Laike was at an impasse. He knew what he owed — to the Negaverse, and to the people in the Negaverse — but he didn't know how to pay them back. Sure, he could work for years on end and finally build up some arbitrary amount of money, then pay it back to the people involved like the time spent waiting and all the other non-fiscal aspects of helping him out didn't warrant payment. He thought about how his mom once talked about thriving as a form of paying back others for helping someone out of a hard time, that sometimes watching someone finally succeed was the benefit they were looking for. And, there was also the argument that transactionality only got worse with capitalism, which placed a price tag on everything that must be exchanged back and forth, so by feeling like he should do something, Laike was feeding a toxic system.

He had been stuck in this conundrum for weeks. Months at this point. He was doing okay now, he had a new bedroom and rent was just his half of the groceries and utilities, and no one was complaining at him. It gave him distance from his family so he could be frustrated with them without it impacting how he interacted with them. But distance, safety, and the slow but inevitable road to success did not answer how he could repay the people involved.

The Negaverse already had wealthy tycoons numbering among its ranks. It already had great soldiers who went on missions and stuff. It had people who hunter traitors, people who recruited from civilians, people who gave the Negaverse a good public face, and people who collected information on the enemy in some really clever ways. But Niter wasn't any of these things; he was just good at draining energy and getting out of fights. Energy wasn't something that only he could provide, though. He was sure that there were many people out there who were more capable and more lucrative about it.

Laike wadded his hair into a wad as he stared at the blank page on his desk. He was hunched over it, Ticonderoga pencil in hand, chewing on the metal piece just before the eraser. What could Niter do that no one else could do? Obviously, there was his magic, but that just seemed to vanish things and move them somewhere else. That wasn't exactly useful.

But — there was his planet, too. Or comet, or asteroid, or whatever. Hestia took him to hers, and it was incredible to see a place so different from their own flora and yet similar to their architecture. If he could get to Planet Niter, then he could at least see if there was something around worth salvaging. It might be as token as the tea and plant he got from Hestia, but it could be a start. Of course, there was a whole problem of how to get there since the Negaverse was short on rockets and it seemed like only the White Moon had an easy option to teleport there, but Niter was sure that Jet knew something. Jet knew basically everything, as far as he was concerned.

It wasn't much of an answer, but it was the start of one. It was a place to start checking. That was enough for Laike to feel a little better about it — for him to go back to bed, too.