Ryuji went back to the inn and for the first time, he hid something from Karen. He desperately wanted to brag about becoming a mercenary but at the same time, he really didn’t want to admit that he was now in a party with two other women. He decided he would see how the whole werewolf thing went and then he would either tell her or maybe be killed as a mad beast.
When he got to his room, he realized that he had forgotten about the satchel of food he had been carrying around the whole day and cursed himself for being an idiot. He spent the rest of the night reading and writing in his journal. Oddly, he found himself with a surplus of things to write into the journal. He of course included the information about werewolves but he had a lot more too. There was the section for happenings in this world of which he had a lot to write about. The biggest addition to his journal was in new ideas for spells, spell components, and spell techniques.
He wrote down his hydrogen oxygen fire spell in as much detail as he could. The knowledge of what those atoms were was the hardest part of explaining it. He knew about science but he also knew that if he were to try to explain it for somebody else there was probably no way they could repeat it.
He wrote in his observation about mana following the intent of the person wielding the spell and not being totally determined by the glyphs at the center of a spell circle. He wasn’t sure how this would be useful but he thought that with proper investigation he might find a use for it.
He then started going fantasy geek and writing all the different spells he could remember from any anime or manga that he hadn’t seen or read about here, which was most. He paid special attention to wind spells which he considered woefully underused. He wrote in some ways he thought a wind blade might be feasible. He also began thinking of how to find better versions of reagents for spells.
He began by trying a wind spell with regular wind and then followed it by one where he used nitrogen only. The effect wasn’t obvious till he tried it on a lamp. The same level of wind spell when used with only nitrogen as a spell component and the spell tailored with one glyph added, put the lamp out almost instantly.
His next bit of speculative writing is over the possible reagents. He remembers that quartz is a piezoelectric conductor and thus a powder of that, maybe mixed with silver or gold dust, might just work for lightning-type spells. Would phosphorus make a better fire reagent. What about water created by magic, is it purer than the river water? If that won’t work, what about water that was boiled and condensed again?
The next day he woke up and attended to his morning ablutions but Karen had been awake for a while. He told her that she could wake him and he would be willing to perform a bit of morning magic anytime. That earned him a kiss but she refused saying that it was hers and her family’s job not his.
He shared a bit of sweet bread with Karen before going to Dorn’s shop. He began learning the glyphs for enchanting and summoning. He had extra incentive to make sure that both of them were successful if he wanted bathhouses and to provide Miyako the boost she needed to get an apprenticeship with Dorn.
The work he was doing on learning the more complex structuring of the glyphs for use in second and later tier spells was coming to him like second nature because it was. He was used to using an ideographic language since kanji was based off of old Chinese characters and represented long sets of ideas. The glyphic form wasn’t very hard to figure out and begin using shorthand. As practice, he took lessons learned from books and tried to summarize them using only the glyphic structures but it was usually too spartan.
Dorn noticed what he was doing and told him that he was the strangest and possibly the cleverest apprentice he had ever heard of. The idea once explained was something that Dorn himself decided to try practicing, especially with the enchanting which he was having trouble with. Dorn began to suspect that he wouldn’t be the master for very long and that his pupil might well change the way a lot of wizards saw magic.
After they were done for the day, Ryuji was allowed to leave early but he didn’t go to see the cats. He went to see one certain cat beastfolk and a dark-elf. Kyarako got the key without anybody even looking at her. When they went across the street, they saw the building they were going to be using.
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It was indeed a warehouse that looked like it used to be one of the outlier buildings of the church. When they went inside, aside from being hot and smelling of stale air, there was nothing too surprising. There were tons of crates full of odd monster parts in giant crates stacked everywhere.
The cages were at the back of the warehouse and were just as big as Kya said they were. Each cage was big enough that he would only have to duck a little to stand in it. He handed everyone several silver and told them to rub it all over the bars. They were a little puzzled till they saw the silver coat the bars where Ryuji was rubbing them together.
It was very hard work trying to get a decent coat on any of the bars. The problems were manifold but the main ones were, the silver would flake off, the steel bars were rusty and made the silver more prone to flaking, and the overhead bars were a bitch to keep rubbing. Ryuji ended up taking over the plating of the upper bars entirely. It was painful to hold his hands over his head and rub the coin of bars for over an hour but he discovered that the pain faded too quick.
The bars had a minor coat but he wanted to be certain and coat every bar thoroughly. He also identified a weak spot. They hadn’t covered the bars on the floor. Miyako asked how he would stay in there if the bottom was plated and he told her he would bring a blanket. The women were ever amazed at his ability to hand off silver without concern. In order to address the issue he asked them what would cost him more, a bit of silver or going on a killing rampage and they understood his lack of hesitation.
They made plans to meet up every evening and work on the cage. He did end up visiting the cats but was happy to discover the place bustling with work crews. Both at the old building and at the general store. The bakery was selling more bread in the slums pavilion than Lizbet had ever imagined was possible and she had people from there working in some of the various bread stands. Lizbet had basically adopted a family of red-weasel beastfolk the way he had the cats and he had to admit that the kids were very, very cute and liked to cuddle.
One small problem that arose was that the guild required every member to go on a quest every eightday. Ryuji wanted to go on a quest but had a lot of business to attend to and couldn’t yet. The women were both in good standing having completed quests within the last eightday so he paid them a silver each to keep watch and make sure nobody found out about the cage. This was a bit more than what either of them would make on a quest but with little to no risk.
Ryuji told them that once the moon madness was passed, he would go with them and get each of them a new set of armor and new weapons if they wanted. He even promised that he would take care of Kyarako’s family but she refused, stating that it was her responsibility to her family.
He took the papers with the prototype for the magic circles to be used in the bathhouse and as a magic meter to Dorn’s shop. He was so drunk that night that he had forgotten a lot of the details but when he saw the work he just about passed out. He had Ryuji redraw and rewrite all of the theory and formulas into a new journal that he gave him and immediately dropped the enchanting project he was working on in favor of the enchanting of the magic meter.
Dorn told him that as a wizard he was going to become rather famous and also the object of a lot of criticism. Ryuji asked if he could put it off on Dorn since he was actually the one to suggest the idea. Dorn was baffled by this as he didn’t remember any of that but Ryuji told him that him, Dorn, and the regular from the inn had sat down and hashed all of this out. Dorn asked why he was passing on the fame and fortune and Ryuji told him that it wasn’t his idea and besides, he wasn’t in need of money and didn’t like a lot of attention just for the sake of attention.
Dorn agreed reluctantly but insisted that any profits would be shared three ways. Ryuji agreed so long as Dorn agreed to share expenses with him for the development of the project and eventual business. Dorn was a little conflicted with that but agreed because he knew he didn’t have the finances to build a new business like what this deserved.
Ryuji had to speak to the crews from the building projects. There were six crews of carpenters total and two of stone masons. Ryuji asked if they were able to break off and train in any way. Two of the crews were comprised of more than one professional and a third had an apprentice that was close enough to be allowed to head a crew provisionally. One of the crews of carpenters actually had three professional carpenters in it.
Ryuji bargained with them to take on beastfolk for their crews. The answer was flat refusal at first but then Ryuji revealed his plans to work a lot in the slums and reform them. He then told them he would pay double for a crew that was training beastfolk and suddenly all but one old codger did a miraculous about-face.
Ryuji took a couple of the crews to the buildings he bought for the bathhouses. He dropped a single crew of carpenters at the place he wanted as a soap factory. The stone masons he left to help with the buildings of the general store plaza. The general store, oddly, got a lot more business just because there were people working on it, go figure!