Kurumi, typically a master of maneuvering, was left speechless by the ease with which Yukari and Akira were escalating the domain. This reality-bending landscape was being treated like a simple construction project.
Yukari, sensing the unspoken skepticism, confirmed the absurdity with a charming shrug: "As long as we have the materials, dear, I can build everything effortlessly."
This statement, however, instantly sobered Akira. He stopped smiling. The cosmic power was cheap, but the real-world resources were not. His focus immediately snapped back to the penthouse and the briefcase.
Akira quickly assessed his options for generating the required capital:
1. High-Risk Wealth Generation: Utilize the Instantaneous Financial Transmuter (HFT Briefcase) and the rhyming sonnets of the Unlicensed Predictive Almanac to generate immediate, massive, but potentially unstable wealth. This requires a high-stakes, real-world operation.
2. Stable Asset Liquidation: Sort through the massive stack of ability cards and monster materials he collected from the trial. He knew from experience in various fictional stories that unique, high-tier abilities and rare materials often functioned as highly valuable commodities. This path offers a slower, but more stable and discreet source of funds.
Akira, ever the pragmatist, decides to pursue the Stable Asset Liquidation first. High-frequency trading and reality transmutation can wait until they have a solid, untraceable foundation.
"Yukari, Kurumi," Akira said, grabbing the stack of ability cards. "Before we transmute any gravel into gold, let's see what kind of inventory we're working with. These monster materials and ability cards are our first liquid assets."
Akira first checked the ability cards he gained from the slimes he defeated in the initial part of the trial. while seemingly basic, offered some utility:
1. Paralyze Shock: An ability to deliver a non-lethal electrical charge upon contact, capable of momentarily paralyzing low-level targets.
2. Thunder Resistance: A passive trait granting minor resistance to electrical and lightning-based attacks.
3. Minor Explosion: A single-use, low-yield burst of fire and concussive force that can be triggered in a small area.
4. Freezing Aura: A passive ability to slightly drop the ambient temperature around the user, causing mild frostbite and slowing opponents with prolonged exposure.
5. Acid Resistance: A passive trait granting immunity or high resistance to common acidic damage and corrosives.
Akira quickly realized that while these cards weren't unique enough for immediate wealth, the Acid Resistance and Thunder Resistance cards were highly marketable among people that seeking protective buffs, and the Paralyze Shock card had excellent non-lethal utility for capture missions. He mentally cataloged them as stable, low-tier tradable assets.
From Rabbit:
1. Flicker Dodge : Not simple agility, but a passive movement ability that allows the user to perform an instantaneous, short-range teleportation (a "flicker") whenever a hostile action is directed at them.
2. Lucky Foot of the Boundary : A passive-active card. The user's luck stat is marginally but permanently increased.
3. Unseen Burrow: A highly refined version of simple digging. This ability allows the user to instantly melt into any patch of earth, concrete, or stone, move through the subterranean layer as if it were water, and exit silently anywhere within a kilometer radius. Movement is completely undetectable by conventional means.
These three cards alone provide Akira with the means to generate a substantial, untraceable lump sum of cash, vastly exceeding the value of his basic slime cards.
Akira mentally filed away the three high-value Rabbit cards, knowing that the most immediate, untraceable cash flow would come from selling the Lucky Foot of the Boundary. Its boundary manipulation aspect was unique and highly desirable, and its vagueness made it perfectly discreet.
From the Chicken monsters, Akira easily extracted two core abilities. Unlike the high-concept Rabbit cards, these were straightforwardly powerful in their specific domains:
1. Unbound Aerial Mastery: This ability grants perfect three-dimensional spatial awareness while airborne, allowing for intricate, high-speed maneuvers, instantaneous direction changes, and the ability to maintain equilibrium in any wind condition. The user's body instinctively finds the best vectors for flight.
