Artifacts 4 Cash

"Our new work station. Just recently put in, each part is big enough for you all to work comfortably while making your own circles. Currently, no one else works here, that's how new it is, but we plan to fill it soon. You can work here for now."

"Do you understand how depressing this seems? Working in a heavily locked basement for cash."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't imagine what it was like before I changed it. People were all crammed in, fifty people worked here at once. The previous owner simply said this way everyone could learn from each other. Obviously, it didn't work quite so well, people began stealing and mixing up tools or weapons. Fights broke out all the time. Just try to imagine what that looks like in a room of uncomfortable, amateur circle creators possibly with inferiority complexes that have a bunch of weapons. Bloodbaths were weekly but the owner continued it, trying to put in new rules and things they didn't follow just trying to cut costs. An absolute idiot. But now I own these last two floors and some of the higher ones."

"Who was the old owner?"

"Some idiot the Vanes hired. I think it was someone from the Vonnear family. Always the incompetent bunch."

"So do the Vanes own this place?"

"They bought the building but I am the real manager."

"When you sell my items, will it be considered the weapons sold by Vanes or the hunters association?"

"No, it won't be the Vanes credit. You aren't a contracted worker, just a business partner so we will be selling your items from an independent store, which brings me to my next point, what do you want to name it and where would you like it. It won't cost you anything to set up the store, we have empty spaces and leftover parts from old stores to make a new one for you. You can design and do whatever you want to it."

"I don't have a preference about its design or placement, just as long as it sells. I guess name it… Slimes Armory."

"Are you sure you want to name it slimes armory? Slimes are considered one of the weakest creatures on the planet, almost no one wants to hunt them because they do nothing, naming an armory after it might not help. It's like naming a restaurant after cockroaches."

"Yeah, I want to name it after slimes. We can change the perception of slimes for the entire world."

"Alright, this is your choice." Dives shrugged. "Also, you won't make as much money if we simply give you items for you to carve circles into, obviously, so the room next to you also has a blacksmithing station for you to make your own weapons and armor."

He sat himself down in one of the rooms and set up his workstation. Once he got into his work, his surroundings disappeared from his thoughts, they became simply hazy backgrounds, he didn't even notice anything happening around him. The only things in existence were his hands and tools.

The first thing he did was to make everything on his mind since coming here, what would happen is he put the gravity circle, one of the few circles he wasn't able to decipher so far, and the speed circle he learned in the fight against Sato. he placed each circle on opposite sides of the blade and pumped mana into both of them. The result was a much faster swinging sword, the gravity circle pulled it down while the speed circle simply helped the person swing faster and the gravity circle to move faster. It seemed the speed circle couldn't be used on inanimate and dead things, using it on metal did nothing.

He continued messing with the gravity circle and changing around a few characters in the circle, creating unknown effects. An hour passed. Then two, then three, and it was nighttime before he even knew it. Dives came occasionally to restock his materials and put price values on his items. Zeeth asked Black if Dives was ever lying about what he thought the price was. There was only one time when Black said Dives was feeling a little suspicious and did try to lower the price but after he was confronted, Dives didn't try to lie again. And just like that, he spent two days non-stop working. During his two days, many of his items were flying off the shelves, even his scary face shield was bought off as a gag gift. The buyer liked it so much he wanted to give Zeeth his personal thanks and sent him a chocolate cake from his personal bakery.

"Maoh! Jich cake ish amashing!" Zeeth chewed through his mouth as he spoke.

"Ugh, don't speak with your mouth full." Dives looked at the brown mush in his mouth in disgust. "Here, I also need to give you this."

Dives gave him a small pin with an insignia of a slime covered in armor and weapons. "This is the logo for your store, show this to the sellers and you can take any of the artifacts that you made by yourself since you are the owner. Anything made with materials from us, labeled with a V sticker, you get a 10% discount, which also means you get 10% less in the end profits so use sparingly."

"Thanks." Zeeth took the insignia and studied it.

Back in Magnator, Meres came back from a teleporter. Page was meditating on the tip of a sharp sword, standing on the sharp point with a single toe while pulling in as much mana into his body as he could. 'Finally, I have some time to use my futuristic knowledge.'

"Page! I'm back." Meres shouted. "You're still doing your weird meditation?"

"Yes, grandpa." Page opened his eyes and a small blue dot glowed from the center of his eyes, small enough not to be noticed normally but still there. They faded away soon after he hopped down from the sword tip and the mana calmly swirling around him burst apart and returned to the raging mana around them. "I've gone a bit further."

Two days after he started working in the underground room, he had about 300,000 styrs in his card, something Meres gave back to him in the pouch.

"Zeeth," Dives said to him as he was taking a lunch break, "is there anything you'll need for the next two or three days?"

"Just food and stuff, can't really think of much else. Why?"

"Great, because I will be leaving for a while I'm not sure how long but I need to deal with some company issues that arose elsewhere in the city and I might be gone for a few days. If you need anything, ask Fion."

Fion was a tall warrior woman in heavy armor. She didn't look at him but she stared straight ahead with a serious face.

Dives left, Fion went to stand guard at the entrance and Zeeth went back in the closed room to study the blue shield he received from the dwarves, trying to learn more about magic circles from that. He had been trying to figure out what to do with it for hours and learned a lot of circles to dispel and reflect magic. It was incredible that they all somehow worked together on this one shield, it was like trying to get a hundred different size gears with different shapes and functions all to work miraculously to do one thing all on one shield.

'What could be missing from this?'

