Dual Realm Exchange System

After the four ladies finally bid him farewell, Damian remained inside his newly rented store long enough to meet the contractors Marissa had hurriedly assembled.

There were carpenters, enchanters, painters, sign makers and several ordinary laborers among them, most having agreed to work through the night because Damian was willing to pay the additional rush fee.

The circumstances surrounding Rosewood Town had disrupted plenty of ordinary business anyway, so the prospect of earning extra money for one exhausting night was apparently enough to gather a surprisingly competent crew.

Damian spent the next hour walking through both floors and explaining exactly what he wanted.

The first floor would remain relatively open, with most of the retail displays pushed toward the walls so customers could move comfortably even during crowded periods.

The front counter needed to be reinforced, the storage room required additional locks and basic magical security, while the windows needed protective enchantments strong enough that some idiot could not simply smash through them and steal merchandise worth several Gold Coins per unit.

As for the second floor, Damian wanted the offices cleaned and furnished properly, but the two VIP rooms deserved special attention.

If he was eventually selling things like Spirit Gathering Arrays for seventy-five Gold each, the customer buying one probably would not appreciate discussing the transaction beside somebody purchasing a Grain Avoidance Pill.

By the time Damian finished explaining the layout, one of the contractors had already started measuring the main floor.

”Work through the night if you can, but don’t kill yourselves doing it. I want this place ready quickly, not badly,” Damian instructed before leaving.

The foreman slapped his chest confidently. ”Leave it to us, Baron Baines. We’ll have the worst of it finished before noon.”

Damian sincerely hoped so.

By the time he finally returned to his cottage, it was already around nine in the evening.

He removed his Journeyman Mage robe, dropped onto his bed and stared upward as the events of the day drifted through his mind.

Garrick’s body.

Kellan kneeling before him.

The seven children.

The destroyed remains of Otter Village.

Then the new store, the longhouse, and the strange conversation with the four ladies afterward.

Damian released a long sigh.

Barely more than a week ago, his greatest concerns had been hospital bills, an abusive employer and whether his ribs had been fractured badly enough to require expensive treatment.

Now he was managing property, maintaining businesses across two worlds, protecting eight dependents and worrying about whether four beautiful women were beginning to consider a relationship with him because he might possess supernatural progression resources.

Life really did not know moderation.

Damian allowed his thoughts to wander until exhaustion eventually pulled him into sleep.

......

The next morning, he woke feeling considerably better.

Damian bathed, dressed and left his cottage after a quick inspection of his equipment, heading first toward Central Lane.

The contractors had made remarkable progress as the previous furnishing store was barely recognizable.

Fresh shelving had already been installed across much of the first floor, the counters had been stripped and rebuilt, protective runes were being etched around the rear storage entrance, and two workers stood outside preparing the frame for what would eventually become Damian’s sign.

There was still plenty left to do, but the foreman estimated that the majority of the renovation would be completed by late afternoon.

Damian nodded approvingly and brought out several Grain Avoidance Pills.

”Divide these among the crew. They’ll keep you properly nourished for the day, so nobody needs to waste time finding breakfast or lunch. Don’t treat that as permission to skip water or work yourselves unconscious,” Damian warned while passing them over.

The foreman accepted the pills cautiously, only to become stunned after Damian briefly explained what they did.

Damian left before another round of exaggerated gratitude could begin.

His next destination was the communal longhouse.

When he arrived, the difference between yesterday and today was immediately noticeable.

The grief had not disappeared, and probably wouldn’t disappear for years.

However, the children were no longer huddled together as though the world might collapse around them at any moment.

Several were sweeping the floor while two older children were helping organize clothing and bedding.

One little girl was awkwardly trying to fold blankets while repeatedly producing something that looked more like a crumpled ball.

Outside, Kellan was training.

The young man stood in the yard with Garrick’s silver spear, repeating the same thrust again and again with an intensity that bordered on obsession.

His feet shifted, his hips rotated, and the spear snapped forward.

Again.

Again!

Again!!

Damian watched for a moment before approaching.

