At home, I checked my status. That stupidly huge list of perks and Skills had to be tamed. I spent the rest of the evening organizing and categorizing them. Thankfully most of them were passive. I couldn't hope to remember all of them.
The next morning, I used the same method I used with the fairies to remove Lorna and Eric's collars. I just ate them. They were the same thing as the collars used on the fae back then. A magical construct summoned by a specialized spell and sustained by the victim's own MP regeneration. A test done before removing showed that it used part of the MP regeneration in a more aggressive way than my Wellspring perk.
I unwittingly learned the spell. I could enslave kin, and only kin, if I wanted. The spell was very specialized. There was one for each species. I shoved it aside forever. No way I was going to collar anyone. As a threat it was useless, and If I was willing to go that length, it was easier to just murder the person and interrogate the ghosts. Against my perk and the promise of purification, none of them so far withheld any information.
I knew that very well. I've been a banshee for fifty years and if someone offered me to end my torment, I would withhold no information as well. A spectral undeath is the worse fate. If I had to put it in words, it felt like the sum of a terrible hangover, broken ribs, crack withdrawal, and the feeling of powerlessness from having one's own mother murdered in one's front, squared. A terrible analogy, but one that rang very true. Except for the drug withdrawal, I've felt them all.
Back to the siblings fidgeting in front of me.
"You are free, but that doesn't mean you aren't wanted," I told them. Fiction showed that slave freedom came with a healthy dollop of survivor's guilt. Their mentality was that of a product, a thing to be used. To be granted freedom was akin to being discarded. So I grabbed their hands and continued, "You are important to me. I wish you stay with me, but not as slaves. I'll need someone to work as my guard captain, and I would very much love to have a cute apprentice like Lorna."
"We would like very much to serve you, mistress," Eric said while Lorna was too busy blushing.
"Good. Now let me introduce you to another important member of my household staff. Kazuyran, you man enter," I called the [Assassin].
The dark elf entered and I did the introductions. Kazuyran was my "majordomo", officially. My very own combat butler.
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Now that getting a single level meant billions of Exp but killing a single monster meant millions, I decided to finally start my shop. The next week was spent preparing everything. We took a square of the corner of the mansion grounds facing a street crossing and moved the fence around that square, leaving space for the shop building. With the reward money for solving the assassinations, I hired a team of builders to lift the structure fast. I used planks instead of wattle-and-daub for reasons that would become obvious later. A log frame with planks on both sides, leaving an empty gap between them.
I didn't give a shit about their work quality. I would use the spell-song to reinforce the wood and magic to fill the gap with stone later. The building would only seem to be wooden. That independent work, under the cover of illusions, took another week.
My initial approach using only copper and a few low-quality gem fragments was a flawed one. It gave me a feeling as to how to make the jewelry but most of it was unusable. What I needed to do was to infuse the metal with some sort of essence during the manufacturing process, to "open" the material to receive enchantments later. For that, I had three options, from the least to the most expensive.
First, I could use the souls of the deceased. Not binding actual ghosts to the enchanted items, that wasn't sustainable or desirable. But I could take a bit of their essence as a leftover product from the purification process and infuse that to the jewelry. The results were varied because not all ghosts had the same power of nature. Studying the best ways to use that nature to synergize with enchantments was a whole field of study that Rosewise wasn't too interested in.
Second, I could use alchemically processed monster blood to give the jewelry a bath. Like a spiritual galvanizing process, the creature's essence would wrap around the metaphysical manifestation of the item, priming it to receive the enchantment. That bath could also be used long-term to restore spent materials to a useable state. The drawback was that the monster blood needed to be fresh, but I had about two fuel tanker trucks worth of fresh blood that would never spoil, and I wasn't even halfway through the monsters from the stampede, not to mention those we farmed in our last delve.
The results from the blood infusion were more deterministic, as I had to use an alchemical process to prepare the blood and I could refine the material to ensure the desired result.
The third method was using magic core powder. I could smelt the metals with that powder, creating a sort of metaphysical alloy that had the same properties of the material - for all physical purposes, copper treated that way was still copper - but increased the enchantment potential by an order of magnitude. The greatest enchantments, legendary ones like Queen Alloralla's daggers and armor, were made that way.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Given the circumstances, I started with the ghosts. Thousands of soldiers died in the fight for the regency and a lot of them were still loitering around town. It was cheap since it only used my MP and SP. The spirit-infused copper rings tripled in capacity. An ordinary ring had three points worth of enchantment potential while one with a quartz shard had fifteen. The lucky success rate to get higher-quality rings was the same but the fact that all of them were useable was a huge boon.
