Applicant One is a brunette human without any affinities, while Applicant Two is a blonde human with a familiar affinity. It's not one I have, but something my Duchess has. From process of elimination and from 'color theory,' I don't think it's radiant, fire, or holy.

It's a greyish, purplish blob.

Wind or Mind. I'm leaning towards Mind. Someone attuned to that energy might be beneficial to hire. It's not on her resume that she can use magic, so either it's an affinity she is unaware of or one she can't manifest by using spells.

Applicant Three is the wolf-person. I'm not skillful enough to pinpoint the energies, or lack of, in specific people in a room, so the three I already mentally removed from the position have their affinities relayed to me.

She has two, and I'm positive one of those energies is [Nature]. I have a decent affinity with [Nature], although that came after I attuned to my energies. The other one escapes me, but I assume it has something to do with her religion.

I have nothing to back that claim, but that won't stop me from making it.

Applicant Four is also a brunette human. She is from Silvervein, so I suspected her to be a death cultist. I don't feel any affinity to death. There is something, but I'm unsure of what it is. Something to do with metal?

I guess it was silly of me to think she was an actual cultist... Not that changes my disposition on hiring her.

Applicant Five is the Merfolk. I would be tempted to hire her only because she's a race not in my [Lexicon]. Ironically, searching for information on the internet would most likely inform me of her exact race.

Regardless, her two affinities, one of which I would bet is water, and my curiosity is dwarfed by her affiliation with organized religion. I'm not dissing any god or goddess, especially since it's a sea god, and I'll be on a boat sometime in the following months.

Applicant Six is a prosecuted race with some blood ties to reptiles. Duchess can identify her as a member of the hierarchy, although lower than her, meaning she has a serpent, dragon, or other scaled creature blood in her veins.

Since Duchess didn't mention the Merfolk woman, who is even more scaled than Applicant Six, I assume she has no ties to the 'hierarchy' and that fish and reptile scales are different.

[Indeed. There is some overlap as dragons of the sea exist, and so do water serpents, but they aren't fish. At least they transcended being simple lifeforms.]

Do you think the blonde woman has a Mind affinity? If so, is she a good candidate then?

[Unless thisss one uses magic to probe her mental defenses, thisss one won't be able to tell. Perhaps that human is a proficient caster and has manipulated outcomes and paperwork using her proficiencies. If so, she will be a valuable asset once tamed.]

That's a big if. And don't use the word 'tame.'

[Aren't my master a tamer? Why not tame the species you share?]

Taming them would imply that I'll treat them as I do you and the rest of my beasts. Being my tamed beast is different from being a subordinate. It's more intimate, even if my soul won't bind to theirs, and they won't use a slot of my skill, one I don't have.

Duchess is content with that answer.

Technically, my taming skill - regardless of how strict the requirements needed to be considered one of my tamed beasts - doesn't limit species. If I find some guy walking down the street who happens to be unique in some way and considered a 'ruler,' then I could theoretically bind them to me.

I could be the ruler of the Prime Territories by going up to the president, hoping he's unique in some way, and beating him until he consents or is unwilling to resist. Bam, I tamed the PT president and will be hunted down because of all the laws I broke, regardless of any presidential pardons.

I don't know. After I get Beryl, and once I retire around the age of 200, then maybe I'll adopt some unique orphan, grant them a title and fief, then treat them as a tame beast, allowing them to be innately stronger than their peers from all the passive stat buffs and tailored training.

It's not like treating them as a tamed creature would be inhumane. If anything, they would be treated better since they would be a part of my family. (Beyond the whole adopting thing.)

Applicant Six has an affinity to life, and two others I find familiar but have never seen before, meaning my tamed beasts don't have them either.

I drop the brunette without any affinities and keep the blonde and the lizard person as my final two.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"That person will be my personal guild secretary, and that one can be my personal assistant. You can give the others jobs within the guild if they are interested. I don't trust deeply religious people."

"Aren't two members of our board religious?"

"I haven't seen Charlie or Free Chains go to mass. They have a special relationship with their gods. Plus, if money and law turn their back on me, I might as well abandon the guild and live happily in the wilderness."

"Turn their backs? I... Don't know what to say. Regardless, needing a personal guild secretary and a personal assistant might be redundant. The tag 'personal' might be redundant, not the job positions. And I'm not being facetious with your wording. 'Personal' means their job description is about work directly relating to you."

"Eh. It's my money. Just make sure those two have adequate work."

"That would be your job, to assign tasks."

"Then, by definition, all the tasks I assign will be directly related to me. Handle the rest... It's about time for me to leave. I have to meet the FIB in an hour."

