[Charm] was something I still needed to learn properly. Where I was from, there was hardly anyone or anything that made me want to use such a silly ability. Perhaps, this was a great opportunity to finally learn it and test it out. Right after my shift ended, I asked Smoothie to give me some tips and pointers to effectively draw out the [charm] ability. Just having the intent wasn't enough to make much difference.

Smiling was essential. I could definitely do that. Easy peasy, right?

The next was gesture and posture. I was never popular in the past, but this life, all was going to change! I wanted to learn how to be cute from Smoothie, I really did. Yet, she refused me outright. I would have to figure it out myself. Instead I tried to observe her every movement, every detail.

"Mother! Stop that! It's embarrassing."

Did I make it too obvious?

"It's just the two of us here. What's so embarrassing? I'm just having a good look at you. Isn't that what you were trying to tell me? I have been neglecting you, haven't I? I'll look at you all day today to make up for it."

"Mother! Gugh."

In the end, she couldn't resistant my loving gazes so she spilled the beans and taught me the moves, the killer moves! Actually, it was [soothsayer] that knew the techniques. That was what I called making good use of abilities. Who knew it had such a treasure trove of cultured knowledge? I certainly made the right decision to let her tag along with me on this trip.

Finally, there were speech, voice, and tone; those were the most tricky to apply. Apparently I just had to sound sweet. That was the main part. Everything else was just practice. What better place to practice than at the tavern I worked?

I'm sorry, Bnuppa!

Bnuppa was the name of the tavern owner. Usually she helped out at the front, serving customers. Sometimes, when needed, she would help out at the kitchen where her husband worked. His name was Rukket, another harefolk.

Here in this country, people didn't discriminate against each other. Although I personally referred to them by their appearances, the folks here didn't. Most of them all went by the common description or race name, Jud, which in fact included a variety of species. Ferretfolk, molefolk and harefolk were the most common ones I had seen that belonged to the Juds. Honestly though, I didn't know how they were categorized but it might have to do with their physical features.

In any case, I decided to try using [charm] on one of the customers.

Smile, smile naturally. You can do it!

"Dear customer, I'm Berry, is anything I can help you with today?" I unveiled my most natural smile along with my most courteous gestures I could come up. 

"B-Berry is it?" His eyes darted left and right.

"Yes, dear?"

He turned around, his eyes pinned on me before blurting out, "S-sit on my lap!"

Time for the combo attack!

"Oh my, I'm not so sure. Do you have what it takes?" My hand slowly reached out for his shoulder. The moment we made physical contact, I could feel a quick shiver from him. At the same time, his fur was completely upright.

That must've been quite a shock there. I guess it's working? Am I talented or what!?

"Ahaha," I chuckled quietly, "Since you're in a good mood today, why not try a fancier drink today?"

I couldn't keep playing around with a single customer when others were waiting.

"Y-yes, heh, I'll have one Toot Rapple and two daily specials."

Toot Rapple was one of the second most expensive drink that could be ordered in this tavern. I would have to work three hours to buy just one small cup of it.

One after another, I varied my technique from customer to customer to see which one was the best combination. Sometimes, I had little success, sometimes, I had great success. It certainly made the owner extremely happy. Yet, I wasn't given a raise. I wanted a bonus.

"Sales are going off the rooftop! Good work, Ferry. I knew I could count on you."

She didn't even notice how different I was today? What's up with that? On top of it off, she had my name wrong.

"It's Berry. It's Berry!" I corrected her.

She waved me off, "Yeah! I'll be counting on you again tomorrow."

As long as she was paying me, I had no qualm about it. Money was money, even I had to start somewhere. If I couldn't grasp the basic skills of surviving in a society like this, building an empire was but a pipe dream. My ambition had to have a solid foundation for it to be realized. With [charm] now tucked comfortably in my belt, it was only a matter of time before I could sneak my way up the hierarchy around here. There were bound to be aristocrats I could charm into providing me with suitable accommodations. Well, I would have to see how things went in the near future.

During my free time, I was practising mana compression. It wasn't going too well, as if my imageries weren't adequate enough. Compressing mana using brute force with my utmost concentration had little to no results. Not only that, mana compressed using brute force was unstable and dangerous. Seeing how much I was struggling, Smoothie shared an observation with me.

"What's the difference between a liquid and a gas?"

This lead me to brainstorm other ways to condense mana using my knowledge of natural phenomenon. In hindsight, I wished I had thought of trying varied methods earlier if I knew other methods were allowed. The next method I tried was to imagine mana as a gas. To turn a gas into a liquid, and keep them stable, I had to cool them by sucking out the heat. I didn't think mana had a temperature to begin with so I never thought to try this.

"Why did the room suddenly rise in temperature?"

"That was my question! What did you do?" Smoothie glared at me.

She never glared at me before. That was a first. Regardless, a glare from her was quite cute. Berry approved!

Anyway, I hadn't yet condensed any mana into that liquid feeling. It made me wonder how that affected the room at all. It didn't make sense.

"Uhh... I was trying to condense mana by lowering their temperature. It shouldn't have anything to do with the room's temperature, right?" At least, that was my assumption.

"Did you check your mana? It's dropped. I think you accidentally used heat magic?"

"Oh what?"

She was right, I somehow lost a quarter of my mana while I was trying out the new technique. But the thing was, by altering the quality of my mana, that should be quite normal. Thus, I explained my understanding of it.

"Wait, isn't that normal? I'm condensing mana so it should have dropped."

"True, maybe you had some odd imageries. Tell me the method."

After I explained how I was condensing my mana, she face palmed herself. Apparently, I was actually using some sort of magic, albeit inefficient one, to boost the quality of mana. Instead, she offered me an idea.

"Instead of converting all that into magic, why not just isolate them in yourself in some sturdy container. Wouldn't that be easier for you? That way you wouldn't be wasting mana."

"Ohhh, as expected of my child, so ingenious!"

Where did she inherit her intelligence from? Am I actually super smart? She certainly didn't have a father because I certainly didn't sleep with anyone. I'm a virgin! I swear to god.  

Although learning basic magic wasn't intended, apparently now I knew how to manipulate heat using mana. That was really a bonus to all this. Who would have thought it was this easy? Perhaps it had to do with my fey nature. After all, one couldn't expect everyone to use magic the same way, mortal races or not.

"Alright, alright. I'll give this new method a try."

Instead of sucking heat and forgetting about it, I redirected them into a mega container. At least, that was the imagery in my mind. Once it was full, I planned to forcefully shrink it using like a hydraulic press before storing that container away safely. I wouldn't want those unidentified mana to explode in my body somewhere, physically or non-physically.

Meanwhile, I also had a container to keep the condensed mana. My earlier experience made that an obvious solution to prevent mana from accidentally escaping my fey body. Seriously, as it turned out, managing mana was complicated, more so than I originally anticipated. All the while, I had to keep a constant flow of mana from my clone bodies into my fey body.

Even though I was super low on mana, numerically speaking, I had plenty of mana to spare. However, having low numerical value of mana made me a bit light headed. This had to be fixed soon.

I need more mana. Hmm...

blanksphere

(Sept 08) By the way, I take no donations (Patreon, Paypal, etc.) and I don't plan on doing so in the future (at least not for this work). It's completely free as far as I am aware of.