Mid Morning - Mid Winter : Atlas, Bahamut

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*Cl-link* *thud* The jingle of coins filled the air as I set a sizable bag on the table. "This should be everything left."

The ancient behind the desk stared at the bag in awe before quickly returning his gaze to me. "S-Sir, we have a new system, something called 'stretched payments', to allow you to pay in smaller amounts over a period of time if you wish to-"

"I have already spoken with the auction house and have promised to give them quite a lot of mythril to help alleviate costs, so I will pay the remaining costs in full."

What remained was about 250 royal gold, a bit below a third of my initial payment, but while it was still not a small sum, the auction house told me I could expect a very large portion of it to be covered by the mythril I promised to provide and sell through their auction once it sold over the next few days.

To an extent, it felt like a steal since their baseline was similar to the rate Atsáli paid, but at the same time, I had no reason to complain. -I just need to make a good bit of mythril over the next couple of days, and I can pay off the majority of what I spent...-

But while it was indeed a large amount of mythril that would take some time to create, I had no need to rush.

Finally exiting the room, I quickly met back up with my assigned butler and started making my way back to the storage room.

It had only been about an hour since I split up with Krystallo at that point, but while I knew she wouldn't have gotten herself into trouble, I couldn't help but be a little anxious about something happening.

But, of course, my worries were needless.

"Hehe~!"

As I neared the storage room, I could hear her innocent giggles, and as I rounded the corner, I was met with the view of a slender 16-meter-tall dragon laying while covered in jewelry and artifacts, wearing an expression of pure joy.

It was a sight that quickly alleviated some of my stress regarding the artifact and Ilios. "I thought you told Mother that you didn't want a hoard of treasure."

"Ack!" She immediately tensed up before popping her head up to see me. "I-I don't! I am simply appraising the quality of my new things!"

Seeing her deny it and turn her head away to expose even more artifacts on her horns, I wanted to laugh. "There is nothing bad about coveting riches. You should know better than me that it's a normal thing."

She quickly turned back to me with a pout. "But you don't!"

Finally managing to at least temporarily shake off my thoughts, I let out a light chuckle. "Haha, I do. I simply don't act on it unless it has some real worth."

She immediately hesitated before giving me a quizzical look. "I-In that case, I will..." She quickly looked at the empty boxes around her before using her aura to roughly straighten them up and take off almost every jewel and artifact she was wearing, with the exception of a select few.

Once she finished, she was only left with a handful of the artifacts she had bought during the auction, but for the most part, they were all quite valuable. -What a good selection...- But while I was impressed, I could only sigh at her unyielding desire to use me as her guide. "Haah..." -If I jumped off a cliff, I bet she'd jump after me...- But after a moment, I simply motioned over the maids by the entrance. "Please help put the things she isn't wearing into their respective boxes and prepare them to be picked up later today. Some people from my family will come by to pick it all up."

They all nodded and bowed in unison before walking out into the room and beginning to order things.

They were all quite efficient, but before they could finish, Krystallo changed back to her humanoid form and asked one of the maids to pack the artifacts she wanted to bring home herself, and we finally made our way back outside.

Once we eventually got to our carriage, the butler who had stuck to us throughout the day promptly loaded all of the boxes and let our escort back inside the carriage with us, but as we were about to close the door, he gave us one last bow.

"Sir, Madam, I do hope you have been satisfied with our service throughout the auction thus far. However, we will be sure to provide even better service should you return in the future." As he straightened back up, he looked straight at me. "As for the Lord, our madam has told me that you will return in two days, so we will prepare for your arrival accordingly."

Krystallo immediately shot me a curious look before I waved him off. "Please don't stress it. I would like to avoid making a scene."

He immediately gave me a surprised look before lowering his gaze to the ground with a humble smile. "As you wish."

Finally closing the door, the rest of our escorts boarded the outside of the carriage, and we made haste back through the gate and quickly made it back to the estate.

Once we eventually got there, several maids came to help unload the carriage and retrieve the rest of our things, while Krystallo took a select few boxes and darted inside to show Mother.

