Beyern stretched while happily counting the bronze in his hands, not having at least one type of precious metal in his possesion was not very fun.
Yesterday he had the fun fever dream that he was going to use as a basis for his second method of circuit modification, to sacrifice the heart of those who are blessed to the old gods, or items with such a blessing, along with some mana.
He couldn't take the risk of killing a small novice paladin, and their church becoming a rabid dog, buying seers to find whoever dared to go against them.
And if, at any moment, it was discovered he was killing priests, he would be dead meat.
So he was going to be using blessed items instead, but to get something like that, he had to have good relations with a church, and he was not someone who put all his eggs in one basket, so that meant all of the churches had to have some relations with him, just so that if one of the seven land-mines went off, he'd still have six.
He had a few schemes to get all cozy with a good few of them, but Quanta's would be a good bit of money no matter what, and Quytza's depended on the specific priest he could get his hands on.
The others... Would take a bit of money too, but if everything went well, he could probably get an honorary priest or paladin medalion from Xenxilir's church, both if he was lucky or found a wanderer outpost.
To be honest, Xenxilir was probably going to be his main associate, since they liked to feast a lot, and were happy to give out blessings during such a period too.
All it would take would be a bit of effort, but coin would smooth the process by quite a bit.
Today he would be taking a small look by a few other guilds to see if they're interested in anything that Beyern could procure at the moment, to increase the amount of money he made.
All the while, taking a bit of mana out, compressing it, and putting it back in, in a continious cycle.
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Congratulations, Beyern, due to your constant compression of mana, 'Mana-packing' has gained 8-star mastery.
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There were various little deals available, but... In the Alchemist's guild, there was a fun little commision for the gallbladders of Beyklirs, with no limit to how many you could sell to them.
And most importantly, it was a total of 7 copper per gallbladder. His herb collecting business gave around one bronze per day with the extra herbs he was now picking up along the way, with the excuse that he had gotten more used to the area.
With just two of them, he'd double his income, and since the rest of the Beyklir held almost no value, well not compared to the good relations he could forge by giving them to the Xenxilir church.
If he could properly get some death magic in his hands too, then he may even be able to use them as victims of his necromancy experiments, even if there weren't any schematics for animal undead in [Necromancy] 'Yea, that'd be a great achievement, creating a functioning non-human undead before a normal human undead.'
With a plan forming, he was certain his main target would be the Xenxilir church, but for that, he'd need to prepare quite a bit.
First he had to have a record of selling gallbladders, while a few signs and reports of him dragging Beyklir corpses into the city, then also a lowering of his food expenses... Then, he'd be able to come over to the church and talk to a priest there, talking about his 'Problem'.
Him having already picked up his herb money, it was time to make money selling gallbladder.
And to do that, he needed a hunting plan. Just using a sword and dagger like he did with the birds from before wouldn't work as well, since Beyklirs couldn't be tricked by one or two small bits of mana.
Beyern also didn't have a ton of experience dealing with them either, but, they weren't that powerful, nor were they intelligent. As long as he carefully examined their habits with a few test battles, he could have about a 90% success rate.
After some real fighting experience, he could probably increase that to 98%, if he mixed that with an emergency mana stockpile to form into a magic missile at a moment's notice, then the chance of his body being harmed would decrease even more...
He left the city with little fanfare, and went back to the forest where he had been doing business previously.
He started to traverse the woods, and after a bit, where he accumulated all the compressed mana hidden in mana pool, and accumulated it into a bolt of mana, far more pointy than the original magic missile's form, it was also a good bit more compressed.
Also, since 'Minutes of mana' isn't really a stable form of measurement any more, Beyern had decided to go into the spell-inspired route. The mana that a magic missile took was 10 'Mp', if that was true, then right now there was 2.7 mp in the magic bolt in his hand, and counting, since he was still adding on more and more mana.
He finally found his first Beykril, a six-legged mamilian animal with two pairs of eyes that came to about the hight of his hips, and with the length of about 1.5 meters. Though one thing that Beyern took notice of an elongated jaw, and more importantly, somewhat larger throat- or weakness to asphyxiation.
He took out out his sword, and allowed the stunted Cannis-like creature see him, with a somewhat clear path inbetween them.
And the little runt suprisingly, instead of cautiously approaching the larger being, nor going for Beyern's ankles, rushed towards him and then leaped with it's jaw going for his neck.
Beyern's first instinct, was to punch it while moving out of the way. The punch missed, and the evasion failed partially, the Beyklir landing on his chest while not biting his airpipe.
Given a moment of time to think, Beyern's right hand quickly formed a fist and punched his attacker, and his left hand then glided towards one of it's eyes, and poked it with all his might.
The Beyklir squeeled from the pain of losing one of it's eyes, though not losing sight on one side due to it's two pairs of eyes, which gave Beyern the oppertunity to take out his dagger, and then pierce it's throat while taking out the magical bolt in his other hand, preparing to manifest it.
Though he did not manifest it, as the dagger had properly entered the creature's throat, becoming a handle for Beyern to force it off of him.
He took it out of the creature after standing up, and then stabbed three times more, just to finish the job.
He brought the mana bolt back into his palm for ease of maintainance, and he started to quickly examine what he could do for a quick kill 'If every Beyklir does that leap, it'd be easy to, with a bit of practice, kill one with a single stab of a sword through it's open maw or upwards stab through it's neck.'
He took the dagger, and cleanly sliced the annoying wretch's stomach, making a proper opening for his hands to find it's gall bladder, by taking out anything that did not interest him.
After finding it, he remembered where it was hidden inside the body, and ran towards the nearby river to clean off his hands, leaving the corpse, Beyklir ate their own kind without any hesitation anyways.
After cleaning both his dagger and hands, he returned to traversing the forest, finding a beyklir in a little while of walking.
Again presenting himself, but this time with a dagger. And it once again leapt up for his neck, which this time was stopped by his left hand, holding it for only a moment in the air, enough time for his dagger to snap into it's throat.
He then quickly found the gall stone, still using it as a learning experience, preperation for the future.
Then, there was just one more test, this time with a sword.
The Beyklir once again rushed towards him, and jumped, open jaws aiming towards the fleshy part betweent Beyern's torso and chest.
He couldn't help but smile at the consistancy of the pattern, and pushed the sword through the little pest's undefended throat, coming out through the back, passing through vertebrae.
It was quite a bit grusome, but it did, basically instantly, kill the creature.
He wrenched out his sword, and left it on the ground, belly up, after wiping the blood on the sword on the carcass' fur.
Then he used the experience from the previous experiments, he found the gallbladder, and methodically took it out, wiping both his hand and dagger on the creature's fur.
He put the gallbladder, nowhere, he didn't have a place to contain it, and he wasn't putting it in his bag, and letting it taint everything he actually owned with blood and the stench of road kill.
But now he was certain he could kill Beyklir without much risk, and that it would become a large money maker, he would buy a waist bag to put to his side.