He was thinking about how to ask Pauli for help when he received another message from Pauli..
"So what do you think about the place? Great right? You can get almost anything you want there. It is just expensive. You better appreciate it. Most people had to risk the foreign battlefield to gain access to that place."
He texted back, "It is a great place. But I don't have energy stones. Is there a way to exchange dollars for energy stones?"
Pauli replied, "There is no way to exchange energy stones for dollars. No one is going to do that. I am not going to either. They must receive physical goods and services in return, not dollars."
"It also has to be goods and services that they can't get for dollars somewhere else. It is unlikely that you will get such things on earth here. But it is possible to get them if you join my cabal and follow us to the foreign battlefield. We might even stumble onto a mine of energy stones. We will be truly rich."
He stopped chatting with the unhelpful man and grumbled. "I bet he only told me about this place to tempt me to join his cabal."
Wrath agreed. "It is a smart move. I am sure he doesn't know just how effective this move is on you. He probably thinks you have a fetish or something. He doesn't know that you can grow stronger with this treasure trove."
Kelvin grumbled some more. "Well, I won't let his plan work. I'll just take what I came here for in the first place and ignore the distractions."
Wrath sniggered as she said, "We'll see how long you will last."
He was tempted by the Yin-yang ability and what it would mean if he used it on Wrath, but he assured her. "I'm not going to break. There are a lot of useful things that I can buy on my own."
He decided to be content with what he could get from humans—if only for the fact that he could fuse different abilities together to get something better. It would only cost him game points and time.
As he looked through the list again, he realized that Wrath was right about humans having a lot of potential. He suspected that from all the stories that Wrath had told him about Manhattan's feats on the foreign battlefield. But he thought that Manhattan was an outlier. Now he can see that humans truly do have a lot of potential.
This potential is not only in quality, as seen in Manhattan's situation, but also in quantity, as seen by the possession of six classes while other races are limited to one.
It made his eyes shine with pride as he thought to himself, "Only someone who can take and fuse many abilities into one is worthy of being the god king of humans. After all, which human can compare with my potential?"
He returned to perusing the catalog of slaves. He had to do so while bearing in mind how much money he had because the goods were very expensive. Even the cheapest was a million dollars.
He is not a poor man. Even Wrath will agree to that if he pushes her to admit it. Seven months of being a bounty hunter for the police force have not been a waste of his time at all. He managed to save a tidy sum of 127 million dollars.
He thought that kind of money would be difficult to spend in a month. Now it seems he can spend it all in ten minutes. Not that he feels bad at the prospect.
He should feel glad that he can finally convert money into power. Not many people have that chance, and he is happy for the opportunity. But it did little to stop the heartache building up in his chest.
"I must get my gang immediately and make it grow. Money should flow into my hands easily. I shouldn't have to work so hard like a mule for a currency that is fake."
He said that, but he can feel a certain sense of superiority for being able to actually turn dollars into power. It made him feel like he was cheating the establishment. It also made him understand how they might feel using dollars to exchange for something useful.
That's why he decided to prioritize getting a gang. That meant he searched for humans with the mental ability. He found many. They were listed by sex and class.
Some of them were nulls with resistance to telepathy, and others were physique class with a physical mutation that protects their minds. The third were the usual psychic class of supers. But there was also the summoner class, who have bonded with creatures that grant them mental resistance.
There were weapon class and amplifier class supers too. The amplifiers enhanced the mental resistance of others, while the weapon class had weapons that granted them the resistance.
All six of the classes had some form of mental resistance. Their cost depended on how effective and powerful their abilities were. But it was their sex and beauty that had the main influence on their cost.
Female slaves were more expensive. Beautiful slaves, whether male or female, were also more expensive than their average-looking counterparts.
He didn't consider sex and beauty, as he didn't need them. He only wanted a slave with a powerful ability so that he could kill them. Unfortunately, some of them with powerful abilities were also beautiful. They were making things difficult for him.
Eventually he picked a lady with a mental shield ability. She is a psychic class super with an ability that allows her to create layered mental shields. If one shield is destroyed, the others will substitute and protect the mind. The defenses won't fall until all the shields have been destroyed.
The number of shields that can be created is dependent on the mind attribute, while the power of each individual shield is dependent on her ability itself. All in all, it is a good ability to protect his mind with.