It took a while before we got up to the shop, but we could see how the process worked here. People would place what they wanted to sell on the counter. The shop keep would go over the item and they would dicker over the price for a bit before agreeing to the sale. If someone wanted to buy something, they had an actual functioning tablet that people would go through to select what they wanted. Once they did, one of the shop keeps aids would come out with the items and another round of dickering went on.

Most of the people seemed unhappy with the value of their trade goods or the price of what they wanted from the shop. They paid up in the end, because apparently this was the only market around. I really hoped they wouldn’t try to price gouge us.

We were only a few places away from the counter when Cody finally made it back to us.

“Used up all your charges, didn’t you?” I asked.

“I had to. They couldn’t afford potions and the daily fee for being allowed inside the walls at night. Their only choice was to pay the rent and heal slowly over several days, or risk being put out at night and possibly die,” Cody explained.

His heart was in the right place, and it was said that Jesus went around healing people. I couldn’t fault him from following the example of his own god.

“I used some first aid supplies too, when I ran out of charges. I tried to heal the worst first. I also cured some people of a couple nasty diseases they got from some kind of rat, like the ones we fought in that house, except they were, well, normal looking rats.”

“You kept the potions though, right?” I asked.

When he didn’t answer, I said, “Right? Tell me you didn’t give away all your potions, too?”

“Its fine, I got those extra credits from the quest, I’ll buy more. I couldn’t just leave them there suffering like that,” Cody said.

I took a deep breath and let it out with a long sigh. “Okay, okay. But you have to remember, they aren’t our responsibility. We need to get to Colorado as soon as we can. I can’t leave my family there alone. Who knows what has happened by now?”

“I did get another Divine Favor point, though,” Cody whispered.

I sighed again. We needed to get stronger to survive the rest of our trek. I couldn’t tell Cody to not heal people, especially if it strengthened him at the same time. “Fine, just keep it reasonable.”

Cody smiled with pure joy. He could keep helping others, and it didn’t even look like getting more Divine Favor points was a factor in his eyes.

It was finally my turn to approach the shop counter. As I stepped up, a new window appeared before my eyes.

A new Path of Power has been unlocked on Earth

Congratulations, Bartholomew Ferdinand, for unlocking the Path of Blood

I looked around and saw everyone clearing the message that they all received. “Well, shit. That doesn’t sound good at all,” I said to my group. I shook my head and completed my step up to the counter. “Good day, I’d like to sell off some things and make some purchases, please.”

“What? Oh right. Uh… yeah, just place what you wish to sell on the counter. I’ll appraise it and we can go from there,” the merchant said. The system prompt clearly took him aback, and he needed a moment to sort himself out.

We kept the best hides for Cody to work with while selling the lower-level stuff and all the claws, horns, and other parts.

On the counter I placed two level ten imp horns from the brood mother, her wings, thirty-six hellcat hides, forty-eight hellcat fangs, ninety-six hellcat claws, forty of the fifty-six hellhound hides, and one hundred four hellhound fangs. We kept the hides and fangs from the Alphas, and sixteen hellhound hides for Cody.

I also remembered to bring out the manticore claws and fangs, the ones I didn’t use in my experiments. I kept back the hide and the Wings. If we had the time, the wings might make for an interesting crafting component.

The merchant guy’s eyes bugged out over the quantity of items I had to sell. I still had some of my loot to sell, but I didn’t want to get it mixed up with selling group loot. It was easier this way.

“Um… well, yes. Okay, let’s start off with the hides.” He said before picking up one of the first and studying it. “These Hellcat hides I can buy from you for fifty credits each.”

“Hold up,” I said. “I’ve sold hides and parts to the system marketplace before. I know those hides are worth at least ninety credits each.”

“You must have made your sales before the, well, I was going to say the last system message, but the one about stage two starting. Every settlement leader received a message about the marketplace updates,” He tried to explain.

“It was. What marketplace update are you talking about?” I asked.

“Stage one had unlimited access to those fortunate people who got a City Core. It was supposed to help people survive the first stage. With the first stage over, it expected people to do more for themselves instead of solely relying on the System Marketplace. The Marketplace is now limited in what stage of items you can buy from it. Prices went up, and it pays less for loot sold to it.” The man finished explaining.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t know if he was telling me the truth, but the only other option we had was to continue letting it all take up space in our inventories until we managed to find another settlement. With how wide and empty Wyoming was, I didn’t expect to find many.

