The next day...
Nick sat in an office chair within Carla's office looking through two contracts with Carla and her lawyer present. Nick had the thought of bringing his own lawyer but with his rank 2 mindscape, reading and understanding these simple contracts was no problem as they were in the format of: do this by this date and you will be paid this amount.
While Nick was reading the contracts, Carla asked him:
"Did you get the phone that I sent to you, Nick?"
Nick stopped reading the contract in his hand and looked at Carla before answering her:
"Yeah, I received the smart phone, I just didn't expect that a supposed board member was the one who would deliver it."
Carla made an expression as if she was pondering something, then asked:
"Oh, so Britney told you who she was. Did she say anything else?"
Now, it was Nick's turn to ponder:
(I suspect that there is some political in-fighting going on with these people and I definitely do not want to get involved, so...)
"Britney Jenner not only told me who she was but, she made me an offer to work with the Jenner family and not just you."
Carla smiled, amused:
"What reply did you give her?"
Nick shrugged his shoulders and responded:
"I said I wasn't interested and after I had sex with her, I told her to leave."
The lawyer beside Carla opened his eyes wide in surprise in response to what Nick said and looked at Carla to see how she would respond. Carla turned to the lawyer and asked:
"Mr. Marks, can Nick and I have the room for a few minutes?"
Howard Marks, the lawyer, got up from his chair and silently left the room. Carla then focused on Nick and chuckled a bit before saying:
"You had sex with her? Who just comes out and says that in the middle of a contract signing?"
Nick shrugged his shoulders:
"I don't want to be involved in your family drama, so I wanted to be as transparent as possible."
Carla squinted her eyes and asked:
"Oh, if that's the case, did you enjoy fucking her?"
With an almost indifferent expression, Nick replied:
"Yeah, I did, but that's neither here nor there. Why exactly did you send her to my place? Couldn't you have used Marshall or some other worker?"
Carla shook her head in reply.
"Britney is the daughter of an important family member and has been acting in that family member's capacity as a board member of this store to gain business experience in addition to her magical training at another academy. She had already been notified about our profits from selling your scrolls and has been paying close attention to whatever we do that involves you. I happened to be with her when I called you yesterday and she volunteered to deliver the phone to you."
Nick raised his right eyebrow and asked:
"Weren't you concerned that she would make me such an offer?"
Carla shrugged her shoulders.
"And so what if she did, you rejected her, right? Nick, in business and as a Magician, you should expect those around you to attempt to screw you over and undermine you when they get the chance. If they are not trying to undermine you, it probably means that you aren't doing anything worthy."
Carla smiled as she said this, remembering her early years and how she came up. Were there many people that tried to undermine her? Yes. Were there many people that tried to ruin her? Of course. How many of those people are still left standing? Close to zero.
"The games of petty children are not part of my, Carla Jenner's, major concerns. Since she is family and has a troublesome status, even if she is much weaker than me, probably even weaker than you, I will still keep her around as long as she doesn't do something too stupid. Going forward, I would prefer that you not reveal your sexual escapades so easily in front of company, okay."
Nick replied:
"Fine with me."
(I am not really interested in what is going on with you Jenners and I won't tolerate being dragged into a political whirlpool. That being said, I probably shouldn't have had sex with Britney but I just had the urge.)
Nick sighed internally, he was not a robot and sometimes he felt the urge for sexual gratification. Last night, he saw an opportunity to satisfy that urge and took advantage of it.
(I don't think it should amount to a big problem but I should learn to control myself when dealing with business contacts at least.)
Carla called the lawyer back into the room and Nick spent an additional two hours reading through the contracts and then signing them. Nick's first contract gave him a deadline of a month to deliver an additional twenty thousand Beast Capture scrolls at £11,000 a piece. His other contract stipulated that the sloths would be delivered to and stored within the General Beast Store regularly and Nick had the right to determine when and where he would use them to produce his scrolls, with the store responsible for providing transport and disposal; Nick also had the right to sell the Soul Healing scrolls to whomever he wanted but the General Beast Store had a right to ten percent of the profits from those sales.
Nick returned home and produced a batch of a few hundred Beast Capture scrolls and after he did that, he looked over the spells within his soul path inheritance and incorporated a few more into his combat arsenal. Nick also did a few hours of meditation before going to bed.
.......