But, as expected, while it took a few minutes, I inevitably caught an earful about spending over 800 royal gold, which, even after explaining how I was going to pay it off, didn't ease at all.

The next thing I knew, I was laying in our small backyard next to a mound of dark blue mythril as the sun began to set. "Phew..."

In order to make sure I would actually be able to pay it all back on time, Mother forced me to make all of the mythril as fast as I could without cutting corners, saying I must deliver it before the 'raw materials' auction, which was the following morning.

But while it was a pretty busy 10 or so hours, I felt quite accomplished when I was done.

"How beautiful..." Chloe spoke under her breath with a look of awe as she held a smaller piece of mythril in the sunlight and watched it shimmer. "So would this be dark-grade mythril?"

I quickly nodded. The mythril was an extremely deep blue color that almost appeared black depending on the lighting, hence its name, but while its color alone made it a very high grade, when based on strength, it would score exponentially higher, according to Atsáli, even putting it among the highest grades in Bahamut. -But I guess that is to be expected considering how I make it...-

Finally sitting up, I motioned a butler near the estate's back entrance over and asked him to bring out some people to move it all before promptly gathering my things and walking back inside with Chloe and Ilios.

Although it took a while, my stress and anxiety about Ilios had subsided enough to allow my curiosity to return, and with it came my urge to look into something specific.

*Puff* As I sat down on the cushion in my room, the air quickly started to cool, and I let out a visible breath. "Hooh..." Using my aura, I took a small black object off of a shelf near the door and moved it in front of my face.

*Vwoom* It was the Acardi artifact I took from Kaelallan. -Let's see what you really are.. shall we?-

Carefully inspecting it a few more times, I triple-checked every device inside it for any damage or corrosion, even at an atomic level, but shockingly, it was quite minimal. -Some metal connections came loose or broke off, and it looks like there was some corrosion around.. what I think used to be a capacitor, but that should be easy to rebuild and replace...-

Looking over the artifact a couple more times, I worked to fix and tidy everything I could, but as I was wrapping up my repairs, I started to question whether turning it on would even be a possibility.

Within the black box, there were countless devices, some of which I had seen or could recognize and others I couldn't, but throughout all of them were runes.

Those runes were all individually critical for the function of each device, essentially working as cogs in each machine, but while I could gather enough context clues to fix the runes for the devices I could recognize, the others would have required me to guess until something miraculously stuck.

But thankfully, I had a better way to do things. -None of them look critical.. some of them even have bypass cables... What if I just activate them?-

Inside many of the devices were switches that would connect the main circuit to tiny insulated cables that simply looped back to the main circuit rather than continuing into the other devices.

Assuming they were all there for emergency bypass, such as if that module had an issue and couldn't be activated, I manually clicked over all the switches, and only left the modules I was confident in still connected.

-Alright... That should be everything...-

Finally giving it one last look over, I cleaned up and released my control over the final rune, a tiny antimatter rune that took up the entire back of the device.

*vwowowoom* The flow of mana in my room changed in an instant.

-Everything looks good so far...- Carefully watching every detail, I made sure there were no remaining issues with the battery and patiently waited for it to fill.

But once it reached about 75%, a magnet in the battery clicked over a switch that instantly activated the tiny reactor within the phone. *click-hummm*

I jolted slightly at the click of the circuit before a faint hum filled the room.

But I didn't have time to think.

In an instant, a wave of electricity coursed through the reactor's cables and into the circuit board, and while I carefully watched it all through my aura, a moment later, my eyes were met with a bright light shining through the device's black shell. -H..Huh?!-

That was when a somewhat robotic voice met my ears. "Tampering detected. Attempting to resolve abnormalities."

*CLICK* The sound of every emergency switch opening simultaneously made my body tense and my mind freeze in an instant. -WAIT WHAT?!- *VWOOOM* I slammed all the aura I could into it instantaneously before promptly opening and jumping through a gate. *Vwoop*

Silence filled my now-empty room in an instant.

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