The inn was better than anything he had slept in since arriving in Erasval, which was not a high bar given that his previous accommodation had been a gap between two buildings and a narrow room above a tavern, but the difference was real and he noticed it. Proper bed, actual window with a latch, a basin with clean water already in it. He put the egg against the wall where he could see it from the bed, checked the panel once and was asleep before the city outside had finished settling into its night rhythm.
He woke to the sound of Valresh already in motion.
The city operated at a different scale from the settlement in the way that cities always did, not just larger but faster, the ambient noise of it carrying a density of activity that the settlement had never approached even at its busiest. He could hear merchants already calling from the street below and carts moving and the distant sound of something large being constructed or demolished somewhere to the north. He lay for a moment listening to it and then got up and checked the panel.
[Heat Control (F) — Return value: 9,847,330 VP]
[Current rate: 448,210 VP per hour]
[Projected return at 24hrs: 20,603,370 VP]
[Named Grade threshold — Sovereign-grade (Skill): 5,000,000,000 VP — not met]
[Maximum achievable grade at withdrawal: SSS]
[Combustion (S) — Return value: 5,847,220 VP]
[Current rate: 274,110 VP per hour]
[SS to SSS: 8,000,000 VP — not met]
[Maximum achievable grade at withdrawal: SS]
[Unknown Egg (???) — Return value: 7,340,000 VP]
[Current rate: ???]
[VP balance: 143,170]
He had invested another 70,000 VP into the egg the previous evening before sleeping. The return value on it had crossed 7 million overnight and the rate was still unreadable. He looked at the egg against the wall. It looked the same as it always did. Dark, dense, quietly warm, the investment bar moving in its slow breathing wave.
He closed the panel and went to find Rael.
Rael was already downstairs with food in front of him and a map of the city's merchant district spread on the table. He pushed a second plate across without looking up from the map.
"High-grade material merchants are in the eastern quarter," he said. "Two of them worth visiting. The guild-affiliated one has better stock but prices accordingly. The independent one negotiates." He finally looked up. "What are you looking for specifically?"
Kael sat down and ate a piece of whatever bread was on the plate before answering. "Core materials," he said. "High grade if available. I have a specific application in mind."
Rael looked at him with the now-familiar assessment. "Core construction at level 25 is ambitious."
"I am aware."
"The materials for anything above Rare grade at Tier 1 are going to be expensive. What is your budget?"
Kael thought about his coin purse, which contained the mine quest payment from two weeks ago and not much else in terms of gold. His actual wealth existed in a currency Rael could not see and could not be spent at any merchant in Valresh. "Flexible," he said, which was true in ways he was not going to explain.
Rael accepted this the way he accepted most things Kael said, by filing it without comment.
They spent the morning in the merchant district.
The eastern quarter was a different density of commerce from the main road stalls, purpose-built shops with actual signage and stock displays, the kind of establishments that did not move or vary with market days because their clientele were regulars with specific needs. Rael moved through it with the ease of someone who had been here before, navigating the gaps between buildings without checking the map and greeting two different merchants by name.
The Compound Sense passive was active the entire time, pulsing steadily at the edges of his awareness as they passed shops carrying materials with inherent world value. He did not convert anything in the merchant district. Converting a merchant's stock to VP without purchasing it first was a line he was not going to cross on practical grounds as much as ethical ones. But he catalogued everything the system flagged, the values it assigned to materials through the walls of the shops, the relative density of high-value stock in each establishment.
The guild-affiliated merchant had a Tier 2 Epic core base in the display case that the Compound System appraised at 840,000 VP world value. The price on it was seventeen gold marks.
He looked at it for a long time.
Seventeen gold marks was significantly more than he had. He could convert materials to gold through the merchant exchange system he had learned about in the settlement but the rate was poor and the process was slow and he had not yet found a clean way to bridge his VP wealth into coin without attracting questions about where the materials had come from.
He was going to need to solve that problem before the tournament ended.
He bought three low-grade supplementary core materials from the independent merchant using the last of his coin, items that the system valued at 47,000 VP each and which the merchant sold him for four silver marks combined because they were not flashy and not in demand from anyone who knew what they were for. He was reasonably confident no one at that merchant's stall knew what they were for.
Rael watched him buy them without comment.
The tournament registration office was adjacent to the main guild building, a separate structure with its own entrance and a queue that was already substantial by the time they arrived in the afternoon. Cultivators of every rank visible through Common and Ranked tokens, a few with what looked like mid-tier guild badges that suggested they had travelled from further than the surrounding region. The prize was a Tier 3 Legendary material. People had come for it.
They joined the queue and Rael immediately began doing what he had offered to do, which was explain the registration structure in enough detail that Kael could navigate it without asking questions that would mark him as uninformed.
The tournament ran in three stages. Open qualifiers, bracket rounds and finals. Open qualifiers were elimination format, last person standing per round, combat only, no killing permitted under guild law. Bracket rounds were scored on damage dealt and technique assessment by guild observers. Finals were single elimination with no restrictions beyond the no-kill rule. All ranks competed together with a handicapping system applied to higher-rank participants that theoretically levelled the field.
