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Chapter 86: Cooked Books
🕑 Added 2025-07-09 06:18:15 +0000 UTCCashmere stood before the mirror gate beneath the Temple of Greed. In its perfect surface, dozens of himself stared back. Older, younger, thinner, heavier, each version clad in a different color of power.
None of them blinked.
None of them moved.
The reflections simply waited, like options the world never took.
He adjusted his gloves and tapped his golden badge onto the gate. Glyphs lit up in a fan-like spiral, forming the triangle of passage.
[Investor Class II: Golden Reserve.]
The portal pulsed.
[Mirrorway acknowledged.]
He stepped through.
The Mirrorway was colder than he remembered.
A corridor carved from silver light, lined with seamless glass tiles, stretched ahead into a blur of curve and stillness. The glass walls warped and shimmered, reflecting not just him, but his thoughts, flickers of concepts turned into mirrored shadows just at the edge of clarity.
Originally, the Mirrorway had belonged to the Mirror Faction, rivals to Pride. But during the 1st Avaritia’s meteoric rise, the Age of Sealed Debts, he had outbid them in a contract duel, purchasing the transit rights with the promise of eternal value exchange.
Now, it served only Greed’s interests.
And Cashmere was walking it alone.
No slave caravans. No trade convoys. No echoes of whisper-deals from passing couriers.
The path was silent today, paved with forgotten deals and barely held together by decaying oaths.
Still, it remained stable. Function mattered more than sentiment.
Eleven minutes and 6 seconds later, Cashmere reached the other end.
He emerged into cold mountain air.
Northern Hellnia.
Greed’s former stronghold, once ruled by Avaritia himself.
What met Cashmere was a city of quiet erosion. The sky above had turned a bruised gray-purple, its clouds thick with dream core residue, the pollution of crude industrialization. The towers that once glowed with goldlight now sat cracked and dim, surrounded by half-collapsed vaults and rusted contract hooks.
Even the stone beneath his feet felt neglected, like the city had stopped bothering to maintain its pride.
A delegation of ten enforcers greeted him at the plateau. Their uniforms were stained. Half had patches on their suits under their armor.
The commander, Teldan, bowed stiffly.
“Investor Cashmere. Welcome to Node 001.”
Cashmere merely gave a nod.
“Take me to the city. Quietly.”
“Yes, sir. Please be advised, conditions are... unstable.”
They descended together toward the inner tiers of the city. On either side, fountains dedicated to Greed’s greatest mergers lay in ruins, filled with black water and dried blood. One bore an inscription now chipped beyond recognition.
Cashmere said nothing.
The damage wasn’t new or cosmetic.
It was simply ideological, business here had… looser regulations compared to Neel.
And with looser regulations came laxer discipline.
They stopped near the first market tier, where ragged stalls leaned under slumped canopies. Caravan beast pens sat empty. Wealth devil children played in the ash.
Teldan handed him a sealed scroll.
“Latest report. Sixteen supply lines collapsed. Seventy-eight resurrections this month. Suicides, mostly among slavers and bonded couriers. We’ve lost over forty individuals with zero body traces.”
Cashmere unfurled the scroll.
“And the cargo?”
Teldan hesitated.
“Gone. No trail, no residue, all sigil-sealed crates and cages were ripped open. Escort squads didn’t report contact, just... gone.”
Cashmere scanned the names of the missing.
Three of them had once answered directly to him.
“The apple fever?”
“Worse, sir. Entire noble circles are now organizing ‘fruit parties.’ All-apple menus. Restaurants converting menus overnight. Some clients leave fruit offerings outside unmarked buildings.”
He stopped reading.
“Fruit as worship?”
Teldan nodded uncomfortably.
“They’re calling it The Apple Feast. No symbol, no scripture, but it spreads. Quietly, especially among low-tier devils.”
Cashmere kept his voice neutral. “Any signs of outside influence?”
Teldan crossed his arms in thought.
