"Indeed, but so what? Should I reward a child who hasn't fully finished their homework yet?" Kenjaku asked, looking over her shoulder.
Nayuta bit her lower lip in frustration after that humiliating reply.
"Should I just go back under Dad's supervision?" she thought, considering breaking the deal with Kenjaku.
The idea wasn't impossible.
The young girl was aware of her father's ability to break oaths.
She had even seen certain curse users forced to honor their vows, while Jin had broken his without any consequences.
So the thought naturally crossed her mind.
"Stop being so frustrated." Kenjaku's sudden voice pulled her out of her treasonous thoughts.
Kenjaku gave her a reassuring smile, as if trying to motivate her a little.
"If you bring me the fingers of Sukuna that Tokyo Jujutsu High possesses, you will definitely obtain the immense power you desire," she said as she moved away from the kitchen.
"Of course… provided you can actually handle it~" she added with light mockery.
Kenjaku's last words lingered in the air after she left.
"H-Huh… Master, a-are you still planning to interfere with Tokyo?" asked a teenager as he entered through the window.
Slap.
"How many times have I told you that a dog doesn't speak like that?" Nayuta declared, slapping the face of the young man in military attire.
The force of the slap was enough to split his lower lip, but the worry on the man's face didn't disappear.
The dog clearly sensed that his mistress was disturbed.
He wanted to share his experience.
"Woof… I-I don't trust that woman… woof," he reformulated, imitating a dog's bark in another attempt to dissuade Nayuta.
"You're not telling me anything new, idiot. I already know that woman is a wolf in sheep's clothing," she replied, her voice slightly annoyed.
Nayuta had personally "experienced" the twisted nature her stepmother hid behind her friendly smile.
To her, it was clear that Kenjaku was an empty being.
She didn't want her father to be corrupted by this woman's unhealthy nature.
Unfortunately, the possibility that her father was blinded by his feelings could not be ruled out.
She could clearly sense that Jin would not believe her if she revealed his wife's true nature.
"Ever since I came back, I can feel a certain distance between us," she thought, her heart tightening.
Nayuta was right.
Jin no longer truly trusted her since she had left for a long time with Kenjaku.
After all, who knew how far a sorcerer several centuries old could brainwash a child who was barely a few years old?
As a result, he had come to trust someone like Charl more than his own daughter.
"Woof… Sorry for my impertinence… woof," Bayer expressed while looking at the floor, embarrassed by Nayuta's scolding.
"It's fine… sigh. Even if I don't like admitting it, a useful dog is more valuable than a completely obedient one," Nayuta declared as she left the room.
Bayer watched her figure disappear from view and nodded in approval.
(Image)
"Indeed, Q was right to follow that woman," he muttered as he returned to his post.
He had to continue patrolling.
The only reason he had entered the house was the emission of cursed energy from Kenjaku after Nayuta had used gravity.
Bayer sheathed his knives while observing the moonlight after climbing back onto the roof.
…
"Stop being so stingy. A sorcerer's soul is definitely priceless!" Jin retorted as he sat facing the goblin.
The latter picked up a cup of coffee without paying attention to Jin's arguments, then took a small spoon to properly stir the sugar.
The atmosphere became awkward during the process. Fortunately, the goblin eventually spoke up to explain a basic rule of the causal market to Jin.
"Indeed, the soul is a precious thing, and a sorcerer's even more so. However, you've sold a huge quantity of them!" he insisted at the end to drive the point home.
Translation: the soul had lost its value.
In economics, the devaluation of a product that floods the market is mainly explained by the law of supply and demand.
When a product becomes extremely abundant (supply ↑↑) while demand doesn't keep up, its perceived value and price tend to drop.
Buyers no longer need to fight for it, so the product loses its rarity.
It's a bit like if everyone suddenly owned a villa: would it still be important to have one?
The obvious answer is no.
Jin had rarely used the causal market. However, he very frequently sold the souls of other people for various benefits.
One of his most common uses was obtaining raw experience points, which was a logical choice.
He could laze around and let others bring him souls, which he would then throw to the goblins in exchange for experience potions from Konosuba.
An automatic level-up…
The idea was cunning.
Especially since experience points were essentially fragments of the target's soul that the guild card absorbed.
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end.
The causal market had judged that human souls had lost their value due to how trivial they had become in Jin's eyes and because of their overexploitation.
"One way to remedy this would be to increase the quality of the product, vary the type of product, or change the way the product is offered," he analyzed while watching the goblin nonchalantly sipping his tea.
Unfortunately, Jin immediately rejected the first two options.
The ordinary souls sold on the causal market belonged to scum that Jin carefully selected from the worst trash.
He couldn't just wake up one morning and target the soul of his charming neighbor, because it belonged to a completely different type of soul than what he usually sold.
