"…I'm sorry, Cait," Fate said sincerely, tucking his metaphorical tail between his legs. He knew from experience to take everything Old Man Travis said with such a tone seriously, but Kravoss' goading within their shared thoughts definitely didn't help.
"I'm sorry as well," Cait replied with matched sincerity. The flicker of rage in her eyes as she glanced at Pospo suggested she went through a similar experience to Fate and Kravoss.
"Damn youngsters," Travis grumbled. "Always stirring up trouble. When I was your age—!"
"Maybe you should try the pendant on, Cait," Fate butted in. He didn't think he had the heart to take another verbal beating.
"Good idea," Cait replied quickly.
With slow, delicate movements, as though she was holding a helpless infant, she undid the clasp and wrapped the chain around her neck, Mage Reach holding her hair up and out of the way as she fastened the clasp.
Old Man Travis watched on with pride, the fire of his anger having been snuffed out, as she took a small, round, tourmaline-like brown Will Stone out of her storage ring and slotted it into the empty gem setting.
The Will Stone clicked in place and the five fox tails widened of their own accord, the metallic 'fur' consuming the edges of the Will Stone to keep it from jostling free in combat.
Cait funneled some of her Mana into the Will Pendant, the Imprints flashing with silver light as the item readied to bond to her Mana. She gasped as a tendril of gold Mana suddenly exited from the fox tails and jabbed into her forehead.
It wasn't necessarily painful, but it was extremely uncomfortable. When she mustered her Mana to fight back, Old Man Travis held up a hand to stop her.
"Let it do its thing," he insisted.
And so, Cait clenched and unclenched her hands as the golden Mana did its job, its color gradually turning from gold to clear, before disappearing altogether. When it did so, Cait relaxed her shoulders and let out a content sigh, not revealing her shock to the others.
Just the Imprints Travis had mentioned were enough to make a noble from an Earl family green with envy, but those weren't even its most shocking traits.
The first trait that made Cait feel guilty for even accepting such a gift was related to the Mana absorption Fate observed earlier. They not only resembled her currently hidden tail, but also mimicked its function.
Not only that, but this pendant did it better than her tails did!
A kitsubus' tail could siphon Mana out of the surroundings while extended, able to hold enough Mana for roughly three Spells of the kitsubus' Tier or Stage, which could be tapped into while the tail was retracted.
But the pendant took this a step further. Not only could the tails hold five Spells' worth of Mana, but they could also hold five Spells' worth of Mana each, for a total of twenty-five!
This meant that it was better than the highest Tier I Wand like Fate had, which could hold only five Spells' worth of Mana total!
It had to be understood that the amount of Spells the Mana in a wand, or in this case, a Will Pendant, could supply was relative. Fate's Skill was a passive drain on his Mana with little cost when active, and his Spells were likewise just extensions of that.
In his case, rather than fueling flashy Spells that took large chunks of Mana out of his Mana pool, the wand's Mana storage would instead increase the time he'd be able to keep his Skill active.
This was about five minutes of extra time if fully charged, something he always assured, not including or affected by the 150% increase from his Will Stone.
His Spells, meanwhile, were mostly ways to save on Mana expenditures, so using them would actually extend the wand's Mana's usage.
This wasn't the case for Cait. While she had a passive perk for her Skill, the main usage of it was to alter the desires of Mana and living things, something that took a not-insignificant amount of Mana to do.
This ability and the Spells she currently knew would each take 1/5th of one of the pendant's tails' Mana to use, so in Cait's case the item holding 25 Spells' worth of Mana was accurate.
For more Mana-heavy Skills, this might be shortened to five or possibly even less than that, while other Skills may be able to cast dozens of Spells with such an amount of Mana.
The numbers came from the average cost of Spells and Skills on Ziobrun, based on a study the Empress' Guard had performed several years ago.
Of course, this didn't even go into the categorized Will Stones that both Journeymen had, each of which could hold 20 Spells' worth of Mana on their own.
While that made the storage capacity of the pendant seem even more ridiculous, anyone that knew how categorized Will Stones worked could tell you that the Mana storage was a neat side-effect, not the main ability.
But the second Imprint, the one that gave this item its Sapling status put even this impressive trait to shame.
Evolution.
Much like the Manifest Swords of the wealthiest of noble families, the pendant around Cait's neck was capable of evolving its Sapling Grade as she herself grew, only requiring Mana from her of a higher Grade than the item's own to do so.
Such an Imprint was worth more than all of the other Imprints combined, and assured that as she grew in power, they would as well.
The chain would be strengthened further, and the concealment and bonding Imprints would likewise benefit. The Mana storage wouldn't change in size or grow to accommodate her stronger Mana, for the same reason Fate's wand wouldn't have such an issue: it was an unranked Imprint.
As Fate learned when he bought his own wand, unranked wand cores were useable at any Stage, but were reserved for categorized Will Stones, as the space for the necessary Imprints was needed for restricting an uncategorized Will Stone to a user's Stage.
Cait quite literally had an entire fortune around her neck.