Chapter 122: Dimensional Tax
Julien’s boots pounded against the uneven floor as he chased right after Kyle’s broad back, leaving the white glow of the expensive holy fire far behind them in the main courtyard.
The intense heat of the explosion still lingered on his ruined merchant coat. Still, he did not dare slow down because those two surviving vampire knights were definitely going to call for reinforcements the second they recovered from the blinding flash.
Maya kept checking their blind spots with her daggers drawn to ensure the enemy patrol was not silently dropping from the steep stone rooftops, while Aiden just focused on keeping his footing despite the terrible pain radiating from his healing ribs.
Kyle skidded to a halt in front of a towering stone church at the end of a dead-end road and simply bulldozed his way right through the heavy wooden doors.
They all spilt into the dusty interior, and Aiden immediately grabbed a sturdy wooden beam to slide across the iron brackets on the doors, effectively barricading them inside the silent building before collapsing onto the floor.
"I need a lot of food right now, or my system skill is going to start eating my own muscles to fuel the regeneration process," Aiden muttered weakly, clutching his stomach and looking directly at Julien with a very desperate expression.
"Tell me you have something decent to eat hidden inside that magical shop of yours, so I do not pass out on this dusty floor."
Julien smiled confidently, relieved that he could finally provide something useful to the team without throwing his entire life savings at a stone wall.
"Do not worry about a thing because feeding a hungry guy is the absolute easiest problem we have solved all day," Julien replied smoothly, swiping his hand in the air to open his glowing blue interface.
He navigated straight to his personal inventory and tapped the icon to summon the warm food, fully expecting a perfectly plated meal to appear right in his hands.
But the cheerful blue interface instantly glitched and turned a very aggressive shade of yellow instead of confirming the simple transaction.
A loud error chime echoed through the quiet church, and a bright warning screen popped up to block his purchase right in front of his face.
[Dimensional Transit Penalty Activated.]
[Notice: The requested organic items are currently located in World 077. Transporting physical matter across dimensional boundaries incurs a severe logistical tax.]
[Calculated Shipping Cost: 150,000 Pioneer Credits. Proceed with transaction?]
Julien felt his jaw practically unhinge as he stared at the ridiculous price tag attached to a simple plate of steak.
’Are you kidding me right now?’ Julien thought in pure disbelief, frantically clicking on the detailed rules section of his class that he usually ignored because the legal jargon was incredibly boring to read.
’No wonder I was constantly struggling to make a profit back in the commercial sector despite having an endless supply of goods to sell!’
"Well, the magical store is officially closed for the night," Julien announced with a sigh, cancelling the expensive food order and watching the aggressive yellow warning screen fade away into nothingness.
"What do you mean it is closed?" Kyle grunted, leaning his new steel sword against the nearest wooden pew and crossing his large arms.
"You literally just bragged about having a supply of goods, so just pull a steak out of the magic window before Aiden completely passes out."
"I have an infinite supply, but the system does not give me free shipping across the multiverse!" Julien argued defensively, pointing a finger at his glitching screen so they could see the crazy numbers for themselves.
"The system acts like a ruthless interdimensional delivery company operating on strict profit margins. It is trying to charge me a one hundred and fifty thousand credit tax just to move a piece of cooked meat from our home world into this new dimension."
"One hundred and fifty thousand credits for a steak?" Maya asked in total shock, her eyes going wide as she did the mental math.
"You could buy a whole fleet of brand new mana-powered cars back in the districts for that kind of money."
"Exactly, which perfectly explains why my shop catalogue always looks so incredibly confusing to everyone," Julien continued, feeling a strange sense of vindication as the hidden logistical rules finally made sense to his business-oriented brain.
"It is the reason why a practically weightless, highly magical phoenix feather is listed in the same item tier as a heavy glass bottle of low-grade healing potion. The system does not rank my inventory based on how rare the items are, but it ranks them entirely on the physical weight and the dimensional energy required to teleport them safely without breaking."
Aiden let his head fall back against the wooden pew with a quiet groan of despair.
"I am very sorry, but paying that much for a meal will literally drain my bonus in one single transaction," Julien apologised, closing his interface completely to avoid the temptation of spending the money anyway.
"Then we have to scavenge this place the old-fashioned way," Maya stated practically, pulling one of her daggers out and walking toward the dark shadows at the back of the church to start searching.
"There has to be some kind of leftover offering or emergency rations hidden in here."
They really did not have any other choice, so they fanned out across the abandoned building, quietly checking behind the ruined altar and digging through the overturned wooden benches to find anything useful.
The creepy statues of winged angels seemed to watch their every single move from the high vaulted ceilings, making Julien feel incredibly anxious as he walked down the dusty side aisle.
"I found something over here, but it is not exactly a pantry," Maya called out softly from the darkest corner of the room, waving her hand frantically to get their attention.
Julien hurried over with Kyle and Aiden right behind him, finding Maya crouching right in front of an iron cellar door built directly into the stone floor.
It was completely locked from the inside with a very sturdy steel deadbolt, which clearly meant it belonged to someone desperately trying to hide from the monsters hunting in the red moonlight.
"If someone locked themselves inside a dark basement, they probably brought their survival supplies down there with them," Kyle pointed out logically, gripping the hilt of his sword just in case the person hiding down there was not friendly to visitors.