“How much for the coordinates?” Alex asked.

It was several seconds before Shawn answered. The giant observed Alex silently, his large eyes seemingly trying to bore straight into his soul.

“I am bound,” Shawn finally said.

“Oh, you have to be shitting me.” Alex threw his hands up into the air. “Seriously? You can’t tell me? That’s a load of shit. You’re going to pull that the moment I actually—”

“I did not mean I could not say,” Shawn interrupted. “I meant I do not want to. But I am bound by my own rules. I cannot, in good faith, charge as much as I would like to for the answer to your request. The coordinates of a passageway to the Empty Court are not exactly valuable. It is useless to all but those who can already use it — and those who can use it do not need direction.”

“Oh. Well, you should have started with that,” Alex said. “So you can still say. You’re just going to complain about it.”

“Yes,” Shawn said. “That is an apt assessment of the situation. I pride every part of my Ancestry on fairness. The final trial is included in that. The information you ask for will cost you 35 points. I will still caution you to—”

“Done,” Alex said immediately. “You know, from the way you were building it up, I thought you were going to charge me 5 points or something. 35 isn’t that cheap.”

“I would caution you to reconsider,” Shawn finished. Then he blew out a sigh. “But it is done. You have made your choice.”

The giant extended his hand. A dim blue ripple of energy twisted across his palm. A small slate of gray stone dropped down and he carefully lowered it, depositing the slate in Alex’s outstretched hands.

Scrawls of blue energy traced across the surface of the stone. They pulsed with faint teal magic, lit from somewhere deep within the stone. The slate was ever so slightly warm to the touch.

“Sweet,” Alex said, sending it into his spatial ring and giving Shawn a wide grin. “Thank you.”

Shawn just shook his head. “You’ve wasted your points. That information will do you no good. But it is not up to me how you will spend your points. After the earnings you finagled from me and your current expenses, you still have 100 points. What else would you like to purchase?”

“Has anything else been bought from the list you gave me?”

“No,” Shawn replied. “At this point, the offerings that you know of remain the same.”

Alex nodded slowly. That meant there was a melee weapon, a consumable, and a suit of armor left from the most expensive items that Shawn had in store. There were also definitely more things that the giant had that simply hadn’t been mentioned yet.

Most expensive didn’t always guarantee the option was the best one. After all, nobody with half a brain had ever gone out and bought a Gucci belt expecting it to do anything better than the old leather one sitting in the thrift store down the road.

That said, given the focus Shawn has put on being fair, I don’t think he’d put some trash up as any of the best offerings. That means I can’t just blindly skip by anything. I should at least consider looking at one of the expensive items.

The melee weapon didn’t really interest him much, though. He already had his anchor and Princess’ chainsword. Between those two, Alex couldn’t imagine wanting yet another close range tool. He was more than covered in that regard. The only scenario he got the close range weapon would be if he were getting it for someone else.

I suppose that isn’t the worst option. Maybe Claire could use something better. She’s got that whip of hers, though. I’m not sure if this will be any better than the weaponized bindings that were trying to kill her.

Alex had even less interest in the armor than he did the melee weapon, though. His current outfit was way too fun. Running around in a perfectly tailored dress shirt or a tuxedo was considerably more amusing than clanking up to a fight looking like a LARP-er that had gotten lost on their way to defeat the forces of the Alibaba-purchased plastic elf ear army.

There was always the chance the armor was something a little more unique, but it just didn’t really call to him much. He doubted Claire would want to wear anything inspired by rot either. It didn’t sound like a particularly fashionable option.

That left the consumable.

It was the most out of place out of all the other options that Shawn had listed. Everything else promised some kind of permanent boon. A powerful weapon or a tool that was indisputably valuable — and would likely remain so for quite some time.

But a consumable was once and done. For it to be the same price as the other options meant whatever effect it had was going to have to be pretty damn significant.

Alex chewed his lower lip. There was always the option of trying to dig for more information or poking around to find out what else Shawn had to offer. But everything was a black box. There would be no way to figure anything out until he committed to looking at something.

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Then again, since nobody else had tried to take any of the expensive items yet, there was a pretty damn high chance that they couldn’t afford them. That meant there was nothing stopping him from taking a look.

“Okay,” Alex said. “Show me that consumable.”

Shawn smiled. The air above his palm warped once again. A small vial appeared above it, so tiny in comparison with the giant that it almost looked laughable. It wasn’t much larger than a pencil in any dimension.

The vial was full of a brownish liquid full of suspended sludge particles. Just the sight of the vial was enough to make Alex’s stomach churn. There were a number of things the contents of the vial seemed comparable with, and not a single one of them was nice.

Words shimmered through the air above the vial as the System identified it.

All-Rot (Legendary) — Consumable

Upon Destruction: When the All-Rot is freed from the powerful bindings containing it, it will consume all magical presences it comes into contact with entirely, growing and spreading until it is contained by a power source strong enough to repress it. It cannot be stopped or treated in any other method.

