“Why are the lights off in here?” There was a short clack from the door as Mr. Garry walked into the room and Ed winced his eyes a bit to get used to the light. “And 84A, could you shut that window?”

Serah got up and walked to the window.

“Crickets, waste of gold to get them exterminated.” Mr. Garry pulled up a seat and sat across from his bed.

Ed heard a shunk. Serah had closed the window and was now seated back at her desk.

“I see you read Helig.” Mr. Garry nodded over at his book. The little fire spirit had taken to bobbing around his head. Ed’d noticed while it was hot, it didn’t actually burn anything and also seemed to go out of its way to keep it like that.

“Um,” Ed faltered, he didn’t really know where to start. He ended up pointing at the fire spirit. “That seems really exploitable? Like, uh, I could think of a dozen ways that could be pawned off as a zero emission generator, and um, this isn’t even like real magic yet is it…”

Despite being out for at least an hour now, his mana bar had barely dipped past the first tick and when he’d brought up his status sheet it had apparently been dropping about 0.01 per minute.

“Oh, that?” Mr. Garry chuckled a little. His eyes were laughing too. “I mean… it is. In fact, I think about half the mortal energy thingies are just fronts for conversion. Grow your pool a bit and I’m sure even the most half baked of a backwater mage could live like an oil baron. They’re not very greedy, they’ve gotten really good at it too now that I think about it, lightning, transmutation,” He nodded at the spirit again as he ticked off his fingers. “Fire of course. Their spell formulas are all on the market too, I could just give you one of the books if you’re interested. Pretty sure I got one back at my demse just laying around somewhere.”

Ed squinted at him. It felt like he was missing something here. “Why.”

Mr. Garry tossed his arms back over the chair, letting his head fall back so he could look at the ceiling. “That’s the billion crystal question. Guess some chucklefuck thought it would be funny to sell the catholics crystal and now here we are, a thousand of years later, just mucking around on a dozen fronts. Heck, I even have a job now. Hundred years ago this wouldn’t even be a thing.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Huh? What? No, I mean why would you just give that to me.” It sounded really valuable. He rubbed his forehead “Wait wait wait, fronts… job,” This was too much information, “Are you talking about like world war three or something? Is that, uh, happening right now?” He turned to Serah “Are we in world war three?”

“Tamtilus will be out in a moment.”

Ed was briefly stunned by her response.

“She thinks it’s funny.” Mr. Garry said with a sigh. “She’s kinda like a receptionist for the school, I swear she does this like every time I have her put me on hold.”

“Who’s a good soulless construct?” A hand materialized in front of her face and Mr. Garry poked her nose. “You are!”

Serah ignored him, simply tucking a hair behind her ear again.

Mr. Garry tilted his head forward so he could look at him. It was still slung back in his chair. In fact, he was now rather rocked back in it too. “To answer your question though. I guess it’s a matter of scale.”

He rummaged into the pocket of his coat, letting his head fall back again. “Here.” He flicked what looked like a small coin at him. Ed was a little surprised when it landed next to his hand, Mr. Garry hadn’t been looking after all.

He picked it up to examine. It was almost as if it was made of glass, but at the same time it felt incredibly tough. There seemed to be little blue circuits engraved into it too; in the profile of a very intricately drawn dragon’s head. He flipped it over. Much like the front, it had more of those lightly glowing circuits but instead of a dragon they made the shape of what looked like a pair of mountains. Despite the lack of color, the pictures were incredibly life-like. He also noticed the image on the back would seemingly rearrange itself to support whatever side he had currently turned it to.

“Is this money?”

“Yup. Worth maybe half the US economy in dollars?”

Ed almost fumbled the coin.

“Don’t drop it! I’m just kidding. Err, not the value part.” Ed looked at him incredulously as he’d apparently taken out another one and was now casually flipping it in the air. He didn’t look like he was lying. “At least, that’s what I heard from Roy. Anyway, they’re pretty invulnerable.”

“And you just carry this around.”

“It’s like carrying half a bus ticket.” He shrugged, catching the coin. “Teleportation gets expensive, ‘specially out to some of funkier zones. Which brings me back to your earlier question. It takes a pretty weird mage to worry about that mortal paper stuff.”

Right, Ed thought to himself as he watched the coin zip like it was pulled on some invisible string back to Mr. Garry’s hand.