The Spider’s Nest was a small fabric shop in Brighmark Harbor, humbly squeezed between a bar and a carpenter’s shop.
The once proud and earnest shop had seen better days, have never entirely recovered after being scammed out of everything that ever matter. Even after ten years, the owners were still financially and spiritually uneasy and it showed in the appearance of the store. The paint job had withered away, and a few years back, water got caught beneath the floorboards after a flood, causing the wood to expand in strange ways, making footing unsteady.
It had caused their already failing business to struggle even more, because people do not trust the quality of goods when the store can’t take care of its own appearance. It didn’t matter how skilled they were in their personal trade, progress was hard.
“Not many customers today.” Adam Tailor, mumbled to himself a little anxiously.
“It’s always been like that heading into the end of Summer. It will pick up again.” His father said, as Mark Tailor looked over the inventory. “We should start pulling out the heavier wools, since the seamen will be wanting better weather protection. So quit standing around and help me move things.”
“R...Right. Sorry. I’m just nervous.” Adam said weakly.
“Don’t worry about it. Such things come with becoming a parent.” Mark said, giving a sidelong glance at his daughter-in-law, Annabell as she cradled a baby boy against her bare chest. “The girls are doing their best, so we have to as well.”
“Right.” Adam said, a little more sure of himself this time.
But before they could grab the next roll of cloth, the front door struggled open and someone walked in.
“Welcome. What can we…” Mark started to say the usual greeting, before he got a good look at the person and his words became caught in his own throat. “It can’t be…”
“What’s wrong dad?” Adam said, looking over at the woman who had just entered their shop. She was young, in her early twenties, with long red hair, green eyes and a face that felt oddly familiar to the young man, though he couldn’t place it. Not until he spotted the large pink spider that accompanied her. “Maria?”
Tears formed in the woman’s eyes as she struggled to smell. “Yes Adam. It’s me. I’m home.”
“Maria!” It was Annabell that was the first to recover, running up with the baby still in her arms in order to give her old friend a one-armed hug. “You’re back! You’re okay! We’ve been worried sick! Why didn’t you ever respond to our letter!?”
“I… I never got them.” Maria said as she hugged the woman back. “So it was you who ended up marrying Adam after all. I guess that means you are my little sister now.”
The two women continued to hug each other and cry, the baby joining them in crying out of confusion.
“Scarlet, come on. You need to say hello too.” A voice from outside said.
“No! Judith please. I’m no good with this kind of thing! Besides, this is mama’s moment!” A child’s panicked voice replied.
It seemed to be ignored as a middle-aged woman with a no nonsense expression walked through the door, dragging a flustered little girl behind her.
For Mark, it was like looking through a window into the past, seeing the small child who looked exactly the same as Maria had as a child. Though without the tired eyes that had come with her trying to sneakily practice her weaving every night.
Seeing that she couldn’t escape, the child stopped struggling and stood in an awkward stiffness in front of them before introducing herself. “H...Hello. I’m Scarlet Wr… I mean, Scarlet Tailor. It is nice to meet all of you.”
“...I should go get your mother.” Mark said turning and going further into the store.
Alice would definitely want to see this.
Richard looked from the paper in front of him to the stack of things till in the ‘to do’ pile, and cried to himself a bit.
He was born to be a soldier, but ended up a bureaucrat before his rightful time. This was supposed to be his father’s job until Richard became too old for military service, but after what happened to his younger sister, he started to ignore all of his noble duties and left Richard and his mother to deal with managing the affairs of the territory.
Richard had started having to bear its weight when he was only 5 years old, but after he graduated from the Royal Military Academy they were dropped on him full force.
Richard and his young retainers had NOT been ready for that level of responsibility, but his father didn’t care. All he did these days was drink.
It had taken him years to set up a well oiled system to manage things on the day to day routines, but occasionally something happened that he wouldn’t be able to delegate.
Jonathan Wright had not been well liked, but he had certainly been a prolific piece of shit. If there was a tainted pie in town, he probably had something to do with it. The safe that they found the books on [Demon Magic] in had blackmail material on no fewer than twenty major organizations and three noble families. The kind of dirty laundry that could bring down the King’s wrath on a place. And now it was Richard’s job to sort through it all.
He’d also had to decide what to do about the properties that had been seized.
Jonathan had a wife, three sons and a daughter. The two oldest sons were quick to say that they wanted nothing to do with their father, or his property, and that they hadn’t spoken to the man in years.
It was a lie, but they didn’t want to touch anything that had the scent of the Inquisition all over it. They denounced their father and gave up on any sort of inheritance.
Jamie, the third son, had been found to have fled the country ten days prior to the discovery of Jonathan’s sins, around the time the invitation to the Duke’s party had arrived at the family’s doorstep. It was up for debate whether he knew about what his father had been doing and fled, or if he was running for a different reason. Either way, the rat abandoned his father at the first sign of trouble.
