Dawn filtered through the floor grates of Booth Nine, casting narrow bronze bars across Kaelen Vance’s quilt.
Far above the ceiling beams, the first heavy carts rumbled across the Sky-Bridge. Iron-rimmed wheels ground against paving stones. Teamsters shouted curses into the morning chill.
Kaelen opened one eye and stared at the dark pine rafters.
The quiet chime of the Fallow Slate resonated in his mind with steady precision.
[Track 1 (Cultivation Vessel): 700h / Multiplier: 701x] [Track 2 (Martial Combat): 700h / Multiplier: 701x] [Track 3 (Alchemy & Comprehension): 210h / Multiplier: 211x] [Total Reserve: 61,500 Mid-Grade Spirit Stones.] [Time to Milestone: 20 hours.]
Seven hundred hours.
Only twenty hours remained until the seven-hundred-and-twenty-hour Lunar Fallow Surge.
If anyone bangs on this door and forces me to draw my sword early, I lose six thousand five hundred times my baseline yield, Kaelen thought. That is not an inconvenience. That is grand larceny.
