through transactions.
Available methods: selling items, selling skills, selling bloodlines.] That got her attention properly.
“Skills?” [A skill may only be copied and sold once.
If another guest arrives possessing the same skill, it can no longer be sold.] Ari nodded slowly, appreciating the logic of it.
No infinite duplication, no market flooded with the same ability sold over and over by every visitor who happened to know it.
Scarcity, built right into the rules.
“And items?” [Guests may sell items they possess.
The City Lord may purchase these items at a lower price than direct System Shop purchases.] Her eyes brightened, just slightly, at that.
Guests could bring things from their own worlds and sell them to her — which meant, in effect, she had access to an entire multiverse of inventory she hadn’t had to stock herself, at a discount, simply by letting people walk through her gates.
[Recommendation: establish the first public facility.] The panel offered up a new listing.
Resource Exchange Center.
A facility where guests may buy and sell resources.
Guests may exchange items, skills, and special resources for Void Points.
Items purchased through the Resource Exchange Center will cost less than purchasing identical items directly from the System Shop.
It made sense the moment she read it.
The System Shop was convenient, certainly, but convenience always came at a markup, and a proper marketplace would give guests a reason to actually trade with each other instead of simply passing through her gates and back out again.
“Buy it,” she said.
[Resource Exchange Center unlocked.] The purchase confirmed with a soft ripple, and beyond the mansion’s windows a new building rose into place — smaller than the mansion, nowhere near as grand, but clean-lined and elegant in its own quiet way, clearly built with purpose rather than show.
Ari studied it through the glass for a moment.
“Not bad.” Which left her with one obvious problem.
A marketplace with nothing on its shelves was just an empty room with good lighting.
She pulled the shop back open and started browsing in earnest this time, weighing each option with an eye toward something that struck the right balance — nothing too powerful, nothing too expensive, just useful enough that a guest passing through might actually want it.
Vitality Pills came first.
A pill that restored vigor to an aging body, made someone feel younger and stronger, though it did nothing to extend the years they had left.
She selected ten.
Health Pills next.
Capable of curing any ordinary mortal illness, though powerless against anything written into someone’s bones from birth.
Another ten.
And finally, Beauty Pills — a pill that worked with whatever a person already had rather than replacing it, smoothing skin, softening small imperfections, coaxing out whatever natural beauty was already there without rewriting the face underneath it.
Not the wholesale transformation of a surgeon’s knife.
Just a little help.
Ten of those as well.
Vitality Pills ×10: -100 Health Pills ×10: -100 Beauty Pills ×10: -100 [Remaining Void Points: 100] Ari looked at the number for a long moment in silence.
She had started the day with a thousand points.
She now had one hundred left, which was, coincidentally, exactly enough for one more round of the same starter package that had gotten her three excellent employees for next to nothing.
There was a lesson in there somewhere about how quickly money disappeared once you actually started running something, and she suspected it was a lesson she was going to relearn on a fairly regular basis.
Still, when she looked past the number and out at the shelves of the Resource Exchange Center — small neat rows of pills sitting ready under soft light, waiting for a customer who didn’t exist yet — she found she didn’t mind the dent in her balance nearly as much as she probably should have.
[Consumable items will automatically replenish after being sold.] That, at least, was a relief.
Ari had no intention of manually restocking a shelf every time someone bought a pill, and the System, mercifully, seemed to understand that about her without needing to be told twice.
She glanced down at the five invitation cards waiting in her inventory, then back out at the newly finished exchange center, its shelves stocked and patient and empty of anyone to browse them.
The foundation of Void City was taking shape piece by piece, slower than some grand ruler might have wanted and exactly as fast as Ari cared to move it.
She leaned back into the sofa, drink in hand, and let herself imagine, just for a moment, who might walk through that gate first.
Whoever it was, she decided, she only really had one hope for them.
That they’d bring something interesting to talk about.
Preferably with a little good gossip attached.