Sama just rolled her eyes. “Nobody under an Archmage willingly wants to engage a Night Weaver, they are just too lethal. The Mystic Eye might be the most elite university in the world, but they are young scions who want to become Archmages and coast through life, not tough-as-nails Hunters making a living. Oddly enough, the temples are just outside their chosen purview, so if you want to hire one of the instructors, it’s going to cost a mint, and the students kinda just turn up their noses at something that dangerous.”

“Why do I have the feeling you cost much less than most Hunters who would take on the job?” I asked the ceiling.

“Oddly enough, Briggs and I have a rather large number of very loyal people down there now. It’s surpassing strange how well-informed we are about everything going on in that territory.” Her smile was hard.

“So, that talk about bandits was not accidental. I guess some of the lads should be going along with me... and are you looking at establishing a White Mana Zone down there?” I asked her.

“Not until it can be defended. There’s only about twenty people we’ve managed to get from that area up to here. I was actually hoping you could bring a bunch of volunteers back with you.”

“I see absolutely no reason not to double and triple up on things to do. Do you want me to build any infrastructure?” I continued.

Sama closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “How much are you willing to do?” she asked carefully.

“You’re the one sending me down there because you want a Portable Hole and Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks. However long you want me to put that off is however long I’ll work on the stuff.”

Sama looked up at the ceiling and clenched her fingers. “Goddamn, Fae, do you know how fucking NICE it is to work with a powerful Caster who doesn’t look down on ordinary people and not think them worth their time? Who actually wants to do the right thing and is willing to work at it?”

I was sinking back into my pillow. “Now, now. We both know there’s no goddamn such thing. This is me making a speculative investment with petty time and cash in a minor expansion of my business interests, looking to get at least some positive return on my time and money in return for the unmitigated awe, gratitude, and no doubt slavish loyalty of the people there. Praise me, praise me.”

Sama instead got up, came over, and gave me a hug. With her Null up.

I’m pretty sure I was drooling and fast asleep against her very, very quiet and comfortable shoulder by the time she let me go, but I was asleep, so who knows.

----------

A few weeks later...

Radiating gentle light out to approximately sixty feet, the finest features of these Braziers is that they passively eliminate Dark Mana around them, drawing it in and purifying it so the air feels fresher and cleaner to any non-Dark mage able to feel such things! Any use of Dark Magic in the area will make the flame flicker and dance and grow brighter, although it is not powerful enough to actually stop more than most minor of spells that touch it directly!

Each Brazier is formed from magical ores, melded and shaped together in unique patterns, ensuring that no two are actually alike. You can choose from seven styles of ores at this time, with possibly more coming in the future!

If you are a lover of the Light, you can get one of these Braziers for the low, low price of...

---

“Ten thousand of the things made from fool’s gold?” I shook my head at the order from the Church of Light. Naturally they wanted an eye-catching set for themselves, with a unique pattern if possible. Pyrite served the purpose admirably.

It was all expected, of course. There were a lot of their churches around, and despite not really liking us and our attitude, the fact the braziers were independently tested and verified by dozens of Hunters with and without Dark Magic sold the things. The Church had never really accepted Dark Magic being acknowledged by the magical community at large, but there were just too many Dark Mages around to stand against them, now, and they made too many highly valued Toys... like, oh, Awakening Stones.

“Hard getting hold of some pyrite?” I asked over my shoulder to Briggs, who normally took care of the logistics and business side of things. Sama was more like, hmm, a facilitator...

“Non-Energized? It’s just trash tailings. I can probably get you an order for ten thousand tons of it by tomorrow,” he replied absently from the desk behind me, tapping quickly through pages of production lines and tallies. “Only have to pay for trucking it away.”

“What if I go there and just take it off their hands? Will they pay me for disposing of it?” I shot back impishly.

“Ten thousand tons of it?” His thick eyebrows rose over those pale violet eyes.

“Forty-four hundred cubic feet every six seconds once I have the format down. Takes about five pounds per brazier.”

“Pyrite’s about five tons a cubic yard. So, you’re going to be converting about 160 tons every six seconds, sixteen hundred a minute, done in six minutes.” He smirked despite himself at the image of ten thousand tons of scree getting reformed that quickly and precisely. “You’re still talking four thousand of them per cubic yard. That’s eight million braziers!”

I flicked over to the number of pre-orders for the things, which was at half a million and rising, from all over the world, and slid aside to show him that.

He looked up and blinked at the number, which was basically rising non-stop every five seconds as it renewed.

“Are you gonna be able to keep up with that?” he asked me.

“Briggs, this is probably one of the best environmental things I can do for the planet. Also a very easy way for some of the Typeless, Light, and Fire Mages to earn some fast cash for themselves.” I frowned at the number. “Let’s assume I can use Mass instead of Chain. That means optimizing the number that can be found in a ten or twenty-foot radius sphere, to a max of, oh,” Base 20, +10 Good, +7 Star Theurge, +5 Cold, +3 Fire, +6 Divine Theurgy shared spell, +5 for Delimit... “about 56 at a time. It’s more Mana-efficient to Pair what is effectively a V than to Cast it twice, and more efficient again to Echo the Paired spell with Residual Metamagic. So, four spells per round after the first is 224 of them every six seconds, at a cost of eighteen Mana per round. With a full tank of fourteen thousand Mana, I could make 780 sets or so, or close to 175k a day, taking about an hour and a half to do so, assuming we have the braziers set up and ready to go.”