Kael listened to all of it and thought about what handicapping meant for someone whose power did not read correctly on standard appraisal tools.
They were four people from the front of the queue when a voice from behind them said something that was not directed at them but was loud enough that not hearing it would have required effort.
"Registration queue for the open division. How unfortunate. I had hoped the prize would attract serious competition."
Kael did not turn around. Rael did, briefly, with the controlled expression of someone who recognised the voice and had a pre-existing opinion of it.
The speaker moved up the side of the queue rather than joining the back of it, ignoring the looks this generated from the people he passed, and stopped approximately two positions behind them with the ease of someone who expected the space to be made available and found that it was. He was tall, dressed in gear that was not practical in the way Rael's was but expensive in a way that was clearly deliberate, layered materials with a quality that the Compound Sense passive registered as genuine before Kael had consciously decided to check. His Record token was gold-edged in a way Kael had not seen before, a modification that suggested guild rank above the standard issue.
He looked at the queue around him with the expression of someone inspecting inventory.
His gaze passed over Kael, moved to Rael, and stopped.
"Rael," he said. The name carried the particular weight of someone who had used it before in a context that had not been friendly.
"Dorin," Rael said. The same weight, the same history underneath it.
Dorin looked at Kael with the full attention of someone who had decided he was the more interesting subject of the two. His appraisal was not the kind that used a tool. It was the kind that came from enough experience reading cultivators that the tool was redundant. He looked at Kael's token, his gear, the Ashveil Blade, the pack on his back with the egg wrapped inside it, and arrived at whatever conclusion the surface information supported.
"Common tier," he said. The observation was delivered without inflection, which somehow made it worse than if he had put contempt in it directly. "Entering the open division. Interesting decision."
"Registration is open to all ranks," Kael said. "The posting was explicit."
Dorin looked at him with an expression that was not quite surprise and not quite amusement, the expression of someone who had not expected the inventory to talk back. "It is," he said. "Theoretically. The handicapping system for higher ranks is designed to make that feel meaningful to people who need it to." He let that sit for a moment. "It does not change outcomes. It changes the experience of losing."
Rael said his name again with a different tone. A warning delivered in two syllables.
Dorin looked at Rael with the expression of someone who did not take warnings from the people issuing them seriously. "Your quarterfinal losses two years running are a matter of public record," he said. "I am simply managing expectations for your new companion before he commits registration fees he may need for other purposes."
The queue moved forward. Kael moved with it.
"What tier are you?" Kael said, without turning around.
A pause. Not long. The pause of someone recalibrating because the question had been asked in the wrong direction. "Champion," Dorin said. "Tier 4."
"And you are entering the open division tournament where Common tier cultivators can register."
"The prize is worth attending regardless of the competition level."
"Then we agree," Kael said. "Registration is worth the fee regardless of the competition."
He reached the front of the queue and presented his token to the registration clerk without looking back at Dorin again. He heard Rael make a sound behind him that was not quite a laugh and was clearly trying not to be.
The clerk processed his registration, took the fee, which Rael covered before Kael had finished calculating whether he had enough coin remaining, and handed him a registration marker with his bracket assignment printed on it.
[Open Division — Qualifier Round 1 — Bracket 7]
He stepped aside for Rael and looked at the marker in his hand and thought about the Voidstone Shard sitting at the end of this bracket as a prize for whoever won the whole thing.
He thought about Dorin behind him in the queue and the way the word Common had landed and the way the pause had sounded when Kael had asked what tier he was.
He thought about Heat Control sitting at 9,847,330 VP return value and climbing at 448,000 VP per hour and the withdrawal prompt he had been delaying for three days.
He was going to need a private space before the qualifiers began.
Rael finished his registration and came to stand beside him, looking at his own bracket assignment. "Dorin is Tier 4," he said, quietly enough that it was just for Kael. "His family controls three of the larger guild contracts in this region. He has entered this tournament every year for six years and won it four times."
"What happened the other two years?"
"He was not yet Champion tier. He lost in the finals to a King-tier participant the handicapping did not sufficiently compensate for." Rael paused. "He has not lost since reaching Tier 4."
Kael looked at his bracket marker. "Which bracket is he in?"
Rael checked his own and then looked at Kael's. Something in his expression shifted in a way that was almost sympathetic. "Seven," he said.
Kael looked at the marker.
"Good," he said.
Rael looked at him for a long moment. "You are either very confident or very uninformed," he said. "And you have been in Erasval for fourteen days so I cannot tell which."
"Neither can I," Kael said. "That is what the qualifier is for."
He pocketed the marker and walked out of the registration office into the afternoon light of Valresh, and behind him Rael followed, and somewhere in the city Dorin was registering for the same bracket, and the egg was warm against his back, and Heat Control was generating 448,000 VP per hour and had been for the last nine hours.
He had four days before the qualifiers began.
He was going to spend them well.