As for higher-quality souls, he preferred not to touch them at all.
Grade 1 sorcerers like Jiro were not common in the current jujutsu world.
They usually belonged to groups or were affiliated with the higher-ups of the sorcery world.
Jin did not want to start an open war with them.
Not yet.
"So, I'm left with the last option," he thought with a sigh.
Improve the service.
"You're demonic, you know that?" the goblin muttered after understanding Jin's plan.
The man with glasses simply shrugged at the insulting remark.
He didn't care about being called trash.
However, Jin intended to stay as "clean" as possible.
Even if it was hypocritical deep down.
"You say that, but you're licking your lips," the sorcerer with glasses replied, pointing at the drool at the corner of the goblin's mouth.
The latter elegantly wiped it away with a handkerchief from the table.
"So what? Imagine the despair of those people who are willing to do anything for more~" A smile embodying the sadism of capitalism appeared on the goblin's face.
Jin had to fake a cough to bring him back in line.
When Jin talked about improving the service, he was referring to the way the goblin would obtain souls for him.
Normally, the goblin captured people, executed them for their souls, then activated his domain to bargain with Jin.
This time, he planned to operate differently.
People would sell their souls to Jin themselves, through a consensual contract.
The difficulty of obtaining the soul would be higher, but that was precisely the goal of this maneuver.
To elevate the product through service.
That way, the causal market would no longer evaluate the value of the soul from Jin's perspective, but from that of his clients.
"Okay, back to business. I want the maximum knowledge on the creation of cursed weapons from the Heian era," Jin declared, handing over the soul brought by Nayuta.
Jin's basic idea was to give his daughter a weapon similar to Asta's in "Black Clover".
Unfortunately, a weapon that destroys cursed effects didn't seem so easy to obtain.
Jin simply intended to create it.
"A smart choice…" The goblin nodded in approval upon hearing the proposal.
Immediately, the soul disappeared before his eyes, and a large amount of information flowed into him within a few minutes.
The domain expansion shattered.
"My head hurts… Well, I just need to hold on a little longer," he said to himself as he walked toward his car.
He had to go meet Charl to retrieve the Zenin twins he had mentioned bringing back.
"Huh, I haven't looked at my guild card in a while," he thought as he took out his card.
Name: Jin Itadori
Species: Human?
Age: 28 → 30 years old
Class:Adventurer
Level: 32 → 45
• Strength: 41 → 54
• Agility: 42 → 55
• Dexterity: 32 → 45
• Intelligence: 15 → 20
• Luck: 3
• Magic Power: 39 → 52
• Occult Energy: 41 → 54
• Health: 61 → 74
Available Skill Points:13
Skills:
• Luck: lvl 4 → 8 (new)
• Forge: lvl 5 → 9 (new)
• Escape: lvl 6 → 7 (new)
• One-Handed Sword: lvl 3 → 6 (new)
• Hand-to-Hand Combat: lvl 1 → 5 (new)
• Stalker: lvl 5
• Archery: lvl 4
• Spear: lvl 3
• Cooking: lvl 4 → 8 (new)
• Reading: lvl 6 → 9 (new)
• Gore Resistance: lvl 1 → 7 (new)
• Poison Resistance: lvl 9 (new)
• Magic: None
Curse Technique:
• Cursed Energy Manipulation: lvl 4 → 8 (new)
• Vow: lvl 3 → 7 (new)
• Cursed Corpse Creation: lvl 2 → 5 (new)
• Barrier: lvl 7
• Reverse Cursed Technique: lvl 6
• Domain Expansion: lvl 3
• Simple Domain: lvl 6
• Domain Amplification: lvl 4
Items:Vanir Mask, Chunchunmaru (damaged), Bow (damaged), Silver Flesh (unusable), Megumin's Amulet and Dynamite (depleted).
Currently Active Contracts: Tsubaki (shikigami), Charl Choi (human), and Goblin (causal market intermediary).
[Skill Pending Acquisition: Teacher]
Satisfied with his steady progress, Jin started the car with a light heart.
He wasn't evolving as quickly as Kazuma Sato from "Konosuba" or Hiromi Higuruma.
However, Jin wasn't worried about it.
He wasn't under the same pressure as those two men, nor did he have a huge number of worthy opponents to face.
He was somewhat in a similar situation to Kashimo.
…
And so, time flew by at high speed.
[Next, regarding the explosion that occurred yesterday in the city of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture…]
[The cause may have been a faulty gas pipe. I'll hand it over to our reporter on site.]
"So… which one of you dismissed the assistant by saying, 'I'll take care of setting up the barrier'?" Yaga asked, staring at the trio of troublemakers in front of him.