Pecking Order
It has been a few more days, and the Auction House started selling Potions of Focus as promised.
In essence, they were a high-end shop that had the actual auction only once a month, but this didn't stop them from becoming the most widely-known auction house in the Kingdom.
Their signature product, the Golden Space Pouch, was only there to attract customers with its unique effects.
The bulk of the sales was in less extravagant products, such as potions and magic equipment, but now that the Potion of Focus took to the stage, everyone else was considered secondary goods compared to it.
Gerald had a chest of gold delivered to the mansion, protected by ten guards and five of their most trusted servants. The chest was quite small but contained almost three thousand gold coins!
It was quite heavy too, for a chest small enough a man would be able to carry it under one hand. It was almost one hundred kilograms exactly.
"Guess I can retire now, this money is enough to keep a family going for a lifetime..." Gerald murmured as he dragged his hand through the gold coins in his room.
"Are you truly going to retire, master?" Sebas Tian stood with his head slightly bowed a few steps from Gerald. He was called by him a few minutes ago and was standing there since then.
"Haha, of course not! Now that I have gathered enough capital, I can finally truly start! I called you here because I need you to do a few things for me," Gerald said cheerfully, his eyes barely hiding his true thoughts.
What he wanted to do, was dive into the world of Runes. But to study and experiment with those things required money and resources. Although he collected blood from many dozen wild beasts as well as their cores, they were mostly of the Earth Element.
A few aquatic animals also fell under his hand, but they were too few for his liking.
"Although I don't like Ice magic that much, I have to say, those Ice Barriers look kind of nice… I would like to create some defensive spell scrolls, and maybe a few hundred Greater Fireball spell scrolls as well just in case?"
While the butler went on to scour through the city for the required resources, Gerald was busy coming up with ideas and blueprints for said ideas. He could afford to be wasteful with Earth Elemental spells, so that's what he started with.
He already had plenty of Thorns spell scrolls, and they were quite good at establishing a perimeter or a defensive line, so making a few more was not much of a difference.
With the ability to put his mind to paper, he could truly produce spell scrolls like a printer. As long as he had a working scroll in his mind, he could make it! Runemasters would probably cry when seeing their tedious and noble work be treated like making common book pages.
Of course, many knew how to write with Telekinesis, but not everyone could be as precise as he. The ability to visualize in your mind was extremely important when using complex magic.
Gerald mixed a whole bucket of blood with the Ether Crystals and slapped a stack of papers on the table. After getting ready and steadying his mind, the papers and the ink started moving on their own, with complex Runes and designs forming in seconds instead of hours!
And the entire process looked like an automated factory process, each step exactly the same, with only a pair of eyes watching it all like a hawk.
Knock, knock!
"Gerald?"Xilia poked her head through the door. Her voice sounded meek and embarrassed, her eyes looking down, but all that was gone as soon as she lifted her gaze.
Seeing the paper and blood flying around Gerald, her eyes enlarged with wonder and curiosity and she completely forgot why she came, "What are you doing?"
Gerald calmly breathed out and closed his eyes, the spell scrolls circling around him for a few more seconds to dry, before landing in a neat stack on the table.
He then took a deep breath and blinked a few times before simply answering, "Spell scrolls."
"Spell scrolls?" Xilia came close and looked at all those papers on the table.
"That's right," Gerald gently nodded. "You know what they are, don't you?"
Xilia took a piece of paper, looked at it, and frowned, "Of course I do, but…"
"But what?"
"Are you sure they work? I never heard of anyone making spell scrolls like this… Don't they require a lot of delicate work and time?" she questioned.
Gerald made a slightly smug smile, "Why don't you try it out and tell me?"
"Okay!" Xilia immediately agreed and prepared to active the spell scroll.
"Stop!" Gerald shouted and snatched the paper from her hand. "Not in the house! Are you trying to ruin my room?!"
Xilia blushed in embarrassment and lowered her head. "Sorry, I was too excited."
"Why are you here anyway?" Gerald asked and returned the Thorns spell scroll to her.
"Oh! I completely forgot!" Xilia slapped her forehead, "I wanted to ask you if you have any more of those Mana Elixirs? Now that Sera and Elly consumed theirs, they always beat me in a battle of endurance, it's not fair…"
"Oh, that…" Gerald laughed, "I was planning on giving it to you already, here you go." He handed her four vials of Mana Elixirs. "Two for you and two for Qiona, that should bring you on the same level."
Xilia gasped and her eyes sparkled, "Thank you, thank you so much! Muah!" She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and then ran away giggling like a small child.
Gerald stood there frozen for a second before giving a knowing smile and shook his head, sighing, "Bad idea dude, it never ends well…"
He sat back down, cleared his mind, and continued making spell scrolls.
Towards the evening Sebas Tian came back with some of the resources Gerald ordered him to find, so he could already start dabbling in other Elemental spells.
He wanted to focus on defense first, so Ice Shield spells were the first he started with.
Luckily Ice magic didn't have any chilling effect on the caster, at least if you didn't touch them, so the work went by quite smoothly.
Another few days went by like this, and Gerald spent most of the time figuring out how Rune combinations worked. He already made a few hundred Thorns spell scrolls and about the same number of Ice Shield spell scrolls.
He also invested some time and resources into making Fire spell scrolls, mainly simple Fireball scrolls and a few Greater Fireball scrolls, by using the little blood he had from the Minecrawler Queen.
He wanted to make a Fireball Runestone, but the material was not something just anyone could buy, so he could only sigh and try something else.
Still, he made ten of those spell scrolls, although weaker than his actual spell, doing only three compressions for a total of about 30MP.
"Eh, it's good enough I guess… Too bad my materials aren't able to hold more…" Indeed that was the case. The normal paper also had a limit on how much energy it could hold before combusting and turning to ash.
Those powerful spell scrolls, like the Fire Rain one, were made of animal hide or processed leather of a powerful beast.
During this time Gerald didn't train much, but he was still consuming Essence Cores daily. His strength slowly grew and he already crossed the threshold for Silver Rank 2!
'One rank-up every other week? That's fucking crazy!' Gerald mused.
The girls also progressed well, even without his constant teaching as they followed his advice, visiting the capital library and expanding their horizons.
Quona was overwhelmed by happiness from all the books, and from what he heard, she almost cried when it was time to go home, even though she was already practically a grown-up.