Let’s see now, I’ve thoroughly crushed Lee’s dreams and aspirations by showing greater talent than his while also destroying his family heirloom. I think my work here is done.

A few hours pass, now I’m relaxing with a nice cup of coffee in my bakery. The girls at the bakery discussed broadening the menu and brought up the suggestion to me as the owner. I let them do as they please since I’m not relying on this place to make any sort of profit.

Not to mention that a lot of things are going to change now. The cleanup process was annoying so I’ll skip that. Afterall, there are secret societies like Bleakmoon or Solstice whose existence is centered around doing cleanup. I let them handle the ordinary witnesses and papers.

After besting Lee that fellow Liberach easily gave up the deeds to Stonebridge Orphanage and gave it to me. I thought that Liberach slime-bag would just run off to some corner of the city and disappear but he did the opposite of my expectations. He ran up to me and fervently asked to become my disciple.

Excuse me, what?

He mentioned some things with a glowing face like an excited puppy about how he had always thought money was invincible. When he encountered the Vile Brotherhood and learned of the unseen world he realized that he wanted power on top of that.

He cooperated with Lee in hopes that he could become a cultivator and achieve superhuman powers. But on his fateful day meeting me he saw how both his money and the power of the bad guys was no match for me.

It sounds like a cliché, but he realized that true companionship like mine couldn’t be bought with money. He awoke to the truth that the empire he built up was so fragile because he assumed that the power of money belonged to him.

And now he wants to emulate the power I possess and create lasting relationships. At some point I lose interest and only listen intermittently to his sob story. Something like, he was abandoned by his parents and came to only trust in money? Even if he says that it doesn't automatically pardon him of his behavior and actions.

But he insists that he wants to change and learn from me so in order to drive him away I give him a skill called the (You Can Do It Too!)--System. That’s right, I gave him a system and briefly explained that the system will assist him in gaining strength by giving him daily and weekly quests with rewards that improve his body and mind.

In short, if he wants to become powerful then he needs to put in the effort. This system is the kind where by doing 100 pushups every day for a month his strength rating will increase slightly. Other activities like reading and studying will increase his intelligence, and community service will increase his charisma stat.

It sounds like a typical main character’s leveling and grinding system so Liberach seems excited and rushes off to start his training.

No, but seriously, if he just examined the skill even a little bit he should have realized, that skill is nonexistent. It doesn’t affect his body at all, all it does is give him objectives and show a numerical improvement in his abilities.

Exercise increases strength? Reading increases intelligence? Of course someone would improve naturally if they keep that up for months.

It reminds me of when Sister Therese convinced a child that hated clean-up duty to a cleaning challenge. If they could clean up faster and better than the other kids then they would get a treat.

In hindsight that kid should have realized that they’d still be cleaning in the end, not to mention ending up as the best cleaner. Wait a second, wasn’t that kid me?

Well, regardless, Liberach is confusing the results with the reward. Having a system to give out quests and watch the parameters on display increase is like a rush of dopamine. A grinding system is addictive, but it’s also something like a man’s romance. I’m a girl, you say? Who says it can’t be a girl’s romance too!

Just like that Liberach runs off to do all sorts of quests. The system is going to reform him so if he doesn’t give up he should be working out and doing charity works, but it’s none of my concern anymore now that he has dropped the whole disciple thing.

Things seem to have worked out, so now I can take a well deserved break at the bakery watching the girls work. The scent of the coffee is refreshing and takes the edge off my shoulders.

I might as well mention that I used the Crafting skill to make enchantments possible and went ham on the coffee. Enchantments on the coffee maker to bring out the best quality flavor, an enchantment on the cup to keep the drink at optimal temperature, I even enchanted the bag of beans so they stay fresh for longer.

After magically enchanting so recklessly the coffee turned out well, although it seems overkill to go this far for a cup of joe. I think I’m also taking some liberties with enchantment magic. What even is enchantment really? It’s like turning an object into a magic tool, right?

Maybe my definition and usage of enchantments are too loose since for a while now Cheshyr and the girls from Arcoul are staring in amazement. This doesn’t include Brigid though, since right now she is too busy dealing with an annoying fly to pay any attention.

And by fly I mean an evil martial arts cultivator called Lee, who is proposing with a bouquet of roses in hand, only for those flowers to be crushed by Brigid underfoot. Unperturbed, he summons another set of roses from his space ring.

If you’re asking why this happened like how Brigid is silently asking me with tears overflowing, it’s quite simple. I decided to let Lee go in return for being our spy on the Vile Brotherhood. I had Maeve interrogate him with permission to use her powers, and he became quite cooperative.

Apparently his position is convenient for being privy to sensitive information, so it was decided to recruit him. In order to ensure his loyalty, I decided to unseal the skill that I’ve kept locked away, namely the Charm skill.

The skill is borderline brainwashing, but I have no qualms on using it on this guy, only, I don’t want to be the target of his affection. So I had to pass the buck to someone with me, and no way am I giving a dangerous skill like Charm to Maeve.

