Tristessa opened her eyes with a sharp start, bolting upright as if her life depended on it.

"What time is it?! How long have I been asleep?!"

Almost screaming, she looked in every direction.

Around her there was fabric of a tent, illuminated by a lantern powered by a power crystal embedded in its base, and which emitted a warm aura that was responsible of drying her clothes and keeping her warm. By the constant sound coming from outside, it was still raining, the frosty winds blowing against the tent with hostile intentions.

"Relax, lady."

There was a man beside her, almost lying on an old fur rug, his weight supported by his forearms.

"You've been out cold for half an hour at most," he said, smiling at the way his cheekbones stood out behind the handkerchief he used to cover the lower half of his face.

"Oh...good. It's not that late," Tristessa whispered, more relieved, though not reassured.

"Are you afraid of the night?"

"You have no idea..." was her reply, feeling her Baptism in Ruins emanating that unnatural chill that the man couldn't detect.

There weren't many more hours available before she began to feel that eerie, painful signal that the Dullahan was near. She had to enter the city and seek Severus's help before that happened, or at worst, run far away.

Away from the poor people who lived outside the walls... Away from any innocent people who could be hurt or killed by being near her.

Away. Run far away and keep running until she couldn't anymore.

"But I won't be able to do it this tired... What?!" Tristessa touched the sides of her face, her arms, and especially her lower limbs, searching for a pain that had disappeared. "How is it possible...?"

Her loud question prompted the man to point to a small, empty vial lying near her feet, still wearing boots, almost exposed to the rain outside.

"I took the liberty of forcing you to swallow the content of a vitality potion that you, luckily, happened to be holding in your hands," he explained, his voice and elegant vocabulary clear despite the handkerchief in front of him. "Indeed, it was quite fortunate, because otherwise, you would have put me in the awkward position of trying to improvise to save your life, lady. You didn't look well at all… And you smell like piss."

Ignoring that last remark –since it brought back recent memories of blood, flesh and thousands upon thousands of teeth gnawing and tearing- Tristessa picked up the vial from the carpet and, looking at it closely, flashed back to her brief encounter with that knightess.

Turning right away to poke her head outside, she saw her several meters ahead in that same solitary guard position in front of the great entrance gate to the city.

"I see... A vitality potion, you said?" she asked, a smile and a blush fixed on her mud-stained face. She had to come to her senses when she felt her host's penetrating honey-colored gaze, and she half-closed the tent to block out the rain as best she could. "Thank you for your help, and I'm sorry I fainted as soon as I set a foot in here. My name is Tristessa Irandell, and you, Mr....?"

"Auron Casimir, at your service, lady." The man of short black hair picked up a hat lying beside him, made of black leather with a high crown and curved edges, bringing it to his chest and bowing his head slightly.

He was wearing a white linen shirt with a tie, a brown vest over it, and a leather jacket. Dark brown pants, tall, sturdy black boots, and a large belt with two empty pistol holsters. Said pistols—two silver revolvers with automatic drums—rested side by side in front of a small altar that only had a holy image of a saint with a bow and arrow.

The revolvers, the hat, and the handkerchief to hide the lower half of his white face were more than interesting details that caught Tristessa's attention.

"Mr. Auron, are you a gunslinger?" she asked him, bluntly.

"Hmm... Being a gunslinger means being an Imperial Knight, on the same level as a Guardian. Let's just say that a few years ago, yes, I was," he replied without any emotion in his voice, leaving his hat next to his revolvers. "Now I'm an ordinary man, but armed to the teeth. And besides being a man like any other, I'm your savior, and for that, you owe me, lady."

"Excuse me?" she asked, confused.

"Of course. Who would have given you that potion if I wasn't here? You're alive because of me, so I expect compensation for my healing services," the man shrugged, with a mischievous look that Tristessa instantly misinterpreted and stepped back. "In soul-jewels, I mean."

"Thanks for saying that at the end!" Annoyed, the girl searched her backpack for one of the jewels Jin had given her without her knowledge and offered it to him. "Is this enough?"

