Opening a box full of cash never got old. The paper wraps disintegrated the moment she tore them off, revealing a dark, wooden surface. Despite being wood, it was just as cold, just as firm and reflective as solid marble.

A brass insignia of the Seven Spokes stared back at her from the lid, which she lifted. Not the faintest sound issued forth when the lid swung back and knocked against itself. Rows of rings, set into a tray, awaited within, set with gems and engraved with glowing runes. For a shining moment, Krahe felt a child-like joy, grinning ear-to-ear. She could swear the rings glowed with purplish light, and a tangible wave of power washed over her. It was stony, impassive, utterly homogenous and unlike the aura of a person, but the quantity of arcane currency contained within this suitcase was such that it could match the intensity of Casus' presence when he became Silberblut.

Lifting the tray, she found two more beneath it, decreasing in denomination, with the bottom-most one holding densely-packed cylinders of plain bronze bands. Krahe appreciated that she wouldn't have to bother exchanging the rings. Beneath the bottom-most tray, she found a second, much simpler box, which she took out but left alone for now.

Moving onto the letter, it contained two papers. One was a talisman, and the other was the actual letter. It detailed her payout, specifying a hefty deduction for the suitcase with the options of keeping or returning it. It also mentioned that this payout was for Sorayah and that any further progress in the investigation would merit further compensation, specifically any information pertaining to potential Human Charcoal Cult cells and the recovery of relevant items such as further relics and human charcoal itself. A substantial portion of the payout was, in fact, for Sorayah's lantern and the human charcoal Krahe brought along. A second, smaller sum came directly from Razem himself, the reason unexplained beyond the word 'Bonus'. The total money in the box fell shy of even half the posted bounty on her head, but it was still in the six digits. If she was being optimistic, even if Sorayah's case didn't lead to a greater cult, just the occult materiel in her home could furnish her with quite a bit of money. How much of that stuff she would turn in depended on whether she found a use for it. The post-script clarified that the talisman was for the ward-breaker; once activated, it would resonate with its twin in the ward-breaker's possession and call him to its location as pre-arranged by Razem. He would supposedly arrive within an hour if it was anywhere in the city.

As for the smaller box, it contained several paper bags and had another note from Razem on the inside. It was the herbal mixture for the Decoction of Mind's Dawn, with the note being instructions for brewing and drinking it, especially dosage and for how long it would be good after brewing.

"You will surely find it to be of use."

Moving on to other pressing matters, she wanted to visit Yao again to see if the woman could answer some questions for her. There was the Hexkey, Eutropia's broken voidkey, as well as human charcoal in general. As for the anthrocite hand, she wanted to keep its existence to herself until she knew its potential value, so she decided to bring up anthrocite if Yao turned out to know about the base substance. She had not mentioned it to Razem out of caution.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

There was the matter of her gunmanship, which was... Acceptable. She didn't consider the ability to hit a still target at a given distance to be the peak priority, especially since it was so contingent on the gun, the ammo, and the environmental factors. Target tracking and acquisition could be improved beyond just training and real combat, but those improvements were likely be grafts or combat drugs. As she saw it right now, her most pressing shortfalls were to do with getting the right ammo in the chamber at the right time. Alternating-load clips were a start, but awkward, and since the Pattner wasn't tube-fed, she couldn't do something like add a second tube magazine and a selector for which one was feeding. Without modifying the gun, the two options that came to mind were manually placing a bullet onto the bolt face while it was cycled forward, or pushing the round into the top of the clip, assuming the clip was one bullet short. The second option was a bit problematic due to the fact the clips were held inside the gun only by friction and the same spring that pushed cartridges up through the clip.

There was no choice left but to see for herself. Simply pushing a bullet into a partially-empty clip turned out to be the easiest solution. Sliding a bullet into the chamber directly also worked, counter to reason. The clip itself shifted downward slightly when a bullet was chambered, as if the follower spring was pulling it down in response. Krahe brought out the manual and went into the section with the blueprints. The magazine retainer - which was also the clip release lever - was the culprit. It was a single part that gripped a lip on the back of the clip, stopping the follower spring from sending the whole clip out the top of the breech. By disengaging it with one's thumb, it also allowed a non-empty clip to be ejected. The blueprint noted that it was enchanted to shorten subtly when a bullet was in the chamber specifically to let the user load a bullet directly into the chamber.

Now that she gave it deeper thought, she remembered reading the manual only so far as it was relevant to maintaining it and loading the ammo. That left a good 1/5 of the book, which turned out to hold the answers to her questions, including the reason for the gun's specific design. This late section was absent from the table of contents, and its nonstandard nature was evidence by the fact it was hand-written and not truly ordered. It stood to reason Pattner had made this one-off edition of the manual for Audun Sorun specifically, or possibly early adopters in general.

"The revolving cylinder design, albeit convenient, is limited in capacity. My design can be modified to accommodate alternate and/or expanded magazine designs at any time; I have included example blueprints for two types on the next page. Any craftsman of mediocre skill can manufacture the modification. The same cannot be said for a revolving cylinder design. I shall not speak of contemporary revolvers' countless issues with structural integrity, sealing, reloading, etc."

The first modification was a weird apparatus that would turn the Pattner into a belt-fed pistol, with designs for a disintegrating sheet-metal belt included.

The second one was, effectively, a Mauser C96-style self-contained integral magazine, including a design for a stripper clip. Its design even accounted for the possibility of the user wanting to convert the gun back to en-bloc clips.

These options were nice for the future, but useless in the now. Krahe went through the rest of the manual just in case, finding a great deal of interesting technical details and various modifications or features that just didn't make it into the production version for one reason or another. Better sights. A rounded barrel. A different grip. A different trigger. A wooden stock that doubled as a holster. A rimless cartridge and a bolt to match it. So on and so forth. She spent enough time committing it to memory that she was confident it would float to the surface if it was ever directly relevant.