Kael stepped out of the inn and into the morning market noise.
He did the math while he walked.
He had just two copper left. An Iron rank cultivation resource cost somewhere between five and eight silver minimum — the apothecary woman’s pricing on the Duskbloom extract had given him a rough baseline. Call it five silver to be optimistic.
Five silver was fifty copper. He had two.
He needed forty-eight copper minimum.
Errand runner pay was four copper per job. Forty-eight copper divided by four was twelve jobs. He glanced at the timer burning quietly at the back of his mind.
Just nine hours left for twelve jobs. Each errand would take between thirty minutes and an hour depending on distance.
’Not going to work,’ he thought.
He needed higher paying jobs. The problem was higher paying jobs required rank he didn’t have or skills the guild didn’t know he had yet.
He pushed through the guild hall door.
The board was busier than yesterday hunters three deep in front of it, pulling notices, comparing papers, arguing over the better paying contracts in the low voices of people who didn’t want to advertise what they were taking.
Kael waited. Watched. When a gap opened he moved in and read quickly.
Standard errands four copper each, a dozen of them, nobody touched them because the pay was insultingly low for anyone with a rank. Investigation request from a merchant whose storage unit had been broken into fifteen copper, Bronze rank minimum listed as requirement.
Supply run to an outpost two hours east — twenty copper, same rank requirement.
He kept reading.
Then he found it.
Right at the bottom of the board. No red border, no official header — a handwritten notice on plain paper, pinned crookedly like someone had added it without going through the clerk.
Seeking individual for private task.
Discretion required. No rank minimum. Pay: 60 copper upon completion. Inquire at the Millstone Inn, Room 4 C.
Sixty copper.
He pulled it off the board.
『 Timer: 8 hours, 12 minutes remaining. 』
_ _
The Millstone Inn was on the south side of town — older than the one Kael was staying in, the sign faded to the point where the name was more suggestion than text. He found Room 4 at the end of a narrow corridor on the ground floor and knocked twice.
The door opened.
The man inside was middle-aged, soft around the edges, the kind of build that came from years behind a desk rather than in the field. Merchant’s clothes quality fabric but worn conservatively, nothing that announces wealth. His eyes moved over Kael quickly, landed on the ring for exactly one second, then moved back up to his face.
He stepped back from the door. "You pulled my notice."
"Sixty copper with no rank minimum," Kael said. "Yes."
The man gestured at the chair opposite the table and sat down himself. On the table between them sat a sealed document case — dark leather, a wax lock pressed with a signet Kael didn’t recognize.
"My name is not important," the man said.
"The task is simple. This case needs to reach my contact at the relay post on the north road. Two hours walk. My contact will verify the seal is intact and pay you on my behalf." He folded his hands on the table. "Sixty copper on confirmation."
"What’s in the case?" Kael said.
"Private correspondence," the man said. "Nothing illegal. Nothing dangerous." He held Kael’s gaze. "The reason it’s not on the official board is that I’d prefer the contents not become common knowledge in a town this size."
Kael looked from the case to the man, instinctively reading him the way years of intelligence work had conditioned him to do. Posture. Eye contact. Breathing. The unconscious tells people they couldn’t suppress even when they believed they were in control.
Nervous, but not lying.
Wary, not dangerous."Sixty copper on delivery confirmation," Kael said.
"Sixty copper," the man confirmed.
Kael picked up the case and stood "You can assume your job is done" then he left.
_ _
The north road was exactly what the man had described — open terrain, well-maintained, the kind of route that saw enough traffic to keep it clear. Kael moved at a steady pace, the document case tucked under his arm, the morning sun climbing over the treeline to his left.
『 Timer: 6 hours, 44 minutes remaining. 』
’Sixty copper,’ he thought. ’Plus the two I have. Sixty-two total. Should be enough for the resource with extra to spare.’
"You are quite less noisy today, mortal," Seradhiel said after a while.
Kael glanced at the ring. "You’re one to talk."
A pause.
"...Insolent," she replied.
He kept walking.The relay post appeared through the trees an hour later a low stone building at a crossroads, a post-rider’s horse tied outside. Kael went in, found the contact — a quiet woman behind a small desk who checked the seal without speaking, verified the signet, and pressed a pouch into his hand without making eye contact.
He counted the coins outside.
Sixty copper. Exactly. This was one of the easiest missions he had ever completed and even assumed it was a scam but it turned out real.
『 Timer: 4 hours, 53 minutes remaining. 』
He turned back toward Valdris and picked up his pace.
_ _
The apothecary bell chimed when he pushed the door open.
Dara looked up from her counter.
Recognized him. Her eyes dropped to the ring the way everyone did eventually.
"Back," she said." What brings you here today?".
"I need an Iron rank cultivation resource," Kael said, stepping up to the counter.
"The best one I can get for fifty copper."
"Okay I got you" she replied with quite a smirk on her face.
She set her book down. Moved along the shelf without hurrying. Came back with a small rectangular box — dark wood, a simple clasp. She set it on the counter.
"Ironbloom concentrate," she said, tapping the small box with a knuckle. "It’s pressed and refined roughly twice as potent as the Duskbloom extract you bought yesterday."
She let the words hang for a moment before adding,
"It cost forty-five copper."
Kael put forty-five copper on the counter without hesitation." Nice doing business with you" he said and left.
_ _
Back in his room, Kael settled onto the edge of the bed—by now, it had become his preferred place to sit whenever he had something to think about.
He opened the box.
Inside, wrapped in a thin piece of cloth, rested a small, flat tablet. It was dark red, fading almost to black around the edges, and felt faintly warm against his fingertips.
He held it against the ring.
The response was immediate — deeper than the Duskbloom had been, more concentrated, the ring’s pulse jumping once before settling into something steadier and stronger than before. The tablet dissolved against the band the same way the bottle had — absorbed completely, leaving nothing behind.
『 Investment Quest — COMPLETE. Ironbloom concentrate registered. Investment target: Sealed Entity. Processing returns... Reward: Ancient Technique Journal — Azura Burst Flame (Iron Tier 1, Fire Affinity). Item manifested. 』
After a brief silence. Then:
『 Host—nothing offered in earnest is forgotten. Nothing invested is ever truly lost. 』
The notification faded.
A small worn journal materializes on the bed beside him thin, dark-covered, the pages yellowed with age. The characters on the cover are in an old script he somehow understands.
Azura Burst Flame. Tier 1. Fire Affinity.
He picks it up and turns it over in his hand.
It would be his first elemental technique, if he proved capable of learning it. Not Void itself, but Fire—a secondary element his Void composition could naturally branch into, exactly as Seradhiel had described.