“Fine, let’s keep going,” I said.

The merchant nodded and made a few entries into the tablet he held in his hand. “What’s that?” I asked as I gestured to the tablet.

“This?” he asked, holding it up. “It’s my shop access point. It pairs with this terminal here.” He pointed at the Kiosk looking thing to the side of the counter.

When I looked at it, it listed the thirty-six hellcat hides.

Item

Price per unit

Number of units

Total

Hellcat Hide lvl 7

c50

36

c1800

“Well, that helps keep things nice and tidy, at least.” I said.

The merchant went through each item and input the values into the terminal. None of them were what I was expecting or preferred, but we had few options here. I even tried to haggle, but the man refused.

“I’m sorry. The Settlement Leader refuses to allow any sort of negotiation on prices. She sets the rates and is the only one with access to change them.”

After going through every item on the counter, the list updated to look like this.

Item

Price per unit

Number of units

Total

Hellcat Hide lvl 7

c50

36

c1,800

Hellcat Fang lvl 7

c25

48

c1,200

Hellcat Claw lvl 7

c25

96

c2,400

Imp Horns lvl 10

c50

2

c100

Imp Wings lvl 10

c50

2

c100

Hellhound Hide lvl 6

c43

40

c1,720

Hellhound Fang lvl 6

c21

104

c2,184

Alpha Hellhound Fang lvl 9

c65

12

c780

Manticore Fang lvl 10

c72

4

c288

Manticore Claw lvl 10

c72

12

c864

Sub Total

c11,436

Settlement Tax (20%)

c2,287

Total

c9,149

“What the fuck is with this twenty percent Settlement Tax? You are going to tax me one fifth of anything I sell here? How in the god’s damned hell to you think you can do this to people?” I was pissed. They wanted to skim over two grand from my sale.

“I’m sorry, sir. But I don’t set the rates. I can’t change anything, it’s all set by…”

“Yeah, the settlement leader, I know.” I felt a tug on my sleeve and I turned my glare around and saw Magnus watching nearly a dozen armed guards marching over to the merchant stall.

“Bro, if you don’t want to have to fight our way out of here, you might want to tone it down,” Magnus said out of the corner of his mouth.

I took a deep breath. I was tempted, sorely tempted, to just grab our shit and walk away. But there was stuff we needed, and stuff we wanted. Things that would make getting back home safer over all. With another deep breath, I held it for a ten count then slowly blew it out through my pursed lips.

“I apologize for raising my voice to you. I understand that you are just an employee in all of this and have no control over the policies set. The apocalypse is no excuse to be rude to customer service personnel, and I know better,” I said.

The man wiped sweat from his brow as he relaxed. Color returned slowly to his pale face, and I realized I was exercising my aura projection without thought. I needed to train that so that wouldn’t happen again.

After waving the armed guards off, the merchant said, “Sir, I am authorized to tell you that if you choose to join the settlement, there would be no taxation on your purchases or sales. We need every able-bodied person willing and capable of fighting off the monsters that keep attacking our scavenging teams.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, but we are only passing through. I have to get back to my family.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. If you agree to this sale, please press the accept button at the bottom of the screen,” the merchant said.

I was going to sell off my share of magic beast cores, but not with a twenty percent tax on them. They can stay in my ring. I reached over and hit the accept button.

After accepting the sale, I reached out and gave everyone their share of the money. After giving the three of them c2,287, I turned back and asked to see what was available for purchase.

“Certainly sir, all you need to do is press this icon on the kiosk,” the merchant said as he pointed to an icon on the new screen. When I looked back to thank him, all the items I sold were gone already. I figured it was a storage ring or something and pressed the button.

Fortunately, everything I was currently looking for was novice grade. Unfortunately, the costs were higher than they were before, about two and a half times more expensive. Each fifty-point health potion, the most you can heal at novice grade, were two hundred-fifty credits. The hundred-point stamina potions were a hundred twenty-five. My Ki infusion potions were five hundred credits.

Aside from refilling my potion supply, there were only two things I was looking to get. I needed more Spirit stones to progress more in my Formations work, and I needed more Bindings to expand what I could do.

I looked up the cost of Spirit, and Demon beast cores and nearly coughed up blood. A body rank six spirit beast core, with the fire element cost three thousand credits. The equivalent demon beast core was two thousand. They each held up to two hundred Ki, but if used as a Ki reservoir in an item, would only provide one hundred storage. Even the body rank two spirit beast core cost fifteen hundred each. With a sigh of disappointment, I moved on to looking up Ki Bindings.

