Chương 10: One more ten-pull

Three hours and forty-six pages of handwritten notes later, we had the skill tree mapped. Astarielle sat cross-legged on the bed, pink quill scratching at her notepad. She'd kicked off her heels an hour in and hadn't complained about anything since, which meant she actually worked.

"The level 35 Soulcarver node is non-negotiable," she said, not looking up.

"Fifty percent of your highest stat as a flat bonus to all summon stats. That's the single strongest multiplier you can get to me from the tree." Yeah, that did sound overpowered. Many things did, actually. But the sun had set, so I had places to be.

"I'll need to go handle something. Give me the bracelet, and try to come up with a few builds. Make them for level fifty, as that should be close enough." She narrowed her eyes, scanning me.

"What do you want with my bracelet?"

"It's a tower artifact. I can't simply shove it away."

"But I like it."

"I'll get you another one. Hand it over." She resisted the command. But that lasted for about half a second, so she took off the bracelet and tossed it to me. I caught it and stuffed it into my pocket.

"See you later." I headed out. Before I left the door, I glanced over my shoulder.

"Stay in this room until I return." A straight command. She glared back at me. If I didn't specify that, she would have followed me sneakily. The command gave her no such option, and I knew she didn't have any divination magic. The islands at night had a strange quality to them. The tower blocked the stars on one side of the sky, a wall of absolute black that made the constellations on the other side look almost aggressive by comparison.

Construction had stopped for the day, but the main hub still hummed with activity. Supply carts, late-shift technicians, and a group of climbers heading toward what looked like a bar. I passed the leaderboard on one of the hub's display screens. Still fourth, now with two more people on floor eleven. Looked like I had a team for the floor for tomorrow. The dome around the tower was quieter than this morning. Most of the tribunes sat empty, the massive screens cycling through replays of the day's dives.

Mine included. People moved around, but as I walked in, they all started leaving. Cassandra remained alone by the pods. Moonlight flooding in through the roof gave her an ethereal glow, perfectly matching her silver dress and blonde hair. She worked on a holographic interface, from which her crimson eyes slid toward me.

"Well, well, well… the little horn returns to me." I rolled my eyes.

"Did you think long about coming up with that?" She chuckled.

"Long, hard, and through half of the night. It fits you perfectly. In the Old Testament, the little horn refers to Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a ruler so tyrannical that his legend became a metaphor for the rise of an antichrist through oppression of the faithful. It's the perfect moniker for the devil's son, who summons demons straight from Hell."

"I'm sure everyone watching from Asia will get that reference."

"So what if they don't?" Her face split into a broad, charming smile.

"Or is your horn that little?" If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. I shrugged.

"How about you get down to your knees and measure it with your mouth?" She chuckled, blushing slightly. Oh, she loved that joke. I could so tell. She pressed her lips together, trying to maintain composure, and failed. I let the grin pass through my face without fighting it. I walked to her side.

"So… I've heard there's a shop update." She didn't retreat from me. Instead, she edged a touch closer, her shoulder almost touching mine. She raised her hand, conjuring a hologram or an illusion of a shop. The title read Cassandra's Tower Shop. Underneath it, my balance of 3428 tower coins. And then, a shop like from a game, with various items for me to buy with those coins.

"I suppose you have experience with games," she remarked.

"I may have indulged in a few of them a little bit in the past." In particular, by having a full E6S5 account in both Star Rail and ZZZ, and similar whale accounts in other games. The debt to the casino stayed with them, but the winnings were mine, and gacha games were a ton of fun with unlimited funds. She didn't need to hear the details of that, though. She glanced at me with a side eye.

"A little bit in the past? I would have never guessed. Now, there is a fun feature I've added to the shop, but you promised me something, and you haven't delivered, so I'm not sure you deserve me showing it to you." I smirked.

"Raise your hand and close your eyes."

"This better be worth it." She elegantly raised her hand and closed her eyes. I slipped behind her, gently catching her arm while making her lean a bit on me. I pulled the bracelet out of my pocket and took my time fixing it to her wrist. She burned like an open furnace, every inch of her form emanating unnatural heat. Much more so than the succubi. I finished, not saying anything. When my fingers left her arm, her eyes opened, immediately widening. She brought the bracelet closer, staring at it.

The white burning crystals matched her perfectly.

"Now, that is impressive. The way my shop works is that it tallies your loot and uses the tower's internal systems to convert it into currency, and to use that currency to get items to use inside the tower. But you have used a demon to steal an item from the tower, and it actually holds up on Earth." She leaned a bit against me as she spoke. All the heat seeped into me, all into the one wrong spot.

"I'm open to deals as to bringing you something back from the next time."

"I need a living life form at least the size of a dog." She glanced up at me.

"What will you want in return?"

"I saw this lovely place for a date on the way here. It's too good for a succubus, so I figured I'd invite you, instead." A broad smile spread over her face.

"Deal. Fetch me what I want, and I will allow you to entertain me for an evening." She stepped away from me, waving her hand. The shop moved to a screen with various items with various background colors. With a playful grin, she looked at me.

"You know what this is, don't you?" Well, she got me.

"How much is a ten-pull?" She giggled.

"Oh, how naughty. Sixteen hundred tower coins."

"Hit me with a ten-pull then." Cassandra laughed, the melodic voice catching a really vicious edge. She flicked her wrist. The screen spun. It played a little animation of a winged goddess dropping ten stars. Those fell down and formed ten items. All commons. I glanced at Cassandra.

"What're the odds of me hitting the highest-tier item?" She arched an eyebrow.

"Does it matter?"

"No. One more ten-pull." The screen spun, the animation played, and the stars dropped ten more common items. Wow, I really needed a moth wing. I only dropped over fifteen hundred of them in the last dive. Well, next time. Cassandra graced me with a wicked grin.

"I can see how you've ended up over three million dollars in debt." I narrowed my eyes.

"I never told you the number." And I didn't even know the number. One didn't get this much debt by caring about how much he owed. I thought I would be at a few hundred thousand, at most a million dollars. I would have never thought it could be three million. Ah, well, whether I didn't pay back a hundred thousand dollars or three million dollars didn't really matter, in the end.

"Unenforceable debt is often sold at dark web marketplaces. I did a bit of a background check on you. You've been quite naughty with money." I shrugged.

"It's not my problem that they ran no due diligence on me."

"But it will be your problem if someone buys up the debt and goes to enforce it. Climber pay isn't bad, but you've got a lot of interest on that debt. Whoever buys it will effectively own you. And make no mistake, Damian, Secret Societies have infinitely wider options when it comes to debt enforcement than underground casinos do." My chest tightened, but I kept my posture loose. Her voice had a lot of edge to it. And the threat was very real.

I had been counting on my debt being spread around among smaller, semi-legal institutions, so it couldn't be easily enforced. I never considered the option that the debt could be sold as bulk. And she didn't sound like she was bluffing.

"Do you know if my debt is actually for sale?"

"Fetch me my test subject, and I might even tell you tomorrow." With a flick of her wrist, she made the shop disappear.

"I'm the interface to the shop, so the next time you want to set your tower coins on fire, come find me." I smiled.

"See you tomorrow. And wear something tight."