Unexpected Gains

"Why are there so many people?!"

Maya looked at the crowd gathered around the Game Table and muttered unhappily.

Ever since leaving the Workshop yesterday, that adorable little reindeer seemed to have taken up residence in her mind, hopping around nonstop. She had desperately looked forward to school, class, the end of class, the end of the school day, and letting that adorable little reindeer collect every tiny star again—but she had never expected the Workshop to already be so crowded.

The other children felt much the same.

They felt a little wronged.

They had clearly been the first to come to this Workshop.

Fortunately, the children were all sensible. They knew the Workshop needed to make money and could not exist solely for them to play in. Even the more mischievous boys merely cleverly squeezed their way into the crowd.

They were smaller, after all, and it was easier for them to slip through.

One boy squeezed into the crowd. When he saw who was playing, he could not help shouting, "Big Brother! Why are you here?!"

Kata was startled by his little brother's sudden voice. His hand slipped, and the reindeer fell to the ground.

"What are you yelling for?!" Kata said angrily.

He had reached a hundred thousand points!

He had spent an entire afternoon to finally achieve that score!

And it was currently first place!

But because of his stupid little brother, it looked like he was about to lose first place.

Thinking so, Kata warily looked at the handsome youth across the Game Table.

The youth was probably a noble. He wore expensive Silk clothes, and his bearing differed from that of Commoners. He seemed especially calm and aloof, utterly unaffected by the noisy crowd around him.

Now that Kata had already lost, the youth was still nimbly controlling the light-blue little reindeer, making it hop lightly onto the stars.

Damn it, acting all high and mighty!

Seeing the other person's score about to surpass his own, Kata immediately panicked. He took out a coin, intending to enter the game again and give the other person some trouble.

But Kata's little brother had no concern whatsoever for his brother's feelings. Taking advantage of Kata's pause to insert the coin, he squeezed to the front of the Game Table and pressed the button.

"My turn!" the little brat declared happily.

The diamond-shaped crystal hanging from his wrist cord began to sparkle.

The screen before him actually returned to the title screen and started a new round.

"Wait, you didn't pay, did you?" someone immediately asked.

At that moment, the Black Cat attendant that had been sitting beside the counter spoke up:

"This child is an Initial Member of our Workshop. He gets two free trial uses of the Game Table every day."

The crowd watching the game stirred.

"Initial Member?"

"Free?"

"What's that?"

"This is a special benefit for Workshop members. These children were the first guests of our Workshop, so they receive this preferential treatment," Mithril explained unhurriedly. "The Certification Crystal carries a Magic Contract and may only be used by its owner. Even if it is lost, it can be replaced at our shop for only a small handling fee. We have records for every member."

After Mithril explained it, the children immediately felt proud.

"That's right! We were the first to play the Game Table!" Maya said.

She proudly puffed out her little chest, and the diamond-shaped crystal hanging from her necklace refracted the light.

The children all proudly showed off their Membership Tokens.

Others had objections.

"That's unfair!"

"Yeah, why do these brats get to play for free?"

"We came early too. Can we count as Initial Members as well?"

Amid the chaotic protests, someone calmly asked:

"Then how does one become a member of the Workshop?"

Everyone looked over. It was the noble youth in front of the Game Table.

At some point, he had stopped playing and was staring at the Black Cat on the counter.

"Our Workshop is not accepting members for the time being..." Mithril had originally intended to lazily brush him off, but its ears twitched halfway through, as if listening to something. Then it added, "After all, it's still the testing period! But once the testing period ends, the top-ranked player on every Game Table will receive a membership for free, along with a mysterious gift!"

First place on the rankings,

a free membership?

And a gift?!

Everyone could not help looking toward the Game Table.

Kata's gaze collided with that of the noble youth.

Sparks flew!

Late Night · Magic Gear Workshop

"Thirty-six silver and seven hundred fifty cents in total!"

