Depthless Hunger

Chapter 138: Working Toward One Hundred Thousand

In stories winning came down to passion and believing in yourself really hard. In reality, it often seemed to come down to math.

According to Zae Zin Nim, it would cost him 100,000 Goralian Eagles for a perfect breakthrough in his cultivation. He had just over twenty eight of those thousands, so at his current salary from Orillia, it would take him six months to achieve that amount.

He'd mark his progress by how much faster he could pull it off.

Normally his first thought would have been monster hunting, but their hunting on the journey to Yulthens proved that was a poor tactic. All their monster cores had only been worth a little over a thousand and they'd likely thinned the nearby hunt options. Clearly Yulthens didn't value monsters enough for that option to be viable, which meant they needed to look elsewhere.

Investigating the city revealed that they did have options. There was a massive arena known as Yulthens Stadium where important fights took place, including battles for rank and duels that decided contractual conflicts. He hoped to fight there one day, but just any old crystallier couldn't compete there without a good reason. The more likely option appeared to be a place called the Crystallier Arena, which was just off the local Headquarters, where crystalliers frequently spent time and sparred with one another for status or money. Zae Zin Nim had actively voiced her desire to go there.

They didn't have time just yet because they needed to fulfill their obligations to Orillia. She had a wide variety of younger wards who needed training, so Kai took up Physique and combat classes while Zae Zin Nim reluctantly helped them with their cultivation.

Technically that could have been an entire career, like the veteran hunters who had helped train Kai. Yet he found himself strangely distant from his charges. He was only five to ten years older than the students but he felt like he was an entirely different creature from the bright-eyed and optimistic children he taught. It was possible that their idealism wasn't even wrong, since they'd likely have better luck in life than he had, but it created distance.

He did his best to remember all their names and help them out with problems without showing that he was glad for it to be over. The most useful part of the process was learning more about how crystalliers trained, specifically their strengths and limitations. It seemed like they really had nothing to offer when it came to Physique, which surprised him, since even Irunian techniques had taught him more.

Maybe some regions just weren't suited to Physique training, just like some nations had more mana and others had more qi. He wasn't sure that actually worked out and considered the theory while he worked. The rest of his time he spent planning out his own training or brainstorming ideas to get the money he needed for his qi transformation.

Once he'd finished his obligations he headed out into the city again. Since Zae Zin Nim wanted to use their diamond star at all times, he went out on foot, getting a stronger feel for the city. Yulthens wasn't the sort of place where thieves would slit your throat in certain neighborhoods, but it did have the constant risk of offending some noble or running into crystalliers looking for trouble.

His conclusion while training had been that he needed to focus on the merchants: he would probably get a certain amount of winnings through combat, just by being a crystallier, so it would be more productive to seek out other options.

The most important hub for trade was called Mercantile Central, just like in Romastir, but crystalliers apparently weren't generally allowed inside. Many of the merchants seemed to have the same attitude Suortril expressed: fighters were just a cost or asset, to be dealt with alongside their main business. But in a city the size of Yulthens, he had plenty of other options.

While walking in the docks district, Kai saw a surprising number of goods from Cloudspire. Silks distinct from the Krysali wraps, qi pills, and various spices that made the air itself burn. Unfortunately it looked like the shipping operations had all the muscle they needed, either cultivators or crystalliers. He didn't see anyone at the Nascent Foundation stage, but there were several at Body Refinement, which on its own put them at crystallier level.

Past the docks Kai finally found his break: a trading post that dealt in smaller merchants trading outside the city and in the Yulthens region. These weren't the huge merchants who could afford crystalliers, they were just trying to hire trained guards. Kai thought he was the only crystallier present, though others might be using a shroud like he was.

Unfortunately, many of the assignments just weren't worth his time. Now that he had advanced so far, it wasn't worth it to guard a caravan for a few hundred Goralian Eagles. Eventually he found a yellowed paper that suggested a larger prize and went to pursue the request.

"You sure you can handle this?" The scruffy middle-aged merchant who had posted it looked him over. "We tried a climbing crew and couldn't get it. Even hired a flying carriage, but we couldn't get enough leverage. I think this one will require someone with the full power of flight, and that don't come cheap."

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"Why don't you explain the trouble better?" Kai waved the paper. "This doesn't really explain the details. You lost a shipment of crystals somehow?"

"Not the crystals themselves, the qi. You see, we were clearing an old crystal mine - marginal profits, you understand. But there was this big crystal of the wrong type and it sucked up all the qi. Now we can't break off the qi or get it out, and a lot of our profits are tied up in that thing."

"Your crystal miners aren't used to this sort of problem?"

