[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 182 - The Paradox of Selflessness

Deciding that those two could use a bit more privacy, Freddy asked the adjudicator for another room where could browse the shop in peace. 

To his credit, the man didn’t even ask why Freddy’s current room wouldn’t do and just gave him the keys to an empty guest room.

Walking out, he took Sophia in tow and headed there. 

“Whatchu got there?” she asked playfully, leaning over to take a peek at the tablet. 

He briefly showed it to her and she immediately gaped in delight. “Oh, gimme!” She yanked it out of his grip and got to scrolling. She whistled and winced. “Yikes. Those are some crazy prices…”

“Oh, woe be us! If only we had billions of dollars at our disposal…” Freddy muttered with a cheeky smirk. 

She snorted. “Well I don’t know about you, but I plan on splurging a bit.” She gasped. “Oh my god that’s so cute!” Tapping the screen, she pinched her fingers to zoom in on a specific item.

Freddy couldn’t stop admiring the piece of etherology. He had no idea how Old-Earth electronics would compare in function, as he’d only ever read descriptions of them and saw drawings in books, but he thought this had to be rather close. He couldn’t help but wonder whether humanity would eventually recreate something like the Old-Earth Internet. 

The Ethernet was a thing, but it was mostly just for basic communication between the richest people in the empire or large organizations. And even then, it wasn’t as interconnected as the all-encompassing Internet of the old world. 

Putting those thoughts aside, Freddy took a curious peek at what she was buying, only to find her eyeing a highly stylized piece of black leather gear. It came with all sorts of colorful frills and embroidery, to the point where it didn’t look like something a serious person would consider taking into a life or death fight. 

Sighing forlornly, she shook her head. “If only I could wear something like this…”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t you be able to?” Eyeing her rather muscular form, he added, “You can get it adjusted to have it fit.”

“Heh. If only.” She glanced at him, only to grin wider at his confused expression. “Oh yeah. You haven’t seen me in action yet.” Her grin widened. “I’ll be keeping that one as a surprise for now.”

“Suit yourself, I guess.”

They reached the room before long. It was a bit smaller than the one Freddy was situated in, but it didn’t really matter. They got comfortable on the couch and started checking the different stores. 

There was a lot of stuff for sale, and much of it was egregiously price-hiked.

One of the things Freddy considered getting for Janice and Lucas was a simple cursed item that either helped recover stamina or helped reduce the rate at which they’d get tired. 

Sophia’s healing could basically nullify any injuries they took, but that didn’t mean they’d be able to fight indefinitely. He knew damn well that even supreme-quality healing couldn’t do much for raw exhaustion. And the last thing he wanted was to have to drag them around when they completely drained themselves, just like he had to drag Sophia around back in Nova York. 

Such cursed items were supposed to be perfect for the job, since they were usually pretty cheap. Materials for them were plentiful. Hell, it was possible for a good workout to curse someone’s clothes enough to make them into an item that would grant the effect. 

They were mostly used as training aids, and unless they had an absurdly powerful effect, they rarely ever cost more than a million dollars. 

The cheapest one he could find was priced at over 4 million. “That’s bullshit,” he muttered to himself.

“What is?” Sophia asked. 

“These prices are inflated as hell.” He pointed at a stamina ring with a price tag of over 6 million dollars. “That would cost only about half a million anywhere else in the empire.”

“Damn! That is a total scam!” Sophia concurred. “Makes sense, though. With a battle of attrition on the horizon, stamina will go a long way.”

“Yeah, but come on. That’s ridiculous.”

Sighing, Sophia shook her head. “Yet again, the cult’s words ring true. The outsiders truly are the greediest of beings.” She said it playfully, but her expression turned a bit sour afterwards.

Freddy coughed. “Anyway… Let’s continue looking. I want to have a good idea of what’s for sale before we start budgeting.”

“Budgeting?” Sophia grinned at him. “Feel free to budget all you want—I’ll be spending money like there’s no tomorrow. We can always earn more.” She playfully poked his stomach. “As long as we got this money printer, baby!” She chuckled.

“Yeah, but only after—” Freddy froze. “Oh, shit. I didn’t tell you.”

“Hmm? You didn’t tell me what?” 

“Remember all that funding that I gave the adjudicator?”

“Yeah?”

