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She pointed. "You saw that stupid-looking card, right?"

I didn\'t think it was stupid, but… "Yeah."

"That\'s a talisman. They\'re total cheats. Someone else casts a spell on a piece of paper, and until that paper degrades, you can release that spell at anyone else. It doesn\'t matter how high your Rank is. As long as you have a tiny amount of mana, anyone can use a talisman."

Ike\'s brows shot up. "Why doesn\'t everyone use talismans, then?"

Wisp rolled her eyes. "Because they\'re crazy hard to make. There\'s probably only a handful of talisman-makers in all the cities, and most are low-level, since talisman-making isn\'t exactly a route to great power and higher strength. It\'s kind of a dead-end field. You have to invest decades, maybe centuries, to learn them, and they don\'t help you that much, since you can only create talismans at your own Rank.

"You need to be a very particular kind of person to pick it up. As a result, they\'re insanely expensive. One of those talismans is probably worth an entire house in the upper city."

"Holy shit," Ike whispered. He looked at the foppish man with a new light in his eyes, somewhere between impressed and disgusted.

The foppish man leaned around the trees. "Where\'d you two criminals go, hmm?"

Ike turned sideways to the man. He lifted his wolfskin, hiding Wisp from his view as well. "Doesn\'t that mean he isn\'t necessarily as high-Rank as he appears? If he\'s just using powerful spells he\'s borrowed from someone else."

"Bingo. The problem is, he\'s got a shit-ton of those spell cards, and he\'s not afraid to burn them." Wisp peered out from behind the wolfskin, eyeing the foppish man. "We need to get close without him detecting us, and then it\'s a piece of cake. But if he detects us…"

"Hello…? Where are you?" the man sing-songed. He threw a card into the forest. An explosion rattled off, spewing fire and shattered trees into the sky.

"Why the hell is he wasting this much money on us?" Ike whispered, shocked. "He just randomly encountered us in the forest. He\'s trying to capture you for money! Why—"

Wisp pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Some people defy reason. They just want to hurt others for their own self-satisfaction."

"He\'d waste that much money?" Ike muttered again, disbelievingly.

Wisp gave him a look. "There\'s people for whom this much money is chump change, Not even worth bending over to pick up. Pennies. People who waste more money than you will make in your life, in a single day."

Ike raised his brows. He shook his head. "How the hell do I become one of those?"

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Wisp chuckled. "If I knew, you think I\'d be living in the forest?" She paused, then sniffed. "From what I\'ve heard from you humans, seems like you mostly have to be born into it."

"Oh. That sucks," Ike muttered.

"Tell me about it," Wisp replied.

Ike frowned. "But wait, if he\'s capturing you for money, but he\'s super rich…"

Wisp spread her hands. She let out a deep, sad sigh. "I can\'t help it. I\'m just worth that much."

Ike laughed. He shook his head at her. "But seriously."

She shrugged. "I don\'t know. Rich people are weird. Maybe he needs to prove he can make money to someone. Maybe he\'s just having fun. Maybe he really thinks he can extort that much money out of Lord Brightbriar. I don\'t know."

"Yeah… fair. I don\'t understand rich people, either," Ike said, patting his bag where Rosamund sat.

She nodded. "I landed a few hits on him, but nothing substantial. Since he relies on talismans, I wasn\'t really able to wear him down much."

"Were you able to wear down his talismans?"

Wisp grimaced. "Not as much as I\'d like."

"Better than nothing." Ike grabbed Wisp around the waist. "I\'m going to run in. Are you ready?"

She turned around and clung to him, bracing against his body. Her feet pressed against his hip bones, ready to push off. "Let\'s do this."

Ike ran in with Lightning Dash. The wolf skin jostled around his shoulders. Wisp tensed, staring intently ahead.

The foppish man turned. "Oh! There you are! Give in and—"

Wisp leaped off Ike\'s hip. Ike darted around the back of the man, helping her pincer attack. The two of them closed in on the foppish man.

The man threw a circle of cards around him. The card stock burned, ashes drifting up from the corners of the cards as they flew. Ike sped up. Dodging to the left, he ran past the cards and closed in on the man.

From the other side, Wisp raced toward him. She swept her hand out in front of her. A net of webbing caught the cards out of the air. With a flick of her wrist, she threw them to the side. They smashed into a wall of trees and exploded. Wood splinters shot in all directions. A few rattled off Wisp\'s back, but she didn\'t flinch. She and Ike charged toward the man, raising their fists.

The man looked left and right, then laughed. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head at them.

He\'s confident. That\'s a bad sign. Ike slammed the man with a huge punch, while on the other side, Wisp kicked his head.

The man didn\'t move. Ike\'s fist recoiled as if he\'d hit a stone wall.

Ike retreated. He narrowed his eyes, pushing aether out to observe the man.

Blue light shimmered faintly around the man\'s figure. Ike\'s aether could grow no closer to the man than the blue light.

"His necklace. It\'s a barrier enchantment," Wisp said as she leaped back, bouncing a few times like a jumping spider.

"Heh. As I thought. You worthless criminals should give up and be captured by me," the man said. "You can\'t defeat my barrier, and you can\'t overcome my spells. It\'s hopeless."

"Why are you trying to capture us?" Ike asked.

The man harrumphed. "I believe in the rule of law. You\'re breaking the law. Therefore, you must be punished."

"You\'re wasting so much money on two people who would rather walk away. Who don\'t want to hurt you, and aren\'t doing anything to harm you. Why?" Ike asked.

"You\'ve broken the law," the man repeated, as if it was obvious.

"You aren\'t a guardsman. What do you care?"

The man gave Ike a look. "You\'re a criminal. It\'s my duty to punish you. So what if I spend a little money doing it? It\'s right."

"I just happened to fall into the Abyss. I\'m not even a criminal," Ike argued.

"That\'s what criminals would say," the man replied, readying another round of talismans.

"No point arguing with him, Ike. The rich are basically insane," Wisp said, shrugging.

Ike nodded. "I wish I had enough money to be insane."

"Right?" Wisp muttered.

He met her eyes. If it\'s a barrier… it can\'t be harder to break than the city lord\'s barrier. He dropped the wolfskin. The man knew where he was, and he was using spells that hit a wide area, anyways. The invisibility wasn\'t helping, and he didn\'t want to risk it burning up in the fire. "I can break through. Can you finish him off?"

Wisp grinned. She bared her scrawny limbs. "You bet."

"Let\'s get that dough," Ike said, and dashed in.