Chapter 58

“Pretty sure you’re never seeing me again. Goodbye Thera, this is my home now.”“We close in about five hours,” A friendly staff member said as they walked by.

“You close? Stonewalls guild never closes,” He asked, crestfallen.

“That’s mostly an adventurers guild,” Thera told him. “They’re always open in case of emergencies.”

“Ah, so lame,” In front of him were rows and rows of books on various topics, with all of the ones before him being in the public domain. There were shelves of the more popular patented ideas as well, but he wasn’t looking to spend money to use someone else's ideas in the things he would make and sell, so it was better at the moment to not even touch them and risk using one by mistake.

He asked for one of the guild staff to point him towards books on different materials and their properties, and he came away with five large volumes to flip through.

“You aren’t finishing all of those before they close,” Thera told him.

“Not even going to try to. I’m just going to flip through them to see if anything pops out. If this is going to be too boring you can head back Thera, I’ll probably be here until I’m kicked out.”

She shook her head. “I’ll stay, my parents are being a bit too comfortable acting like themselves around me at the moment. If I give them some space they may calm down a little.”

“Suit yourself.”

Ben cracked open the first book while Thera looked for something that she could read to pass the time, though Ben doubted how much luck she would have. She seemed to lean towards history and fiction, not technical manuals. Of course he never would have sat down to read anything like this himself if he wasn’t tossed into this world, now that it was his job it became significantly more interesting.

As he spent hours skimming through hundreds of pages he learned about numerous materials he would be interested in working with one day for their unique and interesting properties, but none matched what he was looking for. Sure there were plenty that seemed to be explosive in the right conditions, but Ben wasn’t even sure if saltpeter was an explosive chemical, or if it was something mined or organic for that matter, all he had was a name to go off of and for all he knew it was the process of combining it with charcoal and sulphur that made it work.

Once he closed the last volume he gave up. He wouldn’t be bringing guns to this world, at least not right now. Maybe he would see if Pelenia would help him send some letters to the various classmates he didn’t know how to contact to see if they could help him out at all, but for the moment he would just have to do his best not to let any other creatures sink their teeth into him. He put his books away, a bit dejected, before wandering through the isles for the last hour.

There were a lot of titles he found interesting that he decided he would be coming back to read later, and occasionally he found something that sounded intriguing enough that he needed to open it and give it a flip through, but he didn’t have the time to throw himself into his reading the way he wanted to. He kept a mental list of things to read later and went to find Thera.

She had been seated beside him, reading through a book despite what he had expected, and he got her attention.

“What did you find?”

She looked up and saw that they were about to start closing up, so she returned it to its shelf. “It’s ‘The use of earth magic spells in enchanting’. It was interesting but nothing that could really help me improve.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Well dad’s going to want to try practicing with me soon anyway so we’ll see how it goes. I wish I packed more than one staff.”

“Can’t we get you a new one in town to use?”

She shrugged. “I can, but aside from Falk’s, yours are probably the best that wouldn’t be disgustingly expensive.”

He thought, but he decided to keep that to himself and take it as a compliment. “Well thanks, my enchanting went up since I made your last one too so hopefully the next one I’ll make will be even better.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Even though her face was covered, he felt like she was smiling.

They joined her parents for dinner, though this time Karly and Glob were unavailable, and spoke about the plans for the immediate future.

“Since Ben seems to be a faster enchanter than I expected, I don’t have anything set up for you tomorrow and I was planning on giving you the following day to rest, so use the next two for whatever you’d like,” Pelenia told them. “I’m receiving reports from the various embassies though that their independent testing is showing the braces you’ve made today are working as advertised, and they want to start commissioning more from you immediately.”

“Wow, okay sure, but I haven’t really worked out a price for them, I don’t know what would be fair.”

“Not to worry, Falk recommended a price I feel is more than fair, perhaps a little too reasonable even, but I don’t think you’ll have any issue with it. Speaking of, I need to transfer you the money for the ones you’ve already made today,” With that the queen got up and walked over to Ben, tapping her card against his own.

He looked at the amount transferred and felt his eyes bulge, quickly doing some mental math. “This seems a bit high,” He said, in his heart feeling reluctant to part with the money he was just given. “At this price each one is enough to live off of for like a week.”

