Chapter 10: The first Return

Chapter 10: Chapter 10: The first Return

I re-edited it again, I seemed to mistakenly posted the drafts, sorry for that. You can read this one. Just a heads up for previous readers.

***

The next morning, Bela nearly dropped a glass vial when Allan walked into her workshop carrying a heavy leather bag.

But as it was, it hovered in the air, tilted at an angle. Then she managed to grab it, her fingers closing around it in a tight grip.

"Lord Allan—"

"I told you, Allan is fine."

No title, but nobles love that title, she thought, as she stopped talking.

The bag was set down with a thud on the nearest available space on the table, among the clutter of broken jars and some acid leaking down.

The space was clear but for a cloud of dust that rose up from the base of the bag.

"And these are from the Hollow Root."

As soon as she placed the vial on the work surface, the color drained from her face so pronouncedly that it became almost comical.

This was how she behaved when something was so fragile it had to be treated with the utmost care, lest it break and shatter into a thousand pieces.

"The Hollow Root? You really went there?"

Her gaze flicked between him and the bag twice more.

"Indeed... that’s why you gave me the healing potion, remember?"

She looked at him for a while.

Is he an idiot? I gave that potion, which was my finest work, worth a full gold, so that you wouldn’t go to the Hollow Root.

Sell it and live modestly, rather than going to a dying pit.

She thought it but didn’t speak it aloud.

"You’re alive... that’s all that matters, then."

"Apparently."

"I heard nobody returned once someone entered there..."

"Well, I did, and I brought something for you."

For a moment the surprise in Bela’s eyes seemed to vanish as she stared at the crystals piled up in the bag in front of her.

But as she reached for them and the light from the lamp above struck them, her eyes sharpened and her entire posture changed.

"These are... it... it shouldn’t be possible."

Bela carefully lifted the first of the samples from her bag and, with trembling hands, placed it under the nearest lamp in the workshop. She twisted and turned it to and fro, eventually angling it so it cast the perfect shadow on the floor.

She finally brought the object close to her eye to get a good look at it.

"Impossible..."

These all seemed to be whole crystals, of various sizes, and all of them were being handled with great care. As she selected each one, her breathing seemed to speed up.

"These are... this can’t be right."

"Hmmm?"

"There’s no impurity. No impurity at all."

She looked up at him, then back down.

"None."

Next crystal, then the one after that.

"Almost perfect," she whispered. Then she moved on to another. "A crystal this old should have fractures. Mineral contamination. Mana erosion. Something. Anything. But these..."

Allan leaned against the edge of the table, arms folded. "That’s why I brought them to you."

"How many did you find?"

"Enough."

"Enough for what?"

"To keep you very busy."

She stared for a long second. Then a short, almost disbelieving laugh escaped her.

"You’re serious. You’re giving this to me? Why?"

"It’s worthless in my hands, but in yours, it will change lives, change the world."

She carefully set the last of the crystals down on the table and wiped her hands on her apron.

"I’ll identify them... No charge."

Allan shook his head immediately. "You know what, charge me."

Bela paused. "What?"

"I said, charge me."

"But you’re my benefactor. I really can’t, my conscience can’t..."

"That’s exactly why, Miss Bela."

She frowned. "Why?"

"Because if I keep giving you things for free, and you keep doing the same for me, eventually neither of us will know what anything is worth."

Bela looked at Allan as if he were a stranger speaking a foreign language. Allan’s hand came down on the table surface in front of him, his two fingers tapping once on the wood.

"Friends give things away, but partners, partners keep accounts."

The word settled between them.

"Partners?"

"Indeed. You see what I’m trying to say, Miss Bela?"

Something shifted in her expression. The unease and awkward gratitude that had lingered ever since the first silver coin had been handed over seemed to fade. In its place was something much cleaner and sharper: interest.

"Then, as partners, you’d like to see this."

She went into the back room. He could hear her rummaging through cabinets, opening and shutting doors, glasses and flasks clinking together.

A few minutes later she reappeared, a stack of parchment and a small wooden board, already half covered in notes, in her hands.