The Ki Bindings I expected to be expensive, and I was not disappointed. Each one cost two thousand five hundred credits. I found bindings for elemental sockets, technique sockets, water condenser, Spirit Veil, Aversion, Deflection, and Shield.

I didn’t have nearly enough for all seven of the novice ranked Bindings, even without the egregious tax rate. I had just a little over ten thousand credits that I could use, accounting for tax. I could only afford two or three Bindings, and a few potions if I was lucky.

I wanted the technique socket, but I didn’t have the info on how to prepare the beast cores, and the binding didn’t come with the information. Each beast core had to be specially prepared in order to manifest the technique the Beast knew in life. The Elemental socket drew on the elemental Ki present in the Core and gave the item that attribute, no special preparation needed. I put that one in my cart.

I didn’t need the water condenser binding, since our water bottles already contained them, and our tents took care of Spirit Veil and Aversion. Though I would really like the Spirit Veil to make stealth armor. in the end, it was a choice between Shield and Deflection. One creates a force-field effect that negates damage, while the other helps redirect force away so damage isn’t taken.

I’m more of a dodge tank than a stand-up tank, but the others aren’t as mobile as I am. Their armor was made from demon beast hide, so I would be the best one to enhance the armor. I chose the Shield Binding.

As I was going back to see how many potions I could afford, I heard Magnus and Cody talking about which Combat Arts they wanted to get and I nearly facepalmed. I almost forgot to check those out. The old man from earlier said they were about a thousand credits each.

I pulled up the novice list of Combat Arts available.

Combat Art

Effect

Stamina Cost

Cost

Power Attack

+30% Damage, -15% accuracy, -15% attack speed

30

c1,000

Piercing Attack

Ignore 50% light, 30% medium, or 20% heavy armor

60

c1,000

Rapid Strike

+30% attack speed, -15% damage, -15% accuracy

30

c1,000

Precise Strike

+30% accuracy, -15% damage, -15% attack speed

30

c1,000

Knock Back

+30% knock back, -30% damage

30

c1,000

Sundering Strike

+50% durability damage, -25% damage

75

c1,000

Critical Strike

+25% critical strike chance, -15% attack speed, -15% damage

70

c1,000

Dash

Burst of speed for 10 seconds. +3 feet per second/point of Agility

100

c1,000

Dodge

+30% evasion, -15% accuracy, -15% damage on next attack

30

c1,000

Parry

+30% deflection with a weapon, -15% attack speed, -15% damage

30

c1,000

Riposte

+30% accuracy, negate penalties of parry

60

c1,000

Toughness

+10 Def 10 seconds -30% movement speed, -30% attack speed

90

c1,000

After careful consideration of the options, I decided on two combat arts. This would let me use my stamina as more of an active resource, and in part, I was really hoping these would stack with my Ki abilities. I added Piercing Attack and Critical Strike. The stamina cost for each were high, but they could make for good finisher abilities.

I looked at my cart to see how much I had left after tax.

Item

Price per unit

Number of units

Total

Ki Binding (Elemental Socket)

c2,500

1

c2,500

Ki Binding (Shield)

c2,500

1

c2,500

Combat Art (Piercing Attack)

c1,000

1

c1,000

Combat Art (Critical Strike)

c1,000

1

c1,000

Sub Total

c7,000

Settlement Tax (20%)

c1,400

Total

c8,400

I had about two thousand credits left for potions. If I kept making Ki batteries, I could avoid buying more Ki infusions, and limit myself to health and stamina potions.

I grabbed five health and three stamina potions and completed my cart, hoping I had enough to cover everything.

Item

Price per unit

Number of units

Total

Ki Binding (Elemental Socket)

c2,500

1

c2,500

Ki Binding (Shield)

c2,500

1

c2,500

Combat Art (Piercing Attack)

c1,000

1

c1,000

Combat Art (Critical Strike)

c1,000

1

c1,000

Health potion (50pt)

c250

5

c1,250

Stamina potion (100 pt.)

c125

3

C375

Sub Total

c8,625

Settlement Tax (20%)

c1,725

Total

c10,350

With only forty-nine credits to my name, I hit accept. I did my best to avoid looking at the Settlement Tax box until it closed. I stepped aside to let the others do their shopping while I checked out my goodies.

