As Ace walked to his room, he encountered Pam in the hallway. Seeing him carry a large cartoon box, she asked, "Do you need help?"
"I got this," Ace assured her. Then, he asked, "Auntie, do you still have your old phones? Or did you exchange them?"
"No, Dan doesn't let us exchange our old phones. They are all stored somewhere. Dan said he would depose properly," Pam responded with an exaggerated head shake and then inquired, "Why do you ask?"
"Can you lend them to me? I plan to salvage them if possible," Ace made up a random excuse.
"Sure, nobody is using them anyway. I will bring them to you," Pam nodded in agreement without much thought.
"Thank you, Auntie. I will be in my room," Ace informed, heading toward his room.
Entering his room and placing the box in a corner, Ace locked his room door. Then, he said, "Rose, do your thing. If you need help with anything, just say the word."
"Master, I've got this under control. Feel free to focus on your curse arts practice," Rose assured. She then carefully unpacked the packages. Retrieving the PC parts in them, she stacked the covers neatly in a corner.
Dame Wasp started assembling the PC on the study table without creating a mess. In her miniature 1/100 form, she utilized her braid laser to fine-tune the hardware components for optimal performance with the available parts. Assembling the hardware was relatively straightforward. The real challenge lay in implementing the software update she had prepared.
Meanwhile, Ace reviewed the body reinforcement curse art on his mobile device. He intended to grasp its intricacies aided by the Martial Arts Specialist effect of the Apex earring before commencing practice. Leveraging this effect, Ace comprehended the body reinforcement curse art and tailored it to his physique, enhancing its effectiveness by drawing upon the Apex earring's otherworldly knowledge of martial arts and human anatomy.
The Toymancer and Toysummons were fully absorbed in their tasks when a knock on the door startled them awake.
'It must be Pam,' Ace mused as he opened the door while Dame Wasp entered her camouflage mode, ceasing all her activities.
Opening the door, Ace was astounded to find Mandy. Walking out of the room, he closed the door behind him. Then, with a frown, looking at the box of old phones in her hand, he asked, "Where's Auntie Pam?"
"She is busy entertaining the guests. So, I came. Here," Mandy answered, passing him the box of old phones. Seeing most smartphones in the box were almost brand new, Ace asked, "Are you sure they don't need these phones? They don't look that old."
"Most of these phones are gifts from boys pursuing me. I used them for a week or two until I got bored. Now I am interested in a younger and more beautiful model. So do whatever you like with them," Mandy said with a mischievous smile. Her wordplay could not be more ambiguous.
*Gulp* Ace gulped his saliva, resisting Mandy's charm. "Thank you," thanking her for the phones, he hurried into the room and locked the door behind him.
Making sure Mandy had left, he asked Dame Wasp, "Rose, will these smartphones be enough to run multiple online gambling accounts simultaneously."
"Yes, they will be more than enough. Master, with your permission, I want to salvage the parts of these phones to assemble a high-performance phone with advanced software and privacy. This way, even on the road, I can use the phone to perform high-level cyber tasks without worrying about revealing our identity or being tracked," Dame Wasp nodded, assuring Ace that the smartphones were enough, and proposed to upgrade his phone.
"That's a brilliant idea, Rose," Ace praised. Then, having already understood and modified the body refinement curse art, he passed his phone to Dame Wasp, "Here, go nuts. But make sure it looks like a regular phone. I don't mind whichever phone design you end up adopting."
Once again, the Toymancer and Toysummons got absorbed in their work. Ace practiced the modified body reinforcement curse art, while Dame Wasp primarily focused on setting up the PC and the smartphones, prioritizing the online gambling project.
Ace and Dame Wasp's online gambling project specifically aimed to target online gambling sites that utilized cryptocurrency for payment and wagering. Their goal was not to rob these online gambling sites blind but to exploit them by periodically playing and winning small bets without attracting too much attention.
Given that the government had special forces like CIB to handle the threat from the 'World of Curses,' Ace believed that major entities like big companies, world leaders, kingpins, and mafia would have private security teams of skilled curse masters. Otherwise, criminal organizations like Steal Song Society would target them for money instead of going through all that trouble of harvesting innate curse tools.
Warning himself that the world was too big and he was not the only one with unique supernatural abilities, Ace did not plan to do something huge but planned to play the long game, putting his and his family's safety above all else.
By periodically playing and winning small bets, it would take long before Ace could amass enough money to buy a custom sex doll, let alone gather significant wealth, which was where the multiple old smartphones came into the picture.
Let us say one device opens accounts in 10 online gambling sites and earns $100 from each site per day. That added up to a sum of $1000 per day. Now, let us say there were ten such devices. That would add up to a sum of $10,000 per day. It was just a rough estimate.
Dame Wasp vouched that one account in a site could win $100-$500 without attracting attention. She planned to create multiple fake accounts and never use the same account on the same online gambling site. Each account would have its unique self-custodial crypto wallet to make payments and withdrawals.
Dame Wasp could earn millions per day using this model, but Ace advised against it. If they made millions per day, each online gambling site would lose nearly a few hundred thousand daily. The site owners would promptly detect a profit drop.
However, if they only made a hundred thousand or less daily, each online gambling site would lose a few thousand per day. The site owners would ignore such small losses, giving it the benefit of the doubt. This method would enable him to operate discreetly and accumulate wealth without attracting attention.
Ace could have instructed Dame Wasp to steal millions from them once and for all, but he refrained from doing so because the primary objective was to remain undetected. Because if their activities get detected, someone out there will start looking for them and the money, endangering him and his family. Whether they would eventually find him, Ace did not know, but he believed that his safety depended on ensuring nobody was aware of his existence and abilities.