Sol’s eyes were trained on the group of Knights being blasted away by An. Beads of sweat broke out after seeing how rough An was with the Knights. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she made the right decision. Regardless, the Knights appeared to be enjoying it in some strange fashion. Perhaps the unusual challenge of meeting someone exceedingly powerful compared to them?

Regardless, Sol turned her eyes from the training men and onto the samples of gear laying beside her. Initially, Sol was only capable of refining the Knight’s swords to become abnormally sharp. In fact, they became so sharp the whole regiment requested custom made sheaths that used friction on the flat side of the blade to hold it rather than the simple leather wrap.

More than once, a blade slid straight through the side of the sheath and nearly injured the Knight wielding it. Rather than allow his men to be injured, Sir Leory denied his men the weapons until the custom ordered sheaths arrived.

Despite the troubles her modifications brought, there was no denying the advantage they brought in combat. Beyond doubt, Sol understood that her escort team survived the 500 man ambush in large part due to the excessive weapons.

Although her cognitive model was running almost all the time, Sol found her progress to be excruciatingly slow ever since her initial success in Body Refinement. Small steps were still steps, however, and Sol was now able to feel the outline of her soul.

Magic was slowly collecting within her soul and there was a semi-viscous resistance whenever she tried to manipulate it. With a bit of practice, Sol was capable of exuding a small amount of magic from her system.

Many attempts later, Sol managed to gain a small degree of control over the extruded magic. Sol took a deep stare at a piece of leather armor laying on her lap. Her spiritual awareness wrapped around it and she began the process of extruding some magic to work with.

As she recalled An’s example, Sol manipulated the strand of magic into a runic shape and used her spiritual awareness to etch it like a brand into the leather armor. Her focus relaxed and she examined the leather to see if her efforts had any results.

Lifting the leather armor up, she intended to rotate it and test its durability; however her excitement was destroyed near instantaneously. The moment she lifted the leather above her chest, the material sparkled and then collapsed on itself, dissolving into dust.

Clearly, something happened. Despite her best efforts to examine the remains with her spiritual awareness, she couldn’t understand what happened. Her eyes glanced over the dozens of leather straps next to her and her determination hardened.

Through the next few days, Sol made it a point to purchase vast amounts of leather from the open market and experiment. Her efforts only provided her small gains and by the end of the 3rd week, Sol finally managed to embed ‘something’ into the leather without tearing it to pieces.

If you could call it success, then there was some success. What satisfaction that should have been plastered across her face was missing. Three weeks and she only managed to not destroy the gear. Rather than joy, there was only frustration.

More than once, Sol dragged An from his training and questioned him about the results. His answers, however, did nothing but leave her flabbergasted. The boy could create complex runes and activate them yet he had no idea how to actually embed it into materials.

After realizing An was honest when he first told her he had no experience in the art of Divine Refining, she was only left with trial and error. Although she lost a lot of information, Sol eventually managed to split her attention enough to monitor the process with her spiritual awareness while also refining the item.

The extra information allowed her to understand the runes she initially attempted had overloaded the material. Magic reached out from the embedded rune like vines across the trunk of a tree. Wherever it touched destroyed the material. By the time the rune was ‘successfully’ embedded, the material was already a hollow representation of itself.

From her trial and error, Sol understood the problem lay in the material. After discussing it with An, she wasn’t sure how to take his response. There were conflicting emotions within her. After hearing her description and theory, An only responded.

“This realm has very little magic in it. The animals, plants, minerals, and everything else that constitutes this plane has adapted to the low magic environment. Injecting massive amounts of magic into something with little to no concept of it is the same as injecting lava into an average person. The whole purpose of having you cultivate the Unchained Queen Beast is to prepare your body as a container.”

In a way, his answer gave her a sense of pride as it gave her an objective view of her progress. Throughout her practicing of the cognitive model, there was little to suggest she was progressing. In contrast however, she felt powerless to boost the strength of her Knights.

By suggestion, Sol tried to ‘water down’ the magic in the rune she embedded. The results were mixed. Without enough magic in the rune, Sol struggled to give it structure and even when she managed to form it, there was little to prevent it from collapsing on itself.

Repeated experiments allowed her to embed the rune into the leather armor, but there was a real question as to if the rune was functional, if it retained its original purpose, or what its purpose even is. Though she did try to learn from An, it only took her a few attempts to realize that An was an instinctual learner.

The boy explained the feeling to her and how he altered the pressure of his spiritual awareness to construct it. Such anecdotes were nearly useless to Sol. She eventually gave up on the boy and sent him back to be a punching bag for the Knights.

Once again, the trial and error process continued until she managed to create a rune that activated into something resembling a shield. There was nothing fancy about the rune and it even failed to activate a few times instead choosing to collapse in on itself and knock Sol to her butt from the pressure wave.

The few successful activations solidified the magic in the air in front of it for a split second. Although it was questionable how it would be activated once embedded or if it would even be worthwhile considering the enemy’s attack would have already landed when it activated, Sol still attempted to embed it for practice.

It was still peaceful and although she was turning through material at a terrifying rate, money was something Sol never lacked and the merchants selling to her were needed in future plans. Killing two birds with one stone was always a profitable move and so Sol made sure to progress her plans while also practicing.

Speaking of plans, Sol wasn’t the only Reviarra member pushing forward. Lord Christopher had returned to his university and started socializing more frequently with the aristocratic successors. It was questionable on how genuine he was to each of them, however he always ensured to leave a good impression while also collecting their opinions.

Near the end of the 3rd week, Duke Reviarra received a letter from his son with a list of names suggesting his initial findings. The Duke reviewed the list and filtered out a few if they didn’t meet his criteria.

The Reviarra household was looking not just for allies, but also for enemies and the neutral parties of the future. Many things needed to be taken into account. Although successors have their own opinions, there’s nothing preventing the 2nd, 3rd or even the 4th son from succeeding their family.

As such, Duke Reviarra made sure to limit their initial candidate list to those households with only one inheritor and whose family was in a position of influence. The type of influence they held was rather broad as Sol’s plans encompassed everything from economic movement to technological proliferation.

Unsurprisingly, Duke Reviarra noticed King Blonsall asking for his opinion less often in court. It wouldn’t be long until the other ministers noticed the abnormality. Perhaps the one good news is that while King Blonsall wished to remove the Duke privately, there was no public motive for him to act on.

As such, the King is forced into a strange balance of whittling away Duke Reviarra’s strength while also maintaining a degree of shameless peace. Regardless, Duke Reviarra could care less. He had already fallen out with the King and was following the motions until the masks were torn off.

Following in her husband’s steps, Duchess Reviarra started attending socials more frequently. Originally, she was more reserved in order to not hear as much vitriol about her daughter’s mercantile activities. However, to her surprise, she found there were many noble ladies who respected Sol.

While society might frown upon a noble woman being a merchant, there would always be the inner voices of the suppressed that leaked out in various ways. Beyond doubt, Iridescent changed Blonsall Kingdom for the better. Few women shopped elsewhere for clothing, perfumes, or medicine.

Not only was Iridescent successful, the sheer volume of money behind Sol was astounding for someone her age. At 10 years old, Sol as an individual was in fact, much wealthier than most aristocratic families. The revelation of her daughter’s success and how her image has changed in the social circles nearly brought tears to the Duchess’ eyes.

Despite the revelation, she kept her agenda in mind. Utilizing her position as Sol’s mother and a secondary owner of Iridescent, Duchess Reviarra started befriending the female leaders of the major families with small favors and perks.