“Three recurring figures. We believe them to be female demons. Peculiar skin tone... hot pink. Faces veiled. Always dressed as maids.”
Cashmere squinted.
“Cherrymaids.”
“Yes. No vocal communication. Just appearance and destruction. They attacked Vault 17 two days ago. We lost the entire squad.”
Cashmere said nothing. He already a suspicion of their origin, but saying that would break the golden rule of investors:
Don’t act until the ledger says so.
They arrived at the outer ridge, a broken platform overlooking the wildlands beyond the fortress.
To the east, dark hills swelled into twisted crags and burnt forest. And beyond them, further still, the land sank, far enough that no one lived there anymore.
There, hidden and unguarded, lay a deep wilderness pocket no longer labeled on maps.
Where Avaritia’s abyss was.
Where that boy still was.
But Cashmere did not speak that fact.
Not yet.
Not until he had more information about all this.
“Sir,” Teldan asked, “why here?”
Cashmere gazed at the horizon.
“Because the ledger doesn't lie. And something here isn't balancing.” He said cryptically.
He turned to his guard.
“Prepare a message. Not to the temples or nobles, this is personal. Inform my proxy in Neel to begin a silent account. Label it under ‘Hidden Potential’.”
Teldan bowed. “Yes, Investor.”
And Cashmere smiled faintly, hands clasped behind his back as the wind howled from the east.
“No alarms yet. I’m just watching the cracks.”
…
…
Cashmere hated conflicting data.
Every set of interviews only added more contradictions.
Suicides with no rituals. Resurrections with blurred memories. Slavers refusing payment for live cargo they once begged to collect. Townships abandoning entire vaults.
Nothing lined up.
The only constant was fruit.
It wasn’t sacred and it wasn’t demanded, just… there. Offered, eaten, bought and sold like coins made of sugar and comfort.
It was a subtle creep, and it was working faster than infection.
The more Cashmere listened, the more he knew.
“This isn’t rebellion,” he muttered.
“It’s erosion. Greed is being outbid by satisfaction.”
And whoever started this movement? If it was anyone?
They didn’t want the throne.
They just wanted Greed to lose everything.
By twilight, he arrived at a building that hadn’t existed during his last visit.
Manjar Manzana.
A two-story restaurant shaped like a noble lodge, trimmed in golden lattice with red apple blossoms hanging from its archways. The walls shimmered with polished white marble, carved with vines of copper and engraved blessings of good harvest.
An attendant bowed as he approached. “Investor Cashmere. Your reservation is ready.”
He was led inside.
Everything reeked of calculated comfort, almost ritualistic. Waiters wore black uniforms with red cuffs. The silverware bore stem and leaf motifs. The walls were backlit with amber warmth.
And apples, red, green, gold. Were baked, candied, stewed, or raw at every table.
Cashmere sat at a corner booth. The air hummed with quiet delight.
His first course arrived. Glazed bone risotto in apple reduction, topped with crisped skin from a sun-dried variety extinct in most known markets.
He didn’t speak, didn’t smile.
But he finished all of it.
Later, a server approached with a nod.
“Dear Investor, would you like to meet the chef?”
Cashmere tapped his wineglass once.
“If he’s worth knowing.”
The waiter nodded eagerly and left.
Moments later, a broad-shouldered devil in a pristine white apron emerged from the back. His skin was deep russet, his eyes bright amber behind half-moon glasses, with two hollow stars under one eye. He looked more like a merchant than a chef.
And Cashmere could always recognize a businessman, practicing or otherwise.
But his fingers were calloused, and his smile was real.
“Investor,” he said warmly. “This one goes by Manzana. Owner and head cook.”
Cashmere gave a slight nod. “You left the contract districts for this?”
“Vice ran dry,” Manzana said without shame. “Greed turned stale. Appetite is eternal.”
His voice was slow but intelligent, like someone who had turned thought into flavor. But his eyes showed a hint or something more.
“Your menu’s strange,” Cashmere said. “No class distinction. No price tiers.”
Manzana gestured around the room.
