You know that feeling when you discover someone isn't just who they said they were, but actually twenty layers more than that. And now you have to recalibrate your entire perception of reality while pretending to drink tea like a civilized adult?

  That was me. Teacup halfway to my mouth, staring at Diantha as though she'd just told me she moonlighted as a crime lord.

  Because apparently, she kinda did.

  She was the Head Merchant of Jalkra's entire empire.

  "Wait. What?" I said, lowering the ceramic cup that Loa had lovingly poured with too much sweetroot.

  "I managed all resource flow across DreaGoth, and parts of Vulkhanzar and Xarthune," Diantha said casually, while simultaneously bouncing Denji in one arm and stirring soup with the other. "That includes mineral transactions, shard redistribution, crystal tariffs, ghost taxes, and void-loan interest policies."

  My brain hiccupped, refusing hard to process everything I had heard. "Ghost taxes?"

  "Yes. Specters demand rent. Long story." She waved a hand. "More importantly, I also ran the Crystal Exchange Board."

  "...You mean like a stock market?"

  She smiled. "Oh, KiAera. So adorable. No. Worse."

  At this point, Mellow had quietly slid a chair behind me just in case I fainted. Biscuit had already made herself crystalcorn.

  I should've known something was off the moment Diantha corrected Liozel's posture while weighing a slice of crystallized cake… with her bare hand.

  "That's about forty light-blues," she murmured, flicking the piece of cake perfectly into Liozel's open maw. "You owe me a tenth."

  My ears flicked. "Wait. You're… charging him?"

  "He asked for deluxe," she said plainly, patting Liozel's head. "The economy starts young."

  "Okay," I said, crossing my arms. "Explain it to me like I'm a confused rabbit-chimera-person who just found out my crystal hoard might be worth more than I thought."

  Diantha turned her elegant, perfectly unruffled gaze toward me, and in that moment I understood the glint I'd seen earlier in her eyes—the one that said: You think I'm just the soft one with a baby? Sweetie, I built a commercial empire in a land run by murder gremlins.

  "Oh dear," she said, smoothing her skirt and rising with the kind of poise that made even the herbal bundles look organized in her wake. "You really haven't been told."

  "About what?"

  She folded her arms, somehow managing to look both motherly and mildly offended. "The Zeldritzon Crystal-Trade Economy (ZCTE), of course. The very lifeblood of cross-domain commerce, bartering, extortion, and decorative jewelry among the civilized monsters."

  Liozel burped lightly. "It tastes like finance."

  I coughed. "You're telling me monsters use… crystals as currency?"

  Diantha's eyes gleamed like someone who'd been waiting months for this topic to come up. She made a gesture—ringing a bell—and within seconds, Whirlkool practically slid into the room with a mossy chalkboard balanced on one flipper and a pointer stick made of coral. Biscuit followed, juggling an armful of glittering shards, humming a jaunty merchant tune like this was normal.

  "Class," Diantha said, clapping her hands.

  ? The Crystal Code, According to Diantha ?

  Whirlkool smacked the board with a thwack and flipped it around. A diagram appeared:

  THE CRYSTAL VALUE CHART

  ┌─────────────────────────────┐

  │ Light-Blue: 1 unit │ ← common forage

  │ Blue: 10 units │

  │ Dark Blue: 50 units │ ← guard-grade

  │ Light-Green: 100 units │ ← minor spell-grade

  │ Green: 200 units │

  │ Dark Green: 500 units │ ← market-cap stone

  │ Light-Orange: 1,000 units |

  │ Orange: 2,000 units | ← disaster insurance

  └─────────────────────────────┘

  THE CRYSTAL VALUE CHART [cont…]

  ┌─────────────────────────────┐

  │ Dark Orange: 5,000 units

  │ Light-Pink: 10,000 units

  │ Pink: 20,000 units

  │ Dark Pink: 50,000 units

  │ Light-Red: 100,000 units

  │ Red: 200,000 units

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  │ Dark Red: 500,000 units

  │ Light-Magenta: 1 Mil units.

