All in all, Jumble's purchases amount to two hundred store credits. There's nothing overly magical in her lot; some colours she hasn't been able to find for centuries, paper that's just right for her rough drafts, pens that mold themselves to her hand; that kind of thing. Pure luxuries. It leaves me with two hundred credits left over.

Jumble sends all her acquisitions away to her inventory, then pulls me into a tight hug. "Thanks, Shelby."

"No problem." I return the hug, then gently separate from her iron grip. "Anything you'll be able to fight with? Or is it all for pleasure?"

"Well, technically, it's all a bit of both." Jumble summons a small notebook and one of her new pens. "My Worth skill lets me sell stories in any way I can make them; written, drawn, spoken… um… and some other fourth way I can't think of right now. It made me a little Worth when I was still stuck here, but after I left I made way more. Like… way more."

I raise an eyebrow. "How much more?"

"I'm not really sure, honestly. I haven't collected my royalties in a while. Probably…" Jumble taps pen against her notebook in thought. "Nope, I can't imagine it. I stopped keeping up with how popular my books are when I stopped worrying about Worth."

If she's not worrying about Worth as a Worth Class, then it has to be a pretty substantial amount. Probably not Noland levels, since she isn't on a crusade to change the world, but a lot nonetheless. And if she's making a lot, then I hate to say it, but maybe I can get in on it. Just like with the other Worth Classes.

"I'm not sure if you know about this, but Worth Classes can share our Worth skills. Mine lets me gamble Worth to increase its value." I pull out a coin, flip it, then hand it to Jumble. "Effectively doubles–or more, if I can figure something out–all my Worth. And the strength of all my coin spells."

Jumble accepts my coin and stares at it. Her eyes widen as I assume she gets a look at how much it's actually worth, and she hands it back with a strange look.

"There's limitations, right?" She asks.

I nod. "For me, I can play against nobody. But if I do it for someone else, they have to play against another person."

"But there's a limit? Right?" Jumble continues as she gets closer. "Or else you'd be… super powerful right now, right?"

That's a… strange reaction. "Uh, yeah, it's a hundred Worth times the lowest clearance level at the table max. And you can't bet Worth you've already increased."

Jumble sucks air through her teeth and looks away. "Dang it. That would've made things way too easy. So, um, how do we do the exchange thing?"

"Noland just wrote up a quick contract. System binding with each of us agreeing on an exchange so we can benefit from each others' skills." I send away my coin and nod to Clutter as we walk into the shop. "For example, I let you use my skill as many times as you want while it's off cooldown. And you… well, I don't really know what you could do."

"Neither do I. Is there a separate skill for it?" Jumble pulls out her Class Card and starts swiping through it. "Oh, um, yes apparently. It just appeared. Ooh, that's a long description. Can you give me a few minutes to read it?"

"No problem. I'll go see how Clutter's doing with the magic; you just come say hi when you're done."

Jumble smiles brightly and lowers her nose to her Class Card. "I'll be done in a minute!"

I smile back at her, then turn and walk over to my other paindne friend who is agonizing over the cauldrons. Each of which is filled with a differently coloured magic–blue, red, green, and yellow. Exactly the ones we got from the constructs. He motions for me to come take a look as get closer, so I come up alongside him and stare deep into the liquids inside the cauldrons.

"Looks like exactly what we need." I say. "So what's the holdup?"

Clutter sighs and crosses his arms. "It's way too expensive. A thousand credits for the smallest vial of any of the colours, and ten credits for the vial itself. So right now I'm trying to come up with some kind of scam that'll let me get this stuff."

"A thousand credits for a vial?" I feel around with my awareness and settle on a piece of glass no larger than my pinky. "And it's a tiny vial too. Did you look at anything else in the store, or have you been peering into the goop this entire time?"

"Goop." Clutter replies instantly. "It smells weird and I like how it burbles. Do you think the shopkeep will attack us if I dip my hand in there?"

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I glance over at the construct. Its blank face is locked on us, and it's leaning forward just enough for me to recognize the pose of someone being suspicious of a customer.

"Hate to say it, but I think it would."

"Dang." Clutter huffs. "There goes that plan."

I furrow my brow. "The plan to get your hand magically burned off?"

He raises a cloth-covered hand and waggles his fingers. "The plan to soak my cloth in magic and hope to heck we can get it out later. Maybe it's time to actually take a better look around."