“We serve those who understand the taste, nothing more.”
Cashmere narrowed his eyes. “That’s not very Greed of you.”
Manzana chuckled. “I don’t serve Greed. I serve what Greed forgot.”
Sacrilege. But sacrilege wasn’t punished here, only deficits.
Soon, dessert was offered on a single white plate.
A single, raw apple.
No cutlery. No garnish. It gleamed faintly under the overhead candlelight.
Cashmere stared at it.
It was just a fruit.
And yet…
A whisper, a feeling, gnawed lightly against his thoughts. Something inside him stirred.
A strange curiosity.
Cashmere wasn't a warrior nor a caster. But as a businessman, he could sense curse energy and magical tampering when he needed to. Compromised product was bad product… sometimes.
But he sensed nothing when he focused on the fruit. Just an apple.
A crisp, juicy, delicious looking fruit…
His devil blood shifted, almost leaning forward toward the fruit like a muscle twitch.
Cashmere’s fingers tensed.
And then he stopped himself.
He reached into his coat and retrieved his [Golden Investment] coin.
He flipped it with practiced grace.
It spun once and landed flat in his palm.
The glyph shimmered in bright crimson.
[SELL ALL SHARES]
Cashmere exhaled slowly. He didn’t show surprise.
Instead, he looked up at Manzana.
“Tell the chef I’m full.”
“I am the chef,” Manzana said again, smiling just a bit wider.
Cashmere nodded.
He left the apple untouched.
And walked out into the cold.
…
…
Cashmere traveled alone to subnode six, riding atop a skeletal mirror-strider, a creature shaped like a centipede stitched from contracts, bone, and reflective glass.
The path twisted downward, away from the marble boulevards of Greed’s main city and into the outlying resource veins that once pumped gold and contracts from the far edges of Avaritia’s empire. Now they were little more than dust-filtered silence and abandoned ledgers.
He passed three hollow toll gates.
All unmanned.
A decade ago, this would have been impossible, someone, somewhere, always watched the books.
Now?
The gatehouses were sealed with dust, and the shelves inside were still stacked with unpaid IOUs like tombstones.
He arrived at the subnode near midnight.
It was built into the side of a sunken basin, disguised as a miner’s hostel. Barely twenty meters across, but once a vital listening post for Greed’s northern monitoring network.
Cashmere had assigned operative Krolm here, a contract devil for hire with a 3-star rank, a good head for cause and effect, and no fondness for excessive morality.
Krolm had not sent updates for nine days, half the reason Cashmere chose to investigate personally.
That was not acceptable.
The door to the subnode was already cracked open.
Cashmere stepped inside without drawing a weapon, not that it made a difference.
The interior had been picked clean. Files gone. Relay disks stripped. Even the nameplates were removed.
But what mattered was left behind, burned deep into the main wall behind the vault desk.
A black apple.
Its stem etched in sharp-cursive.
And no accompanying message.
Cashmere stared at it in silence for a full minute.
Then he let out a breath through his nose.
“You were smarter than I thought, Krolm.” The devil seemed to have sensed the shift in the air and fled.
He didn’t call for cleanup.
He didn’t log the defection.
He just sat down in the scorched chair, rested his back against the wall opposite the apple drawing, and retrieved a single coin.
Not ordinary gold.
His coin.
Worn smooth over centuries, infused with faint sigil-script and three unseen law traces, fate, karma, and something else that shifted depending on context.
[Golden Investment.]
Most thought it a novelty, a gimmick.
It read market decisions. Advice based on intuition. Vague readings with unclear triggers.
But that’s because they didn’t know how to use it.
Cashmere had spent two hundred years aligning its edge with his blood, timing, and contextual leverage.
His bloodline had a fate strain, not deep enough to become a fate mutation, but enough to feel the tremble of forks.
And karma? Too broad to enforce change like the Irony Devil. But perfect for sensing when balance was no longer possible.
The coin told him only one thing.
When to Buy.
And when to Sell.
