The level six Xian shopkeeper smiled broadly at his entrance, causing Hector a spike of concern. There was something predatory there. "Hello, Master Sirius."

"Why if it isn't the Stalwart Xian himself."

Hector winced. "You watch television?"

"It's something to pass the time. Needless to say, Hector, you've impressed me. Are you interested in going to Tian?"

His mood instantly brightened. "Yes, of course."

"I can only recommend you, you understand? The final decision is made by someone else. But if you sign a fixed term employment contract with me, I am authorized to sell you specialized resources. It's a phenomenal opportunity."

Reflexes honed over decades vendor negotiations engaged. "What resources for what terms?"

"Were you a businessman? I had you pegged as a warrior."

He realized his mistake in an instant and strove to cover up his background as a dreamer. "I had to be a businessman first so that I could afford the resources to become a warrior. You don't just run into a dungeon below level four."

"Is that right?" Sirius went to one of his infamous cupboards and withdrew a large bag. "Before we go through the resources, let's discuss the terms. This tournament has been a bit slow coming together. There are still five months to go. So I would need you to report to my shop the day before the departure date. If accepted by the representative of Lord Andrew, you will depart immediately for Tian to be a competitor in the tournament. If you fail to show or refuse to go, you will be required to pay a million credits. It specifies standard debt garnishment, so you'd never be able to hold more than a thousand credits at a time – everything you earn over that goes towards the debt."

Hector considered those terms. He basically showed up here in five months and went with the man who came to collect him. Because he had the ability to create a transit sphere, the penalty was nothing to him. He could leave this world behind if the financial penalty cut too deep. And if he didn't like the tournament once he arrived, he could bail on that as well.

"Sounds fair enough. What are the resources?"

Sirius pulled out an item. "The first of five items made available to prospective competitors is a tincture of propolis. It's a product of Zing. Their emperor is said to take a dose of it every day."

"Propolis? Isn't that gunk from bee hives?"

"It's a potent resource," Sirius said. "Maybe you will be more impressed with the next one." He pulled free a pile of what looked like green crackers. "Seaweed bricks. These are harvested from the South Sea by an order of monks. Their use was a closely guarded secret during the age of sects, but has since become popular for its potency."

Hector couldn't for the life of him make his face into a shape that communicated any level of interest. Bee gunk and seaweed? He wanted silver plasma elixir. Actually, he wanted gold plasma elixir, but that obviously wasn't coming.

Sirius pulled out what looked surprisingly similar to a mason jar full of some waxy white substance. "From the nation of Stein, we have chicken skin preserved in fat."

Next came a translucent wrap the size of a dumpling with some powder inside it. "A new invention that they are calling a powder pill. Ground crickets and ash from burnt straw inside rice paper. Its effects are wide-ranging across all body tissues."

"And finally," Sirius pulled out a bottle of cloudy liquid, "we have lime water, processed from the finest Amaratti limestone. What it lacks in potency, it more than makes up for in specificity. If you seek to practice the cold forged method, as it appears you are from your skull progress, then this will be a most potent resource for enhancing your bones."

Hector frowned. "You didn't give me any prices."

"They are twenty thousand each. You should also buy some wine to make sure you have enough energy to make use of whatever resources you choose." Sirius tapped his finger on the lime water he'd pulled out last while he waggled his brows.

"I definitely need a case of wine. Plus two of the lime water and one chicken fat." He'd just spent almost half of his fortune.

"You should purchase the powder pill as well. It's quite potent."

He sighed. "Fine. And another psychedelic honey pill."

"Another? This is three for you, is it not? I'd stop after that."

"Why? Is it dangerous?"

"Using the brain as a bridge to the mind carries some risk."

"Last time, then. Oh, right. I need more Bacopa leaf." He couldn't forget Riley.

"Still training your protege? I have green juice in stock."

He sighed. "Sure."

By the time he left, he'd parted with two hundred thousand credits. He took a taxi home, stowed his resources in a basement storage rental, and carried the first items to the restaurant on the first floor. A tag on the lime water told him to dilute it with water so that he didn't damage his mouth or stomach, so he ordered a large glass of water to go with a cheap stew.

Hector alternated between drinking the lime water diluted in normal water and taking swigs of wine. He only finished a quarter of the lime water and half the wine before the resources kicked in in a big way. Hector abandoned the rest of his meal to go to the rooftop.

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For several hours, he pushed cosmic energy into his skull. It went so unbelievably smooth. In short order, he went from about sixty percent enhanced to the peak of level five in the bones surrounding his brain. Then, since he still had plenty of wine and lime water, he eagerly took another sip of each.

Mistake. A huge one.

The bitter lime water chemically burnt his mouth and throat. He coughed most of it back up and circulated cosmic energy to heal the injuries. Still wanting to experience the benefits, Hector dumped a small amount of lime water into the wine bottle and drank it diluted in that fashion. It made the wine even worse in flavor, but he reveled in the ease of his body enhancement. Before he was done, Hector managed to fully enhance his right femur and start on the left.

The excitement he felt at finally seeing progress was immense. Of course, it hadn't come without cost. His energy reserves were down to ten percent. Not even a full bottle of wine could prevent his reserves from rapidly dwindling.