Auron was forced to straighten and sit down to take the jewel and look at it carefully for a second, then look back at her with a frown.

"A GSJ?" he asked, with honest confusion. "Do you even know how much a vitality potion is worth on the market, lady?"

At Tristessa's silent refusal, Auron shook his head.

"A potion like that costs ten soul-jewels. How do you expect to pay me with a difference equivalent to nine potions? If you want to give me your money for free, I'll gladly accept it, but don't be so shameless, even an opportunistic like me is embarrassed," he explained, returning the jewel to its owner and growing more frustrated at her clear lack of understanding. "Is there anything I said that doesn't make sense? Didn't your parents teach you about money or monetary conversions?"

"No…"

"No? Do you know about...?"

"I had an accident and lost my memory," she blurted out, making the man's eyes widen. "I'm not lying: I know absolutely nothing about anything. I know my name and surname by sheer luck."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"What, are you serious?! You should have said it before, lady! There's no way you'll survive if you don't know how money works!"

More concerned with the financial side than the implications for Tristessa's health, Auron reached into his pocket and pulled out five different types of jewels, one of them similar to the one he had returned to her.

He laid the five on the carpet, side by side, so she could see the difference in light focused in their centers.

"First of all, do you know why these jewels are so valuable that they're used as currency? No? Well, do you see that lamp?" The gunslinger pointed at the only source of light inside the tent. "Without soul-jewels, there's no way to create energy crystals—or power crystals, call them the way you want, lady. And without those crystals, society will collapse: it's an everyday use; there's no way to imagine our lives without a crystal."

Of course, it sounded perfectly logical. Lighting, military power, thaumaturgy… Who knows how many more applications Tristessa had yet to see. It was a technological stepping stone in its own right.

"This one here is a soul-jewel, or SJ for short. It's the basic unit for finance," Auron explained, pointing to the jewel, identical to the one Farross had given her along with stomach contents and saliva. "From here down, in terms of light intensity, you have a [lesser soul jewel], or LSJ, which is worth one-tenth of an SJ, and a [broken soul jewel], or BSJ, although we usually refer to it as a bullshit jewel since they're worth one-hundredth of an SJ and you can't buy shit with it, lady."

Indeed, the lesser soul jewel shone much less than the SJ, and the broken soul jewel's shine was barely visible, along with the imperfect shape of the sphere surrounding it.

"Then you have the ones that shine brighter than a SJ: you have an [argent soul-jewel], or ASJ, which is worth ten SJs, and then a [great soul-jewel], or GSJ, which is what you so foolishly almost gave me and is worth one hundred SJs. That way you can make the various conversions between the jewels, okay, lady? Don't tell me you don't know how to multiply and divide, please…"

"Of course I do. I'm amnesiac, not stupid," Tristessa retorted, causing the man to burst out laughing as he stuffed his money back into his pockets. "And there are no other jewels besides these? Once I saw a jewel that glowed with a black light…"

A black soul-jewel, if she remembered correctly, from a memory she did wish she didn't remember…

"Yes. There are three more types of jewels, more valuable than the ones you just saw. A jewel that emits a golden glow is a chaos soul-jewel, although it's more commonly known as a [Chaos gem], or CG, and it's worth five hundred soul jewels. Then there's that jewel you mentioned, a black soul-jewel, or better known as a [Black Gem], worth a thousand SJs. And finally…"

Auron's eyes shone with deep desire. A subtle greed he didn't bother to hide.

"A jewel as black as night, and that shines like the Heart of Darkness itself: an abyss soul-jewel… [Abyss Gem] for short, worth ten thousand SJs," he explained, probably imagining what he would do with such a jewel in his hands, given the way he lay back on the carpet and stared blankly at the ceiling. "I swear, lady, there are times I so want to go out there in the middle of an Evil Dream, like an Abysswalker, and try to get one of those, or at least a black soul-jewel. Damn, the Shadow Queen has such a sadistic temper, leaving such juicy rewards inside such dangerous monsters…"

"Wait, what you're saying… Does that mean you have to kill monsters to get soul-jewels? Or… people?" she asked, not quite sure she wanted to know the answers.