She placed the first sheet of parchment in front of him.

[Basic Healing Potion, Improved Formula]

Allan’s fingers went white from gripping the parchment. The changes were all so precise. He read through them again. The cleaner distillation ratios would make a huge difference.

The substitution for one of the ingredients was also brilliant. He had tried that before, but it always seemed to increase waste rather than cut the effective ingredient.

Bela had found a way to use it and increase the amount of effective ingredient at the same time.

And the note on temperature control was something that would have taken most alchemists months of trial and error to come up with.

She’s fast.

A faint chime sounded inside his head.

[Investment Opportunity Detected.]

[Target: Bela]

[Previous Investment: 1 Silver]

[Current Return: Improved Formula]

[Potential Future Return: HIGH]

The silver he had given Bela had opened a door. She had walked through it and brought back something more valuable than his original coin. Now the door was wider, and another investment was waiting on the other side.

He looked at the young alchemist. She was already turning to a fresh sheet of parchment.

"Bela. Let’s start our journey from here."

"Your formulas." He pointed at the parchment. "My warehouses. My capital. And your materials."

Bela’s eyes widened as she read the words, and she stared at Allan with a shocked expression. "Your formulas. My warehouses. My capital. And your materials." She repeated the words as if she couldn’t believe them.

"Not yet," Allan said, then shook her hand vigorously. "I want to build a business around them. Together with you, as partners," he finished, and sat down, dropping into his chair as if his legs had given way beneath him.

Silence again. She looked down at the improved formula, then back at him.

"You really mean that?"

"I don’t make investments I don’t believe in."

A small smile played at the corner of her mouth. She picked up her pen from the papers in front of her and put it down again. She stood up from her seat, her hand reaching out to be shaken across the table.

"Then... I suppose we have a deal, Mr. Allan."

He shook it. "Indeed we do."

The following days moved faster than the ones before them.

The mansion was to be remade from the foundations up. Cracked walls of old plaster were torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

Floors were ripped up, and the dust filled spaces below were cleared of years’ worth of debris and rodents.

The simplest of furniture for the simplest of rooms was sourced, brought in, and set up to create the basic groundwork of a living space fitting a mansion of such standing.

There was finally movement at the Oakwood estate, the very place where Allan had woken up to find himself in a completely foreign world.

As each day dawned, the mansion would start to come to life. Men with tool belts busily fixed cracked plaster and patches of missing tile.

Newly cleaned floors were swept and furniture hauled into freshly painted rooms, where brand new simple furnishings waited to be put together.

Meanwhile, over in the abandoned warehouses on the edge of the estate, the doors were forced open, the roofs mended, and the floors cleared of years of dust and rat droppings.

Bela continued to work in her workshop, testing, refining, and making new potions with his crystal. An improved healing potion was the first of three new potions Bela created within the week. Two more variants, one with a longer shelf life, the other with a faster onset but shorter duration of effects, were also created by the alchemist.

Allan watched all of it.

No, he was not going to be a micromanager. He would sit back and watch the flow of coin entering the estate.

He would watch to see when deliveries of various supplies would arrive. He would watch for the various frictions that arose and then disappeared as people worked to resolve them.

The first three days were chaotic. A variety of supplies arrived in no particular order. A large quantity of cores was delivered but labeled incorrectly. A carriage arrived with a broken axle on the way back from the market.

Allan was sitting in his office, a space that had once been cluttered with empty shelves and a dusty desk. Now the room was filled with ledgers, contracts sealed with red wax, and a growing pile of gold coins.

236 gold.

Not bad, he thought, sitting back in the chair, in the newly furnished office of the old Oakwood Manor.

Then the System spoke.

[Investment Network Updated.]

[Current Partners: 4]

[Potential Return: Increasing.]

His smile widened. "So it really works."

He stared at the notification until another one replaced it.

[New Investment Opportunity Detected.]

[Target: Arclight Business Venture]

[Initial Capital Required: 100 Gold]

[Current Capital: 236 Gold]

The smile vanished.