It didn’t tell him why. That was his job. But its accuracy, when treated properly, was near divine.
He flipped it again.
A casual spin. Let it land.
[SELL ALL SHARES.]
The words glowed crimson.
His face showed no reaction.
He just sat there, tapping one gloved finger against the arm of his chair.
“You're not her.” he whispered.
He wasn’t even sure if the coin meant Hannya anymore.
Maybe it never had.
Maybe the apple wasn’t hers. Maybe it never was.
Gula? Maybe.
But there were no signs of a curse, not even a sliver of her mana on that fruit.
And everyone knew she was lazy, eating and sleeping all day. Asking that people only dine with her when she gets bored. And her relationship with their father god was neutral. She doesn’t eat what isn't on her plate.
That’s why Avaritia never targeted her.
So he told his children.
But whatever this was... it was a new narrative.
And that meant…
"Whatever is rising here, whatever this is, isn’t something I should try to own."
Cashmere stood, pocketed the coin, and began walking out of the node.
Markets don’t like confusion,” he muttered to himself.
“But they hate sentiment even more.”
He had to change strategies.
This wasn’t an investment.
This was a cleansing.
…
…
When Cashmere returned to the upper city, the rot had only ripened.
The streets of Node 001 were still paved in gold-laced stone, but the scent of spice and cooked sugar now hung in the air like incense.
And worse than that, he saw smiles.
Just like the chef, real ones.
The kind you didn’t find in Greed’s dominion. Not unless someone had just signed a kingdom away for a meal ticket. But these people weren’t grinning from gain, they were content, calm.
A trio of children chased one another down an alley, laughing.
“I’m the pink one!”
“No, I’m the one who demands pain!”
“We should demand apples instead!”
They wore makeshift maid veils, folded napkins and fruit-tied ribbons. One of them carried a toy tray with painted apples glued to the top, and another carried a belt, using it as a makeshift whip.
Cashmere watched them pass with a growing weight in his stomach.
This wasn’t religion.
This was play.
And that made it permanent.
At the trade square, four new fruit stalls had popped up overnight.
Each vendor wore red gloves and offered “blessed crimson harvest” apples, sold by flavor type.
Burnt Gold, Dream Crisp, Witch-Sweet, Feastcore.
Feastcore?
He passed one stall slowly, pretending to check his ledger. A devil in merchant robes whispered a greeting.
“Investor! You’ve come at the right time. Word is, a bank’s been bought.”
Cashmere halted mid-stride.
“What bank?”
The merchant leaned in, breath smelling of cider.
“Old Vault 9. Contract Bank. Thought to be unsalvageable since the war, but someone pulled out a legacy claim, sigiled in red. Bought the whole thing and all the debt titles still inside.”
Cashmere’s pulse slowed. “Who?”
“Doesn’t say. The title owner was blank, but the claim seal bore a mark outside of the Greed faction.”
He paused, then walked away without another word.
At his private loft near the central tower, Cashmere stood in the balcony’s shadow and watched the gold-lit rooftops flicker below like candles.
He had taken risks before. Moved cargo through fallen temples. Invested in half-dead gods hoping to drain their last miracles for profit. He had even once shorted a Devil Prince.
But this?
This was different.
He didn’t understand it.
And what disturbed him more than anything, was that he didn’t think anyone did.
Not even the people inside it all.
This wasn’t a movement driven by a tyrant or a philosopher. It was organic, flowing through gaps in the soul like water through cracked stone.
He flipped his coin again.
It didn’t glow this time.
Just a slow turn and a flat, silent landing.
No advice.
No command.
Only stillness.
“So it’s already decided,” he whispered. “I don’t get a vote anymore.”
And outside, the gold-lit rooftops shimmered with candlelight and fruit banners as the markets of Greed whispered not of ambition…
…but of comfort and contentment.
Comments
Butch Perterson
🤣 nice catch
Legokill101
and here we see why gula scares the pants off those nobles in the capitol
Wintermelody
Thanks for the chapter