As for Maria and Scarlet, it quickly became evident that the two of them were being lawfully held against their will by the man and had as little to do with him as possible, and given Scarlet’s extremely high level of [Holy Magic] at such a young age and had a ‘Sacred’-type Bond, the pair received the label 'completely above suspicion’ by the Grand Inquisitor.
Level 109? Seriously? It had to be one of the highest in the entire city, not including Joshua, who’s [Holy Magic] had long since passed the 200 mark.
So naturally, all of Jonathan’s lawful possessions should have gone to the pair of them. Jonathan had started out wealthy from his own inheritance, he extorted money from several different organizations, and had used Maria like a slave to produce dresses that were as valuable as high class armor, which he reinvested into several places.
Scarlet and Maria were to inherit a sizable amount of money, several hundreds of small properties, dozens of businesses, including three separate slave camps, and three mansions in various parts of the kingdom. A massive fortune.
...They didn’t want anything to do with it.
They accepted the money, but didn’t want to have anything to do with any property or business owned by ‘that man’. The only exception being a single slave, a woman who had lived in the same isolated house as them for all those years. The rest of it had been pushed onto Richard with him being told to deal with it.
Maria hadn’t wanted any reminder of Jonathan around her, and Scarlet didn’t want to deal with the hassle of dealing with so many things.
‘Money and properties are great things to have if you need them, but after it becomes more than you need, it's just a chore to manage them. It’s better to only have as much as you need and a bit extra for a safety net.’
...Smart girl. He could see why his son was so interested in her.
Which became a problem in itself.
Now that the one who could claim legal ownership of Maria and Scarlet was gone, and so soon after their coming out at the Duke’s party, eyes were starting to venture towards the mother-daughter pair.
News hadn’t spread far yet. The party only had 50 different families at it, many of whom didn’t take part in these kinds of power plays, but as time passed, more and more people would know and things could start to get hectic.
At the current stage, this had as much to do with the mother as the daughter.
Scarlet’s display at the party had been attention grabbing, but her abilities as a support through her Bond Skill could be imitated by 10 high level [Holy Magic] users, if given an hour to prepare. Knowledge about how high of a level the girl was and how high her [Holy Magic] level was only came to Richard through the Inquisition, when they were giving their courtesy report.
Until Scarlet got her Class, interest in her would likely remain at a high simmering level, in groups other than the Church.
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Maria on the other hand was already capable of producing dresses that were worth a very large amount of money. And given that she had already been tricked in the past, there were noble families claiming to want to be ‘guardians’ of the woman and her child, in order to protect them from people like Jonathan.
...It was a good idea. For a Noble family, abusing someone who you have the ‘guardian’ status of was unthinkable, as the ‘guardian’ status was something given by the King. So to abuse it would mean being severely punished by the royal family.
Their role was less to control their charges and more to prevent other nobles or merchants from abusing status or tricking them. But that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t have much easier access to the pair, making it easier to draw them into their factions. Given the money that was on the table and the future possibilities that Scarlet posed, who they ended up under the guardianship could make a big difference in the balance of power between the various factions.
...And if the country didn’t move in, the Church might try to swipe them.
Richard had already written his letter to the King, hoping to persuade him to allow his family to take guardianship, but he would have to wait to see what would happen.
...Was he a hypocrite, getting annoyed at the other nobles for doing what is accepted as the correct thing for a noble to do? Maybe, but like the rest of them, he wanted to ensure the best future for his children, his grandchildren, and his territory.
This was just the first step.
“It needs some wallpaper, but other than that, it’s perfect.” Scarlet said with a nod of approval as she looked around her freshly boarded surroundings before looking up at the carpenter’s family, orbs of light magic still floating above her head. “You guys do good work. Thank you very much.”
“Not a problem little Miss. Just doing our job.” The father said, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.
He hadn’t quite believed it when two weeks prior, his neighbor’s 5-year-old granddaughter popped in and said that she had a job she wanted them to do for her, before leading them into a large underground area underneath their building that had been cleared out and reinforced by magic during the night and had told them she wanted them to put down wooden boards on the floor and walls.
She had paid them up front for the job and explained what she wanted them to do exactly.
“I was thinking about doing some renovations in the main shop too. But I’m sure your other work has been stacking up. So just tell me when you have the time.” Scarlet said.
She’d used [Transmutation Magic] to fix the bad floorboards, but more process jobs would take a while. Even straightening the floor boards had taken several hours to do through magic, with very long incantations. And it wasn’t challenging enough to be worth good levels in Scarlet’s own [Carpentry] skill.
The ever present problem with General Skill Magic, so expensive and time consuming. Best to leave carpentry to someone with an actual carpentry Class and spend her own time elsewhere.