During combat class, Thompson Varrow and Nick squared off against each other while the other students were sparring. Nick had become very proficient with performing the movements of the Waiting Viper and Varrow has decided to put that proficiency to the test.
Varrow's movements with the sword were swift and precise, not missing any opportunity to deflect Nick's attacks and use Nick's lost momentum to his advantage to press forward. Nick slashed and sliced at Varrow, paying special attention to his footwork and breathing like he had been instructed. Nick tried his hardest to match up to Varrow's speed but was slowly unable to cope with the many slices that Varrow sent his way using the same Waiting Viper technique. Varrow's sword seemed to move like an agile snake that bit into Nick every chance it got so by the time that Nick was sent sprawling onto the ground, he had several superficial wounds on his chest and arms.
Varrow walked over to him and performed his healing spell which only took a few moments to mend Nick's wounds. Nick complained:
"Why do we have to use our real swords during these spars."
Varrow spoke with a tone that suggested that what he was going to say was obvious:
"Growth only comes through pain. If you want to learn swordsmanship at a decent pace, you should get used to being cut and you better figure out the reasons that you received each cut."
Varrow finished healing Nick and said:
"You've gained a decent proficiency with the Waiting Viper technique. Now I'm going to teach you an additional one, the Menacing Crane."
Nick internally sighed:
(Why do these sword techniques have such weird names?)
Varrow began to perform the movements of the Menacing Crane and Nick immediately noticed the difference between this sword technique and the Waiting Viper. The Waiting Viper was best performed in retaliation to an opponent's attacks, building up momentum until a deciding blow could be struck while the Menacing Crane was an all out offensive that did not give the enemy room for pause or rest, that is, it was designed to go for your opponent's throat from beginning till end.
The Menacing Crane technique was definitely more complex than the Waiting Viper, having 25 different movements in total. Varrow spent forty minutes showing Nick the technique and explaining each movement. Afterwards he went back to lecturing the students after they had finished their sparring. There were twenty minutes left until class would end and although Nick lost badly to Varrow in their spar, that loss did not demotivate him. Nick rested his right hand on his bare chest and tried to regulate his breathing and when he felt that he was ready, Nick practised the movements of the Menacing Crane until class was over.
Nick left combat class as soon as it ended and went straight to his commercial building. Usually, he would go to the spell creation club after class, but now that he had ample funds to buy supplies and do other things, he found the club less and less useful so instead of spending time helping Norman with his work, he intended to focus on developing his business and studying magic.
Nick took out his magically encrypted smart phone and called Marshall, from the General Beast Store. Marshall answered quickly:
"Hello, General Beast Store."
"Marshall, this is Nick Capitol. Have the sloths related to my contract been stored yet?"
"Yes mister Nick, they have."
"Well, can you have them delivered and loaded into the ground floor of my building by 7 pm tonight, I'll leave the door unlocked since I don't want to be disturbed. I also want you to pick up the cages and carcasses tomorrow morning as early as 6 am."
"I can have the sloths delivered at 7 pm via our transportation array. I will have the men in place to load them into your building and they will come back in the morning to retrieve the cages and carcasses of the animals via box truck."
"I'm satisfied with that."
Nick hung up the phone and went to the 2nd floor to produce another batch of the Beast Capture scrolls. When he had produced a little over two hundred scrolls, he stopped and turned his attention to the soul path spells that he planned to learn and use going forward.
(These are great but they require me to magically make adjustments to the laws on my soul to use them or else I'll only fail in casting them.)
Some spells were like that, where a part of the body or multiple parts had to be conditioned before the spell could activate properly, assuming that the laws were formed correctly within the mindscape. Nick needed to go through another period of cultivation similar to his use of the Break Soul Formation to make subtle changes to his soul to properly use his chosen soul path spells; it would certainly be painful.
Soul path was one of the strongest paths in terms of attack power but it was also one of the most painful and difficult paths to cultivate because the soul was generally not very malleable and each permanent change to it came with noticeable effects. If one did not cultivate the soul correctly, best case is that they would develop lasting mental issues, the worst case is that they would become a hollow shell of themselves that could do nothing but drool.
Nick spent a few hours studying the spells and when he received a notification via his smartphone that the sloths had been loaded into the ground floor of his building, he stopped his studying and carried all of his materials, including his scroll writing papers to the first floor to begin creating his first batch of Soul Healing scrolls.
