“You seem pretty happy, Matt,” Adrian remarks, sipping on his drink.

  “Oh yes, I am! I upgraded my Icy Shot with the attraction core, and now it recalibrates its path to follow the target I choose. There is obviously an extent to how much it can follow, but I am quite happy with it.” Matt smiles brightly, before continuing their own pale blue drink.

  “It seems like a direct upgrade of the Attraction core to your ability. What kind of core did you use in support?” Adrian asks, furrowing his brows.

  “Oh I used a Support core.”

  “Support?”

  “Do you perhaps not know about them?”

  “No, I suppose I do not. What kind of magical creature creates that? I don’t think I’ve seen many supporting creatures, or heard of any. Unless it’s from a higher floor?”

  “No no, it’s actually not even a real core! It’s artificial!” Matt declares.

  “Artificial you say… how are they formed exactly? And where should I get them?”

  “Adrian… have you never actually walked in the market? I know you have. I have been there with you a few times. How do you not know about them?” John asks incredulously.

  “I mean, I have been to the market, just never much around the core market…” Adrian chuckles nervously.

  “Oh my god!” Matt mouths, barely restraining themselves from screaming. John shakes his head, and Ji-a avoids his gaze.

  “It’s not that big of a deal. I’ll go tomorrow, okay?”

  “I’m coming with you! I need to show you the place properly.” Matt declares, giving him no place to squirm out of this arrangement. Adrian shifts in his seat nervously.

  He has never had to spend time with Matt alone. It’s not that he hates them or something, but it has just never come up, and now he feels a little awkward about it. He doesn’t know much about them. Their likes and dislikes. He cannot even say he knows their personality all that well, apart from the bubbly one they show.

  Should I send an avatar?

  Adrian seriously considers the idea, but something about it doesn’t feel right. He shakes his head.

  No. That will be cheating. I should go myself.

  The night falls soon after that, and the morning wakes up. Matt has been outside his door before he wakes up, ready and excited to go shopping. Asking for a few minutes to ready himself, he calls them inside, and dashes into the bathroom.

  A few minutes later, Adrian walks out, still a little drowsy, but more or less excited to find a core suitable for his skill.

  The market is not far away from their inn, and one can immediately recognise the beginning of it from the dense population, dirty roads, and stalls everywhere.

  The market flows into several alleys, packed closely together, leaving a narrow aisle for people to walk on. The market in itself is divided into several sectors according to people’s needs. There is a place for clothes, utensils, for religious stuff, for toys, food, vegetables, meat.

  The starting areas are a mess, with people crowding the narrow roads, but the deeper one enters, the more expensive the place becomes, and the less crowded it becomes.

  The market for climbers finally opens in front of him, leading to much cleaner streets.

  There are shops for Blood pouches, boasting special effects like a percent increase in blood added during the collection process, or higher days of preservation. Adrian has been looking forward to buying a new one, as he has still been using the one from the previous floor, and it’s already full.

  He inquires about the prices and although they are a bit expensive, it’s a price that he can pay.

  “Not now. Important stuff first! If you still have money after it, then buy.” Matt slaps his hand reaching for the pouch containing his coins.

  Adrian nods and follows them, feeling a strange memory bubble up. It was back when he used to follow his mother shopping, and she’d give him a small amount to buy whatever he wanted. Being a kid, he’d wanna buy the first thing he could lay his eyes on, but she would always stop him and tell him to look at everything before buying something.

  He pushes the memory away for now, and looks at Matt.

  “Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?” Adrian asks.

  “Yea sure, about what? Ooh look at this core! It’s a Bleeding core from the 4th floor, and this is a Sky core from the 5th floor! These are so good… but damn expensive!” Matt exclaims, haggling with the shop owner over the price of the Bleeding core for a while, eventually managing to bring it down by 20%.

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  They didn’t even buy it! Saying they’ll come later!

  Adrian’s admiration shot up instantly. To go through the drama only to not even buy the product. That was one heck of a power move.

  “I was just wondering, where are you from?” Adrian asks.

  “I’m from Adaltan. Have you heard about it?”

  “Oh my god you are directly opposite to us!” Adrian exclaims.

  “Wait, are you from Okrug!?” Matt’s head whips towards him.

  “Yes!”

  “Oh my god! You are our diametric rival!”

  “It seems like it. How does it feel like knowing we are winning this year as well,” Adrian says smugly. There’s a tradition around the Tower, in which the cities opposite to each other would hold an year long competition.

  The competition is very simple. In every city, there are 5 special balls spread out, or hidden in special locations. One cannot distinguish the balls, without certain equipment. The task is a simple game of infiltration and spying.

  Find as many balls as you can from the other team, and take it back to your city without being caught, and you win. Okrug had won last year by a margin of 3:2.

  “Ah, I don’t really care about that competition though,” Matt says deadpan, their face completely plain and bored.

  “Is that so?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You liar!” Adrian insists, making Matt erupt in a loud laughter. “Yea yea, my family was pretty upset about it. I remember my dad cursing all over the place over it. That was a memorable day…”

  “What's your family like?”

