They rented a three-storey building in Heavenly News City's eastern quarter — prime location, high foot traffic, 3.5 million crystals annually. Essim overpaid deliberately. In the cultivation world, wealth bought respect.
The next morning: furniture from the City of Life's General Store. Thirty alliance members recruited by Aisha — fifteen Tier-1 guards, five Tier-2 guards, ten civilians trained in sales. Setup took an hour.
The ground floor displayed weapons (Level 5-20), healing pills, talismans, and skill books. The second floor held premium goods. The third was storage: ten gold chests of inventory plus Golden Warrior puppets for emergencies.
Haman — sharp-minded, bespectacled — managed the store. Ocit — muscular, chain-wielding — ran security. Both Aisha's picks.
"The Seed Store," Aisha declared.
"Why 'Seed'?"
"Because it's our first branch in a foreign realm. A seed that will grow into a forest."
Essim decided not to argue with poetry.
That evening, in his private storage room, Essim took stock. Sky Mortars (thousands in reserve). Golden Warriors (thousands more). An Intercontinental Ship. Skill books by the hundreds. High-tier crystals. Universal Insight Stones. And ten thousand Silver Storage Rings — duplicated from Voirel's drop.
His talent scaled with the universe. Every new realm, every new resource, became infinitely reproducible. The gap between Essim and everyone else wasn't closing — it was widening exponentially.
He duplicated everything. Each cycle — ten thousand copies per hour — represented wealth most civilisations couldn't generate in years.
Then he went to dinner. Aisha had ordered crab.
"You're turning twenty-five this year," she said.
"Don't start."
"If you ever need help finding someone — I have connections."
He threw a napkin at her. She caught it, laughing, and for a moment the Ascendant Realm felt almost like home. -e • • •
While Essim built his commercial empire, his alliance members were fighting.
Old Man Haikal stood at the centre of a darkened battlefield, his black tome turning with furious speed, his body wreathed in dark flame. Opposing him: a silver-haired Beast Master woman commanding bears, bats, and owls adapted for low-visibility combat.
"Just a lowly Player," she sneered.
"Talk less," Haikal replied. "Show me the strength of the Beast Masters."
He shot forward like a comet, dark flames consuming the space around him. She countered with flying summons — but Haikal's domain was absolute darkness, where his magic held every advantage. Their battle raged on, neither gaining decisive ground. Attrition warfare, perfectly matched.
Elsewhere, Laras had become a legend. A hundred-metre cross of radiant light stood planted outside Fortress #41, healing all allies within a kilometre. Laras fought at its centre, wielding twin orbs of holy light against a twenty-metre elephant-beast. Nine hours straight, zero consumables used. Her King-Level Crystal Core was self-sustaining in siege warfare.
"Sister Laras is incredible," Dion said from a safe distance.
"She is," Takulani agreed. "But where did our leader get enough Silver Badges to promote all of us in a single day?"
The question nagged at every core member. Essim had distributed badges within twenty-four hours of the event starting. If purchased through contribution points, he'd need three hundred thousand — enough to top the leaderboard multiple times. But he wasn't anywhere near the top.
The answer remained his secret. No one dared ask.
Above the void, on a patrol ship, Essim and Grey played alien chess while Aisha and Eliane traded stories. The four of them had become genuine friends — an unlikely bond between Players and Faithwardens, forged in shared danger and honest conversation.
Eliane spoke of her sheltered childhood as a mayor's daughter. Aisha shared memories of growing up with Essim after their parents' death. The women's bond deepened — a kinship born of understanding what it meant to carry responsibility too young.
The battlefield was vast, the war ancient, and humanity's role in it still being written. But for now, on a small ship drifting through the clouds, four people from different worlds had found something rare.
Friendship. The kind that lasts.
The Seed Store became profitable within three days. Cultivators and Players alike flocked to it — the prices undercut local competitors by thirty percent, and the quality was unmatched. Haman managed inventory with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker, rotating stock to match demand patterns he tracked meticulously.
Essim established a supply chain: duplicated goods shipped from the City of Life through the portal network, restocked weekly. The overhead was effectively zero — every item in the store was a copy of a copy, produced at no material cost beyond the duplication talent's cooldown.
Within a week, the Seed Store had become a landmark in the eastern quarter. Regulars greeted Haman by name. Guards from the War Office stopped by on breaks. Even a few cultivators from the Tou Pavilion's lower staff quietly purchased equipment for personal use, unable to resist prices that their own employer couldn't match.
The WMA was no longer just a regional power in the Ascendant Realm. It was an interrealm commercial entity — the first of its kind, as far as anyone knew. And its growth showed no signs of slowing.