I mean she was really getting into the interrogation to the point that I heard Lee confessing to every little thing he had ever done, which included when and how many times he wet his pants. How she got that out of him is too scary to think about. Imagine an unhinged person getting the Charm skill?

That left only Brigid as the person to give the Charm skill to, for which she was oddly excited about. She charmed Lee and then proceeded to try charming Sister Therese and the other female volunteer. Not surprising.

And to her great shock the charm skill didn’t work. Luckily I was careful enough to modify the skill before I handed it to her, making it into a Male Attraction skill. I’ve seen enough of this knight’s browser history and the list of premium site subscriptions. In addition, she’s also been frequenting streaming sites and sending gifts and donations to some cute female streamers.

I have to put a stop to her endless spending. It’s not actually hurting me financially but I’m starting to hear rumors in the online sphere that she’s known as the leader of the Queen’s Knights. I can’t imagine what she’s been up to nor do I want to know.

Well it’s been quite hectic until this point. To summarize, I gave Liberach a questing system to reform and get rid of him, and also had Lee charmed to Brigid. Those two are taken care of so this incident can be settled peacefully.

You could say as a consequence Brigid ended up with the new skill Male Attraction, which she seems to abhor. But you know, I had no choice, I couldn’t exactly let her use Charm on the other girls in our group.

We only ended up with one casualty in this case so I call it a victory, though I’m sure Brigid, who is trying to shake off Lee, would disagree. Looks like I don’t have to worry about her abusing the Male Attraction skill.

The last thing to wrap up would be Stonebridge Orphanage. I snatched the deed back from Liberach so now it’s my responsibility. I had the folks from detective Raina’s Solstice secret society wipe the kids’ memories of the event. I was also going to wipe the Sister’s too but she protested against it.

While they were at it I also had the Solstice folks attach a device to suppress that girl May’s unique constitution so she wouldn’t be targeted again by evil cultivators. They left me to deal with the orphanage so I decided to move them from that rundown place to my building.

So far I’ve only been using the first floor and the top floor of the building hence I still have room to accommodate an orphanage’s worth of children. I gave the kids plenty of rooms and turned part of the first floor bakery into their personal playground.

It’s a strangely pleasant sight, on one side we have the bakery with pretty girls in aprons, the other filled with bright and lively children. I think I’ll add snacks to the menu so the kids can enjoy some treats. I guess the bakery should be known as a cafe now, the cafe filled with girls and kids.

It was easy enough to convince Sister Therese to move them in as the living conditions were decent and it wasn’t a burden to me. The discussion of building a new orphanage for them is where things got tricky. Even when I confidently showed off the deed she wasn’t going to use my money.

I don’t understand her philosophy. She doesn’t want charity and donations to spoil the kids, but accepts government funding and politician donations. I wonder if she had a bad experience with a shady charity organization?

In my case she refuses to accept handouts from someone who grew up in the orphanage on top of my young age. I calmly explain that I’m not a normal girl anymore. Come on, do you know any other young girls who own an entire building?

In the end I challenge her holding the orphanage’s future as the bet. The challenge we decide on is rock-paper-scissors since she’s witnessed my strength beforehand and considering this to be the fairest way to play.

What she doesn’t know is that I have time magic on my side. The game begins and as her hand starts to form a shape I slow down time so I can observe and change my hand accordingly. On top of that is my psychic mind-reading so the outcome is already decided.

After the best-2-out-of-3 turns into best-7-out-of-13 she begrudgingly accepts her defeat and has a forlorn, downcast look. She looks to me in a weird and tender way and speaks her mind.

Therese 「 Becca, I don’t know what happened to you since you left, but I can say that… you’ve gotten stronger. You’re no longer a little brat, but I’ll always worry for you. That won’t ever change. 」

I’m not sure if there’s a deeper meaning to her words but I smile to give her a bit of comfort. She’s taken care of me and I owe a lot to her and the orphanage so it’s my turn to repay her from now on.

Let’s see, I still have a few millions, so I could try to build a mansion for the kids. I could also open up more businesses to give them jobs and training. Just imagine the looks of awe on their faces.

Of course this all sounds like a lot of work but I suppose I could throw the project to someone better suited to managing it. Maybe Sister Therese? On second thought, she may not be an ideal manager. But maybe she could learn from someone, like Liberach? I’ll send him a message and maybe have his system give him a quest for it.

I only now realized it, but I haven’t seen my slime pet Mu anywhere. This whole incident started when I began a search for him, and before I noticed he just disappeared in the middle of the commoion. Where did that little blue ball disappear to now?

Like last time I locate him with Clairvoyance and see a remote broadcast. Mu the slime is surprisingly alone without the wolf Fu or Pip the golem, on top of that he is somewhere dark. I can barely make out his surroundings, but it seems to be a sewer system.

How on Earth did he wind up there? More importantly, it feels like some event went down. I can tell since Mu is on top of a swarm of rats, looking like a proud general on his horse.

...I’m going to pretend I never saw anything. Let’s ignore the slime ball for the sake of my sanity.

END OF CHAPTER 11