THE GOD EATER

The attendant said, “Unfortunately, that’s how much the information is worth. So we can’t ask for more money.”

Loki said, “I see. Anyway, let me see what it is all about.”

The voice on the other side said, “That’s good to hear.”

Then he was given the token to pay the money into. After he paid, the attendant went to get the information.

A few minutes later, the attendant returned with a package, which they passed to Loki through the connecting cupboard. Loki took the package and quickly broke it open to see its contents.

The content was only one line. It said, “Become a divine being or assimilate the core of a dragon into your energy well.”

He was both enlightened and disappointed by this because the solution was informative but difficult to implement. He knew about divine beings, and he knew that it was very difficult to become one. As for the second option, that one is even more difficult because dragons are said to be extinct.

As difficult as these solutions were, he couldn’t complain because he had been given two solutions. If there was anyone to blame, he could only blame himself for being weak.

But he scoffed and said, “No wonder it was so cheap. Having the information makes very little difference.”

The attendant said in disagreement, “We don’t price information based on the impact on the buyer. It is not as if we can measure the impact of a piece of information on buyers. After all, there are many kinds of buyers.”

“Instead of using the impact of information on buyers to determine price, we used the difficulty of acquiring the piece of information and its rarity to determine its value.”

“Take that piece of information, for example, it is pretty common sense to many people that taking the heart of a dragon can break the limit of talent for humans. The information was easy for us to acquire, so we can only sell it cheaply.”

On the other side of the booth, Loki’s face fell the more he heard. After the attendant was done speaking, he said, “If it is common sense, then why did you price it at 10,000 energy stones? Isn’t 10,000 energy stones too much for something that is common sense?”

His question made the attendant chuckle in their androgynous voice as they said, “Honored customer, the fact that you are asking for it means that it is not common sense to you. That makes it a valuable piece of information.”

“Anything we don’t know is priceless to us. It is because you know the piece of information that you had the right to speak about its value. Before you knew it, you would have been willing to pay 100,000 energy stones for it if I had asked for it.”

Loki didn’t have a good counterargument for that, but he still grumbled some more about how this shop cheats people.

After grumbling, he said, “Speaking of divine beings, do you know why the reincarnation of a divine being will have infinite energy?”

In response, the attendant said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t have that information.”

This made Loki scoff and say, “Here I thought you knew everything, but it seems I have overestimated your capabilities.”

The attendant didn’t mind that he was belittling their establishment. They said with a sigh, “We too hope to know everything.”

Loki couldn’t find fault for that, so he asked for the information on why the divine beings were blocking the creation of more rank 5 cultivators.

The price was still 10 million energy stones, which he paid promptly. Then he was given the information he wanted.

The information said, “Rank 5 cultivators can become divine beings and always want to become divine beings. Unfortunately for them, only a limited number of people can become divine beings. Rank 5 cultivators can only create a brand new slot for a divine being that they will occupy or take the place of a divine being when that divine being dies.”

“However, divine beings that die will always reincarnate with memories of their past life as long as they are not injured too much. After they reincarnate, they will try to recover their previous divine post and use it to ascend again.”

“This situation makes it so that both rank 5 cultivators and reincarnated divine beings are always competing for divine posts. This is why divine beings don’t like rank 5 beings.”

This made Loki nod and say, “It makes sense.”

Then he continued reading.

The next line said, “The enmity between the rank 5 cultivators of a certain Life Ability and the divine being in possession of the Divine Metac of that Life Ability is always the most intense. It is so intense that the divine beings will always want to kill rank 5 cultivators of their Life Ability on sight.”

“This is because in the time that it takes a divine being to reincarnate, advance back to rank 5, and take back their divine position, a rank 5 cultivator can take advantage of their weakness to kill them and replace them.”

“It has even happened before that a rank 5 cultivator knew when the divine being above him would die and was lying in wait. So when the divine being died, the rank 5 cultivator immediately used a method to steal the divine post and replace the divine being.”

Loki’s eyes twitched, but he continued reading.

“So divine beings hate rank 5 cultivators. As soon as they hear that a new rank 5 cultivator has appeared for their Divine Metac, they usually go looking for that rank 5 cultivator to kill them.”

“This is why rank 5 cultivators rarely appear in the world. They have to hide themselves to prevent being killed by divine beings.”

At this point, he said, “Oh. So that’s why I haven’t seen any rank 5 cultivators. I just thought that they were hard to see because they were rare.”