2. Predator's Focus Sight: An active ocular enhancement that grants the user preternatural clarity, eliminating environmental clutter, fog, or visual noise. It allows the user to see heat signatures, slight movements to lock a visual target through moderate physical barriers, such as thin walls, thick foliage, or crowds.
Akira proceeded to audit the cards from the more aggressive monsters, next focusing on the Boar spoils. These abilities, he knew, would be less about subtlety and more about raw, brute force—perfect for certain niche markets.
From the Boar monsters, Akira secured two highly practical, if somewhat straightforward, cards that could still fetch a respectable price:
1. Unstoppable Ram: An active, channeled ability that allows the user to build incredible kinetic energy over a short distance, culminating in a devastating, forward-charged blow. This attack is not only immensely powerful but also possesses a high degree of "piercing" and "knockback" force, allowing the user to break through reinforced barriers, walls, or lines of heavily armored opponents with minimal self-damage.
2. Sustained Consumption: A passive-active metabolism enhancement. While consuming food or liquids, the user can rapidly convert calories into immediate physical stamina, minor healing, and accelerated regeneration. The speed and extent of the recovery are directly proportional to the amount and quality of the consumed sustenance.
Akira continued his meticulous inventory, moving on to the spoils from the Wolf monsters. As expected, these abilities focused heavily on speed, stealth, and pack dynamics, offering another set of valuable, high-utility cards.
1. Feral Sprint: An active movement ability that grants a burst of incredible, sustained speed. This ability taps into the user's predatory instincts, allowing them to maintain top speed effortlessly over rough terrain and long distances without suffering the typical penalties of fatigue or terrain resistance.
2. Shadow Step: A highly efficient stealth ability. It allows the user to instantly blend into any area of low light or shadow, moving without disturbing the air or creating ground vibrations.
3. Intimidate: An active, short-range psychological ability. By focusing the user's will, it projects a palpable aura of predatory dominance that can induce fear, hesitation, and minor physical paralysis in lower-willed or weaker opponents. It's a guaranteed way to break enemy morale before a fight even begins.
4. 4. Bounding Leap: A physical enhancement ability that allows the user to achieve incredible vertical and horizontal jumps. It includes an innate sense of perfect landing and balance, allowing the user to effortlessly transition from a massive jump directly into a run or combat stance, regardless of the height or distance traveled.
Akira moved to the spoils from the Ghoul monsters, expecting abilities tied to decay and affliction. These proved to be potent debuff and damage-over-time, highly valuable to those specializing in attrition warfare.
1. Rotten Stench: A passive, short-range ability that emits an intense, invisible stench. It doesn't just smell bad; it causes immediate, severe nausea, disorientation, and a rapid drop in focus and stamina within the immediate area of the user. It is highly effective for area denial and disrupting enemy coordination.
2. Caustic Discharge: An active ability to project a concentrated stream of highly acidic saliva. This acid bypasses most standard protections and is particularly effective against metals, synthetics, and organic tissue, quickly creating weak points in armor or defenses.
3. Corrosive Slash: A passive physical enhancement that imbues the user's natural weapons (hands, claws, knives, etc.) with a decaying touch. Any physical cut or slash will not only inflict damage but also leave behind a slowly spreading corrosive affliction that continues to degrade the target's health and defensive capabilities over time.
From the Skeletons, Akira gathered a surprising mix of cards, ranging from humorous utility to genuine combat assets:
1. Party Trick: Skelly Dance: An active, highly theatrical ability that forces the user into an elaborate, disjointed, and irresistibly catchy skeleton dance. While performing, the user gains a massive boost to their charisma and luck stat, often dazzling or confusing opponents. The downside is the user is completely unable to fight or stop dancing until the routine is over.
2. Bone Head: A passive resilience trait that grants absolute immunity to all forms of mental attacks, psychological pressure, and memory manipulation. Since the user technically has no brain, they are completely immune to mental suggestion, fear, or mental overload.
