The what now? Bianca must notice that I don’t have any idea of what she’s talking about “It’s an extremely profitable, extremely illegal auction house the <Sycamore gang> hosts at the end of every month.”
Aurora looks surprised “That should be tomorrow, right? It sounds very shady, I don’t think you should go.”
I don’t know… I do need the money…
“Of course it’s so soon, that’s why I’m fucking telling you about it!” Bianca sneers “Look if I wanted to kill you I’ve had plenty of chances to do it, and we’ve had sex too! There should at least be enough trust between us that I could take you to an illegal meeting in the middle of nowhere!”
I… that makes it sound worse doesn’t it?
Now I’m not so sure…
Sigh… I really do need the money.
“I’ll go.”
Bianca smugly smiles “Great! I’m glad your brain hasn’t rotten from staying in this shithole for a whole week!” She claps “We’re leaving early tomorrow!”
After that she just leaves flying.
How rude, you could’ve at least said goodbye.
I look around and see that everyone is also a little confused.
I grab the sandwich bag Bianca threw at me and look inside, they’re all completely intact, as expected from someone with 4 patterns.
Bianca went out of her way to cook us something… Maybe she’s not so bad after all.
I give a sandwich to Antonia “Thanks!” and another one to Aurora, she bites it and gives me a thumbs up.
I also give a sandwich to Felix, since he’s here for some reason “T-thanks…” He just accepts it, but he seems down.
You don’t like sandwiches?
Hmph.
I also grab a sandwich, and it’s surprisingly good!
Bianca is a surprisingly good cook.
…
“Thank you guys, I couldn’t have worked on anything without your help.” Antonia and Aurora have helped me a lot during this, I’m in their debt.
Antonia closes her eyes, crosses her arms and nods her head “Don’t even give it another thought! This was incredibly interesting for me!”
“I have to agree, I never realized how complex blacksmithing could be” Aurora is making a reliable smile, but then bites her lower lip “Of course, if you want to thank me…”
“Haha!” Felix starts laughing nervously.
“So how did your <trance> go? you were quite busy on that!” Antonia looks a little red.
“Ah!” He looks surprised “Hehe, you see…” he explains it to us.
Apparently he lived the live of a nimbus eagle for 7 years, how interesting.
“Hoh, that can happen?” Aurora looks interested too.
Is that healthy?
Wouldn’t you forget a lot of things over 7 years?
And we killed that eagle too, that can’t be good.
Poor guy.
“So what are we going to do now?” Aurora finished her food really quickly.
“I don’t really have any more materials.” I’m tired… “I think I can only wait for the auction at this point.”
“I’m beat too!” Antonia reclines on a wall.
“Sigh… let’s go take a proper rest, we’ve done all we can with the materials we’ve had.”
Everyone nods, and we start walking towards Timotei’s house.
* * *
After entering the house, Aurora made a beeline to her room, and I have to assume she went to sleep.
Antonia and her dad started talking about something, and I don’t want to interrupt them, so I also go to my room, I have something very important in here.
That sphere.
…
I take it out from under my bed and put it on top of it, I also do the same with the 6 blades.
Do I sell this thing?
I don’t have much time anymore, and I also won’t have a better chance to sell this thing.
If I’m going to do it, it has to be tomorrow.
It’s likely it’ll be worth a lot of money, it managed to knock out the whole caravan after all.
That’s including Timotei, someone who has 3 patterns and should be on the strong side, and Makoto, I have no idea how strong he actually is, but he should be around 4 or 5 patterns, right?
It should be worth a lot of money, and it’s something I can’t really use, I’ll just knock myself out if I try it.
Should I check it with <Body of steel>? I don’t think it’s a great idea…
I activate it anyway, and my whole arm turns blackish gray.
…
It’s not as interesting as I thought it would be…
It is interesting, but this is not something I can’t understand.
This sphere only contains two formations, and a few simple but elegant patterns to connect them.
One is to store audio, and the other is to play it.
I mean… now I know these formations…
And the pattern should be useful, especially once I can experiment with them.
I don’t think they would have been very useful while I was making my artifacts though…
This only means that the sphere itself is not the useful thing, but the song inside it.
If you can call that a song, just remembering it gives me the creeps.
…
At some point it became night.
So soon?
…
I look at the <Nimbus knife>, this is the first artifact I’ve ever made, and I was mostly experimenting and solidifying my understanding on the process.
Antonia helped me make it, I think the fact that it moves faster midair is her personality showing through, the <Nimbus knife> is as much her creation as it is mine, I really couldn’t have made it without her help, not with my arm like this.
But the real question is, how much is it worth?
As much as I don’t like it, I made this because I need money.
But unlike that Monica Lupei, I also made something I can be proud of.
Even if all the other blades are superior to this one, this is still an artifact that is superior to anything that has been mass produced.
At least in my opinion.
…
I look at the sphere again.
In an auction with a ton of bad guys, it should really be worth a lot of money, right?
I’d bet my good arm that it could pay off most if not all the cost for the potion.
…
But I don’t want to sell it.
First, it doesn’t really belong to me, it belongs to the man with the bronze jaw, who saved our lives, even if he’s dead, he might still have a clan, or even a relative who this should belong to now.
Second, it’s also a valuable clue to finding who the man with a bronze jaw even is, he’s someone who I also want to return a favor to, if I sell the sphere one of my only leads to him would be gone, even before I could start properly searching for him.
And third, I feel like I would be accepting defeat if I do sell it, I’d be admitting that what I made isn’t good enough, and that I had to rely on pure luck to get through this.
I don’t like that.
That Monica Lupei would just laugh at me.
…
I think about the <refrigerator>, no, just refrigerator, that thing really makes me mad.
No pride or love can be found on any inch of that thing.
It’s the definition of something soulless.
Nobody who worked on that cared about it beyond making it work.
Infuriating thing.
…
“I’ve decided you’re going to stay right here.”
I put the sphere under my bed again.
My work is good enough
I put the blades away and go to sleep.
…
Or at least I try to, there’s an annoying beam of light shining right into my eyes.
It can’t be…
It’s already daytime?!
Goddammit.
///////////////////////////////////////////
Authors note:
Wow, we actually reached 100 readers!
If anyone has any questions about the settings or characters I'll answer them in the comments.
I also decided to release the chapters I have scheduled too, so I hope you guys like them.
(Can we reach 500 readers next?)