“One moment, sir,” the Merchant said. “Since you sold a lot of magic beast components, I was wondering if you have any magic beast cores? They are in high demand and I should have mentioned before that they are currently exempt from the twenty percent tax.”

I paused a moment before going through my purchased items. After we divided the cores up, I had plenty, including some left over from before collecting Rowan and Cody. If the demand was high enough, it was possible I could get a good deal on spirit or demon beast stones. Rukia could use the Spirit stones to help her grow, and the demon stones could help with my crafting.

“I might have some available, especially if the tax doesn’t apply to them. What about demon or spirit stones?” I asked.

The Merchant’s eyes lit up when he heard there might be some available. “Just between you and me, Karen, she is the owner of the settlement, uses the magic beast stones to level her up since she isn’t exactly a combat class. We don’t have as much need for spirit stones, not that many cultivators around here, and we don’t have anyone able to process the demon stones to make them usable. So, they are pretty cheap around here.”

“How much are the Mana cores worth? And what do you sell the spirit and demon beast cores for?” I asked.

“Well, we are willing to pay up to thirty credits per level of the magic beast cores. And since we have quite a bit of the spirit beast cores and even more demon beast cores, we sell them for thirty credits per body rank and twenty per body rank, respectively.”

“Wait, I looked up the price of Spirit and Demon beast cores on your tablet. That’s nowhere near the cost listed.”

“I understand your confusion, sir. Those were the prices if you bought the cores from the System Marketplace itself. We are still working out setting up different options from purchasing from us directly or from the System Marketplace. The price I quoted you are for the cores we have in our own inventory.”

I considered it for a moment as I pulled up my storage ring inventory. I had thirty-four magic beast cores ranging between levels four through ten, though only one at ten. The majority were level sixes. They paid per level instead of per mana, and it was still less than I sold them previously, but if I sold all of my cores, I could get another c5,800. The price for the spirit and demon best cores were cheap enough, though, to balance out the lower sell value of the mana cores.

“What are your highest-level spirit and demon beast cores? Oh, and do you know the elements for them?” I asked.

“The highest we have is for a body rank five magma bear. It produced a demon beast core. That one killed six people before it could be brought down. We have several body rank 4 cores from a herd of deer that were brought in. Their elements vary. Here, let me show you a list.”

I looked over the list and did some math in my head. It was a shame that they only had one at rank five; the rest were below that. I looked over the list. They had a respectable number of cores.

Rank

Demon Beast Core

Spirit Beast Core

1

50

100

2

27

30

3

18

20

4

20

15

5

1

0

Below the summary, it broke down the cores based on element type. They had a wide variety of elements, enough to cover all eight basic types, though some were more rare than others.

I pulled out one of my notebooks and started doing some math. Based on the trade values offered, I could afford to take the rank five, all the rank fours fifteen of the demon rank threes and sixteen of the spirit rank threes. That would almost double the number of cores I would be exchanging. I would be twenty credits short, but if I was lucky, they would let it slide for thirty-four stones, their leader Karen, to level off of.

I pulled out all of my mana cores and let the Merchant inspect them before offering my deal.

“How about if I trade these Mana Cores to you in exchange for the level five Demon beast core, all your level four cores, demon and spirit both? I also want fifteen of the rank three demon cores and sixteen of the spirit beast cores. I want all the water element rank threes you have. Looks like about a quarter of your supply are water.”

The merchant tallied up the totals and considered my words before nodding. “We find this trade to be acceptable. While the trade isn’t exactly even, I’m sure the Leader wouldn’t mind a twenty-credit discount, especially with a level ten mana core being included.”

We shook hands, and he deposited all the spirit and demon cores into a bag and passed them over to me. Just in case, I pulled them all out and counted them as I put them into my inventory. They dealt straight with me and I was satisfied. We shook hands and I let the rest take their turns to do their own trading. I stepped away to go over my earlier purchases.

The combat arts came as hardbound skill books. However, while skill books were usually the size of encyclopedias, the combat arts were the size of my small high school’s yearbook. Reading them left me with a mild headache, but manageable. The pain faded after a few minutes. The Ki Bindings looked like parchment scrolls bound with a ribbon to keep them rolled up. I put them away to study later. All that money spent and only a few items to show for it, and two of the larger ones are now dust on the wind.