Nick looked at the over one hundred small cages filled with sloths arranged neatly throughout a section of the first floor and bitterly smiled for the sloths:
"Well...its either your guys' lives or my development. I choose the latter."
Nick spent the next few hours using every sloth to manufacture Soul Healing scrolls.
........
One month later....
Nick carried a box to the first floor and placed it among a stacked collection of many other boxes. Nick looked at the dozens of boxes all around him and felt proud.
"It wasn't easy but I've not only fulfilled my contract for a second batch of Beast Capture scrolls but I've also produced a stock pile of Soul Healing scrolls."
During the past month, Nick spent much of it studying and practising his own spells outside of the time that he spent in combat class, however most of his time was actually spent producing Beast Capture and Soul Healing scrolls.
Nick thought about all of the sloths that had died in his hands, their souls being used to produce scrolls and although he felt some feeling of remorse about it, he understood that this was just how running a business worked.
(You have to break eggs to make omelettes. I doubt that the CEO of Jerry's Fried Chicken loses sleep about all the chickens they have to slaughter to produce their meals.)
"This past month, I have produced twenty thousand Beast Capture scrolls and ninety thousand Soul Healing scrolls."
Nick had produced so much Soul Healing scrolls because the scrolls used a rank 1 basic grade spell and he required minimal magic energy to make copies of them, about 150 magical units per copy. The most expenditure of magic energy that came from producing the soul healing scrolls was using his spell, Retrieve Soul, on the sloths but Nick figured out that the spell could be used on up to fifty sloths at a time and since they were weak, non-magical creatures, the spell only required about 3,000 magical units to retrieve the souls of those fifty sloths. The quality of Retrieve Soul as a spell was very commendable, having such reasonable magic energy requirements despite being an advanced grade spell, although it was a fairly complex spell.
Nick took out his magically encrypted smart phone and called Marshall who answered the call quickly:
"Hello mister Nick. What can I do for you today?"
"I have another batch of beast Capture Scrolls that I want your people to come pick up."
"Oh, certainly. I'll have the workers and delivery truck at your office in about an hour."
Nick hung up the call. He had worked out a deal with the General Beast Store so that as long as he paid the workers additional wages and a fee, he could make use of their manpower and trucks to deliver his Beast Capture scrolls to their store. Nick didn't mind since he did not want to deal with the logistics personally and he did not want to currently spend the time hiring people either.
Nick then called Carla, who answered the phone after some time:
"What is it, Nick?"
"The Soul Healing scrolls are ready, Carla. I have ninety thousand of them that I am willing to sell for £50,000 a piece. You said that you were marketing them, right? Well, do we have any interested customers?"
"It's been hard to get people on board since you did not give me any of those scrolls for people to sample but with my relationships, I have secured a few commitments but £50,000 seems like a high price. Do you have a reason for it?"
"Carla, you know that I have some experience with soul magic. Well, that experience has shown me how awful and problematic damage to the soul can be and I know that soul cultivation and backlashes for failing to cast spells and the like are very common. We have a unique product with potentially high demand and relatively low supply, it is natural to price it so high. I might even have to increase the price later."
Carla did not know much about soul magic and had limited experience with cultivating her own soul so she did not fully understand the value of the Soul Healing scrolls but Nick did. He knew that he was going to make a fortune with his creation. Carla responded:
"Fine, since you don't have any staff yet, I'll take the initiative to collect the orders and forward them to you. I'll even handle the logistics involved in delivering the scrolls for an additional 2% of the profits. Do you agree?"
Nick thought for a while and replied:
"I agree."
"You'll have the orders by the end of the business day."
Carla hung up the phone and Nick left his building to go to combat class with the sword that he received from Varrow at his side.
......
Nick swung his sword in a vicious manner against Varrow who was doing the same but Nick's strikes lacked the power and precision that Varrow's strikes had. The difference in their skill level was obvious at a glance and as the spar went on for another ten minutes, Nick found himself covered with superficial cuts, even one being on his forehead which bled profusely, hampering his vision.
Nick plopped onto the ground, tired and in pain, not wanting to spar anymore. Varrow stooped beside him and cast a healing spell that would mend all of his cuts in a few moments. The other students who were supposed to be sparring themselves had stopped some time ago to watch the exchange between Nick and Varrow and they were stupefied.
Nick had only been practising swordsmanship with Varrow for about five months yet his movements with the sword seemed profound from their perspective, far from the same level as Varrow but that was to be expected considering that Varrow was a Regular Magician who had definitely been living for a long time.