  └─────────────────────────────┘

  "Each crystal variant holds innate mana particles," Diantha explained, hands clasped like a noblewoman teaching etiquette. "And mana, as you've probably guessed, is everything. Fuel. Power. Proof of status. And, if you're my husband's sort, leverage."

  "Mana-based capitalism," I muttered. "Of course."

  "It gets better!" Biscuit sang, tossing a dark blue shard and catching it with her tail. "The Jalkra economy uses APU tracking to gauge productivity! That's 'Aggregate Particle Units.'"

  "You're telling me there's a currency-to-energy exchange rate?"

  Diantha raised one manicured brow. "Would you expect anything less from the DreaGoth Dominion? Even love letters are tax-deductible there."

  "How did you even—"

  "Become head of it?" she cut in, preening slightly. "I was born into a Minokaurbo merchant line. We were once bartering horns and haul-beasts long before the clans unified. We don't fight wars with swords. We fight them with supply chains. My people are Oni by blood, minotaurs by bulk, and merchants by destiny."

  "But… you're an Oni," I said, carefully. "Aren't you supposed to be, like, warriors? Duelists?"

  "Yes," she said. "And? Do you think we beat each other to death for free?"

  Even Mellow looked scared now.

  "But why trade with crystals at all?" I asked.

  "Oh, KiAera," she said sweetly. "Because when you tie your economy to elemental resonance, you ensure every trade bleeds real power."

  She held up a light green shard and rolled it between her fingers. "This isn't just currency. It's potential. Some use it for spell-crafting. Some power machines. Others eat it."

  "Biscuit eats every single one she gets," Whirlkool said flatly.

  "THEY'RE TASTY," came a muffled shout from the ceiling.

  I stared at the glimmering shards, my mind reeling. All this time, I'd been stuffing crystals into bags like trail snacks. And here Diantha was, a walking vault of economics. A hidden titan behind Jalkra's control.

  "I can't believe he let you keep all this power," I whispered.

  "Technically on maternal leave." Diantha tilted her head like a cat who'd just been reminded she was famous. "So it did reach your ears. Yes. 'Merchant of DreaGoth.' Jalkra inherited me when he married me."

  "You really do run the Jalkra economy…"

  "I optimize it. Strategically enforce it. And occasionally dismantle it from within when it grows too stagnant. But yes."

  "She made half the tax code while a teensy teen," Biscuit added cheerfully.

  Whirlkool sighed from her nearby perch on the windowsill, polishing one of her shell-cannons. "She corrected half the tax code," Whirlkool grumbled, waving the pointer. "The old one didn't account for aquatic vendors."

  "And don't forget the vault key in her leg," Biscuit added cheerfully, dangling from a rafter like a hammock-shaped cat cloud. "It's literally inside her shin."

  "I don't use that one anymore," Diantha said, mildly annoyed. "The DreaGoth codes are biometric now."

  I blinked again. "The what?"

  Ume, from the far corner, stirred her tea. "She means that the high-value crystal vaults recognize her heartbeat as authorization."

  Of course they do.

  I leaned back on my heels. "You people run your economy like it's a combination of smuggling and eldritch commerce."

  "No, no," Diantha said, in her gentlest tone. "It's simpler than that. You just have to understand the Crystal Tiers."

  "Ah yes," I muttered. "Because currency should glow. Obviously. Do you even realize how insane all of this sounds?"

  Diantha smiled sweetly. "Darling. You're housing a wyvern, thirteen crystal mice, a kobold militia, and at least one sentient herb stack. Why draw the line at crystal economics?"

  "...Okay, fair."

  She walked over to one of the crates I hadn't paid attention to before, flicked open its top, and revealed layers upon layers of neatly organized crystals—each glowing faintly. Her hand hovered over an orange shard that pulsed with so much stored energy it made my skin shiver.

  "This one?" she said. "Could pay for an army's rations for a week. Or buy my son a quiet future, if I invest it well."