He still had half the bottle of lime water remaining too. That was enough to finish his other femur and then start on his humerus bones – maybe even finish them. He just needed to restore his energy levels enough to make effective use of it. Hector stored the lime water away and collected the gifts for Riley, then went to see her.

"Hector! Why is your energy so low? Did you get in trouble in the dungeon?"

"I spent it doing body enhancement. I also have presents for you, so charge me for an outing."

She eyed the bag he was carrying with some curiosity as she made the arrangements. Then they were out the door. Hector took her to a nearby steakhouse and tipped the server in advance for putting up with the eccentricities of Xian consuming resources alongside a meal.

Riley drank the extra large bottle of green juice one shot at a time, chasing it with sips of Bacopa tea and bites of meat. "I can feel my energy going up already. What does it feel like when you get your mind up to the limit of your soul?"

Hector paused. "I actually don't know the answer to that. I can tell you that with your body it's like you hit a wall. There's no room for any more energy to absorb."

"What is your mind statistic?"

"Three point nine. I'm going to get it to four soon."

"Wow, Hector, that's amazing. I bet Arahant can't mess with your mind at all."

He laughed. "Not the normal ones, maybe. There are some powerful people in the multiverse. I bet the Sage of Persuasion could mess with my head pretty good."

"It's not like you'll ever meet her anyway."

Hector just smiled. "You're probably right."

Riley managed to finish all of the green juice and half of the Bacopa leaves. She put the remaining dry leaves into her pocket for later consumption when they left. Then they visited an art museum that Riley's friends bragged about visiting.

"This isn't a very good painting," she confided.

"I don't think the painter intended it to be a realistic portrayal." Hector didn't consider himself an expert on art, but he'd seen some abstract paintings on Earth that made the unusually proportioned subjects on the canvas seem mild in comparison.

"That's dumb."

"You know," Hector said, "I think people in the art community just get bored looking at pretty pictures. They applaud this kind of thing because it's different and they get to look down their noses at people like us who don't get it."

"I like pretty pictures."

"Me too, Riley."

She turned to a nearby statue that depicted a beautiful, defiant woman standing before a monster. It was all carved out of a single piece of stone. The woman was obviously a Jinn based on the fact that her left arm was mechanical, ending in the barrel of a weapon of some sort. The monster she faced was an amorphous fractal nightmare. Riley had spent more time looking at the centerpiece of the room than the many paintings hanging around the perimeter.

"Do you really think I can grow strong?"

"Everyone can. Few do because only some want it enough to sacrifice their comfort."

"Xian are strong at level four?"

He knew what she was asking. He also knew that the true answer would crush the interest she'd begun to show. "Xian are pretty strong at level three if they raise all their statistics."

"Level three." She nodded as if making a promise to herself.

Hector kept her company in a movie theater after the museum, trying not to show how much he wanted to get back to his capsule hotel to drink another bottle of wine and cultivate. He couldn't decide if he was looking forward to body enhancement or mental strengthening more. Either way, he needed to boost his energy reserves.

The movie Riley chose was a romantic comedy. She apparently liked the actors playing the two leads. The beats were a little odd for Hector as, despite the pervasive influence of resonance, this world was very different from his own. The woman was a Jinn who was working as a maintenance technician while studying for her generically named 'fusion exam'. The man was an Orisha who made a living as a delivery person, using his heart space to stow goods away.

The 'meet cute' didn't make any sense to Hector. The heater in the man's apartment broke down and the woman showed up to fix it. She decided that a rather large part needed replaced and could not figure out how to get it out of the room. She was at her wit's end when the man arrived home and asked if she needed help. She felt like she'd been insulted for being a woman and left. So the man stowed the item and teleported to the street before she could leave the building.

It seemed to Hector like the man was just being a smug asshole. But the woman couldn't be upset when she realized she'd been humiliated because he was a survivor of Aes. A plot twist came when it was revealed that he was actually a dreamer whose only connection to the fallen home world of the Orisha were from inherited memories.

By that point, the two of them were dating and it didn't matter. The plot of the movie was so low effort that Hector couldn't tell where bad writing ended and foreign cultural tropes began. Riley ate it up. He couldn't figure out why she liked it until he identified what element most keenly annoyed him. Everything about the story was so blatantly mundane. Just normal folk doing normal folk things. They lived in a multiverse with dungeons and fallen worlds. Who wanted to see the Union Central equivalent of a Hallmark movie?

The answer to that question was Riley. She craved a happy, normal existence like the one depicted on screen. Just a normal girl running into a normal guy so that they could have a normal courtship which would lead into a normal happy ever after. It all seemed so unambitious to Hector. Once he knew everything that was possible, knew that he could cultivate like Volithur, Hector had left the mundane behind entirely. He wanted more. That some people wanted to limit the scope of their existence… it did not compute for him.

After the movie, he walked her home. Riley remained mostly silent, but asked a few questions. How strong were Xian at level three? Did women ever work in construction? What about police work, could they do that? He answered seriously, knowing she was trying out different futures in her head. They didn't seem remotely practical to him, but the important thing was that she was envisioning futures where she did something different.

When they parted, Hector raced back home.

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