  “Eh, it’s really hard to tell how they really are when the only times I see them is when they come to meet me, or when my dad needs someone to take his pent up frustration on…” Matt says, growing quiet as the words come to an end.

  Adrian grows quiet and his heart drops.

  “When you said about the day being memorable, did you mean…?”

  Adrian’s questions hang over them as they stop walking. People yell around him to move away, to clear the way, or even as they shove past him, he stays standing, looking at Matt’s figure.

  They never answer, but the answer is obvious. With a croaking throat, he asks, “What did he exactly do to you?”

  Matt stays silent for a while before turning around and says in their cheerful voice again, “It doesn’t matter, so don’t worry! That man and woman won’t be able to do anything like that to anyone now! I’ve made sure of that. Let’s go now. We still have some shopping to do!”

  They walk away, and Adrian remains standing there for a few moments, taking in the person Matt and all he learned today. It’s not, not even a percentage of their life, and yet he cannot help but admire their strength. The strength of character to be able to smile and live happily even after all that.

  Adrian wonders. What drives them forward? Is there an attraction here as well? Fate? Or something else?

  He decides not to ask them yet, and enjoy the time he has here.

  Matt shows them a few more shops, a few people recognising Matt as they come up to their shop. Adrian is quite shocked to find they already have such an impression on the shop keepers in the short amount of time they’ve been here.

  He also finds cores from the floors below being sold for almost the same price as the ones on this floor. He asks the shopkeeper about it, and finds that although the danger is low, so is the supply. The only lower floor cores are from the ones the climbers sell, or the ones he has to send someone to specially fetch which creates a third party, and hence the premium.

  Adrian nods in understanding, and finally finds the one he has been looking for. A Support core. Strangely he doesn’t get the instantaneous understanding about a core he has when he holds one usually.

  “Do you mind me asking how they’re actually made? I’ve never really seen an artificial core before.” Adrian asks.

  “What you? A fish under rock? How you not know basic stuff? Tsk tsk tsk Matt you need to teach the fellow. He not survive in the world like this,” The shopkeeper grumbles.

  “I know right! Don’t worry, he’ll learn.”

  “Hmm. Well you know. You take mana. You take a soul,” He brings his hands into a ball and says, “You condense and you get artificial core. Easy peasy.”

  “Uh huh. That makes sense,” Adrian nods, fully knowing that the process must be hundreds of times more complicated than the one just described, but also knowing that the shopkeeper probably only knows this much.

  “Why a soul though? Also are human souls used in this thing? And why can’t I feel the knowledge about this one?” Adrian asks, but the shopkeeper turns and looks at Matt instead.

  “Okay okay, I’ll explain. The soul is both an anchor to keep the dense mana stable, and also allows for easy mixing with the soul energy of other cores. And no, as far as I know, beast souls are used for it. And lastly, you can’t feel the knowledge because it’s not a natural core, duh.

  “The core is called a Support core, but it doesn’t exactly have a characteristic. It’s just a bundle of gathered energy used to aid the primary core in finishing the upgrade of the skill.”

  “Would this make the upgrade weak or something?” Adrian asks.

  “Mono natcha! This guy too many questions!” The shopkeeper waves his hand in the air exaggeratedly.

  “No it won’t,” Matt laughs.

  Adrian ends up buying three of them, for just in case. Seeing that he still has some money left, he decides to finally get that Blood Pouch as well.

  A few dozen minutes later, they both finally leave the market and head back. They do have few vultures to kill today later, so they both need some rest before the expedition.

  Adrian profusely thanks Matt and then finally retires in his room.

  The first thing Adrian does is to check for an upgrade with the Fate Glimpse and Support cores.

  “Upgrade detected for Timer:

  “Determine the occurrence or expiration of an object or event into the future. The precision of the divination depends on Mystic stat.

  “Ritual for the upgrade:

  “Find a mark left by you while glimpsing into the future.”

  Adrian quickly reads the upgrade, clenching his fists. This is exactly what he wished for. Something passive, with no extra mana cost, and yet able to tell him the future.

  The ritual drops his heart a little. How is he supposed to do tha-

  Ritual completed! Sacrifice the cores to begin the Upgrade of Timer.

  How!? What? When did I do that?

  Adrian stares blankly at the message, going through his memories of any time he must’ve done that. And then a single memory stands out.

  It’s the only time he could’ve been said to have glimpsed into the future. During the hidden reward. There when he had just woken up, barely clinging onto the metal lines, he saw a short sentence ‘I was here’ inscribed on it in a familiar handwriting.

  He hasn’t thought much of it since then, as his handwriting isn’t that much unique, but what if it is his handwriting. He has written it when he visits there, all for this upgrade to work right now.

  So did the me of the future have the skill upgrade or not? What will happen if I go there and not write anything? Will I lose the upgrade?

  The mere thought brings a headache, so Adrian decides to stop thinking about it for now.

  He looks at the cores in his hands, and the message floating in front of him. With a gleeful smile, he sacrifices the cores.

  #