3. Reinforced Rib Cage: A passive physical enhancement that dramatically increases the user's resistance to blunt force trauma, piercing attacks, and critical organ damage.
4. Faint Aura of Death: A subtle, passive ability that surrounds the user with a gentle, decaying energy. This aura causes all minor flora to wilt and small vermin to flee, and it marginally slows the natural healing rate of any living being within a few feet of the user.
5. Bone Puppet: An active necromantic ability that allows the user to animate any fresh skeleton (human or animal) within a 50-meter radius, controlling it with perfect fidelity. The puppet is purely physical and acts as a remote extension of the user's will.
6. Summon Skeleton: An active summoning spell that calls forth a single, highly durable, combat-ready (Skeleton} equipped with basic armor and a standard weapon. The summoned skeleton lasts until destroyed or dismissed.
From the Kobolds, Akira secured a rich haul of abilities focused on stealth, infiltration, and acquisition:
1. Master Locksmith's Touch: A passive-active enhancement granting the user intuitive understanding and preternatural dexterity when handling mechanical security devices. The user can visually assess a lock's mechanism and, with a touch, effortlessly manipulate even those secured by magical or highly advanced technologies, making traditional lock-picking instantaneous and silent.
2. Flicker Steal: An active, close-range ability that blends dexterity with minor spatial distortion. The user executes a blindingly fast, near-impossible steal by momentarily shifting their hand's position across a fraction of space, allowing them to lift small items directly from a target's body without ever physically being felt or seen by the target.
3. Geomantic Sensing: A passive detection ability that allows the user to sense subtle energy signatures emitted by valuable, rare, or magically-imbued items. The user gains an innate sense of where treasure is hidden, not just in the immediate vicinity, but across large, complex areas or deep underground.
4. Veil of Silence: A powerful passive ability that blankets the user in an aura that actively dampens and absorbs sound. The user's movements are perfectly hushed, and any sounds they make are minimized to near zero, granting perfect aural stealth.
5. Silence Step: A mobility enhancement that automatically calculates and executes the softest, most efficient path and pressure for every step the user takes. It is impossible to trip or stumble, and the user leaves absolutely no traceable footprint or ground vibration, making them immune to ground-based sensors.
6. Death Mark: An active, focused ability that allows the user to designate a single target within their line of sight with an invisible, ephemeral "mark." For the next hour, all of the user's attacks against the marked target gain a massive bonus to lethality and significantly increasing the chance of an instantaneous kill.
From the Goblins, Akira secured a set of cards that ranged from group utility to extremely problematic personal enhancements:
1. Frenzy Call: An active ability that emits a focused, high-frequency auditory signal. This signal instantly attracts any nearby lower-intelligence hostile entities to the user's location, making it an excellent tool for creating diversions, initiating ambushes, or rapidly raising an army of cannon fodder.
2. Guaranteed Impregnation: A passive biological enhancement, limited to male users. This ability genetically guarantees that the user's sperm is supremely viable and motile, resulting in a 100% pregnancy rate upon conception, provided the female partner is biologically capable. It is an unnervingly efficient reproductive trait.
3. Instigator's Aura: A subtle, passive psychological ability. The user radiates an invisible aura that gently amplifies the irritability, paranoia, and latent hostility of people within a close radius. This effect quickly leads to arguments, confrontations, and chaos, often escalating minor disagreements into full-blown fights.
4. Perpetual Drive: A passive physiological trait, limited to male users. This ability grants the user limitless sexual stamina and drive, eliminating all biological limitations related to exhaustion or recovery time in that domain.
Akira finished the inventory with a contemplative look. The Goblin cards were ethically troubling but financially staggering. The twin male-only cards, {Guaranteed Impregnation} and {Perpetual Drive}, along with the \text{Lucky Foot of the Boundary} and the {Death Mark}, were the keys to unlocking the capital they needed.
He had no intention of using the ethically volatile Goblin cards himself, but they were now the most valuable, easily liquidated assets in his possession.