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Time passed, and Caelan's shop's reputation had completely spread throughout Crimson Port. Every morning, crowds waited outside the door. The young girl Ella was overwhelmed. Fortunately, Caelan promptly canceled free play and switched to a paid arcade model. He also created in-store versions for all games. Otherwise there'd be even more freeloaders filling the place.
The in-store version was essentially arcade mode. Infinite continues, but no life-borrowing. One life cost one copper bit—about ten cents. Very affordable.
The game runestones were specially programmed to record his and Ella's fingerprints. Each time a runestone charged with mana touched a fingerprint, the life count increased by one. To prevent accidentally adding too many lives, Caelan set it so a pinky fingerprint would decrease the count instead.
This was the method he'd come up with, but it made Ella even busier. Especially mornings when she was alone—she couldn't keep up. So Caelan asked Ella to bring her twelve-year-old younger brother and gave him authorization too. With her brother helping, Ella's workload became manageable.
At Crimson Academy, Caelan was stopped on his way back from the mana gathering array.
The person who called out was Cassius. His Elemental Contra skills had progressed—he could clear Normal difficulty with five lives now and was tackling Hard. He mentioned he usually died at the sixth stage's fire-breathing trap, where the shortened cooldown reduced the margin for error even further.
"Hey, Cassius. What's up?"
These days Caelan often ran into Cassius and Victor chatting about games, so they'd become fairly familiar.
Cassius got straight to the point. "I heard you're looking for empty storefronts in the city. Related to games?"
Caelan nodded. He really was inquiring about nearby properties. Mainly because his current shop was simply too small. Even if he removed all the chess tables and replaced them with other games, it'd still be cramped. Every time he came back at lunch, the place reeked of body odor. He couldn't take it anymore.
But that wasn't the main reason. The main reason was he wanted more people playing his games. Mana feedback diminished over distance. His current mental energy coverage was maybe a few dozen meters. Within that range, feedback was completely undiminished. But if someone played outside Crimson Port? He'd be lucky to receive anything. At least, he hadn't felt any feedback from beyond the city. There might be some, but the amount was negligible. Like losing an entire market segment, he thought ruefully.
Expanding the shop would significantly impact his strength progression.
"Any requirements for the storefront?" Cassius asked. "Like location?"
Caelan's heart jumped. The guy was a direct descendant of a major House—he probably had an empty property somewhere. "No special requirements. Just needs to be big enough. The bigger, the better."
"This place is way too big."
If he thought Cassius could handle it, Caelan would've conjured an illusion of himself facepalming.
The place Cassius brought him to was a market storage area near Crimson Academy, located on sublevel two. Looking around, it was probably close to two thousand square meters. Way beyond what Caelan had expected.
"It's not that big," Cassius said. "It's not even as large as my family's courtyard."
Damn rich people.
"How can a commoner like me compare to a noble like you?" Caelan said dryly.
"So what do you think?"
"I'm definitely satisfied. This place is way bigger than I imagined." Caelan nodded.
"Want to buy it then? I can give you a discount."
"Brother. Do I look like I can afford this place?"
"Doesn't seem like it..."
If it doesn't seem like it, why even ask? Are you mocking me? Caelan rolled his eyes. "Why is such a huge space still vacant?"
Cassius thought for a moment. "I think this place used to store magical beast furs from the Frostpeak Empire. But my aunt had some minor conflict with the supplier's son, so the supplier stopped providing goods. After the inventory here got cleared out, it's been idle ever since. Over a year, probably."
"Your aunt—Vice Headmistress Minerva?"
"Yeah. She really loves the games you made, by the way. Just her skills are..." He coughed. "If you have time, you should go meet her."
"Sure, I haven't met her yet. My classmates say she's a great beauty, but she rarely shows up because she's researching new magic." Caelan paused. "By the way, if I want to rent this warehouse, how much is the rent?"
"The butler told me it's usually twenty-four gold crowns per month. For you, twenty gold crowns."
"Alright, thanks. I'll bring you the money tomorrow."
As they were about to leave, Caelan suddenly remembered an earlier theory he wanted to test. "Cassius, I've got a new game ready for release. Want to help me test it?"
"Oh?" Hearing it was a new game, Cassius immediately perked up. He eagerly asked what kind it was.
"Action game." Caelan looked around. There was an old table and chair in the corner. He walked over, used Wind magic to clean them off, pulled out Chronicle of the Fierce Tortoise Warriors from his pocket, aligned it properly, and channeled mana.
Cassius didn't mind the shabby setup. He plopped down on the old chair, eager to try the new game.
As Caelan's familiar opening music began, Cassius unconsciously tapped his leg to the rhythm. Then came the relatively long plot introduction. The opening animation could be skipped by pressing any button, but Cassius was clearly very interested in the story and watched the entire thing carefully.
"Chaos Lands, interesting. When I graduate, I'll form an adventure team and definitely go there to experience it." After the plot ended, Cassius smiled. "Is this game plot inspired by related chronicles you've read? Humans turning into green-shelled tortoises—could it be from the Sea Tortoise Kingdom chapter in 'Maritime Chronicles'?"
Caelan quickly searched his mind palace, confirmed he hadn't read that book, and gave a noncommittal smile. "Something like that."
Cassius didn't notice Caelan's evasive tone because character selection had begun.
Caelan paused the game and briefly introduced the elemental attributes of the five tortoise warriors, asking Cassius to try each one and share his impressions. Caelan stood silently to the side, carefully gauging the intensity of mana feedback from Cassius playing each character.
"This game feels really fun," Cassius said while controlling the dual-sword-wielding Leonardo.
"He's the leader of the warriors. According to the plot, he leads all the tortoise-men. His attack power, speed, and range are all balanced. If you press jump and attack simultaneously, he unleashes his ultimate skill—Whirlwind Slash. The character is invincible during execution, but be aware it costs ten health points."
Caelan had removed the infinite ultimate spam at low health. The attack power was greatly weakened too—now required two hits to kill regular enemies. However, invincibility frames were slightly extended. When health was between two and ten, the ultimate could be used one more time, dropping health to one point.
Due to increased character flexibility, as long as someone was familiar with controls and enemy patterns—and after relentless testing by stick figure testers—expert-level testers could theoretically achieve no-damage clears after extensive practice. Though that was limited to Normal difficulty. Even master-level testers couldn't no-damage Expert mode.
Once you got familiar with this game, clearing it was easier than the NES version. But it took longer.
The dual-sword, staff, and single-sword characters required four hits to defeat regular enemies—300 points per hit. The dual-sai required six hits at 200 points each. The nunchaku only needed three hits at 400 points each.
The nunchaku had the highest damage and fastest attack speed, but a fatal flaw: after every four attacks, there was a one-second recovery animation. During recovery, the character couldn't attack and could only walk, not run. Extremely vulnerable to counterattacks.
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