After finally escaping Jonathan, Scarlet’s mother had wanted to move back in with her parents for a time, which Scarlet respected, but the cramped living spaces was… a problem for someone of Scarlet’s temperament and night time activities.
So she immediately got to work resolving that issue, building a giant basement for her and her mother to occupy.
She made it a bit bigger than she needed to, being ten rooms, with a sub basement inside of the basement, but she would find something to do with the space. They could move things out of the upstairs in order to empty the storage area there, then bring the wall down to make more room for the shop.
It had been a long time since she had done something like this.
In her previous life, after the social worker saw she was capable of handling her own affairs and gave her access to the money from the lawsuits against the factory owners and the private boarding school, she had bought a few properties and had them renovated and rented out. It had been like a management minigame that she played with every once and a while, along with her stock exchanges.
She’d kept a good balance of money between her banking account, government bonds, her stocks and the housing market, so even if the economy went through hiccups, she would still be perfectly fine. No matter the nature of the hiccup.
Her income from rentals paid for her taxes and living expenses, and she was able to comfortably retire at the age of 14.
...What a ripoff that she left that cushy life she had prepared for herself behind. Now that she thought about it, did she die or didn’t she? Was she just a copy of her original self and there was a Rebecca Garza back in her old mini condo?
...Mah. Not like it matters either way. Not worth having an existential crisis over. First rule of surviving nihilism, just don’t sweat the stuff that is beyond your puny human brain to understand.
“Mama! It’s all done!” Scarlet said as she climbed out of the trap door and ran to where Maria was sitting around the table with Judith, Annabell and Scarlet’s grandmother, Alice.
“Already? That is surprising.” Maria said as she lifted her daughter up into her lap.
“Yeah, they are very fast workers! I should think about giving them a bonus!” Scarlet nodded in agreement.
“That would be thoughtful of you. I’ve just finished my latest project too!” Maria said before holding up the thing she had been working on, bright pink baby clothes that had a hood with a pig nose and ears, with even a little tail in the back. “What do you think?”
“So cute!” Scarlet shouted in approval. Her mother had made her such clothes too when she was young, and she even had a few pajamas that were still in the same style.
“You do remember that Thomas is a boy, right?” Annabell said with a worried chuckle.
“Is a piglet no good?” Maria asked with a slightly hurt expression that crushed the mother’s attempts to object.
“I’ll be sure to enchant it properly so that he’ll be able to start his leveling up!” Scarlet said happily.
Annabell and Alice exchanged looks before turning back to the little girl. “Scarlet, it isn’t safe for a baby to start leveling. Everyone knows that.” Annabell said gently.
“I didn’t know that…” Maria mumbled weakly. She had spent Scarlet’s childhood encouraging her every choice when it came to training, with neither her nor Judith having ever heard of Mana Intoxication Sickness. If Scarlet hadn’t learned [Mana Control] so early, she’d have been in serious trouble.
“No need to worry. I’ll be enchanting his clothes with the same kind of enchantment that the Nobles use to make sure that their children don’t have mana intoxication problems.” Scarlet assured them. “I’ve also managed to create something special to help with his training. Tadaa!”
Scarlet reached into her pocket and pulled out a red crystal the size of her thumb, with glowing white lines hidden within its surface.
“...What is it?” Annabell said, afraid of the answer, but too curious not to ask.
“It’s an artificial magic crystal, one with a holy mana generating array inside of it.” Scarlet explained. “It is a magic item that absorbs mana from the air and transforms it into holy attribute mana and feeds it to the holder. And since it is holy attributed mana, it gets around the normal problems with absorbing too much mana at once.”
“There are problems with absorbing too much mana?” Maria said, tilting her head.
“...Ah…” Scarlet said not sure how to respond to that. She’d never told either her mother or Judith about [Arcane Mana Resistance]. So she avoided the subject. “This was my first success in creating a magic item, so it still isn't very good. But I’ll get the hang of it soon. Until then, a Tier 3 will have to do.”
The stone only provided 1 holy mana every minute, but she would make a better one later. She’d only tried 23 times, and she had enough materials for another 200 or so, thanks to the Professor’s very generous care package. Enough to last her another 5 months. If she used them right, she could get a really good result before she was finished.
“...Alice. How much exactly is a Tier 3 magic item usually worth?” Annabell asked drily as she looked down at the crystal.
“About 20 gold coins.” Alice replied.
“Right… 20 gold coins.” Annabell said with a nod.
20 gold coins was about as much profit as their shop made in 3 years. It was a large amount of money to a commoner, but to Scarlet, she didn’t even register it as being worth anything.
“I’m still getting used to Scarlet.” Annabell said as the small girl in question started to mumble out a spell and create butterflies with [Illusion Magic] to entertain the baby Thomas.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there is no getting used to her.” Judith said with a shake of the head. “Just ignore it. The sooner you do, the happier you’ll be.”