With great effort, Clutter tears himself away from the row of cauldrons and moves to peruse the rest of the shop. All the stuff here costs way more than the art supply shop, which makes sense as a part of a real living city, but not as part of a quest. We're here for a reason, not to buy paintbrushes and pens. So why would the quest bother recreating any shops that aren't actively useful?

My first instinct is so it can drain our hard-earned store credit. And I don't feel the need to look past it.

"Pearl, do you see anything worth buying in here?" I ask quietly.

She shakes her head. "I can't see through the glass jars or read the labels. Even the magic in the cauldrons doesn't feel very magical, so there has to be something here dulling our senses. Or everything's actually not all that powerful."

"Can you tell if the liquid magic's the same stuff that we have back at the workshop, at least?"

"It… might be?" Pearl shrugs. "Sorry, I still can't tell. Not that it matters, since even the two of you put together wouldn't have been enough to buy one vial."

Fair point. Bad news for us at the moment, but damn good news overall. Once we find some way to get more valuable stuff, we can just come back here and get as much magic as we want. It's not like one vial's worth a good chunk of my net Worth or anything.

Ha. Ha ha.

I raise a hand to my face and sigh. Shit's expensive. And we've got jars of it lying around in the workshop with one little defect that we can't quite get out of it. My awareness flickers as Jumble finally looks up from her Class Card and makes straight for me.

"I found out how it works!" She says excitedly. "And I drew up a really simple contract. I can use your skill once every day, and you get to be a part of my next novel! Um, with a smaller share of the royalties because of your clearance, but I made sure to change it so your share grows as your clearance does."

My curiosity sufficiently piqued, I lower my hand and look into Jumble's glittering eyes. "You mean I'd be a… co-author?"

She vigorously shakes her head. "Nope! You'll be a character, and I'll write a little acknowledgement at the start to make sure everyone knows you're the inspiration for her!"

"But you won't use my real name, right?"

"No, no, no, that'd be silly. You'll be Arle, the mysterious stranger who swoops in and… umm…" Jumble blushes furiously and looks away. "You, um, don't read a lot, do you?"

"In fact, I do. When I have free time, which I don't have a lot of nowadays. Why?"

Jumble squeaks and tries to hide her face. "N-no reason. I j-just have to, u-um, change a few scenes. For reasons! Perfectly valid reasons that have nothing to do with whether you'll read the book or not when it's done. SO! T-the contract! Will you sign it?"

My Class Card pings, and I swipe through it to look at the brand new message I just got from Jumble. It's about as simple as it can be; she gets to use my skill once a day, as long as I'm not put under duress by her asking, and I get 2.5% royalties from her next book. And any future ones that feature 'Arle', whoever Jumble ends up writing her as.

"Do you trust her enough?" Pearl asks. "Because I think I do."

Maybe it's just the Worth Class in me talking, but honestly? So do I. No stipulations this time. I put my finger to the messenger and scribble my name right next to Jumble's, and I feel the weight of magical restrictions fall over me. Jumble gasps and clutches her chest for a moment, then frowns as the feeling dissipates.

"I thought it'd last longer." She muses. "It's kind of anticlimactic, isn't it?"

I nod in agreement. "Definitely. Now we can help Clutter look for anything that's worth spending our store credit on."

Jumble sends her Class Card away with a beaming smile. "Can do!"

"No need!" Clutter calls from the other side of the store. "I think I found the perfect thing!"

He emerges from behind a knee-high table with an inkwell-sized metal pot. A tag hangs from a string, putting its price at two hundred and fifty credits. Just enough for us to buy two of them if we pool the rest of our credits. He strides proudly over to us, places the pot in Jumble's hands, then turns to me and smiles.

"I can't believe they're selling it for so cheap." He says as Jumble raises the pot to her eye. "One drop apparently works for half a liter worth of magic, and as long as we can deal with the byproduct, we'll have working stuff in no time."

Jumble frowns as she twists the pot around. "I don't see any description here. How do you know what this is?"

I lean around to see what Clutter has in his other hand. A small piece of paper with writing on it. "Seems like he found instructions he's not willing to share just yet."

Clutter grins and brings the paper out for us to see. It's written in paindne, so I can't read it, but Jumble squints to get a better look. Pearl just quietly reads it to herself, barely loud enough for me to hear.

"Unbinding drops; take two drops per liter of tainted magic to remove the taint. Warning; depending on how the magic was tainted, this can be a very dangerous process. Works almost instantly." Pearl hums to herself in thought. "That's exactly what we're looking for. As long as that warning doesn't turn out to be too bad. But it's going to be bad, isn't it?"

I silently nod in agreement.

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