Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation

"How much money exactly did you spend?"

Finally, after she put away the cards, I thought of an important question that had been overlooked just as I was about to start cooking. I stared at her seriously and asked.

"Not a lot..." She immediately averted her eyes when I brought up the spending.

"Be honest!" Feeling something was wrong, I hurriedly turned her head back. "How much did you spend!"

"Not much, just a few hundred silvers..." Nicola reluctantly turned her face to the other side again, but this time finally blurted out a number.

"Exactly how many hundred silvers?"

I felt like my heart was bleeding. A few hundred silvers could be equivalent to doing quite a few low-level tasks. It had been almost half a month since we rented the house, and we had only earned a little over 4,000 silvers total. After paying rent, paying back Adrian and others, daily living expenses, we now had less than 3,000 silvers left.

This took up at least 10%!

But my intuition told me it wasn't that simple, because when she said this, Nicola was still concealing something.

Holding two bird eggs in my hand, I really couldn't rest easy going to cook like this.

"So how many hundred exactly?"

Seeing she didn't answer for half a day, I became anxious and continued pressing her.

"9..." Unable to withstand my interrogation, Nicola reluctantly told the truth.

"998..."

There was a "snap" as an egg fell to the ground, surprisingly not cracking as it rolled to a corner under the bed.

Wind Dancer bird eggs were indeed durable.

"Where did you get so much money?" I finally calmed down from the shock, and suddenly thought that with her daily quests, she only earned less than 300 silvers in an average day. And the remaining portion after daily expenses was usually kept in a layer under her pillow.

Could it be...

Seeing I was about to cry as I went to flip the pillow, Nicola knew she could no longer conceal it, so she quickly confessed her mistake.

"Sorry, it was my fault, I took the money that was under the pillow."

I took out all the money from under the pillow and found there were only a few hundred silvers in total.

"The amount doesn't add up!"

I looked at her puzzled, didn't she say she spent 998? There was almost 3,000 yesterday, how was there only this little left?

"Because..." Seeing this, Nicola smiled awkwardly and slowly took another card out of her pocket, different from the previous one, this time it was an Eight-Winged Angel.

"I also bought one of these..."

"Snap!"

Another egg fell to the ground.

"That's for you liking angels so much!"

"That's for buying cards!"

"That's for buying two of them!"

As if the meat in front of me was Nicola's, I chopped heavily into the leopard meat on the cutting board. I felt like I was about to explode from anger. We had painstakingly saved up money for half a month and most of it was gone in an instant.

I was wrong, I underestimated Nicola, the wealthy young master. I thought she had changed after transmigrating here as her gender changed. But it didn't take long for this guy to reveal her habit of spending money like pouring water.

"Feliciana, I was wrong, I definitely won't recklessly spend money next time." But the culprit was still apologizing nonstop behind me.

I had originally wanted to punish her by not allowing her to eat, but then I thought that some of that money was what she earned, so that would be unfair to her. In the end, I could only let it go.

"Why are you apologizing? Part of that money was your own. You can spend your own money however you want. That has nothing to do with me."

I humphed, I didn't want to bother with her anymore.

"Anyway, your ring has turned into two inflatable angels now. Just take them along when you go out to do quests, it wouldn't hurt to have them help carry things for you."

I mocked sarcastically. It was a shame, Nicola had said she wanted to buy a storage ring, but now basically all the money we saved was used up. We'd have to start over from scratch.

"They aren't just inflatable dolls, they have other uses too."

But when I mentioned those two cards, Nicola immediately became excited again and defended herself.

"Oh? What other uses?"

My curiosity was piqued again. To be honest, when I first saw the cards I was quite shocked too. To say I wasn't interested would be a lie, but what was most important right now was that we needed to save money to buy a storage ring. So this kind of entertainment toy could completely be delayed until later when we had enough money.

"Well, it's a bit complicated to talk about out of nowhere now. You'll know when I take you to see tomorrow."

Nicola had that mysterious look on her face again. I saw that she hadn't learned her lesson at all, it was simply a stance of I'll definitely commit it again next time.

After a while, the food was finally cooked and brought to the table.

Today's dishes were stir fried sunrise kale, stir fried leopard meat with basil, and pan fried wind dancer egg drop soup. With one meat dish and one vegetable dish served with soup, the nutrition was quite balanced.

