>>96864158

That's... not really right, but Karen supposes it is easier to wrap your head around than talking about banking exp to spend later when you need an extra emergency point of whatever. She herself tried to keep enough on tap to afford an excellency at all times, just in case.

"That sounds dangerous?"

"Not really. It's basically perfectly safe" Thimia interjects. "Basically everyone here is doing it, though I'd wager most of them aren't holding it for more than a week or two, so they can spend time accumulating the growth factor - we call it experience - in ways they find easy to work their way through, and then spend five minutes on something they don't like training to suddenly get better at that."

"We're off topic though", Messier says blandly.

"We are", Marena agrees.

"We are?" Est echoes confusedly.

"So, I don't particularly care about the key. At best I'd like to hold it for five minutes just to say I did, but after that, eh. My team will spend most of the competition sabotaging everyone else, so you guys just hit it as hard as you can. I have half an idea for how to end it without immediately putting you guys on the run again, but I'm still working on how feasible it is, and I need to run is by Misho anyways."

"Not Nemen Yi?" Ten Winds inquires, asking the real questions.

"I don't give a shit about her opinion. She's getting what she paid for, which is fucking nothing."

"In short, you want to team up."

"Pretty much."

Ten Winds side eyes her, and Karen shrugs. She doesn't trust the girl. The explaination of what she did doesn't cover HOW she did it, because that still should have been impossible.

She flickers her own eyes off to the side, towards Marena, and shrugs. Her sister nods faintly, and then three of them look towards Misho's wife, Thimia. She fiddles with her ring faintly, before shrugging.

"I think Misho will be fine with it." And with that, they're a team.