“It may or may not have come from… an advance sale on the organs…”

She didn’t understand for a moment. And then, she realized that he gave away all of the money. Including the half that would have been hers with their current agreement. Her face twisted as if she’d swallowed a lemon. “Wow! Okay… I mean… it’s your body. And you can take the organs out even without my help, so it’s not like I have dibs on them. But… Yeah…”

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ll pay you back, though,” he insisted. “I'll likely be getting some extra money from sales that go particularly well. Would you agree to keep helping me if I let you have it?” While he could do it himself, her help made things go a lot faster.

Sophia smirked at him. “Half. I’ll take half.”

“What?”

“If you get extra money, we’ll split it in half. And I’ll keep helping you.”

He frowned at her. “Are you aware how much you’re getting screwed if we agree to that?”

To his surprise, she laughed. “Okay, first of all, giving me half has always been a little generous. And Freddy, I’ll be honest with you; I’m glad you did that. Even if you told me beforehand, I would have agreed to donate my half to help.”

“Why would you do that?”

“And why wouldn’t I?”

“Because that’s a lot of money to just give away, Sophia.” 

“Wow, you are being one hell of a hypocrite here,” she pointed out. “Why can you do it, then?”

“That wasn’t a donation. That was an investment. I own this city.”

She raised an eyebrow and squinted at him. “Why are you going out of your way to make yourself seem like a selfish person?”

“I… What? No, I’m just trying to point out that my reasoning wasn’t exactly selfless.”

“But it was,” she insisted. “We both know there were a million better ways to invest that money, Freddy. Even if the city actually survives, it will take forever for it to recover enough to earn that money back. You could have just spent it on yourself, instead. That’s what most people would have done.”

He scoffed. “You think I don’t already know that?”

“So what’s with you, then?”

“Because I can’t stop thinking that it would have been better to use that money on myself—and then help people.” She was about to point it out, but this time, he cut her off, “I know! I know…” He groaned. “I know. Common fallacy. People thinking like that is why so much stuff goes to shit. I know.” He sighed and sank into the couch. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. Especially after today.” 

His body shook slightly as he drew a quivering breath. “I can’t help but think that being selfless always sets you back somehow. Giving money is losing money. Saving the powerless antagonizes the powerful. Extending a hand risks having it cut off. So what then—are all good people fucked by default? Is that why only assholes seem to get ahead in society?

“It feels like there is a glaring flaw in how reality is designed. Why don’t good deeds at least build latent aura or something? Just some small reward—something to balance the playing field. But there’s nothing. The only way to influence anything is through power. And the only way to get power is to prioritize yourself. I hate that.”

“Yeah. I get that.” She looked away with a sad expression. “And I wish I could offer some words of comfort, but… yeah, I mean, you aren’t wrong. Trying to be good is a thankless endeavor. Anyway”—she waved her hand dismissively—”that’s too depressing. We had enough of that for today.”

Freddy shook his head. “Damn straight. Let’s get some shopping done. And you know what?” He smiled. “I think I might splurge a little, too.”

She returned a devilish grin of her own and they focused on the tablet. 

At first, they just randomly clicked on categories and just moved around to see what was on offer. There were too many items however, and it quickly became apparent that they weren’t going to get anywhere by just pressing random buttons. 

Frankly, the two of them were pretty clueless about such etherology. It made them look like fools as they fumbled around and tried to figure out how the damn thing worked. After about fifteen minutes of fiddling, they discovered a filter section. 

Freddy glanced at Sophia and found her staring back at him. They nodded at the same time and he pressed on the “price” filter, setting it to order all the items from most to least expensive. 

Now, given that some rather wealthy elites were present, Freddy wasn’t surprised that some big ticket items would be up for sale. 

What he didn’t expect was that the top of the list would make him feel poor.

The highest-cost item on the whole list was a 37-billion dollar cursed ring. It was a Ring of Essence Recovery that granted 0.007% essence recovery per second. 

Now, to the uninitiated, this would probably be quite baffling. Given how little essence recovery it granted, it almost seemed like a useless item. But it wasn’t. Not at all. 

The natural passive essence recovery of archhumans was about 0.001%. per second—meaning, it took about 27 hours for someone to naturally recover a single star worth of essence. 

Of course, this could be drastically sped up through meditation or by killing weaker monsters. But this had its own caveats. 

For a peak one-star, it took almost a 100 monster kills to recover essence back to full. This wasn’t exactly fast or safe.

And meditation, while great for recovering from being fully drained, actually drastically slowed down the closer someone was to being full. 

To actually get back to being fully topped out, without a specialized talent, waiting was really the only choice most people had. Expensive essence-recovery elixirs could also do the job, but overusing them carried the risk of soul injury, so not even that was a particularly good choice.

This really put the value of Freddy’s soul construct into perspective. 

