Where there is risk, there is profit.

~Dzbog, the God of Fortune

Conall’s axes chopped through the leg of the lumbering Thunder Bull. These giant beasts were massively stupid but charged about the floor mindlessly. It was madness, but fighting them was easy as long as they adopted simple strategies. Plus, they only charged when enraged and only charged in one direction. Even the weakest cultivator learned movement techniques by this point, so dodging them should be easy.

They were on the fifty-ninth floor because his wife, brother, and father had to complete the Soul trial to reach the Ice ranked floors. At the end of every ninth floor was a trial floor, the zero floors. A zero floor was smaller than standard floors and had to be traversed alone. Conall couldn’t help them with anything other than guidance.

These were also known as the Soul Trials, and each had a theme. The Chaos Soul Trial was the worst one Conall had experienced because it required entering a Spatial Tempest, which tore apart the fabric of existence and randomly created spatial rifts to trap the trial goer. Conall was expelled from the trial a dozen times before succeeding, and it was through sheer luck. Most people thought the tower was genuinely shattered because of this.

Conall couldn’t refute that either because the towers had walls mainly due to this trial. It prevented the rifts from dumping them in a realm outside the tower. Even if they entered a rift, at worst, they’d end up on a lower floor or associated hidden realm. Whether by design or not, even the hidden realms weren’t isolated, so the cultivator had a chance to escape.

That meant his wife, brother, and father could end up lost forever since this tower lacked those protections. Conall wasn’t too worried because the chances of that happening were low. That didn’t mean there wasn’t danger because a spatial storm could tear a person apart without leaving a body intact.

Cia froze in combat, and Conall overreacted a little when he saw the Thunder Bull charging her while she remained unmoving. He tackled her out of the path and then cut down the beast, ending the training session. Luthais came over, and after inspecting her, he just shrugged at Conall.

“She’s fine physically.”

“Her consciousness is temporarily in the Spirit Realm,” Burble said.

“What the hell does that mean, you stupid beast?” Niall’s grave voice interrupted.

“She is a Witch, and she is a Spirit cultivator. Does an old senile bastard like you not understand something so simple?” Burble growled back at Crow’s grandpa. The two stared at each other angrily before they burst out laughing.

“Fuck. A shameless dragon and an old man that’s never grown up. What did I do to deserve this?” Conall asked.

“You had Crow. You call me shameless? That little bastard is always running around naked. Don’t blame me for criticizing your parenting skills. How many wives does that little jerk have? I only got your mother—”

Luthais interrupted his old man because he couldn’t contain his laughter anymore. “Are you jealous of your grandson’s ability to pick up women?”

“You disappoint me, son,” Niall chuckled evilly. “At least I had a woman, and your nephew has dozens. What about you? I don’t think you are the one to criticize me. Wait until you get laid, and then you can talk. Right, Connie?”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Conall nearly shouted. “However, dad’s right, little brother. I’ve tried to get you laid several times. Give it up already.”

“Stop picking on your brother,” Cia said, coming out of her trance. “He should be able to find himself a bevy of mortal women. They aren’t picky when it comes to cultivators.”

“Bahaha!” Niall and Burble laughed.

“Ahh, fuck off!” Luthais finally threw in the towel but ended up chuckling along with them. “By the way, what happened to you, Cia?”

“Crow. I’m not sure what he is doing, but he was temporarily in danger of scattering his consciousness. Whatever this shared bloodline thing is, his fading consciousness allowed me to link up to him and give him a nudge.”

“Does he know it was you?”

“I’m sure he does, just as I know it’s him. However…” Cia grinned and almost laughed. “He picked up another wife.”

“That fucking brat,” Conall grumbled. “Is she pretty?”

“That’s all you want to ask?” Cia glared at him. “She will be.”

“What does that mean?” Luthais asked.

“That pitiful little girl was tortured by her little sister. That little bitch cut her up, and then she spread some type of poison into the wounds preventing them from healing.”

“That’s awful,” Burble murmured.

“Seeing those scars, Crow didn’t back away?” Conall asked.

“Nope. On the contrary, he bonded with her. He still refuses to let the scars on his palms heal,” Cia sighed painfully, and Conall hugged her. “There is one other interesting thing. She isn’t from our tower. He is in some kind of special realm that is connected to all the towers.”

“That shithead!” Niall spat. “He isn’t even letting the women from other towers go!”

Luthais chuckled, not even caring if they ridiculed him again. He always felt like Crow was partly his son, too, since he raised him for many years after Conall left. It lightened his heart to know that the kid was doing well.

“Well, let’s keep going. The faster we climb, the sooner we can put this all behind us and go meet up with our boy,” Conall said and kicked the stupid cow that almost hurt his wife.

Cia whispered into his ear. “You did good with our boy, he may not know what you did for him, but I do. He is brave and has a kind soul. You are a wonderful man.”

“Hmph,” Connall grunted but couldn’t keep the stupid grin off his face.

***

Otto and the girls reached the fifth floor. The only trees here were massive oaks that reached toward the sky. Surrounding them was rich farmland. The town at the top of the stairs didn’t have any gigantic buildings but sprawled for quite some distance. The most amazing place was the farmer’s market.

They spent a week living in the town and buying fresh ingredients to cook daily. The farmers even had their own factions, which were broken down by the type of farm they ran. There were the farmers that raised beasts as livestock, farmers that grew orchards and maintained wineries, and the crop farmers.

