"Is that so?"
Sharan glanced at Li Ke. She didn't particularly care about such trivial matters; instead, she placed a sleek brooch on the table in front of him.
"You can use this for now. It will allow whoever you are speaking with to perfectly grasp the meaning of your words. It only lasts for a month, but a month's time should be more than enough for you to pick up the local language."
Having said her piece, Sharan turned around and left. Although the brooch was quite valuable—a consumable magical artifact she had crafted herself—she was content just being able to help. Money wasn't something she deeply concerned herself with.
Li Ke, on the other hand, quickly called out his gratitude.
"Thank you so much, Miss Sharan! I'll definitely pay you back for the brooch in the future."
Sharan paused, looking back with a light smile.
"No need to repay me. Just buy me a drink when the time comes."
With that, she stepped completely out of the room. Li Ke opened his mouth to say something more, but the doctor standing nearby spoke up first.
"Alright, sir. Now that you can understand us, you don't need to worry so much about your companion's condition. She was just knocked unconscious by the impact. She should be waking up any moment now."
The doctor gave a reassuring explanation, and Li Ke quickly expressed his thanks. Afterward, he sat down by Kiri's side, quietly waiting for her to regain consciousness.
The doctor's diagnosis was spot on. Not long after he left, Kiri's eyes fluttered open, staring straight up at Li Ke.
"So... why are you here? Am I back in hell?"
Kiri looked at Li Ke, completely exasperated. She remembered everything vividly: first, she had plummeted into the vast Empyrean Sea, and since swimming wasn't exactly her strong suit, she had sunk like a stone toward the abyssal depths.
Just when she thought she was completely finished, she had crossed a bizarre threshold.
Suddenly, she was pulled out of the ocean and thrust into a completely different, strange realm.
In that place, the sea behaved incredibly weirdly. Before long, the support beneath her vanished, and she found herself free-falling through the air once again.
If a stray piece of timber falling alongside her hadn't smacked her right on the head, she absolutely would have landed on her feet without a scratch.
"The good news is, you're not back in that godforsaken world," Li Ke said, letting out a wry laugh. "The bad news is, I'm the one who fished you out. What's worse, we are completely penniless. Right now, we owe a fisherman and his son for saving our lives, we owe the doctor for your medical treatment, and we owe a mage for a translation tool."
Li Ke's financial breakdown made Kiri shudder, forcing a sharp complaint out of her.
"Wow. That actually sounds a whole lot worse than hell."
Being flat broke was undeniably a dire situation.
However, Kiri's attention quickly shifted to a different matter.
"But seriously, now that you've saved me, shouldn't you be heading back? Or have you already sent that Lux girl home?"
Kiri eyed Li Ke with genuine curiosity. Even though she often thought of Li Ke as a bit of a jerk, the fact that he had crossed worlds to save her proved that he was a decent guy at heart—someone who wouldn't easily turn his back on a promise.
But if she was completely fine now, why hadn't this guy said his goodbyes yet?
She sized Li Ke up from head to toe, then flopped back down onto the bed, sprawling out like a starfish. Exasperated, she spoke up.
"Don't tell me you're still trying to get into my pants? Fine, bring it on, you animal. I'll just pretend I'm getting bitten by a mosquito. Besides, it's not like your barrel is anywhere near as big as my double-barreled shotgun anyway..."
Li Ke's eye twitched. Kiri was always like this, completely derailing a serious mood into whatever absurd farce this was.
"Keep talking and see if I don't make you cry out for mercy," he muttered, letting out a heavy sigh.
"The reality is that I need a massive amount of Energy to head back—nearly ten thousand units of Energy. If I only rely on you, I could sleep with you until you're pregnant and it still wouldn't be enough. That's why I need to make a fortune here, so I can hire a bunch of girls to sleep with me just to pool enough Energy together. The problem is, women who do this purely for money won't have much of an emotional connection with me, so the conversion efficiency will probably be terrible."
Li Ke sighed, fixing his gaze on Kiri once more.
"So, you have to help me make money. Consider it the cost of me saving your life, Kiri."
"Huh?! You want me to earn money so you can go pay for women?! How can you say something so utterly shameless with a face like that?!"
"Then are you willing to treat me as your husband and let me sleep with you eighty times?" Li Ke asked, his voice deadpan and entirely calm.
"Not a chance! Who would ever let a jerk like you inside! As if anyone cares what happens to you! Just leave me out of this entirely!" Kiri snapped, jerking her head away to signal her complete disdain.