He prepared to return most of the money to Penelia, but she flat-out refused him. “There’s no issue, I’ve already deducted the cost of materials and labour for making the braces themselves. It works as advertised and it's significantly less cumbersome than a cloak, which can go for at least three times what we’re looking at selling yours for, mind you. Not to mention you’re currently the only person who can make them. Given the ease of production as soon as more people get the skill to make them the price will start going down, but for now this could still be considered low. Should your identity as the inventor ever be revealed though it should earn you quite a lot of goodwill with the various nations buying them,” What she didn’t say was that it was likely many of the nations had already started to investigate him. Since he elected to keep his identity a secret with the guild, if any nation tried to actively pursue him they would likely come into conflict, but it wouldn’t stop them from using this time to create the best sales pitch they could if he ever wanted to go public.

Ben felt dizzy. For an afternoon's work he had almost made enough to live for a year, if he included what he had left from the church and earned with Falk he was past that. With the queen talking about setting up more appointments he was uncomfortable in ways he couldn’t properly explain.

“Um, what should I even do with all this money?” He asked, a little unsure of himself, but Penelia seemed happy to help him out and put things in perspective.

“Ben it may seem like a lot of money now, and to an extent it certainly is a lot to get all at once, but there are plenty of purchases that could use it up just as fast. You could spend it all on a large payment for a house, or some rare items, or order materials you wouldn’t be able to acquire without that sort of capital. It’s a lot of money, but it could easily be gone in a flash so either use it up quickly to get it out of the way, or use it wisely, besides, it’s not like you’ll be able to sell them once you leave here if you plan on keeping your identity a secret.”

He didn’t understand what she meant by that at first before realizing she was right. If he was the only one who could make them then fitting the enchantment to each person would pretty obviously show who he was. Now that he was thinking about it, that was a huge issue in itself but Pelenia at least helped ease his concerns over his newly acquired wealth. Yes it was a lot of money to get at once, but it was nothing compared to the millionaires and billionaires of earth, who would make that much in a day or a week or a month, and surely there would be plenty of wealthy individuals in this world making far more than that. Considering he was with the queen of a nation and a spirit that could make rare magic metals essentially from nothing he suspected he was seated with two at the very moment.

“Okay you’re right, I may have gotten a bit overwhelmed. I’ll buy a couple things I was too poor for before and just save the rest for now until I have something worth doing with it.”

“Good boy, and of course if you want the money to keep coming in there’s always an option,” The queen told him with a smile.

“Oh?”

“Work for my kingdom,” She said, immediately shocking the boy and leaving him speechless. An issue his friend did not have.

“Mother!” Thera yelled. “Even if you know he’s the one making them, the guild isn’t going to like you trying to take someone who wants their anonymity.”

The queen only shrugged. “While it’s true that plays a part in it, there are plenty of other reasons to want the boy now that I’ve gotten my eye on him. An enchanter with that sort of speed is rare, and with an invasion coming someone who can add such incredibly high resistances to any armour would be a godsend. Frankly I should probably fire the diplomat who let such a promising young man slip through my fingers, though it looks like any nations going to your region made the mistake of looking at combat strength alone.”

“Don’t just fire people on your whims! And that doesn’t matter anyway, Ben likes his current life, right Ben?”

Thera turned to him and he nodded his head. “She’s right, thank you for the offer but I’ll have to decline, I still have a lot I want to learn from Falk anyway.”

“Quite alright,” She said happily. “Just remember the offers on the table if you change your mind in the future.”

The queen dropped the matter easily enough and soon they slipped back into casual conversation again, with mostly Thera catching up on what’s been happening in Anailia while she was away, when she asked a favour of her mom.

“My hair’s starting to get a little long, would you mind cutting it for me?”

"If you ever need a haircut in Stonewall I probably could help you out, Thera,” He cut in. “I don't know if it would be directly tied to my crafting but I'm sure some of the skills would cross over enough that I could manage."

She started fiddling with a strand that was just a bit past her shoulders. "I'm just used to having mom do it so I didn't consider it, but next time I’ll try and get you to do it if you don’t mind. It's a good way to make some extra money out there anyway."

"What? Why? How?" He couldn’t see a connection between getting a haircut and earning money, no matter how much he thought about it.

She thought for a minute before explaining. "I guess it shouldn't be a big deal if I tell you but do me a favour and keep it to yourself. My hair doesn't just look golden, it is gold."

Ben felt the gears of his mind start to shift and turn. "What? But then… Thera could I see one of your hairs real quick?" He asked with such earnestness that she plucked one without a fight.

He felt it in his fingers and examined it. He hadn't worked with gold before but he had felt hair. This had the right texture and feel to it when he moved it around in his hand, even after having been removed from her head it didn't immediately change to having more gold-like properties. It gave him an idea.

He went up to her, grabbed her shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes, surprising her with his sudden boldness. He had to do it though, he needed to sincerely convey himself to her.

"Thera," he spoke with a passion-filled voice that left everyone in the room wondering what he would say. "Let me use your body."