The merchant looked at him like he'd said something bizarre. "We aren't doing the mining, son. This is an old mine that's finished operations a while back. We were just trying to extract the last value when we ran into all this trouble."

"Well, let me take a look." Kai smiled and set down the paper. "I might be able to do something."

On the way out none of the workers seemed to want to talk to him, other than saying that other crystal cultivators had tried and failed. That was just as well, since it gave him time for more cultivation of his own. Their wagon went further from the city than he'd expected, into one of the outer farming regions.

"There are no more mines this close," the merchant explained. "They were all exhausted years ago. Just as well, since it caused trouble to have the workers so close."

Kai wasn't exactly sure what he meant, but there were definitely no workers these days except those they'd brought along with them. The mine itself was more like an empty pit, everything of value torn from it. They headed down one shaft and Kai felt it long before he saw it: a concentration of qi much more potent than anything else nearby.

The walls themselves were made of low quality quartz, the kind that wasn't even used for building construction. He saw a few fragments of other sorts of crystals, presumably not valuable enough to gather up. Their only goal was the major crystal, and as soon as he saw the situation he understood the problem.

Up a wider shaft that didn't connect to the surface directly, the qi crystal glowed brightly. It was a massive one, firmly embedded in the surrounding stone. The sides of the shaft were rather slick stone, which would make them difficult to climb. Kai experimentally threw a rock at the crystal, but it didn't budge even slightly.

"Others already tried that, son, or throwing attacks up at it." The merchant shook his head. "The crystal sucked up too much qi, so it resists weak attacks. And if you break it, that defeats the point. If that was your best shot, this will have been a big waste of time."

"Give me a moment." Kai sat down and began his preparations.

Time to try something he'd never imagined would be useful: the Wallcrawler's Feet ability he'd been scorning for a long time. He replaced Isulfr's Bite with the new essence, then experimentally touched the side of the mine shaft. Just as he'd hoped, his hand stuck to the surface like it could grip every little crack. The ability was very weak, but most of the weak ones seemed to be easy to use.

Kai took off his boots and then began climbing his way up the side of the shaft. The merchants and his workers went from laughing to staring wide-eyed as he climbed further and further up the slick surface. When Kai finally reached the crystal, which proved to be larger than he was, he figured out the extent of it and found a suitably narrow point in the stone that bound it in place.

"You're going to want to get clear," he called down the shaft.

"You plan to work it loose?" The merchant's voice was oddly tinny from down below. "How long is that going to take?"

"A few seconds! Like I said, you want to get out of the way."

Once they had moved, Kai took one hand off the crystal and prepared a Tyrant's Claw. This shouldn't be his full power and a wild attack might do more harm than good. Fortunately, everything he'd been doing to master his monstrous abilities made that easier, so after a short time focusing, he launched a single precise attack into the rock.

Stones exploded, many of the fragments bouncing harmlessly off his body. More importantly, his blow utterly destroyed the quartz above the qi crystal. It plummeted down the shaft and he realized that it was going to bounce off the side, potentially damaging the crystal. Kai threw himself down after it, his hands forming claws as they ran along the shaft to get underneath. Just before they reached the bottom he managed to catch the crystal on his shoulders and blunt the impact with his knees.

Which meant a lot of miners were staring at him as he calmly set the crystal down beside him.

"This is what you need, right?" Kai patted the side of the crystal. "Might have lost a little qi, but no real harm done."

"That, uh... that will definitely do it." The merchant managed to tear his eyes away from the crystal to look at him. "This will be worth more than I expected. We can more than recoup our losses with this. Damn, this has been a problem for months and you just... here, let me pay you those Eagles..."

While the miners got to work, the merchant paid Kai the two thousand Eagles that had been posted. Considering that Kai had gotten the crystal out in better shape than expected, faster than expected, he had been hoping to get a bonus, but he supposed he shouldn't expect merchants to be anything other than tightfisted. It was still a great amount of money for a day's work.

The man offered Kai similar work, which Kai politely refused once he realized it would be for ordinary day wages. On his way out, he pushed Wallcrawler's Feet back out of his core soul. It might be a weak ability, but he was pleased to have used it once.

He even contemplated building up a wide variety of different monstrous abilities that might be useful in various situations. It was easy to imagine that path... and probably wrong. What he needed first and foremost was power. Without Tyrant's Claw having developed so far, his other abilities wouldn't have been adequate to finish the job.

Two thousand more Eagles. 2% of his goal. It wasn't much, and he wasn't likely to find such good options every day, but it was more than he'd had that morning.

Hopefully a sign of things to come. Or, once Kai thought about his track record, he hoped that it wasn't a sign that his luck was about to turn again.