"No, I think it's better if I make you foam at the mouth instead—yeah, exactly like Lux did."
As soon as Li Ke finished speaking, his hand wandered over to her chest. The soft sensation brought a wave of much-needed relief to his stressed mind. Kiri, however, froze as if struck by lightning. Her face flushed a fiery red, and she instantly snagged Li Ke by the collar.
"You utter scoundrel! What do you think you're doing?!"
Just as she was about to explode, a polite cough echoed from the doorway. The two of them looked up to find the beautiful doctor standing there, wearing an expression of pure, unadulterated awkwardness.
"You two... this is a church hospital. So, if you're quite recovered—"
And that was how Li Ke and Kiri found themselves kicked out.
Walking down the bustling, crowded street, Li Ke and Kiri watched the endless procession of cargo-laden carriages rolling past a dense wall of shops. Simultaneously, both of them let out a heavy sigh.
"Seriously, why am I the only one dealing with a language barrier? Kiri, you don't have any trouble communicating with the locals at all. It's unbelievable that your Empyrean language is the exact same one they use here!"
Reduced to an illiterate outsider once more, Li Ke stared at the nearby notice boards. While he figured there had to be some sort of work suitable for him and Kiri, the glaring issue remained: he couldn't read a single word, and as for the tasks Kiri was looking at...
How should one put it? Kiri had her own absurdly good luck protecting her, but Li Ke had completely lost the power of the 7 Days to Die world.
"What's so unbelievable about that?" Kiri said, glancing around. "There's always been a legend back home that the world below was built by Empyreans who fled down here to escape the fires of war. I just never expected it to actually be true."
As she scanned their surroundings, she suddenly tugged at Li Ke's sleeve with sudden excitement, pointing toward a specific building and crying out in surprise.
"Li Ke, look over there! It's the Mage Guild! There is actually real magic in this place!"
"The only reason I can even talk to you right now is because of magic," Li Ke replied dryly.
He deeply wanted to point out the magical brooch pinned to his chest—without which they wouldn't even be able to communicate—but Kiri's pure, unbridled excitement left him utterly speechless.
"Besides, do you actually have any money? You're getting all hyped up, but studying magic requires you to step away from making a living. How much cash do you think you have to fund a magical education right now? Let's find a place to sell our gold first."
Li Ke's practical counter-attack dumped a bucket of freezing water right over Kiri's enthusiasm.
"Oh, right... We haven't even figured out what we're doing for lunch yet," Kiri muttered, her mouth twitching. "Thinking about magic is definitely jumping the gun. Right now, we need to earn money just to find something to eat... Man, why do I still have to worry about food even after coming to a place like this? But hey, Li Ke..."
Kiri had been a penniless rogue since childhood and never had much wealth even back in Empyrean. But right in the middle of her heavy sigh, she suddenly remembered something. A split second later, a solid chunk of gold materialized directly into her palm.
Evidently, Kiri's 7 Days to Die system hadn't completely vanished either.
"Can gold from that world really be used as currency here?" Kiri asked, looking at the metal doubtfully. These chunks of gold were things they had unearthed while digging up iron ore and various minerals; honestly, she found it a bit hard to believe that this raw material actually qualified as real gold.
"Why don't we just try it and find out?" Li Ke said. "If it doesn't work, we can always sell steel or something. You know as well as I do that we don't have much else, but we've got steel and 'scrap iron' to spare. So the top priority is still finding a shop that buys raw materials."
"Makes sense."
Kiri nodded vigorously. The moment she thought of the thousands of steel ingots and steel frames sitting inside her inventory, gorgeous visions of becoming a wealthy woman danced through her mind.
However, just as a completely speechless Li Ke continued navigating the streets in search of a pawnshop or a bank, a minor incident unfolded on the road ahead.
A woman clad in a tight yellow martial arts uniform was being pinned ruthlessly to the ground by another woman in a similar tight combat outfit. Not only did the aggressor smash a solid brick right over the other woman's head, but she also whipped out two glowing purple poison needles and jabbed them straight into the fallen woman's spine.
"That's what you get for running away from your debts!"
The woman on the ground let out a bloodcurdling shriek, lost consciousness an instant later, and collapsed heavily onto the pavement.
Meanwhile, the assailant stood up, brushing herself off without a single hint of panic. Not only did the city guards standing nearby fail to react in the slightest, but the surrounding crowd also looked completely unfazed, treating the violent display as if it were a perfectly everyday occurrence.
Li Ke couldn't help but let out a quiet sigh.
"Well... the local customs here are certainly intense."