On the surface, it was harmonious, but after living there for a time, Mara noticed the disputes and tension. The most common type of livestock was some sort of omnivore beast called the Star-Eyed Ostrich because it only had one eye, and the feather’s around the ocular orb were roughly in the shape of a star. The meat was tender and delicious, and its eggs were even tastier. However, they were massive, twice as tall as a man, which meant they ate a lot.

The tension was because the livestock farmers were allowing their beasts to feed on the plants raised by the crop and fruit farmers. It was a strange conflict that felt surreal to them after escaping the jungle nightmare. It was almost laughable, but Mara and the others considered the problem seriously.

In the end, they chose not to get involved. It felt more like a political struggle than a life-and-death one. Crow allowed them to choose which conflicts to involve themselves in, but he cautioned against getting involved in political wars. His advice was that no one won when politics were involved.

“We could offer them a solution,” Song Xue paid attention to politics, but it was because of her master. She was a hired assassin, and before taking a job, her master told her to consider how it would interfere with the politics of a region. She was a killer but only wanted to target the monsters like Munro Duncan and the bastards that raised asshats like that. She didn’t want to harm locals and people underserving of her wrath.

“Oh?” Mara turned and looked at Song Xue in shock. Mara liked Song Xue, but the ‘first wife’ rarely involved herself in group decisions. However, her intelligence gathering was something Mara heavily admired.

“What if we created a fourth division that grew garbage crops that we sold at lower prices to the beast farms?” Song Xue asked.

“I’m not sure I follow. What’s the difference between a crop farm and what you suggest?”

Song Xue pointed at her sister. “She is very familiar with plants, especially herbs. I’m sure there are better, cheaper, and more filling plants for beasts that we could raise and sell to the beast farms at a much lower rate. Since this is rich farmland, we could also use the land we purchase to grow herbs we can cash in on and help my sister advance her alchemy skills.”

It was the most Song Xue said in years.

“Golden Usurper Grass,” Song Lin said. “In a place like this, someone can practically grow it without maintenance. It’d need to be chopped back monthly and bundled for selling. Those Star-Eyed Ostriches will find it filling, and their meat will become even more tender because of the mana contained within. It’s a little like wheat, but it’s toxic to humans. An acre can produce about a hundred bushels which could feed fifty of those beasts.”

Most of the beast farmers could only effectively raise about twenty-five of the Star-Eyed Ostriches before they’d need to hire entire teams. But the fundamental problem was the cost of raising them. A crop farmer would sell a bushel worth of produce at three to five gold coins, but that was on the premise they could sell it. Eventually, they’d be forced to sell the rotting produce to the beast farmers at a highly discounted price.

Raising an ostrich costs roughly twenty gold coins per month per beast. Since they were like pigs and would eat almost anything, it wasn’t horrible but still cost prohibitive. By the time the ostrich was big enough to slaughter, they’d have to charge two gold per kilogram of beast meat. Since the Star-Eyed Ostrich was massive, they weren’t taking a loss, but beasts were highly destructive. They devoured most fencing, and stone walls weren’t spared either. So a large part of their profits went toward fixing up their farms.

Nin listened with rapt attention, and those who looked at her would probably see gold coins reflected in her eyes. She’d already done the math and realized there was room for a lot of profit.

“There was a crop farmer in the market selling three hundred acres of land,” Nin said, and the others looked at her. “What? Do you know how much money this venture could make? In a month, we could sell the grass at a higher price than our costs because it’s feed and would satiate these beasts to a greater extent. Based on what she said, the meat would become more tender, which would allow them to sell it for higher because it’d be a grade better than the current market. We solve their weird issue because why would a beast farmer want to feed their livestock an inferior product? Our overhead would be low and our profits high. We could profit more in one month than we would from running three auctions—well, auctions on the lower floors since that stuff is mostly garbage.”

“Is that right?” Mara looked over at Song Lin.

The quiet woman laughed. “You are asking me? She’s a money goddess. Do you think I’d know more about profits than her? However, based on her bumbling explanation, I think she is right. But I’m basing that purely on raising the Golden Usurper Grass. Profits could be even higher if we grow other alchemical herbs. We could focus on plants used to make healing salves and potions.”

Mara paced around their meeting place, which was the main living space of the home they were renting. They decided to rest here for a month by unanimous agreement before aiming for the next floor. The jungle floor was mentally taxing, a hard contrast to this existing floor.

“How much was the farm?” Mara came to a decision.

“A Mana Crystal per acre.”

“What!?” Mara shouted. “That’s fucking insane.”

“It isn’t,” Nin insisted. “Besides, I think he’s selling because something happened in that area, or it’d have gone for a lot higher.”

“What do you mean?”

“Carpenter Ant Legion. That’s the rumor,” Song Xue blurted out. She wanted this to happen for her sister, which is the only reason she was pushing for this.

“Ugh,” Mara moaned. Insect beasts were the most troublesome to deal with. They swarmed with rhyme or reason and overwhelmed powerful cultivators with numbers alone. “Fine, but you tell that bastard, and anyone in that region that wants to sell, that our rate is one Mana Crystal for five acres. At most, the lowest we’ll go is one per three. Song Lin, I’ll leave you in charge of getting the herbs and grasses you want to grow and finding the staff to help you establish our farm.”

“Darkstar Farms,” Nin chuckled. “Wait until that bastard hears about it.”

The others laughed along with the little dragon, knowing that Crow didn’t like the name of their faction. He didn’t want to be associated with the bad luck that the name intimated.