For the next several days I continued to work on my exo-frame project while Elita and Shea went out on quests to earn money while also gathering up materials that I’d need in the shop. I began crafting simple magic tools to populate the shop with items for sale. I upgraded Rom and Ram to be able to craft the simple items and had them working on that while Alfred managed the store front. From time to time Jada would pop in to see what we were up to and to collect her share of the profits. We got some customers from time to time but not a lot. So far we didn’t have any must-have items that couldn’t be found at other shops. Hot plates, cold boxes, various armors and shields resistant to different kinds of magic effects, that sort of thing. Jada showed me how to easily make these tools and took care of arranging a contact in the Guild to purchase the required mana crystals at wholesale.

I was just about finished with the exo-frame, when I felt some new items enter my [Inventory]. The girls had been making good use of the satchel I made to store anything they came across on their quests. They couldn’t retrieve the items, so it wasn’t good for weapons or items they would need, but it was useful for getting large items back to town without having to carry them. They would just put the item in [Inventory] then retrieve it from me when they got back.

I’d set up a small watch program that kept an eye on the [Inventory] and would give me a sortable list of what was in there, and with a pseudo-database I was able to auto-tag the items going in to make them searchable by a category or a keyword. The program also gave me a little notification when new stuff went in, letting me know what the thing was and how it was getting sorted. All day long I’d get notifications for this kinda root or that kinda grass, and sometimes I’d get alerts for ores or the carcasses of beasts that they killed, so I had stopped giving them more than a passing glance.

This time I had to do a double take and opened up my [Inventory] screen; I’d just gotten two large Shadow Wolf corpses. I hoped they were in good condition and that they weren’t needed for a subjugation quest. A short while later another item popped into my [Inventory], and this time it was a note. I pulled the note out and took a look at it.

Prime,

We came across these two shadow wolves by chance. Hopefully, they’ll work for that new project of yours.

-- Elita

This was great news and exactly what I’d been looking for. I went out the back door to the workshop where we had a small patio area and unloaded the wolf bodies. They were massive. Way bigger than what I had been expecting based on wolves from my previous world. One of the wolves had been stabbed through the throat, its head barely attached; the other was soaking wet but not a mark on it. Upon further inspection it looked like it had been electrocuted. It was nice to see the girls working together to bring down prey, and I was glad that I’d given Lightning crystals to Elita to compliment Shea’s Water magic. It would be perfect for my Pretender shell once it was processed.

I had been a pretty smart guy in my old life and knew a wide range of stuff, but I didn’t know squat about dismantling animals, so best to leave this to the professionals. Thanks to Jada, I had a contact at the Guild I could talk to. For appearances sake, I’d made myself a fake Mana Shackle and keyed it to Jada’s magic signature in case I was inspected. I put both of the wolves onto a small cart that we had and put on my fake collar and headed over to the Guildhall. It had been several weeks now since I’d escaped from that magic tool shop, and according to Jada I looked like a mass production model, so the chances of being recognized dropped. Still the fake shackle would help prevent people from realizing I was “Unclaimed.”

Walking through the market area, it was amazing to see so many different kinds of races of people going about their business. Aside from humans and races that looked like humans with different ears or shorter bodies, there was a wide variety of demi-humans. I saw a dragonewt haggling with two ratfolk over the price of fish, a beautiful feathered woman that may have been a harpie with glittery purple and pink feathers, and a huge minotaur loaded with bags and packages following after a centaur in a sundress. I noticed a handful of Automata on my way too; some appeared to be bodyguards while others appeared to be attendants, but all of them were dutifully following after someone wearing ridiculously expensive looking clothes. I noticed that all of them also had a red glow to their eyes and I wondered what that meant. A couple of them watched me suspiciously as I made my way through the area, maybe because I was on my own?

Before too long I made my way to the rear of the Guildhall; I’d been instructed not to come through the main entrance with deliveries and drop-offs. I knocked on the rear door and soon the slide hatch opened up and I saw a reptilian eye and an eye patch.

“You the Automata running errands for Jada?”

“Sure.”

“Heh. Sure... okay, yeah.”

The hatch closed and the door opened up, revealing a large, well-muscled naga with six arms. She had dark chestnut colored skin and deep black hair that went past her waist. Two of her arms were folded over her chest while another pair was on her hips and the last set was holding long blades at her sides. She towered over me and looked rather fearsome, but I got the impression it was more for effect than an attempt to intimidate me.

“I’ve got two large Shadow Wolves to sell,” I said, thumbing over my shoulder to the cart. She looked past me at the cart and nodded, opening up the adjoining door to let me pull the cart inside. Without waiting for me to unload, she easily pulled one of the wolves off the cart and tossed it onto her table and started flipping it over and examining it.

“Not bad. Looks like it was a pretty clean kill. Let me see the other one. Ugh, it’s all wet.”

“Combination of water magic and lightning magic.”

“That’s the Angel party that’s working for Jada’s shop, right?”

“Yeah, this is their handiwork. Other than being wet, this one is in quite good condition and should sell high.”

“Is that so? Because when I examined it, there were scorch marks all over it and the meat was already partially cooked. The other one was shredded and barely usable, and both of them had cracked mana crystals. You’ll be lucky to get a handful of coppers for this mess.”