As the days passed, Aki ended up finishing all the books he had.
This turned into a great problem for his hiperactive mind. He could very well turn his brain off whenever at this point, sure, but that didn't feel... right.
As regent, he might have a lot to do, but he had long since given out said work to those conpetent enough to do it, assuring their loyalty with several geases, oaths, and more phisical garanties. All nobles he'd enslaved and several people with extensive experience were always at work on his office, applying the guidelines of his policies and law proposals, which he actually just put on a pile of paper and no one seemed able to get to the bottom of it, though he rarely added to it. So what if it was actually a bit over four meters tall (13 feet)?
He didn't have the nescessary attention span or interest in actually doing more, diferent from Mari, so he was actually the only one without anything to do. Sure, he could probably grind some bow or sword XP, but he never had an actual chance to use them with fervor present itself in front of him.
Sera was busy with training to reach A-rank, Xera had been in the middle of some epiphany for the last five days, meaning she just laid down and didn't move, and Mari always had paperwork to do, though she'd stop whenever someone tried to interact with her.
When he asked about the subject, Sera imediatly offered to teach him how to dismantle monsters and beasts.
"I mean, i guess i've avoided it for long enough." Was his answer, which greatly surprised the orc, because he'd normally dismiss her imediatly and do his best to distract her from the subject before dumping more monster carcasses into the cold storage whenever he found things that could be useful or be exchanged for lots of gold, waiting for any one of the women, or more recently the employees, of the house to dismantle them. He was very good at distracting her.
Aki then took out a dead rabbit from his inventory and dismantled it easily enough before claiming that was all he knew besides extracting blood, which was just water/blood magic.
"Ok, that's all a good start, but considering your dexterity score, the only thing you really need to know is the composition of whatever you want to dismantle and what you should harvest. There is no real easy way around it, you just... Did you just dismantle a human corpse in two seconds? Why do you even carry those around?"
"Yes, and for necromancy." He said, taking out a small bottle out of his inventory, it was the size of his pinkie really, then he opened it, the soul trapped inside quickly trying to escape but being completly stopped by it's captor's grasp. "See? Besides, who knows when i will need to perform some kind of offering or practice canibalism?" Even as he explained, he started to try and reasemble the suspended corpse and stored the soul container again.
His councious wives didn't mind the dead body, and they both knew their husband to practice autopsys in his spare time so as to better know how to heal, but neither really liked the fact he thought he'd need to cannibalize corpses at one point or another. Hells, with his power and pantry it was extremely unlikely he'd ever come close!
Sera couldn't really complain either. Though she herself never got to that point, orcs were indeed the kind that would start eating the moment someone said that meat was back in the menu.
Apparently the experience was different enough from normal that he gained the dismantling skill though, already at level 3 even.
What followed was a brief pause in their traveling, where the women took turns teaching how to best cut, break and prepare some tipes of monsters through the samples they had in storage.
By the end of it, Aki had even swapped jobs and maxed out 'apprentice dismantler'. Which actually unlocked five other jobs.
Seeing this, and deciding it'd been long enough, he decided to grind out the Apprentice craftsman jobs.
First of all was blacksmithing, of course. Taking out a dragon head and Xera's spear, he started the process to upgrade it again.
Bone wasn't exactly the best of materials to handle, even he knew that, but to begin with, he was a mage, not a pure crafter, so it only took a small pull of life magic to separate all the remaining flesh from the material, leaving the gigantic skull stark white execpt for the fracture lines, which Aki restored.
"How are you even going to use that?" Asked a confused Mari.
"Like this." He said and broke off a horn and a teeth from the cranium before quickly 'polishing' and 'squaching' them until they were the size and shape of a similarly sized spear shaft and it's triangular blade point that seemed made out of bone.
"I may not know much about crafting, but i'm pretty sure the weight, edge and resilience are all wrong." Pointed out Sera, who'd been watching for the twenty or so minutes he took to transform the materials into the raw weapon she now looked at.
"They are, but do you know how to upgrade a living weapon?" He smirked, his face suggesting the answer should be obvious. She thought for a bit, looking between each spear he held in his hands, and ultimately coming up with nothing, shrugging and egging him on. "By integrating other weapons of quality similar to the one you have." He said with a smug face before putting both spears on the ground, where the bone spear was clearly being 'sculpted', into the image of Xera's spear, it's shape and lenght changing to something more in line with the structure of the weapon's material.
