It was still a few days before the fair, but I had a lot of work to do. I also wanted fancy clothes, but as I only had a journeyman (4) level proficiency in making clothes, I had to go to a professional. I also had to get more mana stones from the wizard to make more music boxes and dictation quills, as I was now calling them.

  I started my morning by wrestling myself out of Valda's grip.

  "Gwen? Where are you going? Stay here with me where it's warm and sleepy."

  "While that sounds nice, I have things to do to get ready for the fair."

  "Ok, 'Mr. No Fun.' At least give me a kiss before you leave." She puckered her lips with her eyes still closed.

  I kissed her. That was something we were doing now. Don't get me wrong, I liked it. I was just embarrassed by it when people were watching.

  I went to the tailor first and got measured. I paid extra for an express job. I had him work on two separate jobs. One for the fair and one for when I was out adventuring.

  The job for the fair would be a waistcoat with matching trousers, a fine silk shirt, and a nice coat. Something nice and traditional. For adventuring, I would go all out on a limb. I described what a pirate jacket looked like and told him to make it orange.

  It would have numerous pockets, secret and not to hold supplies and inventions. I gave him several infinity bags to sew into the jacket so I didn't have to visibly carry them on my person anymore. I would just have them as pockets in the coat.

  "Are these infinity bags?" the tailor Garret asked. He held them with reverence.

  "Yes. I made them myself."

  "Who, who are you? Are you some famous adventurer?" He furrowed and raised his eyebrows.

  "Not yet, but it's still early days."

  "Do you have a place of business?"

  "No, but by the end of the fair, I might." I grinned widely.

  "Well, when you get one, come back and tell me where it is. I might want to visit."

  "I will." I maintained the smile.

  After that I went to the wizard's shop. I dropped gold on mana stones of various sizes and capacities. The smallest ones, the pebble sized ones cost 2 gold for standard quality. Quality was determined by how clear or murky the stones were.

  I got a few different sizes, but most of them were the pebble sized ones. I dropped 200 gold on mana stones.

  "You're really moving up in the world, aren't you, kid?" The wizard in blue robes put his hands on his hips.

  "Yeah, I guess I am. A lot of it was thanks to you and those books." This wasn't entirely true since most of the money came from my potions, but with the money I'd get from selling the music boxes and dictation quills, it soon would be.

  "I knew you could use those. I figured if anyone could, the kid who made an infinity bag would be able to do it."

  "Well, thank you."

  Back at the guild, I started brewing common health, mana, and stamina potions for Big Al. Common potions brewed quicker than uncommon and rare potions so I could make those in less time. I planned to make uncommon ones after and then sell those to him, since he specifically asked for them.

  They wouldn't make me as much money as the rare potions, but I wanted to do it in appreciation for taking my business in the first place, and because if I didn't, he might go out of business and that would be bad for me.

  As those brewed, I worked on Manufacturing music boxes one small portion at a time. I couldn't Manufacture an entire box in one go. It would take thousands of mana points to do that, and my max mp was only 240. I drank my way through a dozen rare mana potions to make the first non prototype box.

  This one used full pebble sized mana stones for each enchantment. Now it would last 20 years of continuous 24 hour use. Which, for most people, would probably last them significantly longer than that.

  Most of the music boxes I was making now would probably last people multiple lifetimes, which is exactly what I wanted. I didn't care much for the concept of planned obsolescence. This was the idea that you designed products to intentionally break down over time so people would have to buy new ones.

  Besides, this was just the first set of songs. I might travel and get more songs and make more music boxes, just with new tunes.

  Either way, I had my work cut out for me. I chugged mana potions and made music boxes until lunchtime. Then I met up with Valda in the guild dining hall, had a sandwich, and went back to work. She was still training for the fair. She had leveled up to 9 like me.

  I started on my second music box. This one only took nine mana potions because I refined the mana delivery system to the enchantment circles by wrapping a marble sized stone in copper wire and connecting the wires to each circle.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The third one only took six mana potions because I combined all the enchantment circles into one and cut out redundancies and unnecessary functions. The fourth one took three mana potions, the fifth took two, and the sixth took one. The seventh, I didn't even have to use a mana potion, because my maximum mana bar was enough to make the box.

  That was when I knew I was done refining and could start manufacturing the boxes for real. I marked and set aside the prototypes to give out for free and began the real work of making hundreds of them.

  After 5 hours, I had 100 boxes and a batch of 500 common, uncommon, and rare health, mana, and stamina potions each. After another few hours of needle and thread, I had enough bags to deliver all the potions in and another batch of rare potions.

  I did use my Manufacture skill to make the bags. There was no way, with just a journeyman (4) level proficiency in sewing, that I'd finish the bags in any reasonable amount of time manually. I was a good seamstress, sure, but I wasn't lightning quick. I considered making crates for the potions next time. While the bags were convenient for walking around with potions at the ready, they weren't the most stable and they certainly weren't stackable.

  Then I scratched that idea and decided to start over. I began work on wooden crates to hold and carry the potions immediately. After a few hours, I had stackable wooden crates with lids to carry and deliver the potions. Inside the crates, I maintained the grid pattern to hold the potions and prevent them from clinking together or breaking.

