Yeah, this has to be a mistake.  Stardock better patch it... I meant to start a play-through to highlight how utterly broken the quest loop STILL remains, but with cost zero, even a blind person can see it.

Assuming it is NOT intentional (and I don't see how it could be, myself) what file to we alter to fix it?

Ah, thanks. It looks like a line just got deleted from the Heroic entry.

<Cost>2</Cost>

That line is present with other abilities that cost two points, like the spellbooks, but Heroic is missing a cost entry entirely. Inserted it and the game thinks it costs points again.