Chapter 327: Malachor
Baltak’s grin stretched wider across his impish face.
"So," he said, claws tapping lightly over the counter. "What can I do for my dearest client?"
Kael looked around the shop again.
The place was offensive in how comfortable it looked.
Outside, Vanitas pressed against the world like a disease. Darkness waited past every corner, monsters prowled through broken streets, and climbers were more than willing to murder one another for a torch. Inside Baltak’s shop, however, warm light buzzed overhead, neon signs flickered in colors that had no business existing on this floor, and shelves sagged beneath piles of equipment.
He placed both gauntleted hands on the counter.
"What do you got for me?" Kael asked. "Show me the stuff."
Baltak’s eyes shone.
"Straight to business. How beautiful."
He waved one hand.
A gigantic list unfolded in front of Kael.
It appeared like a transparent screen, but unlike the Tower windows, this one looked dirty around the edges, stained with little fingerprints, claw marks, and smudged old ink. Categories stacked down the side. Tools. Weapons. Materials. Armor. Accessories. Consumables. Curiosities. Damaged goods. Unidentified objects. Cursed objects. Probably cursed objects. Definitely cursed objects, discount available...
Kael stared.
Weapons filled half the list and several things whose descriptions sounded like someone had started inventing violence while drunk. Armor pieces followed, some intact, others cracked or burned. Several still had blood staining the seams.
Fresh blood, in a few cases.
Kael slowly turned his head toward Baltak.
"Are you collecting gear that falls from climbers?"
Baltak looked offended by the implication for exactly one second before deciding pride was bad for business.
"Unclaimed gear is treasure on the ground," he said. "If the owner dies, the sadness is theirs and the opportunity is mine. You find anything you like, you tell me."
Yenna crossed her arms near the doorway, eyes moving through the shop with practiced distrust. "He loots corpses."
"I preserve value," Baltak corrected.
"You loot corpses."
"I preserve value from corpses."
Kael sighed. "You know what I like."
"Ah." Baltak’s grin sharpened. "Runes."
He leaned forward over the counter, eyes narrowing as he inspected Kael’s gauntlets. His pupils moved over the sockets, the placements, the rune interactions, the reinforcement seams, and the repairs Kael had made since the last time they met.
"I see that you got a lot equipped," Baltak said. "Very nice gauntlets too. Improved on the scrap you had before."
"It wasn’t scrap."
"It was ambitious scrap."
"Touché."
"It is honest." Baltak tapped one claw against his chin. "Good structure. Crude in places, but practical. You upgraded these yourself?"
"With help."
"Good help."
"Yeah."
Andre would probably pretend not to care if he heard that.
Then spend three hours explaining why Baltak was both right and too stupid to understand the true quality of the work.
Kael looked back at the list. "So, got anything for me?"
Baltak’s face became tragically mournful in a way that was absolutely rehearsed.
"Unfortunately, not a single rune."
Kael frowned. "None?"
"None. Not one. Not even a trash one with a horrible side effect and a description written by someone who hated grammar. None of my brothers on the first ten floors have any either. You’ll have to keep going."
Kael looked at him. "Brothers?"
"Other merchants," Baltak said. "You didn’t think I was the only one?"
"I guess not."
"You wound me. I am unique in quality, not occupation."
Yenna made a quiet sound that could have been disbelief or nausea.
Kael dragged his attention back to the screen. "Since there are no runes, let’s see what else we can grab."
He began parsing through the wares.
There was a lot.
Far too much, actually. Vanitas had been eating climbers for long enough that Baltak’s inventory looked less like a shop and more like a battlefield sorted by price. Kael saw excellent boots, damaged helmets, several high-grade coats, reinforced belts, strange rings, and even a few weapons with effects that made his fingers twitch.
Then he noticed the same problem repeating across item after item.
Requirement.
Level limit.
Level limit.
Level limit.
His mouth curled downward.
Yenna noticed. "Nothing you like?"
"I found plenty I like," Kael said. "That’s the problem."
"What problem?"
"Level limit."
"Oh." She glanced at him. "What level are you?"
"Level one."
Both Yenna and Baltak looked at him.
Not like he had said something surprising.
Like he had revealed he was either an idiot or a monster wearing a human-shaped excuse.
Kael looked between them. "What?"
Yenna stared harder. "Level one."
"Yes."
"You are level one."
"We just established this."
Baltak leaned over the counter, eyes shining with horrible merchant curiosity. "That explains so much and yet somehow explains nothing."
Kael frowned. "I don’t need the stats from leveling right now."
Yenna slowly raised one hand and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "You do realize monsters will start ignoring a percentage of your damage based on the level difference, right?"
Kael paused.
"That’s a thing?"
Yenna lowered her hand and stared at him again.
Baltak started laughing.
Kael ignored him with great effort.
Yenna looked genuinely pained. "Yes, Kael. That is a thing. It gets worse the wider the gap becomes. There are exceptions. But level still matters."
"Never had that issue so far."
"That is because you’re absurdly strong," Yenna said. "But being level capped is not good for you. You have to start spending the saved experience."
"In due time."
Yenna looked like she wanted to argue, but Baltak was still watching Kael with the hungry expression of a merchant who had just discovered a customer with both money and poor survival habits.
Kael returned to the list before either of them could keep poking at him. "Now, let me see..."
He scrolled through more materials.
Bone plates. Rusted cores. Black glass. Vanitas-threaded leather. A bundle of hair from something called a Mourning Bride, which he refused to touch on principle. Then one item caught his eye.
A jade-colored metal ingot.
Not pure green. Not exactly. Its surface had deep black whorls running through it, like smoke trapped beneath polished stone. The metal looked heavy, dense, and strangely alive in the way it held light.
Kael tapped the item description.
[ ITEM STATUS SCREEN ]
=======================================
ITEM NAME: Malachor Ingot
RARITY: Epic...