AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Year 4, Summer, Third Month, First Week.

Samia stared at the wooden ceiling, wondering what she should during the day. It was only the second week of the month-long vacation, but she was already out of ideas to pass the time. Last week, she walked through the city and went to all new places that opened, visited her friends and the departments, and even walked along the Path to watch the “scenery”. With nothing left to do besides training and talking with her family, she was missing the missions and the excitement of spying.

Since the beginning of the year, the safety of their trade partners was entrusted to the shadow, which also meant accompanying them into the cities. Initially, she was a little hesitant to sneak into the Kingdom’s cities, but then, she fell in love with the sensation of observing hidden. It might seem strange, but the excitement of spying was intoxicating.

Even when she had to reveal herself, blending with the crowd, it was also thrilling. The trick was becoming common and unremarkable, so she even bought some clothes to allow her to mix with the commoners when needed. The only thing she hadn’t tried yet was playing a noble, but that would surely happen sometime in the future.

A knock came from behind the plain door and not a second later, her sister entered the room. Although they were becoming different by the day, both in personality and in appearance, the twins still shared the same general features.

“Why are you still in bed? I told you we would go to Johann’s place so you could find a way to spend a part of your fortune…”

Dealing with Sania was always easy for her, much more than for their parents at least. Although many considered her twin ruthless and cold-hearted, for her, the spear demoness was just a caring and protective sister. Without her, Samia would never have the drive to enter the hunting team and later found the shadow unit. In a way, they completed each other, like when they used to fight together, Sania would launch a careless attack, giving her all to slay the beasts without hesitating while she would cover her sister’s openings and protect her from the shadows.

However, they weren’t the same person, they couldn’t stay together forever, her sister couldn’t always be her voice as she wouldn’t always be there to protect the other. So, they learned to survived without each other, Sania learned how to plan and she found her voice in the shadows.

“I don’t know if I should… Even if I don’t know how to spend the money, it doesn’t mean I want to throw it away…”

Her tone was firmer than before, but instead of being offended, Sania actually smiled.

“Good… You’re learning to refuse my ideas… Anyway, we can just go there and you decide for yourself. I promise I won’t insist on anything…”

Sania helped her sister get up and put on some simple clothes before they went to the common room just in time to see their father coming from outside with a basket full of bread. Although many citizens still baked their bread, quite a few chose to buy it from one of the food stalls, either to save on time or because they preferred it. Alfeur, for example, was already a loyal customer of a stall that sells bread stuffed with vegetables and meat. In his opinion, the stuffing was much tastier and practical than soup.

The sisters quickly finished breakfast and left for Johann’s house, which was on the other side of their section. As the Head of Crafting, Alfeur felt the obligation to buy land in the first section and build a big house. Even though the prices were a little excessive, the location was excellent, he could come and go to the food section in only a few minutes.

Johann’s house, though simpler, was still well-located and had all the top features. After knocking and waiting for a couple of minutes, Hanna opened the door and welcomed the girls to enter. The house was pretty much like Alfeur’s, it had a few water taps, an internal lighting system prepared, a stove, a cooler, a big table, and a lot of comfortable chairs spread around.

The cooler and stove are recent creations of the Alchemy Department for domestic use, the former is a box that uses a water crystal to keep everything inside cooler, while the latter was a simple stone block that uses a fire crystal to create fire and keep it controlled.

“Welcome girls, or should I call you, the shadow and the spear demoness? How’s life as the wealthiest person in AK?”

As the only special agent of the Defense Department, Samia earned 570 crystals monthly. In the last six months since the Council started paying wages, she accumulated almost 3000 crystals as she didn’t have many ways of spending it. If it wasn’t for her vacation, she would continue her escorting job and would only spend some crystals paying for food in AP, leaving most of her earnings untouched. As soon as she arrived, Sania urged her to buy her own house or spend it commissioning some tools, but she didn’t saw a reason to do it, soon she would be gone until New Year’s and wouldn’t be able to enjoy any of that.

In fact, if it wasn’t for her father saying that using the crystals could help AK’s growth, she wouldn’t be even entertaining her sister’s ideas.

Sania didn’t like small talk, so she jumped straight to the topic.

“I brought Samia here to talk about your business. She’s looking for investments…”

The sentence quickly changed the Mage’s carefree posture. He sat straight and asked Hanna to explain. Apparently, he accepted that he wasn’t the best person to talk business.

“We’re organizing an independent hunting team, Johann is the face of the team and an important asset, but I’m responsible for management. Our idea is to operate independently and trade directly with business owners. However, we need funds to set up our first hunt. The Council already agreed to sell us some important tools and we already have 32 members, from which 17 have experience in hunting. For technical staff, we have two magic operators and a healer. We estimate a profit of 20 percent for our investors and we should be able to pay it before the end of the year.”

“So, what do you think?”