Anna, who only had her white stockings left, looked at me with teary eyes for the second time that day.

She surely thought that I was going to reject her proposal. But in reality, I just wanted her to keep the stockings on; after all, I'm still human (I hope), and I have needs I've put aside for many, many years. I can only put up with temptations up to a point.

Letting out a sigh of resignation, I signaled to the naked girl with my hand to come closer. It did not take long for a smile to light up her face, and she proceeded to move towards the bed with small jumps of happiness.

Someone could have seen her face flush with color if the room had been brighter, but Anna was steadfast in her resolve and didn't show embarrassment.

Now, *for the moment* I am not going to go into details about what happened that night. I'm just going to say that it was wonderful.

Some might think I am taking advantage of Anna's situation, but as I mentioned earlier, I will only do these kinds of things with people I care about, and that includes my servants.

If I'm going to have servants, I'll make sure they don't regret becoming one even a single day. In this world of death and destruction, the bar for your servant's happiness is relatively low... But if anyone is reading my thoughts, they will know what I mean.

But, first, there is something I have to admit I was actually more desperate than Anna, and her proposal was a godsend (of course, not from the damn goddess).

According to what Lord Edward told me during the journey to Leirel, the students of Rosdan Academy need to bring one or more servants. And getting a servant was a horrible task for an introverted hermit like me.

That was the law in the Forlan kingdom, and not precisely to help with the thousands of students who were forced to stay in the academy dormitory (although it didn't hurt to have them).

But rather, a wizard taking a servant means one less person who needs help from the state (which is little to none). It also helps their families, as in the case of Anna.

Basically, the kingdom forces people with advantages to care for the rest of the population. Even when a poor commoner who can become a magician is found, the academy will provide what the servants they bring need for the duration of the magician's studies until the magician can pay it back once they graduate.

Some entire families take advantage of the latter and follow their magician familiar as servants. Once that family member graduates, he can free them and get real servants for the whole family because there can be poor magic apprentices but no poor magicians.

I must say that the following morning was one of the best of my life; besides not having my head become a maze from having slept a century, I woke up next to a beautiful girl sleeping with a smile on her face. Of course, it might have been better if she wasn't drooling all over my arm, but that's being picky.

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Anna opened her eyes with difficulty, but she was startled when realizing what she was doing, and while apologizing, she licked the saliva accumulated on my arm. Ahem… I might have taught her a few unnecessary things that night.

Still naked, Anna insisted on helping me dress, but this time I didn't let her convince me and asked her to take care of her clothes. Honestly, it made me quite embarrassed just thinking about it; I'm not yet mentally prepared for things like that...

After dressing and having breakfast, I went out with Anna as a guide to sell the non-artifact trinkets I had collected the last time I was awake. I had to pay for Anna, after all.

I don't want to complicate myself yet with the names of the currencies of each nation. Basically, all the current kingdoms I know follow the principle of the value of metals, so I'll go with that for the names of the coins.

One hundred copper coins are equivalent to a bronze one, one hundred bronze to one silver, and as anyone might guess, one hundred silver coins make one gold coin.

But in reality, this is rarely the case; coins are also weighed on scales, and their density and purity have a lot to say. So, a gold coin can be worth ninety-four silver plus twenty-three bronze coins. But to avoid getting entangled in my own thoughts, I will round everything off.

The price that Anna was asking for herself was ten silver coins (first, she was going to say five, but corrected herself at the last second). To understand a bit the value of the coins, you have to think that with a copper coin, you could buy a loaf of bread.

The ten silver coins Anna wanted for her family were equal to one thousand bronze coins and, in turn, one hundred thousand copper coins. It might seem little for a mentality in which a person's life is of incalculable value. But in times when everything is scarce, even having one less person in your family has the added value of one less mouth to feed.

Of course, I am from the times when people were worth a bit more, and I wanted to honor that.

Both Anna and her father went into tears when I gave them a gold coin. It wasn't that much for me; I had made almost a thousand gold coins selling my stuff.

I have to clarify that Anna's father was aware of everything; the soup test was his idea... Could these times of scarcity have been caused by a decrease in the collective intelligence of humanity? That, the lack of technology and the monsters, of course.

But that gold coin wouldn't be everything; once I had my own territory, I planned to take Anna's entire family, her parents, and her three brothers, to live there.

In the meantime, I took Anna to the city outskirts. She couldn't shut her mouth, which was wide open in surprise to see the gigantic tower appear out of nowhere. As I have already mentioned, my magic tower artifact had protection against being found, so only the two of us could see it.

I must add that I introduced myself to Anna and her family as Argy Del. In reality, I had no problem revealing my true identity to them. Still, since Anna would accompany me to Rosdan, I wanted to avoid any confusion and unnecessary explanations, for now at least.

For the moment, I remained for Anna as a mysterious magic apprentice (the rank of an academy student) who happened to possess a fantastic magic tower. And, to tell the truth, with just that she was already quite satisfied, the ordinary people of these times understand little to nothing of magicians.

But the important thing right now was to search the tower for the artifact [Angel's Tears], a valuable vial of blue liquid that could heal any injuries and illnesses. It was the artifact I was thinking of when I found Roy, but, fortunately, I had the option to leave him in the excellent care of the dryads. Furthermore, this artifact has the particularity of being finite.

The search was not that long since I knew more or less the place where I had kept the artifact. It would have been a bit faster if Anna hadn't been flabbergasted in every tower floor and room. I honestly didn't know how I thought of bringing her... but the sooner she gets used to the tower, the better.

Of course, after taking a single drop, whatever the illness of Anna's mother was (I'm not a doctor), disappeared overnight.

I just hope it wasn't a cold... they are not to be looked down on; a cold in these times can easily turn into pneumonia and be deadly, but it still pains me to think I used one of those drops on one.