Luckily, the gunslinger shook his head.

"It's a possibility, but it's not quite the case for more common soul-jewels. You see, soul-jewels are created in a natural way, lady. The most accepted theory is that they're the spiritual energies of all living beings taking physical form, completely at random."

As he explained, he made a series of gestures with the fingers of both hands and pulled a soul-jewel from a blind spot under his palm, like a typical act of illusion. He tossed the jewel to Tristessa, and then she tossed it back to him in the same way, and so on and so forth.

"You will never see a soul-jewel created from a person's soul: it is an invisible process, and so arbitrary that no one has ever seen the conception of one. But there is a catch: the degree of value is proportional to the ease of finding a soul-jewel. Those of lesser denomination can appear in the middle of the road, or inside a rock while mining, or in the skull of someone's corpse as it is being prepared for a funeral."

"But for, for example, a black soul-jewel…" As she threw the jewel back to Auron, she noticed him smiling behind his handkerchief.

"I see you get the idea, lady… The highest-denomination jewels can only be found in dangerous areas of Nekrom. Beasts and creatures corrupted by the Shadow Queen love to eat these jewels: kill them, and you're sure to find riches inside. And don't even mention the monsters that dwell within an Evil Dream… Those are nightmare creatures that have been undefeated for five-hundred years. Inside them you'll definitely find black gems and abyss gems. That's why the Abysswalker profession is as exciting as it is fatal: you can be a millionaire one second and die a painful Death the next."

The memories of her experience in the Evil Dream so vivid, so terrifying, that Auron threw the soul-jewel at her, and she, her gaze lost in the nonexistent past, didn't even move her hands to catch it, taking the harmless impact to the chest. It was the hit that brought her back to reality, and she lifted the jewel from the carpet, checking it closely for any damage.

"We haven't known each other for more than an hour, and I have no doubt that you are a greedy person, Auron Casimir."

The gunslinger chuckled —hidden grin behind his handkerchief— and received the soul-jewel to end that game.

"And you're not wrong. Life is money, lady, and unfortunately, at this moment, I am completely broke and up to my neck in debt. I can't even afford to stay at an inn without compromising my finances."

"Yes, I can see that…" she thought, saddened. She hadn't known what it was like to live on the streets or have her life completely adrift until she arrived in Nekrom. Without the help of the Mercer-Archeos family, she was more than certain everything would have been extremely difficult for her… The thought was very terrifying. "At least Auron has a place to sleep, valuable weapons…"

She had learned that a gunslinger's pistols were their sacred weapons. Selling them was perhaps the same as selling their arms, so she didn't even dare say the idea out loud.

"You, on the other hand, remain a mystery, Lady Tristessa Irandell," the gunslinger interrupted her silent meditation.

For some reason, he stared at her so intently as if doing that would reveal a great truth. This led her to question many things, especially his intentions from the very beginning. She wasn't going to let that go.

"Why did you help me, Auron? Do you have a habit of saving damsels who have nowhere else to fall dead?" she asked, settling down on the rug so she was face to face with her host. "Or is it… You called me to your tent because you sensed my dark soul, didn't you?"

Auron shook his head.

"I have a dark soul too: I won't judge you when I, too, am judged for it. So no, it wasn't because of that, lady… You see, call it intuition, but there's something about you that really catches my attention, and it's not the Discord you emit."

"I hope he doesn't suspect I'm a Stranger…" she thought, trying not to show the sudden jolt of nerves generated by that fear. She decided to wait in silence, letting the gunslinger lose himself in his uncertainties and finally surrender.

"It's curious… I love meeting eccentric people, and there's something about you that tells me you might be one of the most eccentric people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, lady."

He extended a hand to her. The most basic sign of friendship.

"I don't know if I agree with your logic at meeting people, but I think it's always good to make new friends," Tristessa said, accepting his hand with a smile and shaking it. "So tell me, friend, can you help me get into the city?"

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