One Last System

"Ah, you are just in the right place!" the receptionist gleamed, a professional smile filling her face. "Just give me a moment," she requested, turning around and pulling by a rope hanging by the side of the desk.

No sound filled the room. Whatever was supposed to happen after pulling that rope didn\'t include the customers of the place knowing it.

"If you would be as kind as to follow me," the girl said, moving out of her half-height cubicle and pointing with her hand towards the deeper parts of the building.

I followed after the girl without a word. Even though I expected the entire process to be quite similar to what I saw back in the Skyladder sect, it wasn\'t something big enough for me to be surprised when it looked differently.

Soon, we reached a workshop-like room filled with all sorts of workstations. Despite how orderly set everything was, I still got the feeling as if the place was messy. That was the scale of just how filled to the brim this room was.

"Your token, sir," the girl asked, standing by one of the machines closer to the doors.

"Here you go," I said, pulling out and passing away one of my last mementos about the first part of my life in this world.

The girl accepted the bead without a word and put it into the machine. She then pulled at the lever stretching out of the machine\'s side, lowering some kind of contraption over my stone.

\'Isn\'t this just a press?\' I thought, watching how the metal head of the press crushed the stone.

"Don\'t worry, sir," the girl smiled. She most likely noticed my anxiety. "It looks really bad, but that\'s how the process is," she said, scooping all the crushed bits onto a small tray before moving on to the next machine.

She then pulled out a blueish crystal from the shelf below the next machine before seeding it in. And once she placed the tray with my crushed former token below it, she pressed on another lever.

This time, I couldn\'t even guess what was going on as the machine covered both of the items completely. Yet, when the receptionist brought the lever up, only the blueish crystal remained, with the leftover parts of my former token nowhere to be seen.

"The cost of the upgrade will be taken out from your account, sir," the girl said, putting the token in yet another machine. This time, though, rather than pulling on its level, she swung on a reel\'s hand, making the third machine polish the edges of the stone.

"What cost?" I asked, finally realizing that I had fallen right into the trap.

"Ah, don\'t worry, sir," the girl smiled again. But this time, her face was slightly uneasy, as if she only now became aware of her mistake. "It\'s only a single gold coin... But it\'s true that I didn\'t inform you about it beforehand, sir," the girl said, lowering her head.

"Just one more question, then," I said. "All the gold I had deposited on my account in the zero zones should still be of the same worth here, right?" I asked.

"Oh, so you are an advancer, sir!" the girl shouted, her face relaxing. "And no," she then shook her head. "The gold coins earned in the zero zone are slightly more valuable than the ones in circulation in here," she said, her face brightening up again.

\'I guess she was worried she would have to cover the procedure\'s cost out of her own pocket,\' I thought, doing my best to calm myself down.

The prospect of actually still being rich... Was something that I still couldn\'t believe.

In every cultivation novel that I read back in the days, there was the problem of constant inflation. Whenever the main character in those novels would earn something, he would also advance and prove his fortune to be useless in the new realm of power.

That\'s why it was hard for me to digest the idea that what I earned back at the skyladder sect... could still help me out!

"Then don\'t worry about that gold coin," I said, waving my hand.

Right now, in order to force myself into accepting the reality, I had to face it. And there was one simple way to achieve it.

"Could you please allow me to check the state of my account?" I asked.

It was that simple. While there was still the point of the prices of various products raising with their worth, my deal with the brothel back at the skyladder sect was pretty massive.

In other words, while I was unlikely to be rich anymore, I was nowhere near to be as impoverished as I appeared to be!

"Sir, there is no need to be so polite," the girl smiled as she passed the token to my hand. "Sir just needs to drip a drop of blood on the stone from the overview of the account," she instructed.

\'A drop of blood, huh?\' I thought, reaching to my belt and pulling out my knife.

For a moment, the girl\'s face tensed up as she saw me flaunting my weapon, but she calmed down when I directed it towards my own thumb.

\'What, did she expect me to bite my own hand?\' I thought, sneakily sending the girl a look of surprise. \'That\'s so unsanitary and uncomfortable!\' I protested before directing my eyes back to the stone.

Just like the girl said, the second my blood smeared on the blue surface of the stone, the crystal lit up... And then it dimmed down.

"Come on, take a closer look," the girl encouraged, pointing her delicate fingers at the stone in my head.

At first, I took a look at the girl\'s face, trying to sound out whether she was trying to prank me or not. Yet, after trying for a few moments and failing to see even the smallest hint of a made-up story, I brought the stone to my eye...

And then I saw it.

A dimly lit room filled with gold bars and golden coins, and a simple note outlining the content by its side.

63 143.

That was the only thing that I could read, as I only ever learned how to use the numbers of this world. The meaning of it was pretty obvious.

Fifty thousand came from the sale of the recipe for the soaps. As of the remaining over thirteen hundred?

\'Is it the different value?\' I thought at first, recalling what the receptionist said about the varying value of coins. \'No, it doesn\'t make any sense,\' I soon realized. \'If it\'s all held at the zero zones, then they wouldn\'t account for that difference,\' I thought before my face suddenly lit up.

\'Could it be...\' I thought, trembling with excitement, \'that my idea really turned out to be super profitable?\'

Just like with everything that I did business with, instead of dealing with it on my own, I preferred to just sell the ideas and earn from royalties and the downpayment. While it meant slightly lower income, it was also a stable passive gain for me.

And from the looks of things, over the mere two weeks that I disappeared, the concepts I sold to the brothel brought altogether nearly a thousand gold coins a day!

"Just one more thing... but depending on the answer, this might turn into a really long day for you," I said, lowering the stone from my eye and looking at the girl\'s face.

"Yes, sir?" the receptionist shrugged a little, clearly not sure what to think about my warning.

"Am I able to use this wealth even if it\'s stuck in the zero zone\'s safe house?" I asked.

There was no point in having money that I couldn\'t use. This was the last of the major questions that I had to ask before jumping on the occasion.

"Sir, as long as you run it by our branch for a small fee, we can transfer the money to the safehouse of our branch," the girl explained. "Obviously, as long as you just want to buy something from us directly, you won\'t be taxed the transfer fee," she added.

"A long day of work, it is," I muttered, placing my hand on my chest to calm my beating heart.

"Excuse me?" the receptionist asked in a tiny voice, her face filling with anxiety.

I smiled gently and shook my head to get my thoughts back into order.

"Tell me, please, do you maybe trade storage rings?"