Alex stared at the inconspicuous vial.

“When you say consume…”

“Completely and utterly. People. Monsters. Items. Everything,” Shawn said, an undeniable note of pride in his voice. “This is the greatest of my creations. I’ve only ever made one batch. It was a little too risky, and — well, I destroyed a few too many laboratories and bodies working on it. To be honest… it’s not that useful. The use-case is a bit problematic.”

“How fast does it spread?”

“Fast,” Shawn replied. “Very, very fast.”

“This is the Black Plague crossed with a nuclear bomb,” Alex said flatly. “If I open this, don’t I just… what, destroy the entire city I’m in, everyone inside it and myself included?”

“Just about,” Shawn said. “The All-Rot will eventually start consuming itself, and the magical power in this world is still growing. It wouldn’t actually spread as far here as it would in a more magic-rich environment. That said, the vial isn’t easy to open. At your current stage of power… you couldn’t get it open even if you wanted to.”

“I see,” Alex said. He scratched his chin. “How much for the bottle of mutually assured destruction?”

“80 points. All-Rot is powerful beyond belief. As I said, it is my greatest creation.” Shawn’s eyes narrowed as anger warped his features. “But it was also my biggest mistake. If I’d never made it, I wouldn’t have died. It drew too much attention. A weapon like that in the right hands and right environment… well, I’ll never get to know what it could have done. Not anymore.”

The hair on the back of Alex’s neck stood on end. “This is what the Starfallen were after, isn’t it?”

Shawn observed Alex silently for a second. “What makes you say that?”

“Because there’s no way they care about your Legacy,” Alex replied. “No offense. But they’re one of the strongest families in the System, aren’t they?”

“They’re very strong,” Shawn said. “I would not go farther than that. The System is large, Alex. Very, very large.”

“Okay. Strong. But still. Your Legacy is awesome and all that. But I don’t believe they’d have gone through the trouble of partnering with that slob the River King just to get it. They were after something more important. A weapon capable of just chewing through an entire city seems like it would fit the bill. I’d be willing to bet it would do some great damage to a very powerful monster as well.”

“You think they’d be willing to potentially destroy the better part of a region just to kill some monster?” Shawn asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Alex said in an instant. “Why would they give a fuck about 274-50? They’d probably destroy the entire planet if it made things just a bit more convenient for them. Starfallen view us as nothing more than ants.”

A cold smile passed over Shawn’s features. “Good answer. You are correct. It is incredibly likely that the Starfallen were present here for this. But unfortunately for them, they will not receive it. Their representative has already been sent from my Ancestry.”

Alex paused. “What? You mean Absolution actually beat him?”

“That’s going to cost you,” Shawn said with a wry laugh. “We’re still playing our game, Alex.”

That makes no damn sense. How could Absolution possibly have won the fight against Vincent? We nearly beat Absolution ourselves. He’s really strong… but Vincent was on an entirely different level.

Then again, I guess Absolution specializes in 1 on 1 fights. Maybe that was enough to close the gap?

It wasn’t. Alex wasn’t delusional. Anyone that they’d been able to force to retreat wasn’t going to be beating someone as impossibly fast as Vincent so quickly after. Something else had happened.

“Give me the vial,” Alex said after another moment of thought. “If the Starfallen were after this… it’ll be useful.”

“20 points remain,” Shawn said, dropping the vial into Alex’s hands carelessly.

The liquid sloshed within it, its mere existence an insult to everything the Geneva convention had once stood for. A droplet of sweat rolled down the back of Alex’s neck. No matter how unbreakable this vial was, it was still the biggest bioweapon that Earth had ever seen.

He quickly banished it into his Spatial Ring.

“Okay. And I think I already know what I want for my last 20 points,” Alex said.

“Oh?” Shawn asked. “What is it?”

“Seeds. Saplings. That kind of thing,” Alex said. “I’ve got a garden thing back in my town. But a garden is only as good as the stuff you’re growing in it. I figure you’ve got some pretty interesting plants. To understand rot, you’ve got to understand the opposite. That means you should have grown some pretty interesting stuff, right?”

Shawn blinked. He clearly hadn’t been expecting that line of questioning. After a moment, he inclined his head.

“I can arrange for 20 points worth of plants that I believe you would find interesting. That is an interesting request. You would prefer for it over a weapon?”

“Everything is a weapon if you use it the right way. Just don’t give me anything that’ll eat my city alive or some shit like that.”

“True enough. I understand your request.” A small leather bag appeared above Shawn’s palm, tied at the top with a thick strand of twine. He dropped it into Alex’s hands. “You are out of points.”

“So I am,” Alex said. “How would you say I did now that we’re all done?”

“Well enough.” Shawn gave Alex an approving nod. “Better than I had expected. But, curiously enough, not the best out of your group. One of them actually managed to get more points out of me than you did.”

“What?” Alex blinked. “Who?”

Shawn grinned.

“Claire.”