“Interesting!” Claud stared at the nine skillstrips that were sitting in front of him, which had been inscribed in three different ways. The top two skillstrips had Cleanse, the middle two skillstrips had Purification, and the last two skillstrips contained Ablution.

All of them had varying effects. According to his Omniscience (False), Cleanse removed all foreign effects on the user. In contrast, Purification removed all negative effects on the user, while Ablution would block the next negative effect on the user. Each of them had their own niches, although Claud didn’t quite understand why there was only one difference between Cleanse and Purification.

Whatever the case, however, what was most interesting was that fact that these six skillstrips actually came from his Will of Purity. Claud had been making a skillstrip when he noticed that the spiritual structure of Will of Purity could actually be broken up, or rather, he could separate its spiritual structure into six pieces.

They were mirror images of each other, so the resulting product was six skillstrips, with a total of three different skills.

“This is really fascinating,” Claud muttered.

Lily, who was sleeping on his back for some reason, stirred slightly. “What’s interesting?”

“The skillstrips,” Claud replied. “I now have six skillstrips; two for Cleanse, two for Purification and two for Ablution.”

“Huh?” She straightened her back. “How did you do that?”

“Well, I noticed that the spiritual structure of Will of Purity seemed like it could be broken up, so that’s what I did.” Claud jiggled his shoulders, which was a far harder feat than it normally was. “As a result, I got six skillstrips. In a day, I can probably churn out a hundred or so from a single skill alone…”

Lily looked at him blankly. “If we do this for a whole day, that’s over a hundred skillstrips, right?”

“Exactly.” Claud folded his arms. “To be honest, I think we should just purchase Elysia wood. My rate of production is going to be off the charts anyway. If I use normal paper to store them, it’s going to be wasted.”

“How about some Elysia paper too?” Lily asked. “That should be able to last for a whole month, right?”

“Right!” Claud clapped his hands. “That’s a great idea! We’ll need to buy some, though.”

“I bought over eight hundred pages, so it’s fine. Every page can make a total of twelve strips…hmm.”

“What’s wrong?” Claud asked.

Lily got up and rummaged through her bag, before pulling out a piece of paper. Turning it such that the long side was now vertical, she tore it into half and handed one piece to Claud. “Inscribe your Will of Freedom on this half of the paper.”

“Okay.” Claud did as he was told, and within seconds, a gorgeous pattern had been burned onto the paper. Lily examined it for a moment, folded it into three segments, and then folded it again vertically to produce six different pieces. “This should be Flight, and two other skills I don’t know about. Can you look at them?”

Claud nodded, and then looked through the six pieces. “Flight, Flight, Unimpeded Movement, Unimpeded Movement, Effortless Crossing and another Effortless Crossing.”

“Ooh. What does Unimpeded Movement do?”

“The user is unaffected by slowing effects and environment conditions,” Claud replied. “Effortless Crossing allows people to move without expending any stamina at all.”

“All these sound like great skills.” Lily rubbed her hands. “And more importantly, it seems that you can just inscribe those Will skills on half a piece of paper. This is quite convenient, isn’t it?”

Claud nodded his head. “Value for money and effort! What’s not to like?”

Smiling, Claud looked at his Will of Captivity, before wondering what skillstrips his skill would yield.

[Skill: Will of Captivity

Skill effects: When used, all designated targets within sight will be frozen in space for up to three days, unable to move their body or to use their mana.

Passive effect: The user gains the ability to break through frozen space.]

After checking the effects once more, Claud imprinted the skill onto the remaining half of the Elysia paper sheet, and then sliced it up evenly with his mana. The first two skills, as expected, yielded Binding Order, but the remaining two skills that he got were quite intriguing.

“Spatial Shackles and Mana Lock…how is Spatial Shackles any different from Binding Order?” Claud muttered.

“Well, at least we know what Mana Lock does.” Lily fiddled with the six skillstrips. “Still, now that you discovered something this convenient, we can totally open up shop now. Who knew that your skills are this awesome?”

She picked up the skillstrips and then pulled Claud to his feet. “Come on, let’s open up shop. It’ll be very suspicious if you continue to do nothing. Besides, there’s a sad little toddler that’s been waiting for us for some time.”

“One of those shadow babies?” Claud asked, tilting his head.

“Remember? You promised one of them that they can come here whenever he liked,” Lily replied. “You even fed some of my sweets and pastries to him.”

“Oh, yeah.” Claud jiggled his shoulders once more. “Let’s go say hi to the little guy, then.”

The two of them hung up the skillstrips for sale, and then flipped the sign and unlocked the door.

A little toddler waddled in a moment later, before hugging Claud’s leg.

“Huh, you’re really outside and waiting for us.” Claud wanted to pick the little guy up, but he wasn’t in the best state to be doing too much physical activity. It would be fine if he was picking up something, but this was someone — he didn’t want to accidentally drop a little baby.

“Up you go.” Lily carried the little toddler. “It’s our grand opening today, do you know that?”

The baby nodded, and Lily smiled. Bringing the tiny guy to the area behind the counter, she sat him down on the table and pulled out some packaged sweets and cookies from somewhere.

Lily was happy with feeding the little guy, so Claud simply leaned back and enjoyed the heart-warming scene, before thinking back to the past few days. The past two days had been insane. After a day of shock and awe at the God of Precision’s death, the three supreme powers of the world had jolted into action with a bustling urgency.

The Nihal Senate, which had arrived not too long ago, departed on some magical flying ship of theirs. Emperor Grandis had joined up with the divinities’ familiar spirits to investigate what the heck exactly happened and where the Omen had attacked from. As for Supreme Saran, he had mobilised all his troops and decided to search through Vacuos for some reason.

They hadn’t come knocking yet, but they would soon arrive here. This was why he was in such a hurry to set up shop here — if today was the grand opening, the two of them had to be busy setting up a bunch of things for the past week. Therefore, neither of them could be culprits in killing the Red God…probably, anyway.

In actual fact, Claud was banking on the possibility that the correct people could see his withered state. How could someone on the verge of death do anything?

Smiling to himself, Claud picked up a biscuit and fed the little guy gently.

The two of them were in the middle of tempting the restless little toddler with orange juice when the door to their shop opened, and a bunch of soldiers entered. There was this officious air around them, and more importantly, Claud didn’t recognise the insignia that sat on their sleeves.

The soldiers milled around the shop for a while, checking the various descriptions of the skillstrips that Claud had prepared, before the fellow with more medals walked over to the counter.

“You two are the owners of this shop, correct?”

Claud nodded. “How can we help?”

“Our records show that this shop was recently set up here,” the officer replied. “Due to extenuating circumstances, we need to subject the two of you to questioning.”

“What questioning?” Claud asked, his voice level. “Can we see the official instructions and edicts? Is this something Count Vacuos ordered.”

The officer produced a roll of golden paper, and then opened it. Those movements were smooth and practiced; clearly, he had done this a lot. “By order of Emperor Grandis, everyone who sees this edict is to conform with the expectations of inspection and submit to questioning honestly.”

Claud nodded at Lily, and then turned back to the officer. “Very well. Go ahead.”

Taking a deep breath, the two of them walked out of the counter area, a little baby toddling behind them. The officer looked at Claud, at Lily, and then at the little shadow baby, before chuckling.

“Little guy, it’s just a routine questioning. Don’t worry about your friends.”

Claud glanced at the officer again, who now seemed a bit more pleasant on the eyes. “Please, do go on ahead.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, sir.”