”You’ll destroy your shoulders before becoming strong enough to kill anyone if you keep training without rest,” Damian warned.

Kellan stopped immediately and straightened. ”Lord Damian!”

”Damian is fine unless we’re doing something formal. How did everyone sleep?”

Kellan hesitated before answering. ”Better than I expected. A few of the younger ones woke up crying during the night, but they eventually went back to sleep.”

Damian nodded.

He spent the next half hour checking on the children personally.

Had they eaten? Were the beds comfortable? Did anyone feel sick? Was anything missing?

Most of the answers were reassuring.

They remained confused and subdued, but the food, warmth and simple certainty that they would still have somewhere to sleep tonight had already done more for them than Damian expected.

Before leaving, he gathered everyone together.

”Come to my store on Central Lane later this afternoon. Kellan knows where it is. I’m going to begin arranging everyone’s responsibilities, education and training from there,” Damian explained.

The children nodded with varying degrees of understanding.

Kellan, however, stood straighter.

”Yes, Lord Damian!”

Damian decided not to fight that battle today.

......

After leaving the longhouse, Damian considered visiting the Adventurer’s Guild.

A quest would solve several problems simultaneously.

He needed money after murdering his cash reserves with commercial rent, he needed more practical combat experience, and now that his Skill Point balance had returned to zero, monster hunting had become even more attractive.

Unfortunately, Moonveil Forest was effectively unavailable as the situation there had changed completely after the three village attacks.

Previously, Damian’s intelligence had created the perfect opportunity for a lightning operation.

His party had eliminated the Dark Goblin patrol that attacked them, captured its most important member and extracted detailed intelligence only after the creature’s death.

Even the White Wolf Clan information had come through Moonfang and the displaced wolves rather than some obvious human reconnaissance effort.

As far as anyone knew, Blackroot Den had possessed little reason to assume Rosewood Town understood the scale of its forces, the hidden eastern approach, the locations of the captives or Ravelhorn the Reveler’s involvement.

Had the Adventurer’s Guild struck immediately, experienced teams could have exploited that ignorance and inflicted enormous damage before Varkas Blackroot understood what was happening.

That opportunity was gone now though.

The Dark Goblins had launched a massive preemptive attack instead.

Whatever their intentions had been, burning Boar Village, Bison Village and Otter Village amounted to a declaration of war.

Blackroot Den would now be expecting retaliation, so its traps would be prepared, its scouts would be watching every approach, and its warriors would be armed and organized.

Assassins would be positioned where they could inflict maximum damage, and any hidden defenses Damian’s interrogation had failed to discover would almost certainly be active.

Charging into Moonveil Forest immediately would squander lives for little reason.

Rosewood Town was therefore doing the intelligent thing.

Recover first, strengthen the roads, reinforce nearby settlements, move civilians from exposed areas, track the Dark Goblin raiding forces, determine whether more settlements were threatened, and then prepare a response far larger than the original Adventurer’s Guild operation.

Because the situation no longer belonged solely to the Adventurer’s Guild.

The churches were becoming involved, local authorities were mobilizing, and even merchant groups with investments outside the walls would inevitably contribute resources.

Other combat organizations would also soon follow.

Once word traveled farther, the Rastia Kingdom itself might take interest in the fact that organized monsters had attacked human settlements along an expanding frontier.

Varkas Blackroot had been completely correct to fear Ravelhorn the Reveler’s plan.

Damian could not help comparing it to Imperial Japan attacking Pearl Harbor.

A sudden strike might achieve spectacular immediate results, but if it failed to cripple the enemy completely, all it truly accomplished was turning an irritated giant into a furious one.

And Rosewood Town’s eventual response would make two atomic bombs look merciful in terms of the proportional difference between what Blackroot Den had inflicted and what humanity possessed the capacity to return.

So, for the moment, Moonveil Forest quests were frozen or heavily restricted.

That left three broad hunting regions available to Damian.

Greenmoss was the safest, essentially the starter region for inexperienced Copper Adventurers.

Useful for practice, perhaps, but probably terrible for Skill Points.