After spending so many days, I had finally figured out how to cook home food with the ingredients in this world, so we didn't have to just eat local food. My only regret was that I hadn't seen anyone selling rice, so I could only use bread as a substitute.

I personally felt the taste was just average, I didn't know if it was because of my cooking skills or because of the ingredients.

But Nicola didn't care. Having gotten used to eating home food, being able to eat this kind of dish in another world made her feel it was very good already. She kept praising that I cooked well.

Since someone was complimenting me, I was quite happy about it. So from then on, I became in charge of cooking dinner every night. Of course we still occasionally went out to eat for a change of taste.

The next day, when we had some free time, Nicola brought me to the shop where she had squandered money.

Although we had walked past the entrance countless times, this was my first time entering the store.

The shop's name was very ordinary, it was simply called:

"Samfield's Entertainment Room"

Upon entering, it gave an impression like that of an average supermarket. The shelves displayed many items whose purposes I did not know.

"What is this used for?" I picked up a ball the size of a glass marble in front of me and took a look at the labeled merchandise name "Write Pearl".

"Don't know."

Nicola glanced at it and shook her head.

"How about this one?" I picked up another die-like triangular object. Strangely its name was actually "Rem Pricus's Dice".

She also answered I don't know.

"You say you don't know anything yet how did you end up running over here to buy Magic cards?" Unable to restrain myself, I raised doubts to her.

"Because yesterday at the Adventurer's Guild, I saw several people gathered together discussing..."

Nicola also seemed quite interested in the merchandise on the shelves, constantly fiddling with them.

"So I went over to take a few looks. Later they recommended this shop to me..."

And then I could imagine what happened next. Given her temperament, she must have come straight up and asked the boss if she could see Magic cards.

At this moment the gorgeous red double doors inside the shop opened, and a gentlemanly looking thin tall man with a mustache and top hat walked out.

"Ah, Miss you've come again."

Seeing Nicola, his face immediately filled with smiles as he enthusiastically walked toward us.

"You seem to have brought another companion today?"

"Yes, we came to take a look at your..." Nicola had a hard time remembering the appropriate term when stating her purpose.

"Oh!" The man who appeared to be the shop owner was very professional. He immediately understood what she meant with just that.

"You want to play a few rounds?"

"Play a few rounds?"

Hearing this, images of unsavory things immediately came to my mind, and I glanced at Nicola.

"It's not what you're thinking. Go inside the room and you'll know."

Seeing my doubtful expression, Nicola immediately explained, then pulled me along into the double doors.

Behind the doors it was like two completely different worlds. A bright expansive view, gorgeous decorations, and even the lighting used a round transparent dome.

This place couldn't even be called a room anymore. It could completely count as a hall with at least a few hundred square meters in area.

"It's so spacious inside!"

I couldn't restrain the surprise showing on my face. You really couldn't tell at all from the outside. And it seemed there were quite a lot of people, all sitting or standing in front of tables scattered around the hall.

"How is it?"

Nicola excitedly glanced at me, then brought me to a table nearby.

"Are you sure people don't come here to gamble?"

As she pulled me along, I looked all around. No matter how you looked at it, the atmosphere here did not differ much from casinos on Earth.

It was just that they didn't seem to be using roulette or playing cards at these tables. Many even had a layer of transparent cover on them.

"Um, there's a little difference."

Nicola didn't say much more and we arrived at a table that looked like a giant strategy sandbox. There were already two other people standing on the other side.

I saw Nicola insert her Eight-Winged Angel card into the card slot on the edge of the table. Soon an extremely tiny Eight-Winged Angel appeared amidst the mini mountain range in the center of the table. To make it easier to see, there was an arrow marker above its head.

"Look, Magic cards can also be used in a place like this."

As she manipulated the angel to move, she explained to me.

"Use the virtual characters summoned by the cards to defeat other enemies in here. You can obtain points stored on the card."

When we arrived, the venue already had all kinds of virtual characters. They were engaged in battles in various corners of the map. Some were 1v1 duels, others were group battles.

Nicola's controlled Eight-Winged Angel quickly joined a skirmish near a spawn point. Seizing the opportunity, it took out a human swordsman with low HP.

There was a light "ding". The magic digital display device in front of her immediately jumped from 18 points to 22.

This was exactly like an otherworld version of an online computer battle game. I even saw the Eight-Winged Angel unleash some skills and moves that it didn't have when it physically materialized last night.