"Should I be practising swordsmanship too or train with another weapon?"
"No way...casting spells is what Magicians are supposed to do, right, we don't need to be using cold weapons or the like."
"That's not right. There are plenty of Magicians that use magic tools to fight, even in our year. Have you ever heard of Marsha Cassidy who uses two guns during combat or Brudus Flinn who often uses a spear when fighting?"
"Hmmm...you're right but those guys have probably been practising since young, how the hell are we supposed to compete?"
Kevin Stalwart interrupted the people speaking and said with an unusually stern tone:
"You're supposed to compete by figuring out your own style and working hard to develop it, isn't that obvious?"
Kevin had somewhat grown up since he had suffered a defeat at Nick's hands. He no longer talked as much and took his classes more seriously, he even stopped hanging out with his friends as frequently as he did in the past and spent much of his time working on his spell casting skills.
Marcia looked at Kevin and thought:
(Kevin has changed a little, just like Don did after he lost to Nick. Things are almost the same again where the group that I planned to get involved with has basically dissolved because of Kevin's lost interest in nurturing it. Should I change too?...)
Marcia felt that she needed to change, even just a little considering the repeat experiences she's had as well as witnessing Nick's progress first hand. She definitely did not think that Nick was some kind of genius and even thought that he was a little simple since he didn't talk about anything else other than magic but he was definitely working hard and making greater progress than her in becoming a Magician. She also knew from the information that the Bartholomews gathered that his starting point might have even been worse than hers; at that thought, she felt embarrassed for how she had called him a less than when they first interacted.
Just as Varrow had finished healing Nick, a sudden bright light appeared close to their position that revealed a woman's figure after it dispersed. Nick recognized the woman as Rebecca Jones, one of Richter Order Academy's instructors.
She walked over to Varrow, saying:
"Thompson, I need to have a word with you, let's speak in private."
Varrow, with a disinterested expression replied:
"It's not anything that needs to be kept secret, right? You can just talk right here."
Jessica looked at Nick and recognized him as the young man that had obtained the corpse of a rank 6 Magician before but soon turned her attention back to Varrow, saying:
"There will be an emergency auction tonight hosted by the Madrid family who have apparently suffered heavy damage after many of the most powerful Magicians in their family were seriously injured while exploring a high class realm. They need money to pay for the treatment of those Magicians so they are opening their vaults and selling some treasures. Are you interested?"
The other students were a fair distance away but Rebecca spoke loud enough for them to hear. They started chattering amongst themselves immediately.
"The Madrid family? Aren't they in the top one hundred of the Forbe's List for being one of the richest Magician families in London? They actually need to hold an emergency auction to afford medical fees?"
"Why would that be surprising? Exploring high class realms is dangerous and you could encounter anything in them. There have been many prominent Magician families in the past that were brought down because of losing powerful Magicians to a high class realm."
"I know more than you guys. Word is that the head of the clan was injured during this exploration and his wounds are so severe that he might die. If that guy bites the dust, then the Madrid family will lose a lot of standing with the other powerful families."
...
While the other students gossiped, Varrow rubbed his chin and said to Rebecca:
"Sure, I'll go, I know for a fact that the Madrid family has an item that I would be interested in."
Nick listened to the conversation from the side and wondered:
(A high class realm? I've never heard that designation before.)
Slade went ahead to inform Nick:
[A high class realm is a large magical world that is filled with natural resources, including unique plants and/or magic beasts. They are different than low class realms in that they are much larger, some being one hundred times the size of the universe that you live in with all sorts of different planets. Low class realms do not have advanced civilizations living within them and possess limited resources but high class realms usually have such civilizations and the amount of resource that they contain are usually in massive amounts. Grand Earth that we are currently in is located within a high class realm.]
(Oh, I get it now, so high class realms are places that other magic civilization inhabit. It would probably be great to visit one.)
[...Yeah sure.]
Slade did not speak anymore. Nick felt that attending an auction would be a good thing for him and just as he had that thought, he received a text message from Marshall saying that they had picked up the Beast Capture scrolls and that Carla had transferred his payment to his bank account. Nick went to view his bank account balance and after seeing over £350,000,000, he knew that nothing was holding him back from participating in that auction.
While Jessica and Varrow were still speaking about their plans, Nick interrupted them humbly with a question:
"May I also attend this auction?"