  It was at this moment I was very happy to have added pebble sized stones to my infinity bag enchantments and woven the stones into the fabric of the bags. With the amount of wood I used to make the crates, and how much wood I had left over, I realized if the bags were to stop functioning now, I would get trapped in a sea of materials and would likely starve to death. Something I very much didn't want to do.

  When I dropped off the crates of potions for Al at Big Al's Alchemy Shop, he took me down to the basement. There wasn't enough room behind the counter to store all the crates.

  "Just so you know, those potions of yours sold like hot cakes! Especially the anti-toxin ones. What grade are they? They must be high." He smiled greedily at the crates. He was seeing gold, I was sure of it.

  "Grade?"

  "Yeah, you know, F, D, C, B, A, and S?"

  "Oh, I don't know. I don't pay attention to that part." I waved my hand after finishing laying out all the crates.

  "You should pay attention to it. It decides if you get repeat sales or not. It's determined by taste, how hard they are on the stomach, speed and ease of digestion. Things like that. Important things if you want to sell potions." He wagged his finger at me.

  "I know that, but I figured if I can drink them and they don't bother me, they wouldn't bother other people. Besides, I'm not high enough level to determine grade off hand."

  "You can still determine if the grade is decent by trying the potions, making tweaks and noting differences."

  "Yeah, I guess I was more concerned if they worked." I shrugged.

  "That's important, but you need to be more entrepreneurial than that if you want to make a name for yourself in this world."

  "Ok. I guess I'll start working on that. Although, it does just add another thing for me to be a perfectionist about."

  "There's a balance to everything, I say. Lean into your perfectionism. Just not enough where it prevents you from taking action." He nudged my shoulder.

  "Thanks. That sounds like good advice."

  "It is, because I said it." He puffed out his chest and threw his shoulders back.

  "Right."

  I made 1,020 gold on that transaction by selling him 1,500 common, uncommon, and rare health, mana, and stamina potions at 40% of sale price. His uncommon potions sold for 50 silver and his commons sold for 20 silver. I kept a full batch of rare potions, which left me with over 600 of each type when you included yesterday's batch.

  I realized I would've needed a wagon to transport the potions and the gold if I didn't have my infinity bags. As it was, I was doing pretty well for myself. I was able to transport whatever I wanted, whether product or gold, without having to make a big thing about it or looking conspicuous.

  I spent a good chunk of what I made on new inventions and products, but you had to spend money to make money. I didn't know what I was going to spend this new 1k gold on, but I was sure I'd find something. Maybe a fancy wand or staff. Or maybe I'd just use the orange rock as a wand or staff.

  A staff might be stretching it, literally, but I could probably pull it off if I made it thin. The original rock was quite large and my original two flintlocks were no different. Compared to modern handguns, they were huge. Now that I had regular steel flintlocks, I didn't need the rock ones.

  When I got back to the guild, I transformed my old flintlocks into a staff. At the end of the staff, I placed a mana stone that I had ground and polished into a sphere. I didn't waste the shavings and powder, though. I collected that in a vial for potential later use.

  Once the mana stone was in place, I made the orange metal of the weird rock form four vertical rings, evenly spaced around the blue orb. The orb was partially see through and dark inside. I hadn't filled the orb with any mana yet. When filled with mana, mana stones glowed blue. The orb was roughly 20 times the size of one of the pebble sized stones. In earth terms, it was about the size of a golf ball.

  The mana stone wasn't the only good thing about the staff. Since the metal of the staff could channel my mana, I was able to use it as a proper magic staff, which allowed me to cast bigger spells and increased the range of my spells as long as I was willing to increase my casting time proportionately.

  Staffs let you store mana inside them, which allowed for larger spells depending on how conductive the staff's material was. Since I had combined my staff with a mana stone, that increased my casting efficiency. By how much we would find out.

  My spells were limited to the abilities I got from leveling up, such as Manufacture, Synthesize, Assemble, and Excavate. Increased range—beyond a couple feet—on those spells alone was a significant upgrade. I manufactured a back holster out of leather, shortened and thickened the staff, and placed it on my back. With it shortened, it was barely noticeable and didn't get in the way like a normal staff would.

  I made 100 dictation quills and then headed back to the inn. I went to sleep fully expecting to be making more music boxes and quills the next day, but apparently that wasn't in the cards. Valda woke me up bright and early and smacked me with a pillow. That didn't seem necessary, but she did it anyway, because she was Valda.

  "Wake up! Wake up!" She smacked me with a pillow again.

  "I'm awake! I'm awake!" I covered my head with my hands. "What's going on?"

  "You're going to come train with me for the fair! I decided that yesterday."

  "You decided?"

  "Yes. I decided. Is Gwen going to say no to his girlfriend?" She laughed.

  "No." I laughed back. It wasn't what I was expecting to do today, but I wasn't against it. I figured it could be fun.

  "Good! Now let's go!"

  So that's what we did. We trained for the last two days before the fair. She wanted me to participate in the games as well, and I wasn't against it. It sounded fun. I was just so preoccupied by my entrepreneurship that I didn't think about it.

  I got to practice with my new guns and staff, as well as a little hand to hand combat, because Valda wanted me to be able to defend myself if another Patriculus came along. I told her I'd just drill their head, but that wasn't good enough for her. So we trained.