The building was weird. From the outside it was nothing remarkable, just a bit too ornate. But on the inside, it didn't follow any architectural rule I was familiar with. For one, once Shiena pushed open the doors, I walked into a single square room with three solid carved doors with slots on each wall other than the one we just came through. Each of them had glowing purple lines on them in the pattern of vines. Shiena closed the one that we came through and the glow subsided from the rest. She then led me through one of them to a long empty hallway with rows of similar doors on them on one side. At the end of the hallway, another door barred the way. Something about my confusion must have shown on my face because she explained the purpose of this design without prompting. The building was segmented into small chunks that were all sealed away from each other and magically ventilated so that no noxious fumes or worse could spread throughout the entire building in case of a leak. Kind of like an airlock. I nodded, that certainly made sense.

  Our destination was one of the hallway doors that opened up to a small booth with a counter. A sign above the counter warned sellers to not open up sealed vessels on the counter and that dedicated testing facilities were on the second floor. A masked person in the same robes waited for us there and bowed when we entered. The mask was entirely black and was carved in the likeness of an androgynous expressionless human face.

  “Greetings, honorable members. What do you wish to sell today?” Their voice was distorted and I couldn't tell anything about them from it: their age, gender, accent, all of it was hidden by the mask.

  “This. How much will it be for?” I took out the bottle full of venom out of my backpack and set it on the counter. Wordlessly, they touched a glass rod to the container until it started to glow a dull blue.

  “Seven credits for all of that.” I had no idea if that was good but judging from Shiena’s careful lack of any reaction, it probably wasn't. “You will get the container back when it is sold if it can be safely cleaned afterwards.” They continued.

  “How long will that take?”

  “Just come by tomorrow. Now lend me your card, esteemed member.” I did as asked. I figured it was fine since Shiena was with me and she didn't object. They inserted the card into a slot on the counter and then handed it back to me. A tiny ‘7’ was now printed on the corner of the card. The buyer bowed again.

  “Have a nice day.” Okay then.

  “Where are we going next?” I asked Shiena once we left the booth and she led me towards the

  “Well, since we are already here, I figured I'd show you what kind of skills and tools you can buy with those credits before going to the terrariums. I doubt you want to see every single booth where you can sell or something.” Terrariums? Gah, I should have gone there first. I was looking for other insects to integrate into the hive, wasn't I? Medea could create kids but those were limited in their evolutionary potential until Medea itself grew and they would still literally into the resources Medea needed until I fixed the limitations imposed by literal gods. But still, the Emporium was not going anywhere right now, if we were already in the building then looking at the stuff the Emporium sold couldn't hurt.

  “Sure, lead the way.”

  It turned out that the center of the building was an open air plaza with at least half a dozen massive counters manned by three to five masked Emporium members each. Behind each counter was a set of massive shelves filled with everything from vials to booklets to crystals and more.

  A massive marble statue of a thin woman with bird wings and a narrow needle-like sword as tall as the woman stood at the middle of the pavilion. Well it was needle-like in proportion to the rest of the statue, from my perspective, it was thicker than any sword I'd seen other than Valdima's monster of a weapon.

  The largest counter was our first destination. Rows and rows of vials, bottles and more glass containers were arranged behind it. A lone vial with what looked like a tiny drop of a clear liquid sat on the counter itself.

  “This is where you buy poison but I doubt you need it, yet, that is.” Shiena smiled. Yet? If that didn't sound like foreshadowing for some future sales pitch, I'd, well I wouldn't eat a hat but I would lick one. One of the people minding the stall bowed as we passed. We didn't linger.

  The next stall was far more interesting, weapons. Here we actually paused to look at the products. I was not disappointed.

  Swords that injected poison into the wounds it caused, narrow needles that were laced with a numbing agent and lethal toxins. They were all way past my budget of 7 credits with the cheapest of them being 19. The best one was definitely a knife that was placed almost reverently in a golden case at the counter itself. It was sold for a whopping credits.

  “What does this even do to be priced this high?” I asked, almost scared that it would be something stupid like gold magically hardened to be like steel. Back in my old world, people with more money than ways to spend it would build shit like gold toilets and gold guns and something about seeing that in the news while struggling for food really made me rather antipathic to that whole idea. I mean, I liked my luxuries and being pampered, but stuff that had no actual use or tangible benefit just rubbed me the wrong way.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “This knife is made from raw materials mined from Sitra Achra itself! It grows stronger with each kind of toxin it is exposed to. The edge grows sharper and ceases to be entirely physical to bypass all defenses and the wielder’s own stats get boosted. With time, this can be one of the greatest weapons a poison mage can ever hope to wield.” The masked attendant explained with what sounded like actual reverence in their voice. I mean yeah, this was definitely worth it for a mage of that inclination but something bothered me. I had heard the term ‘Sitra Achra’ before. If I was not mistaken, it was something like a religous evil otherworld thing, at least from what I remember from an old MMO that had a spell named after it. Come think of it, it was notable that things like dragons, hydras, and orochis were also present here, weren't they? I mean, those weren't called that in Dellish, though the idea was the same. But this was different. This was the first time I was looking at a word that was directly shared across worlds.