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I divided my time between teaching Lorna magic and working at my shop. Eric and Kazuyran took care of the mansion. One day, I was at my workshop when a carriage stopped in front. I sensed two people entering, the smell of olive oil and metal polish followed by the sound of metal plates clacking. Knights?
"Oi! Shopkeeper!" A man said with a rude and haughty tone.
I set my tools down and walked to the storefront. There was some space in the room for about five or eight people, with a bench for clients to sit if they needed something. The counter was tall, about chest height for a human. Behind the counter, however, the floor was raised. I could walk behind the counter and find it at a comfortable height.
"About time," the man said when I came from the door.
"How may I help you, sir?" I asked, not letting my annoyance show.
"Mind your manners, peasant! You are in the presence of Count Sutton!"
I kept repeating to myself, "Do not murder the shit out of this asshole. Do not murder the shit out of this asshole." I might need to join a murderholic support group.
"I'm sorry, sir. I'm blind. I can't know I'm in the presence of anyone if you don't tell me."
"That's fine, Sir Rhys. We're here on a friendly visit. Miss Honorcoin, pleased to meet you. I'm Count Sutton, and I'm here to offer you the opportunity of becoming my retainer."
"I am flattered by the Count generous offer, but I am forced to refuse."
"What? You insolent halfling!" Sir Rhys roared. I didn't get any spittle on me, so it was fine.
I sensed another carriage stop.
"Miss Honorcoin, there are several benefits I can offer you. I am sure that if you--"
I cut him off, "One hundred levels worth of magic cores per month. That's my retainer fee, Count."
The knight barked again, "Insolent wench, do you think you can talk to the Count like that?"
A commotion started outside. By what my detection was telling me, the rest of the Count's escort was blocking the newcomers, and they were arguing.
"Miss Honorcoin, that's too high. I'm willing to pay you one hundred gold coins per year."
I infused {Divine Negotiator} in my next statement, "Count Sutton, that's my fee. It is not negotiable. You either take it or give up. I can harvest that many cores delving, not to mention the Exp and other useful materials. That's not an outlandish fee."
"I see," The Count mumbled. Someone entered and whispered something I couldn't hear. "Well, I need to go. I wish you success in your new business," He said without a hint of a smile in his voice.
Sir Rhys slammed my door. The argument outside increased. I decided Sir Rhys needed to have a little accident and put a contract on him. Maybe I should farm all the high-level knights in this city. It's not like they reached the level and position they hold without many wicked deeds. And rumors of the assassinations would lead to increased expenditure on security. But not yet.
The next day I visited the guild, sold some monster parts for cash to place repeating requests for common materials in bulk and uncommon herbs and reagents. I set an escrow account with the guild that could keep me supplied for months.
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As I started to enchant some of the rings and amulets, one big problem reared up its head. My {Wild Enchant} Skill was very good for scrambling the resonance of the rings but it had too big a chance of messing up the enchantments by removing something important. Bigger than the chance of granting something extra. Of course, I decked my enchanting set of jewelry with bonuses to that Skill but that only went so far. I needed the other bonuses to increase my success rate too.
For the whole summer, I only crafted the rings imbued with the soul-stuff of the dead soldiers. I didn't enchant them, accumulating MP well above my maximum cap. I had to break another curse. The one capping my Skill levels. I selected a few perks to sacrifice along with another small fortune of cores. I could probably buy a small kingdom with that many cores. I had forty million MP, enough to pay for four years of elder fairy blessing for the entire Fulgen Forest.
The last attempt used five hundred levels worth of cores and two very rare perks to break an ultra-rare curse. Now I was willing to burn a thousand levels of cores and no perks. I also waited for the night of the autumn equinox, when two moons would be full. That gave me an extra forty percent reduction on the MP cost.
I activated the perk and selected the curse.
> * Unskilled IV (very rare): You cannot raise Skills above Novice ranks (level 9).
The energy of the cores was entirely spent and it was still not enough. I resigned myself to burning another level of {Corrupted Blood Resistance}. The end result was a downgrade of the curse's power.
> * Unskilled III (very rare): You cannot raise Skills above Apprentice ranks (level 24).
That was... Good?
The loss of another perk hurt my power-greed inner munchkin, but maybe I should be bolder with the perks. Maybe I should dump everything that was not essential to break these curses. But on the other hand, I did well so far. There was no need to rush things. This Skill boost was what I needed to push my craft to a new height. All of them. The one resource I had plenty of was time.
I let my life fall into a routine. I'd study magic with Lorna, craft jewelry, make a few alchemical items to put up for sale, like my sex lube that was a huge hit not only with Cedric's harem party but also some high-end prostitutes and other ladies that required discretion with their purchases.
After the third maid came to buy lube on behalf of their mistresses, I found the way to get rid of the nobles' recruitment harassment for good.