Then came Ironfang Highlands which was populated with green orcs, bugbears, hobgoblins, gnolls, and kobolds.

These were enemies with more raw strength, better organization or more dangerous racial advantages than the Dark Goblins Damian had fought.

Beyond that was Gloamfen Mire.

Burrower Worms, Corrupted Drow, Giant Spiders, Harpies and enormous bloodthirsty bats populated that region.

Damian frowned, realizing that while he could probably survive both regions with the right party, that was not the same as possessing an advantage like in Moonveil Forest.

Against Dark Goblins, he had benefited from excellent information, compatible magic, and circumstances that repeatedly played into his strengths.

Ironfang Highlands and Gloamfen Mire would not politely arrange themselves around his build.

Before moving into genuinely harsher hunting grounds, Damian needed to reinforce his weaknesses.

And that reminded him of another problem, one that was considerably more important.

......

Damian returned to his cottage rather than accepting a quest.

Inside his bedroom, he settled into the comfortable single-seat sofa near the window, crossed one leg over the other and leaned back thoughtfully.

Kellan and the children, huh?

On paper, the plan was excellent.

Give them shelter, education, and then Classes.

After that, use cross-realm resources to accelerate their progression and gradually create a loyal group whose strength grew alongside his organization.

The younger children obviously required years before combat even became relevant, but Kellan was nearly ready now.

Except there was one rather enormous flaw.

Damian possessed nothing capable of directly turning a Preparatory Class into a Standard Class.

That was a problem, a major one.

Qi Nourishing Pills granted Experience Points.

Qi Acceleration Pills doubled eligible Experience acquisition.

Wonderful.

Neither solved the actual entry requirements for a Standard Class.

Using them on someone trapped in a Preparatory Class would be horribly inefficient.

The person might gain levels and Experience, but Preparatory Classes did not provide the Attribute Points, Origin Feats or proper progression benefits granted by Standard Classes, while the adaptation limitations of the pills would still accumulate normally.

They would effectively burn valuable progression medicine for almost nothing.

Kellan was the clearest example.

Damian had asked about his Character Sheet earlier.

The teenager possessed 6 Strength, 4 Dexterity, 5 Agility, 5 Constitution, 4 Intelligence, 4 Wisdom and 4 Spirit.

Not bad at all for someone who had never gained a proper combat Class.

More importantly, years of Garrick’s training had given Kellan Novice and Novice , with the latter already approaching Journeyman mastery.

For Kellan, Skills and Specializations were not the issue. Rather, his Attributes were.

A Fighter required 7 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 4 Agility and 6 Constitution.

Kellan therefore lacked only a handful of points.

For an ordinary person, that meant more training which could take months, or even years, potentially.

Medicine might shorten the process, but Damian had searched the Evergreen Sect catalogue thoroughly enough to know that nothing available at his current level simply handed mortals raw Valorian Attributes.

Valoria itself was even worse as the bottleneck existed because the world’s rules were designed around it.

Yes, extraordinary resources existed, like Dragon Blood Potions, Rare blessings, Bloodline transformations, and even Legendary medicines capable of permanently altering the body.

But those things were expensive precisely because they bypassed ordinary limits.

Damian currently lacked the qualifications to treat such treasures like training supplies for eight dependents.

At this point, Damian smiled thinly.

Fortunately, he did possess one method, just that it was not a consumable.

Shengyuan’s Body Tempering cultivation techniques!

Damian’s own breakthrough had already proven that cultivation could directly increase his physical Attributes.

The Five Elements Harmonization Art granted balanced increases to Strength, Dexterity, Agility and Constitution as his cultivation advanced while other techniques focused on narrower combinations.

In theory, the solution was obvious.

Teach Kellan a compatible Body Tempering cultivation method, let him raise the missing Attributes through cultivation, then awaken the Fighter Class!

Problem solved, right?

Except it was not.

This was the first genuine roadblock Damian had encountered in his plan to freely exploit both worlds.

And strangely enough, the problem was not selfishness.

Damian had no intention of becoming one of those lunatics who discovered another power system and immediately decided that he alone deserved to possess it beneath the heavens.

