"Next, I want to tell a story about summoning heroes of the past to pursue a universal wish-granting device, the Holy Grail."
After roughly explaining the concept of the multiverse, Caelus began telling the girl the story of the Holy Grail War. However, the version he was telling now was the story of the Holy Grail War from the original timeline, the one without his own interference.
After all, his own version of the Holy Grail War was far too brief, not really suitable for telling a child a story. The whole thing was basically him speedrunning it with assassination tactics, only fighting Gilgamesh at the very end.
Although Bianka had lost her memories, her intelligence remained intact. She could perfectly understand the logic behind concepts like the multiverse he had just explained and the stories of these heroes pursuing the Holy Grail.
Of course, Bianka naturally did not know the magnificent and turbulent pasts of those heroes, so Caelus also recounted the stories and myths that symbolized them.
As the story was told bit by bit, in Caelus's voice that held no inflection, Bianka's eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Finally, she leaned against him, her body curling slightly as she fell asleep.
Caelus stopped telling the story, closed the book in his hands, and looked at Bianka sleeping against him. After a moment's thought, he picked the child up and let her lie in his arms.
Then, a black tentacle extended from the shadows, hooked the black coat that had been placed not far away, moved it near Caelus, and gently draped the coat over Bianka. It even carefully adjusted it, making sure it was snugly tucked in before the tentacle retracted back into the shadows.
He simply held the girl, sitting quietly by the campfire in a daze. Every so often, a tentacle would emerge from the shadows, wrap around some dry firewood obtained from who knows where, and toss it into the fire to keep it burning.
Gradually, the sky outside grew darker, and the howling of the blizzard began once more.
Caelus glanced at the cave entrance not far away. Then countless tentacles extended, intertwining to block the wind and snow rushing in from outside, leaving only a few gaps for the smoke and gases from the campfire to escape.
Bianka slept very deeply, as if Caelus's embrace was incredibly warm.
The crackling of the fire burning the dry wood and the howling of the wind and snow outside seemed to form the most perfect white noise at this moment, creating a feeling of great comfort and ease.
Caelus also closed his eyes, trying to sleep as well.
…
Bianka opened her eyes and realized she seemed to be lying in someone's arms. Moving her head slightly, she saw Caelus with his eyes closed, as if sleeping.
Bianka quietly watched him. She had not paid much attention before, but now, looking carefully at this big brother, she felt he gave off a sense of pitifulness, like an abandoned wanderer with no home to return to.
Or perhaps a sense of being broken.
Drawing on the remaining bits of understanding and the knowledge she had learned yesterday, Bianka thought this to herself.
Just as the girl was about to continue staring at Caelus's face, she noticed those dim golden eyes had opened at some point. Now the two of them were looking directly at each other.
"Uh, good morning?"
"Mmm, good morning. It is currently 6:48 AM."
Bianka left Caelus's embrace and then noticed a complete set of clothes neatly folded on the small stool not far away.
"Your current clothes are still a bit thin. Although the wind and snow outside have stopped, the temperature is still quite low. It is best to change into some warm clothes. I have prepared them for you. Can you dress yourself?"
"Yes!"
"Then that is fine. Change into these new clothes, have breakfast, and then we will continue on our way."
Though still young, Bianka could already dress herself. After she changed into the set of warm clothes, she noticed that at some point a small wooden table had appeared by the campfire, with some food already placed on it.
"Luckily, we can be flexible. Furniture from the carriage can be taken out for use, which conveniently solves the problem of eating in the cave. The points needed to exchange for physical items are also very low, so raising a child long term is not a problem. The issue is not having this world's currency, which will be a bit troublesome during the journey."
[System: Even if you say that, I cannot help it. We do not provide the Host with various currencies for each world. You can use points to exchange for various nice looking jewelry, gold, and similar items, then exchange those for cash at jewelry shops in towns. But we will not directly give you cash to exchange.]
"So your system store even has the essence blood of a Creator God, but there is no direct way to exchange for cash?"
[System: That is a story from a very, very long time ago. Back then, we did indeed have a function that allowed exchanges for the currencies of various worlds, and the price was very cheap. One system point could exchange for one hundred million. Then a certain Host appeared, born in another world. He was a priest under the Goddess of Wealth, and he had an annihilation type system.]
[System: In short, under various circumstances, that guy relied on his ability to exploit bugs and the help of his slacker system, which had already extended its graduation for several epochs and was desperate to graduate. He leveraged the existence of currencies across the myriad worlds and the wealth concepts contained within them to ascend to godhood in a short time, jumping from the second tier life level to the seventh tier.]
[System: Then that guy directly reported himself, turning in a whole pile of his own rule violations and even adding various clauses, completely blocking the path for those who came after. This made him the sole case, so he was exempted from a whole bunch of punishments for his violations. To this day, it is estimated that in another few hundred million years, he will have finished paying off all the fines he owed and can start his journey anew.]
"The first sword to become an immortal severs the path to immortality?"
["Mmm, that is roughly the idea. Anyway, since then we have not been able to directly provide currencies for various worlds. We can only provide things like precious metals and jewelry that can be exchanged for cash, but we cannot directly exchange world currencies from us."]
"But gold and those valuable pieces of jewelry are also symbols of wealth, are they not?"
["It is not the same. Exchanged currency must ensure that it can be used normally within the world. So the currency we obtain comes with legitimate origins and proper procedures coded by us. And therein lies the manipulable part. But with gold, it does not matter. We can code the information and there is plenty of it. Of course, if you take out a huge amount of gold and crash a world's financial system, there is nothing we can do about that either."]
"But getting gold is useless. Based on the memories I devoured from those few Valkyries, in this world if you want to exchange gold for cash at those shops, you need proof of the gold's origin. They do not accept gold of unknown origin, and even if they do, they will not trade with strangers."
["Uh, then you are out of luck. You will have to figure it out yourself. After all, in the vast majority of worlds, they might just lowball you a bit. Worlds with strict origin checks like this are relatively rare."]
Caelus unraveled the tentacles sealing the cave entrance, then stepped out onto the snowy ground outside with Bianka, who was now dressed in warm winter clothes.
For now, having no money was fine. It was not particularly urgent anyway.
"So, does this count as a 'Poor's Travelogue'?"
["That is a terrible pun."]
(To be continued.)