I'm glad I can put the whole FIB debacle behind me since I have a country to represent in a few months. I wouldn't mind dismantling the organization with the copious amount of evidence Free Chains found, but that might delay my payment.

Meeting the FIB at their headquarters sounded unfair, and the FIB people felt the same about having this meeting at my guild building. We settled for neutral ground.

The courthouse, where a failed assassination attempt happened, allows private meetings between two parties. It costs a pretty penny, but the FIB executives are fronting half the costs.

I arrived early, but Free Chains should be in the building already. Before I leave the car, I summon Prometheus from my [Beastial Storage]. When I casually fed him my old prosthetic arm, I figured he'd eat the metal and be done with it, but I was mistaken.

Prometheus has a trait called [Forge Body] that allows him to consume magic items and mimic their appearance and stats. The caveat is that he can only 'remember' a certain amount of items, and if the item's rank is above C, it gets downgraded to C.

He turns part of his mass into an item, so as long as he has a leftover body, Prometheus can turn an 'arm' into a gun or the arm he recently consumed. Or he can go all in and be a denser version of the smaller item.

I brought this up because I had a funny idea. The items Prometheus turns into aren't perfect replicas. They have different aesthetics and can have different densities. What else can he change?

The first thing I did was try to have him turn into two different items simultaneously. It took a while, but he managed to do it. He turned into a metal arm with molten metal running through it instead of blood, wielding a similar-looking revolver.

Then I had him turn into two of the same items or at least parts of him. Two pseudopods turned into a revolver each, which was slightly unexpected.

Then, I had him try to create a different type of firearm similar to the one he consumed. He succeeded but was uncomfortable, and the gun wasn't functionally different stat-wise. I tried again but with a completely different type of gun, with an entirely different loading mechanism.

Prometheus failed.

Alright, that's fine. The final test was to gut the 'interior' of the prosthetic arm. Besides the mechanism to store and shoot bullets, the arm's interior was extremely close to being anatomically correct.

Prometheus had difficulty moving with just the armor-like 'skin' but could move it nonetheless. He cheats slightly using his main body for the joints, meaning they have a viscous fluidity rather than typical joints.

That's when I had the idea to 'wear' Prometheus. The arm is the exact dimensions of my biological one, so wearing it would require me to skin my arm. Or Prometheus can grow around it.

But why would I do this? What is the practical application of wearing one of my tame beasts? It's not like I'd be wearing him for the armor. Because it looks cool? No, I'd wear him as a deception tactic.

To hide the fact that I regrew my arm. Regeneration magic isn't rare enough to warrant hiding my arm. If anything, not having an arm for an extended amount of time is strange, especially for my level of wealth.

Unless I can guilt or manipulate people with my 'apparent' disability.

Having a tamed beast at my fingertips could be helpful, but I have two skills that do that. [Master's Whistle] and [Beastial Storage]... Not that I can't just have my tamed beasts in the same room as me.

It would be a decent way to initiate a sneak attack... Fuck it, why not. I wear Prometheus like a gauntlet that goes up to my shoulder.

The metal is warm against my skin and feels semi-fluid but looks and feels rigid from the outside. Ironically, wearing Prometheus makes me vulnerable since I'm constantly [Martyr]ing for him.

If I were a boss in a video game, the only armored spot is where I would take "critical" damage.

I leave the car and go inside, finding the meeting room and taking a seat.

Then I wait.

~~~

I didn't sit in silence staring at a wall for an hour. Instead, I was meditating, trying to get more acclimated to utilizing my attunement stat.

An hour went by pretty quickly, and soon the meeting commenced. Charlie entered the room, and then Free Chains entered. My lawyer was elsewhere in the building while Charlie just got here.

The three people representing the FIB were the vice-director of the FIB, a middle-aged man. The vice-head of the containment branch, another middle-aged man. And one of their head lawyers, an old man.

They wouldn't send a member of the hazard branch to this meeting because that would practically be an admission of responsibility since the only way they can get out of this is if they somehow isolate the hazard branch from the rest of the FIB.

After some curt introductions, Free Chains starts the meeting by getting straight to the point.

"I'm glad y'all can make it. We have outlined compensation in this binder here. We can take the time for you to read it."

None of the three men reach or look at the binder Free Chains slides over. I can tell that the FIB's lawyer seems disgusted by Free Chains by the grimace he let slip from behind his poker face.

The lawyer starts speaking for their side, "Your party has created quite a stir recently, and we fail to see how we are liable for any of the claims brought to our attention. We have not filed anything against your client. But I'd advise you to rein in your accusations and retract your statements to the press before we press the issue."

Oh. Sigh, I guess we are doing this the hard way. I wonder if they would notice if I started meditating during the meeting.