They walk a little further along the strip of vendor booths before Musa stops abruptly at a weapons stall.
Aster follows his gaze up—way up.
At the very top of the display, encased in layered stasis runes, is what seems to be a wooden club.
It doesn't look like a weapon at first glance. Just a curved, bark-veined branch coiled inward protectively like it has teeth. Moss clings to one side. The entire thing glows softly.
"You see that?" Musa nods at it. "The Verdant Rootbludgeon. Want to try scanning it with your new NII?"
Aster focuses his will and activates the scan.
The air tightens.
A pulse like warm breath passes over his skin.
The scroll's voice slips through his mind.
[📎 Scan initiating]
[📎 Consent ping... received.]
[📎 Oh my.]
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ITEM SCAN: Verdant Rootbludgeon
Type: Staff/Club
Tier: Standard D Grade
Element: Wood
Cultivation Requirement: Saint – Nascent Sprout Stage
Down-To-Clown: Self-aware sapiosexual, curious but cautious
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Description
"From the fractured bough of an Astral World eldergrove that once dreamt itself into sentience, the Verdant Rootbludgeon is used primarily by club-wielding cultivators attuned to the element of growth, recovery, and patient wrath, the club amplifies harmonic resonance between the wielder’s intent and the natural world.
Effects
• +22% Spiritual Regeneration Rate
• +28% Effectiveness to Barkskin or Wood-Type Defensive Techniques
• Grants “Thornburst Echo”: On striking an enemy, embeds latent seeds of psychic thorns that erupt after a 3-second delay, dealing minor psychic damage and spreading disorientation.
• Enhances compatibility with Rootstyle martial arts by 1 tier.
Functionality:
When swung, it hums with a harmonic drone, and striking the earth causes mossy patterns to bloom in a 3-meter radius. When held, it feels like a living thing trying very hard not to shiver with anticipation.
Down-To-Clown:
Technically, you can insert a finger into the knothole near the root base and whisper your safe word. If the Maul vibrates back in Morse code, consent is given. From there, its sap-resonance lattice responds to rhythmic stroking and warm breath along the spiral notches near the grip-root junction. Initiating a ‘growth communion’ ritual (see p.142 in Pollinate Me Gently, My Warden-Branch), cultivators can coax the bio-wood into a softened pliability ideal for intimate exploration. Stimulate the root base while whispering compliments to encourage full woodflower bloom during climax, where it releases a burst of spores that smell like cedar and taste like bittersweet apology.
Bonus:
• Hidden Talents: Can photosynthesize positive affirmations into temporary defense buffs. Occasionally sprouts strawberries in battle.
Has a moaning frequency during impact, which some would describe as satisfyingly needy.
Prefers dominant lovers, and partners who aren’t afraid of mutual rooting.
Gets flustered by direct eye contact but secretly fantasizes about being used in a three-way with a watering can and a dryad.
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Aster stares at the glowing interface window like it has just propositioned him. Because technically… it had.
He blinks.
Then again.
Then very slowly turns to Musa, face drained of blood and possibly faith.
"…Is my scan supposed to mention 'pleasurable knot structure ideal for post-mating rituals'?"
Musa doesn't even pause. "No."
Aster's voice goes high. "Did it suggest I stimulate the root base while whispering compliments to 'encourage full woodflower bloom?'"
"Nope."
"It told me the club's 'moaning frequency during impact' was 'satisfyingly needy.'"
Musa bursts out laughing. "I told you, you'd regret it!"
Aster holds up both hands like the scan is a wild animal. "You didn't say it had a down-to-clown tab telling me in graphic detail how to have sex with sentient objects!"
Musa doesn't respond; he's too busy cry-laughing to even try.
From deep inside Aster's skull, the scroll pipes up:
"That club wants you to be vulnerable. You strike better when you let it see the real you. Consider crying. It likes that."
Aster visibly recoils.
"It has… opinions on my emotional availability, Musa."
"Let me see what the scan is supposed to say," Musa wheezes between tears, flipping through his own scan results. "Mine just says 'wood affinity, +22% regeneration, don't use base underwater.'"
"A base is just a root," the scroll purrs. "And every root deserves to be nourished."
Aster screams. Silently. Internally. With the weight of a thousand cursed incantations and one too-trusting wallet.
"I need to uninstall it. Now!"
"You can't uninstall it, I warned you! A soul-bonded Nootropic-Program directive is pretty permanent by itself, but Blenkinsop's Consent Clause was his specialty—he believed consent was a contract for lifelong commitment."
[📎 Permanent is such an ugly word. I prefer intimately ongoing.]
"I will chisel it out of my frontal lobe."
Musa is already laughing now, the bastard.
"It's permanent, Aster."
Aster closes his eyes.
He has bought exactly one thing in the Market District.
It has been discounted by ninety-seven percent, condemned by the Council, and is now flirting with the concept of his frontal lobe.
He hates being poor.
Inside his skull, Blenkinsop hums with pleasure.
By the time they find Lena, Aster is ranting with the ragged intensity of a man trying to exorcise capitalism through interpretive dance.
