Book 1
Chapter 19: Temple of Quid: The Misunderstanding
The party arrived at the Temple of Quid in the late afternoon. Walking with Ichiban and Fluffy was like being dragged by an ox while chased by a kangaroo—a steady trudge interrupted by ridiculous, bouncing chaos.
The temple itself was a marvel of the ZhilanContinent. The towers stood up straight, feeling cruel and mathematical, like a line graph that mocks you during a bad fiscal year. Its windows were cut from shimmering, translucent bars of compressed Quid, refracting the light with a cold beauty. No one sang here.
The silence felt like a budget ledger, balanced to the last copper coin. This was a place where wealth and piety were one, a sanctuary of sacred commerce.
---
The Sacred ATM
Ken took one look at the magnificent altar at the center of the antechamber. It was a colossal slab of polished stone intricately carved with swirling quid-sign runes. He walked up to it with the casual, unshakeable confidence of a man entering his own living room.
"Hey guys," he said, patting the smooth side of the carved stone as if it were a familiar pet.
"Look! It's a Temple of Quid ATM! This must be a special one, like a premium member's lounge or something."
Ken's words hung in the air, a tiny, profane ripple disturbing a deep pool of sacred silence. The altar gleamed, and Ken's dumb grin reflected right back at him.
"Must be an old model," Ken muttered, running his hands experimentally over the altar's cool, unyielding surface.
"Or maybe it's a divine one! Do I use my fingerprint here or just, like, a vibe?"
He proceeded to pat the sacred stone with rhythmic, gentle taps.
"Come on, Quid, pay out. Your boy's here."
Fluffy's ears twitched. He bounded forward, nearly tripping over his bow.
"Jackpot time! Hit it harder, maybe it spits out candy!"
Narutama's hand flew to the hilt of his katana in a motion older than thought. His soul, forged in the austere traditions of the Sanata Clan, was utterly and morally mortified.
This was a house of worship, a place of profound spiritual significance. The air was heavy with the weight of generations of devotion. And here was his best friend, treating its central holy relic like a public utility.
His katana remained stubbornly dull in its sheath, a silent and deeply personal insult from the universe.
---
The Audit from Hell
As Ken continued his oblivious tapping, a strange and volatile energy began to coalesce. While the temple's energy was pure, benevolent, and meticulously ordered, this was not.
A raw and ugly energy emanated from Ken's glitch-Mone, radiating nonsense for no reason other than its own existence.
The two forces, the sacred power of a temple and the profane power of a cosmic bank error, met directly over the altar in a furious, invisible storm of conflicting auras.
Laluna, a finely tuned instrument for detecting anomalies, suddenly staggered back, a look of pure agony twisting her features.
Her perfectly manicured rune-nails, which usually glowed with a cool blue light of detection, began to flicker violently. Pulsing between a panicked red and a sickly green like a crosswalk light.
A sharp, piercing pain like a spike of pure data corruption shot through her head.
"The… the energy signatures!" she gasped, clutching her temples as her internal systems rebelled.
"They're clashing! It's a holy energy audit slamming into unauthorized-glitch Mone! My head… It felt like heaven's account book had been shoved through a corrupt spreadsheet. Pages smeared with coffee, numbers snarling at each other."
Ichiban, who had been placidly observing the temple's architectural lines, merely grunted. He alone saw the subtle, frantic dance of a thousand golden runes as they tried and failed to reconcile the utterly irreconcilable.
He saw the truth of the event unfolding, a clash of fundamental realities, but he chose to do nothing. This was not his fight to mediate.
---
The Utterly Bewildered Priest
The high priest, in his flowing gold robes, watched the party from a high balcony with the quiet grace of a satisfied auditor. He usually wore a face of serene and divine confidence. He was accustomed to sinners and the spiritually lost. But this was something his training had never covered.
As Ken, beaming, shoved a handful of gilded coins into a small crevice in the altar's base, the high priest's serene composure shattered like glass.
"By the holy denomination!" he cried out, his voice cracking with unadulterated bewilderment.
"Cease! That is not an ATM! That is the Altar of Prosperity! A blessed icon that tracks the accumulated spiritual wisdom of our blessed G.O.D.!"
Fluffy gasped theatrically, throwing his arms wide. "Bless me, O Sacred ATM! Rain Quid upon your faithful idiots!"
The high priest nearly choked on air. He watched in mounting horror as the coins disappeared into the altar's structure.
They didn't trigger the soft, approving hum of a sacred offering being accepted. Instead, the hollow, mechanical ker-chunk of a faulty vending machine rejecting a wrinkled bill echoed through the air.
The altar's smooth surface, once a model of clarity, now glowed with a single, stark, offensive new rune:
"ERROR: UNIDENTIFIED DEPOSIT."
Ken looked up from the altar, his face a picture of innocent accomplishment.
"I'm making a deposit!" he chirped, utterly and blissfully oblivious to the metaphysical crisis he had just triggered.
"I've got a lot of spare Quid! This is so convenient!" He gave the stone a final, encouraging pat.
The high priest could only stare, his mind reeling through a thousand sacred ledgers and finding every one suddenly out of balance. In all his years of devoted service, he had seen greed, corruption, and even outright desecration.
But he had never, ever seen a transaction so profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
He watched the sacred light of the altar flicker and dim under the weight of the error. His voice cracked into a whisper, the kind of sound that felt like a sentence being passed. He then spoke:
"Per audit clause 7-B… unauthorized collateral placement… your soul is now... overdrawn."