He had been taking it for granted for a while already, but it was truly a completely bullshit advantage. But even for him, getting completely topped up took an annoying amount of time, which was why he usually only brought himself up to 190% essence or so and then let his natural recovery handle the rest. 

This was why this item was so powerful. 

For a peak two-star, it would bring the time needed to fully recover down to only about 7 hours, and that was without meditation. With meditation, it could be cut down even more drastically. 

From delving more frequently, to practicing one’s abilities more, and just being actually topped up more often, this item was something everyone could use. 

Except for people with essence-recovery talents. But those people were true cheaters. 

Freddy was a bit depressed when he saw the item suddenly vanish from the list. Someone had bought it, it seems. “Damn. I kind of wanted that.”

Sophia snorted. “It seems we’re gonna have to budget a little bit.”

Going down the list, they spotted only a couple other items that were completely outside of their budget. And Freddy soon noticed a pattern—almost every single item on the list was quite obviously directed at one of the elites. Or, well, Freddy.

One of the items was a unique blood-affinity bracelet with an essence discount. It cost 20 billion dollars. 

Given that none of the elites had the blood affinity, this was likely aimed at Freddy himself. 

Thankfully, he already had the Warrior King’s Pendant, so he wasn’t tempted, because otherwise he would have cried himself to sleep.

He already had a discount on the Blood Ring, but another discount item was always welcome, especially for the blood affinity—even if discounts stacked multiplicatively rather than additively. 

Going further down the list, they found even more interesting stuff. But soon enough, the list got too cluttered with items they didn’t really need, so they started adding more filters. 

First, they decided to take a peek at the consumables. 

At the top of the list, there were a number of treasures promising all sorts of permanent or temporary boosts. The permanent ones almost always came with some sort of downside or side-effect, but for the most part, they were worth it even without a talent like Freddy’s. 

Freddy ignored the ones with minor side effects in favor of scrolling down to find the really dangerous shit. There, a few items caught his attention. One of them was a potent strength concoction that would cause severe acne problems. Another was a plant leaf that would make his eyesight more sensitive in the dark, but he’d occasionally get migraines if exposed to bright lights. A third item promised improved blood circulation but at the risk of developing varicose veins. 

Of course, none of these would actually cause him any problems, making the choice to pick them up rather easy.

Most of these items were priced in the hundred-thousands or low millions, so he bought a bunch without really thinking much about it. Given his extensive history of abusing dubious substances, he doubted he’d see much more growth from these, but at his current level, every extra bit of power went a long way.

Eventually, they scrolled back up a bit, and there, he spotted something that caught his attention. 

Mindguard Pills. 

Price: $14,510,000/pill. 

He raised his hand and focused on his storage ring. A moment later, a vial with two shimmering, translucent pills that looked identical to those in the image appeared in his hand. 

Sophia looked at his hand and then at the screen. “Oh! That’s great! We finally know what those are, I guess.”

He chuckled at that. “Thankfully, they didn’t degrade during the Century of Solitude.” 

Now that he knew what they were, he happily ordered a couple more, since he absolutely wanted to have some in case of emergencies. 

The single biggest difference between a mortal and an ascended being could be seen in the difference between their central nervous systems. The soul had an intricate connection to the central nervous system, and this connection also doubled as a shield of sorts. A small part of it was physical in nature, but it was mostly a shield against hostile essence. 

This was the only reason why the average archhuman wasn’t half braindead. 

Hostile essence, even in the form of reflux essence, could easily destroy the brain without this protection. 

And mindguard pills temporarily gave a drastic boost to his shield. 

It wasn’t surprising that someone like Janhalar would carry a vial of these around. The blood affinity had a low RETI, and the effect made the blood acidic and toxic, which put blood-affinity archhumans at risk of stroke and brain damage should they choose to push past their limits. 

While Freddy didn’t have a need to push the blood affinity that far, he’d rather be safe than sorry, given that not even his healing could save him in such a scenario. 

There was one more item in his ring that he didn’t know what to do with. It was a dried piece of leathery flesh. Unfortunately, no such item was up for sale, which meant it was still a mystery. 

He briefly thought about just swallowing it to see what it did, but he stopped himself. There was a non-zero chance it could damage his soul, and that wasn’t a risk he should take. Ever.

Before long, they changed the filter to equipment—specifically, enchanted equipment. 

Now, Freddy hadn’t expected he’d be spending any money in this category. However, it seemed that one of the companies had done some solid research into him.

Because they were selling a set of items that was practically tailor-made for his exact needs.