Chapter 15 - Management issues
Scarlett looked over some documents that were placed on the desk in front of her in her office in the Hartford family's mansion. These particular ones related to the appraised value of some of the artifacts and relics she'd gathered. Although Evelyne didn't like her much, the younger Hartford sister seemed to still uphold her promises and had helped Scarlett with getting in contact with a couple of appraisers as well as one of the local auction houses.
It had been almost a whole week since Scarlett finished dealing with the local criminal organization here in Freybrook and Count Knottley had announced his and her 'cooperative' involvement in the matter. Since then she had been busy with just trying to get a handle on the everyday matters of things, as well as going out on frequent excursions with Kat to look for and clear the dungeons she knew of in the area. So far they had actually found four of them—including the first one—which had surprised her some. She'd only been relatively certain of the location of two of them, after all. But that had been a welcome surprise, even though none of the other dungeons had been Zuverian ruins.
As this was a low-level area in the game none of the dungeons had any loot that was better than what she'd found in the Zuverian ruins, and even most of what they'd found wasn't especially good for her anyway, but she had still hoped it was worth something. As the player, you would just sell low-level equipment like that to some random trader and only get maybe a hundred or so solars—which was the empire's currency—for it, but the game's economy hadn't been particularly advanced or realistic. You could for example sell the bones of the enemies you killed to that same merchant for a dozen solars, or the plants you picked from the side of the road for maybe twice that. It had been a great game, but in the end, she wasn't planning on trusting the appraisals of a system where the only balancing done was probably in regards to ensuring the player didn't grow overly powerful too fast. As such, she had wanted to do some research of her own on the value of some of the game's equipment.
And it was good that she'd decided to double-check these things. Despite being comparatively low-level gear in 'Chronicle of Realms', many of the items she'd gathered were still moderately useful equipment, and some of them were even artifacts. For example, the [Plate of Torn Resilience] was a decent artifact she and Kat had found in an old abandoned troll cave a fair distance away from the city. It was a rare piece of equipment that she was pretty sure gave a decent boost to your stamina in exchange for your HP. Or whatever the equivalent was in this world. Guessing from the description she'd read it just cut into you and made you bleed slightly or something along those lines, although she hadn't bothered to test it.
As nice as it was finding these items, she only wished they'd been more useful to her specifically. The only item she'd actually chosen to keep for herself was a rare [Ring of Umbral Defiance] that heightened her resistance to all dark-type damage. Resistances were another thing she was unsure of how they worked in this world, and it was definitely a matter she should try looking into later on, but right now it was the closest thing she had to any real defense. She should probably do something about that. She had plans, but those were still a while away. At least she had the protection of Kat for the moment.
She moved aside a piece of parchment as she kept browsing through the papers in front of her. She had nine items she wanted to sell all in all, excluding the old Zuverian coins, and even the cheapest of those items had been appraised at a value of 1000 solars. If they were put up to an auction, she'd at a minimum earn 15000 solars just from the equipment even if she counted the cut an auction house was likely to take. And the Zuverian coins she'd gathered—which numbered probably somewhere in the hundreds—were probably somewhere close to that value too. She wasn't certain if they were considered a collector's item or if the material they were made of was just worth that much, but she was looking at earning somewhere above 30000 from just these four excursions she'd gone on since she got here. She still had to do some more research regarding the purchasing power of the local currency in this world, but considering that you could buy a house for 10000 solars in the game she could at least assume that it was a decent amount despite the game's inaccuracies in the subject.
Now, if she were to guess, 30000 solars probably wasn't that much compared to what she had access to as the head of the Hartford family. But these were all loot from just a few low-level dungeons. There had been hundreds of dungeons spread about the world in 'Chronicle of Realms', and the worth of the higher-level items was bound to increase by a lot. Of course, she had to find all the dungeons first, but that was something she had decent expectations about for at least some of them.
All things considered, she was relatively confident in earning money in this world. The real question was what to do with it all. She still barely had any idea of how she ended up here to begin with. Some extra cash probably wouldn't solve that problem. But knowing the kinds of problems that would start popping up in the future, she felt like being prepared in as many ways as she could be was the right choice for now.
That included training. She'd spent at least one or two hours every day the past week training the use of her current magic with Kat. The Shielder had taken to sparring with her—acting with a large handicap—and instructing Scarlett of how to best make use of her Aqua Mines in a fight. The woman had almost seemed borderline masochistic with how she encouraged Scarlett to use them against her. Of course, Scarlett's attacks couldn't really injure the woman as long as Kat had whatever magical defense she used up, and Scarlett had intentionally avoided aiming at any of Kat's barrier's weak points—though she doubted she could hit any of them yet even if she tried—but the excitement that seemed to fill the woman when she fought was weird to see. It wasn't really something Scarlett had noticed before.
But the training definitely had an effect. For one thing, her mana was increasing at a steady pace as long as she kept using it as she did. It seemed to improve by a little under ten or so per day at the rate she was going. Other than that her control of her Aqua Mines was also improving slowly. In the raid on the Grey Dog Gang she had used a few of them basically as bricks to keep people away from her, but that wasn't an efficient way of using them. Considering how she only truly could make full use of them when she used them against an unshielded opponent or against their weak points she still had to get faster at making them and better at aiming. As it was now she doubted she could use them in a real fight just yet. As for the matter of learning spells...There hadn't been much progress. Or any, actually. The lessons Kat had given her hadn't done much to shed light on the matter, unfortunately. She barely knew where to begin with that right now. She had read through a couple of the books she'd found, though that hadn't helped much. But she wasn't about to give up just yet. She was planning on giving those books a more thorough look in the near future.