The 'ding' was audible for anyone in range, which brought those watching back to reality. Somewhere in the line, the slime, donkey and cat all began watching as the mage 'forged' something truly beautiful and practical.
"And that's another job capped. Damn do i love my multipliers. Next is alchemy..." Aki murmured, raising his palm up and taking out a bubble of dragon blood with radius as big as he was tall from his inventory. After the thing was fully formed, he condensed it into a bead floating above his finger, then ussed it to draw blood vessels on the bone spear's shaft and blade, on and over it's engravings. Even as he finished there was still a lot of blood, but as he relinquished control of it, the whole thing was sucked into the spear, a red glow pulsing from the thing as four indentations appeared on the blade's base as it enlongated and seemed to gain an even sharper edge. By the time those started to resemble red eyes, it seemed like the spear was about to speak at any moment. "And that's apprentice alchemist. Guess i can get Enchanter out of the way too..."
As Aki said so, his magic started to gather on his finger again, but this time it became a claw. His companions reconized the gesture from when he engraved things to enchant them, though the tecnique didn't always leave marks on the outside. What they didn't expect was the sudden shrill scream that came from the dragonic remanants as the claw slowly came inside it, the wailing so strong it'd probably have blown any glass into dust at the beginning and knocked out normal people at it's highest, as complicated patterns were slowly traced into it over the course of two hours. They'd have thought the screams had stopped some five minutes in if not for the vibrations as the spear seemed to try and escape coupled with the increasingly brighter pulses of red, which made clear that the person holding the thing wasn't as confortable with the noise as his posture and expression of complete focus would let out.
When he finished, the tormented weapon looked no different physically, but it's aura was without a doubt many times stronger.
The spectator were still shocked, however, when he just dropped it over Xera's spear, which was still on the ground, and a sucking and slurping sound happened, the bone spear in turn dissapearing as it touched the one their companion normally wielded, which became even more powerfull besides gaining new patterns as it reverted back to it's original form. The same could be said about the ophidian who suddenly released a ton of energy.
Checking in on the still sleeping woman, they found that she'd grown a couple centimeters, her forearms and wrists now had red tattos with dragonic simbles, and her tail was longer. Plus horns, she now had a diadem of blackish purple horns. They began a bit a after her ears, protuded and circled her forehead with their tips almost touching.
"I think we can all agree what i should do next." Aki mentioned, getting nods from his wives.
It took some time to strip her naked, which actually confirmed her breasts had grown while her legs were even more defined and suple. Peverted thought aside, everyone chipped in on what would be embroidered on her existing equipment and what to add besides the battle skirt. The end result had Aki cap the apprentice leatherworker job, several dragon blood inscriptions that increased fierceness (actual effects asside) and purple silk cloth being ussed to make her a small side cape that reached to the elbow on the oposite side of where her dark purple battle skirt (attached to the leather pauldrons) fell towards, the later only reaching a bit past her knee.
"At this point, she's probably just sleeping, so how about we just cook a bunch and see who she compliments more?" Aki suggested after laying the armor by the side of the drooling woman.
"You're the one with the biggest alcohol reserves, so of course you'd win jackass." Said Mari while jabbing his shoulder. "It's not the worst of ideas though. Let's go back home."
Aki nodded, a bright light quickly emcompassing them. They'd raided enough dungeons that he now had twenty at his back and call, nevermind he was quite close to unlocking the 'Grand delver' job, which was quite the badge, nevermind it's usefulness. Though none went higher than tier 6, they'd eventually grow thanks to his strategy of more directly linking himself to them.
It was only two hours and a half later that Xera woke up. In her fluffy bed, to several plates of her favorite dishes, her barely clothed lovers in cooking garments and several bottles of licor.
"CONGRATULATIONS ON THE DOUBLE RANK UP!" They said in unison, prompting her to check her status. Her race title said 'High ophidian spear warrior (True dragon)'. She was pretty sure a normal monster would have a more pompous title when they reached rank 8, but then again...
"This might sound weird, but i have to mention, there's a prompt that says my spear has gained Glutonny, with capital g. Anyone could explain that to me?" Aki was happy to brag, using the chance to spoon feed his wife while Sera hugged her from behind and Mari laid on her lap acting like a kitten.