Kaori hurried to the alleyway and waited a minute looking through her bag before going into the alley. There was a guy passing as she got there and didn’t want to raise suspicions. After ducking into the alleyway and going back to her apartment she headed to her bedroom to place her books on the shelf. She pulled down the light novel that she had died before getting the chance to read and headed for the door back to her divine domain.
As she stuck her head through the door, Kaori noticed something odd. She saw that everyone was working on the maps of the world below, just like when she left. It didn’t make any sense because it didn’t seem like there was any progress at all.
While Kaori was pondering this, Belle walked up to her. She had been heading to her room and spotted Kaori back and was wondering if she was about to announce something or do something similar.
As Belle approached, she could tell that Kaori was puzzled by something. “Kaori-san, did you forget something you needed to tell us? If you tell me, I will be sure to pass it along. Is that why you came back so soon? You really need to get some rest and relaxation time to yourself. We can handle things here for a couple weeks. The planet’s time hasn’t even been frozen yet.”
Kaori was stunned. The time hadn’t elapsed faster in her realm than it did on Earth like it did before. What was going on? This left her puzzled and apparently it showed on her face. “Kaori-sama? Is everything alright?”
Kaori flinched out of her deep thought and looked up at Belle, well, not exactly up because the dwarf was too short for that. “Sorry, I just got lost in my own thoughts for a moment. Everything is fine though! I was just caught off guard by a particular problem but it’s not that big of a deal. Have you had a chance to play with the apartment builder settings?”
Belle looked up at Kaori incredulously and then facepalmed. “Kaori-sama *A glare from Kaori sets Belle stammering for a moment* K-Kaori-s-san! I know you get excited to see a piece of programming you created in use but it’s only been about two hours. That’s actually where I was headed now. Did you want to come with me and see me use it?”
Kaori really did but she could tell that Belle only offered out of respect not a genuine desire to spend time hanging out together. “No, no. You go ahead. I have something I wanted to look into. I’ll talk to you later to get your feedback on it and make any improvements you or anybody else thinks up for the program.”
Once Belle politely bowed and walked away, Kaori went back to pondering the reason for the time dilation issues. She was fairly certain that she wouldn’t be figuring it out today and set it aside to think more on later. For now, she wanted to go back to her apartment and read her book.
Speaking of book, Kaori held out her hand and summoned her book. She cracked the first page to peruse the index and figure out where she should begin searching for answers on the time issue, when something else caught her attention. Her worship point credit balance had shifted badly!
At first, she freaked out a bit but then she calmed herself down. She was figuring that one of the deities wanted to add some feature and just bought it but then she remembered that she was the only one who could make those purchases. This had to be something else. Kaori opened and looked at the balance sheet for her worship points and found where a large chunk of WP had been withdrawn for a synchronization fee. She was puzzled until she saw the next paltry fee on the list was creation of currency.
Suddenly, everything fell into place. The time of the synching fee was a little over an hour before she made the currency which would put it right at the time she had arrived at Earth. Somehow, she had synched Earth and her own domain. The question that she had to answer was, is this a one-time fee or a permanent feature? She was able to tap on the purchase and found that the description expanded to provide more information, including the relevant info about it being a permanent feature that can only be afforded to beings originally from the realm in question.
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Kaori smiled a bit at this. She would now be able to visit Earth anytime and not have to worry about the time difference again. That meant that her world would age at a slower rate than others. This was a little bit worrisome because she didn’t know how this might affect the progression schedule.
All of that was a worry for another day. Today she was going to go back to the Shop she was in and buy all of the books she wanted. However, she wasn’t going to just spend WP every time she wanted to buy something. She still wasn’t sure if the money she created was counterfeit or not and that troubled her a little.
Kaori thought for a moment about what she might do to make money. She considered all the things that she could make with her powers that would sell but the only thing she needed was a one time boost, not a repeat source of income. She decided after a while to just create an asteroid with gold in it and pull some of the gold out to sell.
The process of creating and drawing out the gold from the asteroid didn’t take long. Kaori was once again duly impressed with her powers as she flew right into space with no ill effects. The lump of gold she extracted had a certain amount of silver in it and some traces of iron but she didn’t feel like separating it into pure gold. And so, she was off to Earth again. This time she would visit a jeweler first and sell the heavy, fist-sized lump of gold she had in a handbag she created for the purpose.
When Kaori got back to Earth, she had to find a jeweler to sell to. She was never rich in her previous life and wasn’t particularly prone to buying luxury items in the first place. The most luxurious thing she owned was her car and that had likely been impounded and the hassle of getting it out would be far too much when she was supposed to be dead. Instead of doing that, she would just walk like she used to.
Kaori asked several people she knew at various shops and had to defer the questions about her death. She told them that she had gotten a new job overseas and had to leave the country suddenly. It did the trick to alleviate most of their suspicions. Some were probably still curious but were thankfully too polite to ask further. Eventually, she did get the information she was looking for and made her way to a jeweler.
The shop in question looked very upscale and the woman on the showroom was very courteous but in a snobby way. When Kaori bypassed all of the displays of jewelry and went straight to her, she must have automatically jumped to the wrong conclusion. She asked how may I help you and when Kaori asked do you buy gold here, she started to turn to the counter and was beginning to say something about applications when the words finally registered.
The woman, who was a little taller than Kaori and wearing a fancy, one-piece, mini-skirt dress, turned with a rather strange look on her face. “Does this look like a pawn shop to you?”
Kaori was tempted to heft the bag with the gold in it against the side of the woman’s head but politely excused herself instead. She hadn’t gotten more than a half block away when the assistant manager, a short, balding man with a slight limp caught up with her and apologized profusely. Kaori told him not to worry because it wasn’t his fault. Then he asked how much jewelry she intended to sell.
The look on his face when he saw the lump of gold that all but filled the small handbag was quite amusing. The man begged her to come back and she agreed easily enough. After all, she just wanted to sell the gold off and make her quick sum of money.
The woman looked like she was about to protest Kaori coming back when she walked through the door again but the assistant manager rushed over and whispered something to her. Suddenly her face went very pale and she bowed to Kaori before finding another customer to attend to and pointedly did not look in Kaori’s direction again.
The proceedings of the exchange went smoothly and quickly. The man weighed the nugget and asked if he could have a tiny sample for testing. Kaori agreed and he took a sliver so small that he needed a jeweler’s loupe just to see it. Kaori had no trouble seeing it from several meters away but then she was a goddess, so.
The man came back a few minutes later with a contract and Kaori got a really big shock. The contract was for the sale of a lump of raw gold for the value of 52,613,200 yen!