Fine, Terminal, Rin—you win.
"Does it really cost that much?" Shirou sighed. This really was a paradise of evil capitalism.
In the spiritron world, even if he projected yen, yuan, or dollars, none of them could be converted into the currency here.
"Master, how much money do you have?"
Hakuno felt around in her pockets and opened the page.
"Not a penny. The PT from the Outer Moon can't be used anymore. The currency of the Inner Moon seems to be called sakurament."
"Did the monster we just killed drop any money?" Shirou pointed behind him. That thing had been level thirty, so it should have dropped some gold, going by the usual game formula.
"N-No."
"Looks like we can only pay up and become an SM Warrior."
Shirou reached his conclusion.
The Painful Days of Borrowing Money to Whaled
To pay up, you first needed money. Shirou had none, so he had to find some first.
So he searched every treasure chest Rin had placed nearby.
He got 0 SM.
"Even though I already guessed as much, I still wanted to open the chests when I saw them. Just as expected, I shouldn't have held out hope."
Shirou crouched down with his head in his hands and wailed.
"Is the fate of becoming a whale really this heavy and painful?" Hakuno crouched beside Shirou. They looked at each other and sighed.
"How about we save up instead?"
Save up?
Shirou did the math. How much SM would that take?
Right now, he could probably defeat a level-forty hostile program Madoka Orb despite the level gap. That meant the enemy needed to be lowered by a full thirty levels. Assuming the cost per coin stayed the same and each coin lowered the level by five, they would need to insert