“Gotta say, I am somewhat disappointed.” Gaius sat idly on a bench. Upper Elinaris had many benches that dotted the area, although most of them were occupied by loving couples.

“Oh?” Nexus responded from inside his tunic. “Why are you disappointed?”

“Maybe the me on Earth read too much fantasy, but I had this odd trepidation when I entered these shops,” replied Gaius. “Like I might just find a unique artefact that was treated as trash, but was able to unveil its full potential with me.”

“Well, there is something called artefact resonance,” said Nexus. “But they’re very, very rare. Of my many masters, only three had one such artefact.”

“Details?”

“One of them was my original creator, I guess. I’m not sure about the details behind my creation, as well as who my creator was, but I was originally designed to be able to integrate into someone’s brain,” said Nexus. “I’d provide support through a mental connection, and in some cases even take over my creator’s body when needed.”

Gaius looked at his tunic, where the sculpture was rolling around for some reason. “There’s no chance of this happening to me, is there?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Nexus.

“Who are the other two, then?” asked Gaius.

“Lady Jessica, the creator of the Map of Stars…and you.”

The boy’s gaze shifted towards the heavens. “Let me guess. It’s the Stellar Core.”

“Yes,” replied Nexus. “That said, it was the power you absorbed then that made this possible. You took in both the core of the Divine Ladder and a fraction of the Human God’s power…it was to be expected, if nothing else.”

Gaius was silent for a moment.

“Let’s put this topic aside for now,” he said. “What Engine should I get? I’ve enough for two, but that’ll cripple my operations here until I harvest more gems from Heritage.”

The artificial intelligence was silent for a moment. “Well, after this week, you can consider spending whatever gold you have left on a third Engine.”

Gaius blinked. Nexus’ words were bordering on cryptic, and for a moment, the boy wanted to press it for more details. But the likelihood that it wouldn’t reply right now was high enough that he really couldn’t be bothered to open his mouth. Making a mental note to ask the wooden sculpture a few days later, Gaius took out a coin and flipped it.

The boy caught the falling coin without looking at the result, and then got up from his bench. “Astral Wind, then.”

The Astral Wind was a very odd Engine. It lacked the customary abilities of Flight and Sigil Manifestation that virtually every other Engine had. Furthermore, it only had a single ability — Blink, which simply moved the user and anyone holding on to him or her to any pre-arranged location. There wasn’t really much detail about this ability, to the boy’s chagrin, but his instincts told him that it would be very useful for the future.

This feature alone placed the Astral Wind at an exorbitant sixty thousand gold, but after conferring with the second shop’s owner, Gaius found out the reasons why no one brought it. First, although Blinking was instantaneous, the fact that this particular Engine didn’t have Flight meant that its mobility typically lost out in the end. Second, no one wanted to bind with such an Engine, since it was common knowledge that people could only bind with one Engine at a time. It wasn’t as easy as swapping out clothes, either.

In light of these reasons, no one wanted to buy this clearly defective Engine.

That was, until a freak like Gaius came along. It was as though as this particular Engine was made for him, since he did have another that complemented all these flaws

Directing his feet to the second shop, Gaius watched idly as yet another small group of adventurers jogged towards him from the distance. They had most likely come from the Adventurers’ Guild branch, and it was apparently a common sight for groups like this to form up in times of war.

Safety in numbers, I guess. The boy cast another glance at their retreating backs, before picking up his own pace.

It didn’t take long before he arrived at the Adventurers’ Guild. The store he was headed to, the Odd Tinkerer, was located directly across the street from the guild building.

Like the first store he’d visited, this one was full of line graphs that summarised experiments conducted in the creation of artefacts. This shop, however, apparently specialised in experimenting with pathways, the backbone of any artefact. Most of the items here, even those not on the showcases, were small items that mirrored the general design of an Engine.

The artefacts here therefore had rather…novel uses. For instance, this shop had a unique take on ‘Shot’ artefacts, and in utter defiance of the conventional design of the Straight and Curved Shot artefacts, had created a rather compact artefact called the Zigzag Shot.

Gaius couldn’t even think of how to use one in actual battle. They were, however, some of the more popular products in this store. The compact design probably had something to do with it, and at really close ranges, whether the projectile flying out zigzagged or not probably didn’t mean that much.

A gentle tinkle — all three stores that Gaius visited used the same brand, apparently — came from above his head as the boy pushed the door open. Some of the customers inside turned to look at the newcomer, and then did a predictable doubletake at the sight of a small boy.

The act of customers turning their head over to confirm what they just saw was starting to feel old, since it was the exact same reaction when he visited the three stores previously. The fact that the customers perusing the wares of this shop changed by the time Gaius made his decision just amplified the irritation within him.

Supressing an urge to snort coldly, the boy walked directly over to the counter, where an old man was polishing his glasses.

“Oho, a cute little customer!” He placed his glasses back onto his nose, where it perched proudly. “What do you need?”

Conscious of the dozen or so pairs of eyes trained on him, Gaius replied softly, “I want to buy the Astral Wind.”

The old man nodded, and then, in what seemed to be the textbook example of a delayed reaction, turned to the boy again. “The what?!”

At least the old man had the sense to keep his volume down, despite his surprise. Gaius nodded inwardly, and said, “The Astral Wind.”

“Do you even…” The old man’s voice faltered. “No, something tells me that you do have it.”

He got up and yelled some unintelligible words. Heavy footfalls came from behind the counter, and a few seconds later, a teenager with purple spiky hair came running. Before the youth could speak, the old man told him to man the counter, and then beckoned Gaius to follow him.

The little boy followed him, feeling a dozen burning gazes track his movement into the room behind the counter the whole time.