"One hundred?"

He leaned in closer to the floating text, obviously looking at "Arclight." This business belonged to House Arclight. Meaning Amelia Arclight. The future Dark Saint.

"Is it happening already?"

Lira, sorting documents at the side table, looked over. "Master?"

"Oh, it’s nothing."

The System had never offered me any empty opportunities. What could be on the other side of that number that would be worth all he was worth?

"Lira."

"Yes?"

"Set aside one hundred gold for me, please."

She blinked. "One hundred?"

Seris had been sorting through her own stack of merchant notes across the room. Now she looked up. "So then why are we setting it aside?" she asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.

"Because my skill, my precious skill, which gave us the wealth of the Hollow Pit, told me to."

Seris stared. "That’s your financial strategy? Believing in a skill?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Haa... wonderful," Seris said, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her hand. "We finally have money, and you’re already planning to throw a hundred gold at something you won’t even explain."

"I’m not throwing it away, Seris. It’s investment."

"That’s what you said about Bela."

"But that worked, didn’t it?"

Seris narrowed her eyes. "Yes, once, one time among many."

"Once is enough, you know, to make it big."

Lira tried to stifle a laugh, but it escaped her. Seris shot her a dirty look.

"Don’t encourage him."

"I’m... I’m not."

"You are."

"I’m really not."

Seris’s expression had softened. "Still... we should save some."

Allan tilted his head. "Why?"

"Because we need to. The mansion is repaired, but there are still expenses. The business needs capital. We need food. Equipment. Weapons." She hesitated. "And..."

"And?"

"...You promised." Her fingers gripped the edge of the table.

Allan stiffened in surprise as the smile suddenly fell from his face. The room seemed to fall into silence.

Lira seemed to be trying to disappear into the back of the room as Seris kept her eyes fixed on the floor.

"...Oh," Allan muttered.

Lira looked down at her hands, clenched into fists. Her face was bright red.

"You said..."

"I remember," he replied.

"You clearly didn’t. Burying yourself in more and more work."

"I was... busy."

"You’ve been busy for an entire week."

Allan saw their tired eyes. He didn’t need to think twice about what was making them so sad.

"That’s fair."

He sat back down and let out a long breath. He hadn’t forgotten, for the simple reason that he did care.

Yet he had forgotten, for the same reason he’d been so occupied with the Hollow Root, with the dragon, with the previous player’s trail, with the new business, with Bela’s formulas for the various items, and with the System’s quiet notifications of the various things happening around him.

He stood.

"I’m sorry."

Both women looked at him.

"Really." He inclined his head slightly. "It’s my mistake."

Seris blinked. Clearly Allan’s apology was the last thing she had expected. He stood up and straightened.

"But I have a solution."

Lira’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. "What... solution?"

Allan smiled. "We go to bed early."

Seris stared. "Huh! That’s your solution?"

"Hm?" Allan walked toward them. "And I’ll hug both of you."

Silence.

Lira’s face went red. Seris’s eyes widened.

"Master..."

"Really." He spread his arms. "I promised. Right?"

Neither moved, and Allan waited.

Lira looked at Seris. Seris looked back at her. Then, in a barely audible whisper, Lira said, "Is this happening?"

Seris seemed scared the two of them would do something sexual. She didn’t know what would happen.

Allan looked disappointed. "You two are making this far more complicated than it needs to be."

Seris finally stood. "Master..."

"Hm?"

She pointed at him. "If you make this weird..."

"I won’t."

"If you say anything inappropriate..."

"I won’t."

"If you try anything—"

"I won’t."

She narrowed her eyes. "You swear?"

"I swear."

Lira slowly approached Seris and, in a hushed whisper, said, "He’s surprisingly obedient tonight."

Seris nodded once. "That worries me more."

Allan heard both of them. "I can hear you."

"Good."

He sighed again. "Come here."

They didn’t say anything to each other, and Allan found himself feeling their warmth. He wanted to comment on how soft their chests felt, but he didn’t.

He just closed his eyes.