“Hey, Lady Fae?” Jimmy Song, one of the Typeless techies, leaned over from his side office, where he was monitoring this section of the transactions website. “We just got some inquiries from overseas. They are interested in the braziers, but want to know if we work in jade and marble.”

I lifted an eyebrow, glancing at Briggs, who just shrugged. “Reply to them; yes, but the price will rise significantly. And any kind of custom carvings, those will cost extra.” And would be left to the Earth mages who hit Five and were totally ready to use Shape Stone all day for custom jobs.

Jimmy was one of them, so he just grinned, seeing the dollar signs coming up, and zipped back to his screen.

Naturally we were going to squeeze the upper-end buyers for everything, and they were going to happily pay it.

The base brazier was lotus-style, so it could be folded in to conceal the flame and ‘put the light out’, which wouldn’t affect its vivic operation at all. It was simple, the only unique thing being the scrap ore it was Shaped from ensuring they all looked different.

Want a different style of brazier? We had multiples, which we’d run off in lots of a thousand. Want the Light another color than soft off-white? We could do that. Want a set of colored shades for them? We could arrange that. Different stone? Sure, we could do that. It all just cost more money, and if they wanted custom lot sizes, it cost even more money.

Could we come over and ignite one of these flames in their own braziers, pots, lamps, censers, light fixtures, or whatnot? Sorry, no, much too busy. (With dire warnings to our people not to do that, as the biggest thing they wanted was to find out the kind and type of magic doing that so they could steal it, probably at cost of our people’s lives).

Also, days spent traveling out there were days not earning money here, and they could earn a LOT of money here. There was no need to travel to some Family and put up with the pressure and probable threat of death, or mindrape at the least.

It had also been six months since the start of the Earthhouse and our Typeless college courses for non-mages. The courses were designed to unlock a Typeless Matrix for Wizardry and Artifice, which would also catalyze a Typeless Starfield.

It meant hundreds of potential new employees, many of them knowing their lives were going to change... and at the Novice level, it was VERY easy for them to pass themselves as having any single Element they chose, as long as they got the Novice spells for it.

Naturally, those who came to work for us got those spells. The older folks with families could just work in a White Mana Zone making some of the most high-demand products in the world. The younger folks with drive and ambition now had the tools and wherewithal to try for Mage, albeit in a manner they’d never realized existed.

Wizardry and Artifice were basically wide-open fields, and the students of Coralost College were the only ones who were blazing the way for it. The sheer breadth of the possible things they could learn to do just astounded many of them, overturning much of their basic education, especially in the areas of Alchemy and the things possible to make in White Mana Zones.

It was why we were expanding. We had things to make, and they needed things to do.

That was, of course, for those who decided to come to us. To those who decided to accept lucrative offers afield, well, there were problems.

One was that Typeless folks were, in the eyes of normal mages, the bottom of the barrel as far as Talents went. Statwise, they were all 13’s or less, and most were 9 to 12 in their mental Stats, which ruled the world for potential. It was, after all, why they hadn’t Awakened an Element.

It meant they would still be Novice Mages, even if they could use almost any type of Magic. If they were a 9 or 10, they couldn’t even manage a Novice spell in the Elements that needed that Stat, and naturally they had no ability at Wizardry or Artifice if that was their Intellect score.

They wouldn’t get a Mark, with an instant +1 to a key Stat, usually Intellect, sometimes Charisma or Wisdom if it was indeed their best Stat. Even if our people couldn’t become a Wizard or Artificer now, they might be able to in a few Levels, as long as their progress was guided and they mastered the right spells.

They didn’t get the chance to power-level in the Boonies while wielding firearms, helped by incredible Buffs, and feed that Mark with daily Karma, until a month later it hit +4 and their future was wide open. They wouldn’t accrue Soul Crystals, and reach Tier-4 Stars easily, and maybe Tier-5 if they were persistent about it.

Their masters had hired them on and found their ability to use multiple Elements of spells interesting... but they were still barrel-scrapers, with no talent, and would never be more than Novices. After all, the ones with real talent were already mages!

Talented people could potentially follow the same path, it was true. But then, learning that a Typeless mage would only ever have one Starfield, giving up the fourfold power and potential of the other Elements? Who would do such a thing?

They hadn’t been taught any Valence spells. Those were reserved for the Marked and those Sworn into our Allegiance. They had nothing to offer but a very low-end versatility that was of almost no use, even if it did elevate them above those with no power whatsoever.

Those opportunistic fools started dribbling back and telling stories of how they’d been treated. They had realized that even with magic, they were still dirt on the stairs, barely above non-Casters with their potential so limited, fated to be trod under the steps of mages even if they could use spells from multiple Elements.

They were only Novice spells, so who really cared?