The next thing he wanted to do, and it was something he's been wanting for a while, was to study the table Afir made. It wasn't glowing so there were no gems, the magic was made by circles. All this time, he has been unable to find them and that was due to them having been covered. He asked Dives how the circle covering thing worked and it was a simple process of rubbing the same material over the circle with mana, simple but effective and very difficult to find without breaking anything. For a table Afir made with Faber, it would be even harder to find.

He spent most of his time trying to find the circles and writing in the book what he thought about them. Writing in the book was surprisingly helpful in letting him think. And as he thought, it was nearly impossible to tell where the circles were. But the table seemed to know what he wanted and used the strings to recreate where the circles were and what they looked like so he wouldn't have to do them up. The circles drawn on the table were the most complex he had ever seen, even more so than the shield. There were circles to allow it to move, more circles to let it use mana and read the surroundings, and circles that he didn't understand but he assumed they were circles that allowed the table to absorb and grow depending on what it burned.

He kept carving those circles onto pieces of rubble and parts he was intending on keeping. Of course he wasn't going to sell these magic circles that Afir gave him as a gift, he put nothing from the table or the shield onto anything he wanted to sell and destroyed any circle he thought he might lose to others and kept the few that seemed to hold importance or was difficult to make. There were many circles he wasn't even able to recreate, especially not with the large tools and his fingers that he had.

There was a single circle he was having trouble understanding, it was the smallest and most complex circle by far and it didn't seem like anything he had ever seen so far. There were characters falling outside the outer circle, something he never tried or learned about before. He carved it onto a rock and challenged mana through it but it all fell out the outer stems and did nothing. During the two days, he considered opening the coffin he was still carrying around but he remembered how much blood went in and didn't want to release it all here. But curiosity for the blood slime took him over.

'What's the worst that can happen? I'll just control the blood and put it back if it becomes too crazy.' he cut the tip of his finger with a sword and touched the coffin. The tightly sealed lid steamed and popped off. Tendrils of blood crawled out and moved the lid away. It was like opening a chest, the power from the coffin instantly woke Black straight up and filled the room with magic. Purple light shone onto his face, filled with awe and surprise.

In the middle of the chest, the blood slime held itself in midair like it was meditating, and all around it, rocks, gems and dead animal carcasses floated around in condensed form like an ocean of blood filled with rocks and dead bodies, except to Zeeth, they were all materials to work with.

It seemed that when the blood moved into the coffin, it dragged in all these other things as a result. It was quite literally like opening a treasure chest, all of these gems could be used to enhance items and the rocks and bodies could be used together to make items he could never do before. In the Dwarves records, there were quite a few lessons on how to properly use common animal parts like the skin or horns of most creatures.

Having gained all these items, filling his heart with joy, he plunged himself deeper into making items. He didn't shower, clean, or do anything else for days and hardly even noticed the time passing. He sharpened bones into amazing, thorned swords and covered them with other materials to enhance usability. If they were to be marketed, they not only needed to look fashionable, they also had to be easy to use and powerful. Had it only been for him, a simple but efficient design and strong material were all he needed? The stench of blood overfilled the closed room but he didn't dare open it in case Fion smelled it.

Filled with excitement, he went over to the blacksmith station and quickly began working on taking apart the creatures. His table quickly got to dissecting all the dead animals, which was a lot more than he thought since the blood and the rocks falling from the dungeon killed many more than they had, and they had to both work to quickly dissect them. Leftover blood was given either to the table to cook and absorb its power or the chest for more blood to control dried-out guts that he couldn't use for material or sustenance were given to the blood slime.

Using magic to help him transform the materials and bent them the way he wanted, he easily produced twenty high-quality items the first day. He made a few swords, a couple of bone spears, even some masks, some chest plates, and some others. He wrote in his book the things he made and what they did, going into detail what he thought they could do, which kept sparking more ideas for crazier weapons.

The book was surprisingly already halfway full, drawing ideas for circles and writing what they did. He didn't put anything too complex or anything important from the table or shield and kept those to himself.

"HHRRaaagh!" he yawned, stretching for the first time in hours. "Fion, I want to go buy more metal. Maybe something to eat too."

"What would you like? We can deliver it to you."

"No, I want to go to that bakery. Thank them for the cake."

"Alright."

"Sweet, this will be the first time in days that I will leave my bat cave."

"Bat cave?"

"It's a term from my home country. A catchphrase from a series."

He went out the doors and was greeted with two guards and a room far more crowded than before. People all around were using things he carved and wearing armor he made. During his few days at work, he went to the other room and made a few items for him to carve specific circles onto and he saw Arnold wearing one of those metal suits.

"Hey Arnold," he said to his back, "nice suit."

Arnold said to him, without looking at him, "yeah, one of the new suits of armor made by the Slimoury- you! What are you doing here?"

"Slimoury?"

"Yeah, the new store. I wouldn't expect poor people like you to know about it." Zeeth was even dirtier and covered in metal and wood dust.

"I know about it, isn't it called the Slime Armory?"

"It was shortened, saying the whole thing takes too long. Why am I even talking to you?"

"Alright, have fun. Oh, Cina!" he turned around and immediately bumped into Cina, her orange hair standing out in the crowd. Once Arnold heard her name, he turned around and looked for her as well, noticing her behind Zeeth.

"Hi, Zenith," she said. "Just, um, just buying a new pair of knuckle brasses." She was holding a pair of knuckle brasses from his store; it was one of his cheaper ones, a pair that only allowed spikes to protrude from the knuckle areas.