  I stepped forward. "So all this? The decorations, the supplies… even the festival idea?"

  "Already budgeted," she said. "Every cake slice, every lantern string, every monster's portion of security detail and entertainment. I fund peace the same way others fund conquest: by making it profitable. You'll be paid in full: 50,000."

  There it was. The real Diantha, gentle and maternal. But shrewd enough to outplay a kingdom.

  "Do you… teach this?" I asked, hesitating.

  Her eyes twinkled.

  "Do you want to learn?"

  I nodded, because if I was going to protect this strange sanctuary of mine… I needed more than power. I needed infrastructure.

  "It's okay," Diantha said warmly, placing a hand on my shoulder. "You're learning. Besides… generosity is priceless in itself. And in the old Oni ledgers, those are the debts that matter most."

  That's when I heard a faint tink of claws on wood.

  GamaGen was perched neatly atop a wooden beam overhead, talons lightly tapping the timber. His feathers bristled with contained energy, eyes locked on the chart still propped up by Whirlkool's flipper.

  "Ah," he said, "the decimalized crystal economy. Elegant. Underutilized. And entirely my doing."

  Diantha blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  He fluffed his wings. "The structure. The initial logic, the calibration by mana-particle density, even the transitional buffer from realm-barter to crystal credit? That was me. Well, me and a few very annoyed Communicuties who did the field testing."

  "You established this… before the Oni merchant class was formed?" she asked slowly.

  "Oh, long before," GamaGen said. "Oni and Nekomata culture refined it, yes. Honed it into an art. But the bones?" He tapped the wooden beam with his claw. "Quite Ancient."

  "Why didn’t I know this?" Diantha asked, her brow furrowed.

  "I tend not to brag," he replied, then tilted his head with a glint. "Unless it's especially warranted."

  I folded my arms.

  GamaGen stilled at my silence. Then turned his attention to me.

  "Oh," he said. "That look. That's a: Why didn't you ever teach me this? look, isn't it?"

  "Yes," I said flatly. "Because why didn't you ever teach me this?"

  He opened his beak, hesitated, then shut it.

  Diantha looked between us with a sort of reverent curiosity.

  "KiAera," GamaGen began. "When you first arrived, you could barely tell one mana vein from another, and you measured trust by instinct alone. You were surviving. You weren't ready for systems yet."

  "That's not an answer."

  GamaGen ruffled his wings again, then glided soundlessly from the beam to the edge of the crystal crate.

  "Fine," he said. "Because it was never about systems with you. It was about choice. Freedom. You weren't supposed to inherit something like a merchant empire. You were meant to build something different."

  "I am building something different," I said. "And don't you think knowing how this works might've helped?"

  "I didn't want you to fall into the same trap others have," he resumed, choosing his words carefully. "To think order was safety. Or that profit was peace. So I let you improvise. Let you learn from the monsters around you."

  I looked away. Because part of me got it. The other part? Still felt the sting.

  "But I get it now," I said. "I can't protect anyone if I don't know how things run. I need to understand not just the monsters, but the rules they live under. Even the ones written in crystal."

  "Then I'll teach you," GamaGen said as a vow. "Not the kind of knowledge that binds. The kind that frees. Starting with this—"

  He tapped the crate again. "Every crystal color, every fluctuation in exchange rate, every loophole Diantha's people use to smuggle jewelry—"

  "Hey!" Diantha snapped, mock-affronted. "They were earned earrings, not smuggled!"

  "And they taxed as glamour trinkets," he said, dry. "Ingenious. Illegal. And admittedly brilliant."

  Diantha's laugh was sharp, but it stayed warm. "You're more dangerous than you look."

  "So is she," he said, looking at me.

  I nodded. "Then let's make it official. Teach me the rules. All of them. So I know when to break them."

  "Then let's begin with the basics," Diantha declared. "Lesson one: Never let a Nekomata run your ledgers."

  From the ceiling: "Rude!"