His ambition was ordinary.

He wanted wealth, security, and power.

He only wanted enough strength that nobody could casually threaten him or the people he cared about.

Damian was not the type to donate Shengyuan cultivation manuals to the public library or throw copies from rooftops, but neither would he refuse to teach close friends, lovers, family members or loyal subordinates merely because sharing power offended his ego.

Kellan and the seven children were already his people.

If cultivation benefited them and they were compatible, Damian had no moral hesitation whatsoever about teaching them.

The problem here was security, and not from people, kingdoms, nor even monsters.

Damian’s gaze slowly lifted toward the ceiling.

”The gods...”

That was the real issue.

From the moment Damian arrived in Valoria, one fact had been impossible to ignore.

Divine authority here was strong.

Eunice served the Holy Light Church and churches operated openly throughout civilization.

The Holy Pantheon had established continent-spanning rules regarding Otherworlders, and those decrees were taken seriously enough that governments, guilds and institutions built entire legal procedures around them.

Otherworlders were not some obscure magical rumor.

The divines themselves were evidently aware of them and, for whatever reason, generally encouraged their integration into Valoria.

That had benefited Damian enormously.

But Shengyuan cultivation introduced something fundamentally different.

Spiritual Energy and mana were similar enough that Damian’s magic worked in both worlds.

Yet Shengyuan’s Spiritual Energy had become strangely resistant to external manipulation.

Damian’s working theory was that generations upon generations of cultivators had continuously absorbed, refined and permanently claimed the world’s ambient Spiritual Energy.

Even a formless natural energy without proper consciousness had seemingly altered its behavior under that pressure.

It had become wary.

Valorian magic did not work that way.

Mages shaped ambient mana by borrowing it to make spells, then released it back into the wild.

Eventually, that power dispersed back into the environment.

Cultivation was different.

A cultivator absorbed the energy, refined it, then made it part of their body and foundation.

In higher realms, apparently, made it part of the very self.

The energy did not simply return afterward.

So what happened if Damian began teaching people to cultivate inside Valoria?

One person consuming an insignificant amount of mana was irrelevant from the perspective of an entire world.

Ten people were irrelevant.

A hundred probably remained irrelevant.

But the principle itself was not.

If cultivation introduced a new interaction into Valoria’s natural laws, would something notice?

More importantly, would the gods notice?

That was what Damian feared, because he did not know the exact answer.

His own situation was manageable.

Damian could simply travel to Shengyuan whenever he wanted to cultivate.

Valorian magic was even easier to use there, since manipulating raw Spiritual Energy through Mage techniques had occasionally produced unexpectedly powerful results.

His future subordinates would not possess Permanent Realm Passage, so they would have to cultivate here.

And until Damian knew whether absorbing Valorian mana through Shengyuan cultivation caused some divine alarm bell to start screaming, building an entire faction around cultivation was reckless.

That was also why he had delayed aggressively recruiting people after obtaining his General Mercantile Permit as the classic Otherworlder route would have been simple.

Go to a slave market.

Purchase several beautiful, abused young women.

Treat them with basic human decency.

Watch them become fanatically loyal.

Then spend three hundred Chapters pretending not to understand why they wanted to sleep with him.

Damian had elected not to follow that distinguished tradition.

Before spreading cultivation, he needed an answer, a near-absolute one.

Would cultivating with mana cause a problem?

Damian uncrossed his legs.

Well, there was only one sensible way to find out... by testing it himself!

If something went catastrophically wrong, Damian at least possessed the ability to escape into Shengyuan.

And if some divine representative eventually appeared demanding answers?

Well, Damian could always retreat, cultivate until Golden Core or whatever absurd realm came afterward, return several centuries stronger and slap the complaint department representative across the face.

A flawless contingency plan!

...probably.

Damian moved from the sofa onto the floor and sat cross-legged.

His expression gradually became serious.

He closed his eyes, steadied his breathing and recalled the circulation route of the Five Elements Harmonization Art.

Then he began and the technique activated as Damian drew in the surrounding mana.

And the very first thing he experienced left him utterly thunderstruck!