She sits on a low stone bench beneath an arch of moonvine, a book open across her lap. One look at his face and her mouth twitches.
"So," she says, closing the book, "I take it someone left you unsupervised."
Aster points over his shoulder like the market is a war crime. "That place tried to sell me closure. Closure, Lena. Like grief came in sampler packs. I saw a guy offering emotional healing by the cup. Actual brew-your-trauma tea. There were afterlife loans. I'm one bad decision away from my soul being repossessed."
Lena stands, closing her book with a soft snap. "You'll be fine."
"No, I won't. I'm one cursed artifact away from radicalising," Aster says, dead serious. "Next thing I know. I clicked on a scroll because it was 97% off and now it's installed in my soul, whispering pickup lines at amphibians and giving me mating-based battle strategies."
He continues.
"It flirts. With me. With fauna. With staffs. And then I get told I can't uninstall it because of a consent clause. Lena, I'm being spiritually negged by a ghost pervert and it knows my pheromone profile."
He leans in, wild-eyed. "It told me how to stimulate a staff for mutual rooting, Lena."
Musa, grinning like he's just watched a live-action morality play starring his favourite idiot, claps him on the back. "We'll help you avoid the worst of it."
"Great," Aster mutters. "At least I'm not alone. Just possessed."
From deep inside his skull, the scroll purrs, "Technically, we're bonded. I prefer the term soulmates."
Aster makes a sound like someone losing a custody battle in slow motion.
Lena tilts her head, a thought seeming to come to her. "What did that scroll specialise in again?"
"Beast and Artefact Courting. But not the kind that helps in combat. The kind that evaluates mating rituals for compatibility and occasionally suggests I earn trust through vulnerability and when to insert a finger into a knothole and how to interpret its consent through rhythmic Morse code vibrations."
A pause.
Then, very softly, Lena: "…Oh no."
Aster keeps going, because if he stops he might actually have to process what has happened.
"It has a feature called the Down-To-Clown Scale, Lena. It keeps offering unsolicited romantic commentary about local fauna. It referred to my repression as 'promising terrain.'"
Lena turns, very slowly, to Musa.
"You let him go bargain hunting alone?"
"In my defence," Musa says, "I underestimated how aggressively his survival instincts are overridden by discounts."
"Forty-five Faith," Aster says, as if this justifies everything. "That's barely even a mistake. That's a financial reflex."
Inside his skull, Blenkinsop sighs fondly.
[📎 A thrifty king.]
Lena just presses two fingers to the bridge of her nose.
The shopping after that becomes mercifully brief.
With Lena beside him, the market loses some of its appetite. Vendors who'd previously looked at Aster like an unattended wallet suddenly develop manners. Prices soften. Smiles turn respectful. Doors open. Favours materialise.
Apparently nepotism is a valid cultivation path.
Lena moves through the stalls with the efficiency of someone who has long ago accepted that the universe runs on relationships, leverage, and knowing which old woman sells honest reagents and which one would absolutely bottle your soul if given half a chance. She picks up what he needs, haggles without visible effort, and passes the items off to him one by one.
Aster absorbs them into his Stomach Palace with increasing confidence, each successful storage making his posture straighter and his expression more smug.
By the fourth item he is standing like a man who has personally invented inventory management.
By the fifth, Lena and Musa exchange the kind of glance usually reserved for children who are very proud of tying their own shoelaces.
"There," Lena says at last, handing him the final component. "Done. No hidden clauses. No blood contracts. No posthumous repayment schedule."
Aster turns it over in his hand, suspicious on principle.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
He looks at her properly then, some of the performative misery falling away.
"Thanks," he says. "Really. Left to my own devices I'd have come back with three counterfeit reagents, a haunted teapot, and a second parasitic interface."
"Well," Lena says lightly, "you did come back with one cursed interface, but that part happened before I got there."
She smiles, but it softens at the edges.
"I also needed help the first time I came here too," she says. "Only difference is, I had family. You don't. So I figured I'd… be that for you." She looks away too quickly, as if the words had slipped out without permission.
Aster doesn't know what to say to that, which is inconvenient, because apparently the Astral Plane expects emotional responses in addition to financial ruin.
So he settles for honesty.
"Thanks," he says again, and means it harder this time.
Lena waves it off with the awkward speed of someone already regretting sincerity. "Come on. If we stay any longer, Musa will let you buy another problem."
"Excuse you," Musa says. "I only facilitate the educational acquisition of problems."
[📎 And what a glorious problem he is,] Blenkinsop purrs from the back of Aster's mind.
Aster shuts his eyes briefly.
No. He is not acknowledging the ghost zoologist currently nesting in his cognition.
He follows Lena and Musa back toward the mirror in silence, the market's noise fading behind them into a blur of lantern-light, bartering, and economically weaponised spirituality.
Ahead, Galamad's towers rise through the haze, ancient and watchful.
[📎 You know,] the NII says, [if we're to make the most of this partnership, I really should teach you how to tell whether a monster wants to kill you, court you, or if you're lucky, a bit of both.]
Aster keeps walking.
He is going to need stronger coping mechanisms.