  “What's Sitra Achra?” I asked just to be sure. Something about the word felt wrong on my lips.

  “It is the primal elemental plane of poison, where all things that perish wash up to fester. Forgive me, but you will have to consult the church for more information about it.” Hmm. Interesting. We moved on but I kept repeating the word in my mouth. At least now I knew why Shiena expected me to eventually want poison if there were things like that knife. Too bad I had no intention of significantly investing in knives. If I was in melee and not just buying time, I was already fucked.

  The next stall was not as interesting to me. Tools like venom extractors, boxes that preserved bodies and substances and the likes. Hell, the mystery of Sitra Achra was still bothering me. Something about the word felt wrong.

  “Hey Shiena, do you know the name of any other primal planes?”

  “Hmm, I can't say I know much. A priest would be much better to ask but I know of Irkalla at least.” . That was another word from my world, but from an entirely different religion. I mouthed the word and it too felt wrong, even more so. Something was off here.

  Our final stall was the one with the crystals and the booklets.

  “What are those?” I pointed at the crystals before blushing when I realized how dorky and childish that must have looked. Fortunately, my escort didn't notice or at least had the sense to pretend that she didn't.

  “Skill crystals. You can directly learn a skill from them if you have the slots. No need to unlock the path or manually evolving the stuff.” Wait, that was stupidly good. The booklets were descriptions of the skills that were available and their pricing. I picked one up and flipped through it. The cheapest stuff started at a 100 and just didn't seem that good. And then they went up all the way to 9000, ten times the cost of the knife. One skill in particular caught my eye, a 3000 credits passive skill called Blood Poison Cultivation Blood Mana

  “What is the conversion rate between credits and crystals?” That was something I should have asked before, like how I should have had Medea eat fish so that it could learn to breathe underwater until Medea itself had to point out that it was something I should be doing. I felt like an absolute idiot when Medea pointed out that it was better to have that done before I was stuck fighting something aquatic. Prioritizing stuff properly was never my strong suit.

  “4.8. That means the skill you are looking at will be 14400 crystals for one use.” Fuck.

  “But don't worry, it is something that most of our members eventually end up buying.” She smirked. “The Emporium doesn't believe in exploiting its members when it could instead cultivate good relationship with them and let them rise far above just this simple little city. We have branches in almost all major settlements in the world for a reason. You will get it with time.” Alright, made sense.

  “Fine, another question. Why is this skill so much costlier than that knife?”

  “Simple. The knife is already made. You can't reforge it without it losing what makes it special and it can't truly evolve like a skill can. Raw material from the planes is much more expensive because then you can add all sorts of things to it before it is fully forged. But enough of that, let us move on.” I nodded and we moved on. The next stall was also full of booklets but each had the name of a skill I had seen before embossed on it, like Blood Poison Cultivation

  “The booklets are cheaper because they require a divine oath to purchase, esteemed member. You can't share the contents with anyone other than your pets except in a true emergency. With crystals, you have to take no such oaths. And furthermore, it is easy to read about how turning one's blood into poison can make one strong, it is a different matter to painstakingly do the thing and survive it. Skill crystals let you skip that.”

  We checked out the rest of the stall but it was more of the same with some variations. Finally, Shiena turned to me and asked if I was hungry. Was it that obvious?

  “Alright, let's go to the main building. Afterwards, I will show you the Terrariums. You can even buy a tier 0 creature with what you have, by the way.” I grinned. I could get used to this, the carrot of support instead of stick of debt traps.

  I finally figured it out. We were in the gardens that separated the 3 buildings when I finally figured out what was bugging me. The word sounded like Sitra Achra to me and I thought I said that but when I broke it down, the individual sounds were all wrong and yet when they came together, it was still Sitra Achra in my mind. Same with Irkalla. It was almost like my own mind was filling the word with something comparable that I actually understood. That went against everything I knew about languages but then I didn't think languages could be instantly downloaded into one's brains either before I arrived at New Delport. I asked Shiena to wait for a moment as I wrote the word on Medea's shell using the fine layer of dirt and powder that had accumulated on it. I wrote the first letter slowly while thinking of the word and it didn't make anything remotely close to an ‘S’ sound. I kept going, reading and rereading multiple times after each letter. And yet, when I was done, I could only read ‘Sitra Achra’. Again, I repeated the thing with Irkala. Shiena looked on with barely disguised amusement, obviously this shit was not uncommon.

  What the actual hell?