After closing the shop, Angell poured out every coin from the Game Table, piling them into a small mountain of Nickel Coins on the counter. After carefully counting them, he made the announcement.

It was a decent income.

The Central Kingdom used a gold-standard currency system. The largest denomination was a paper note worth "1 gold," while silver currency came in three denominations—"50 silver," "10 silver," and "1 silver"—each available as both banknotes and silver coins. The final Nickel Coins were called cents, with five denominations in circulation: "500 cents," "200 cents," "100 cents," "50 cents," and "10 cents." The exchange rate was: 1 gold = 100 silver, 1 silver = 1000 cents.

According to the latest wage survey published in Cecilia City, the average monthly income of an ordinary family was around twenty silver.

The Workshop had earned almost twice that amount in a single day, and that was with only one Game Table and without Angell having prepared enough coins.

Simply put, the Workshop's finances were finally beginning to improve.

Enlise immediately cheered with absolutely no ladylike restraint. "We finally made money!"

"Yeah! We finally made money." Angell patted the girl's head.

No wonder Enlise was so happy.

Recently, the child had been living in fear that the Workshop would go bankrupt, that she would be abandoned again, that she would have to drop out of school and become homeless. Now, she could finally breathe easy.

Angell was not as dramatic as Enlise, but he also let out a small sigh of relief.

After all, he had always worked for others before. This was his first time being a boss and launching a new project himself, so the pressure had been immense. Now, it had proven that even in another world, with entirely different underlying principles, Electronic Games still possessed strong profit potential. He could finally relax.

Still, he would not count it as a profit until he had earned back the three hundred thousand gold used to repay the Workshop's debts.

That was truly a long-term goal.

Angell looked at the Arcade Machine and calculated, "Since we've proven this can make money, we can consider adding a few more."

"Take it easy. A game that simple might bore the customers in two or three days, meow," Mithril snorted.

"Didn't you tell me to conquer the world before?" Angell asked with amusement.

"Conquering the world has to be done step by step too!" The Black Cat lay atop the pile of coins and stretched. It had spent the entire day working as an attendant and was a little tired. "After being used for a long time, this Game Table itself seems a little unstable. By the end of today, customers were complaining that the machine was lagging."

"Lagging?" Angell became alert.

As a former planner for Electronic Games, the two words he feared most were "lag" and "bug."

They meant money lost from every event, lectures from bald bosses, official apology statements, Players below cursing his parents to death, and compensation vouchers distributed across the entire server just to make it seem like nothing had happened.

Just thinking about it made Angell's stomach hurt.

He considered the cause of the lag. "Could it be that the Magic Core is running out of Mana... At the time, I only wanted to first see how the game worked, so I didn't replenish much Mana."

As he spoke, Angell dismantled the Arcade Machine and looked inside.

Then he and the Black Cat both froze.

The Discarded Core was emitting lights of different colors. It had clearly been filled to the brim with Mana supplied by the Players.

"It's actually full?"

Angell and the Black Cat looked at each other.

They were certain they had picked up a Discarded Core from the warehouse.

Such cores generally came from small Monsters like Slimes. Because their Magic Cores were small and contained little Mana, they could not be embedded into wands. Therefore, the Adventurer's Guild would purchase them in bulk and sell them to places like Alchemy Workshops to extract their Mana.

After a Magic Core's Mana had been extracted, the remaining Discarded Core was not entirely useless. If a Mage wished, they could use a Discarded Core as a Mana storage container.

That was where the Magic Gear Workshop's underground warehouse full of Discarded Cores had come from.

However, these Magic Cores came from Magic Beasts, and their Mana structures were completely different from those of humans. Filling them with Mana was extremely difficult, so Mages generally preferred to buy Magic Crystal Ore, which was easier to charge and had greater storage capacity.

Angell had only thought of making use of Discarded Cores because he was too poor to do otherwise.

But he clearly remembered that when he put it in, the Magic Core had still been gray. Yet now, it radiated a full white glow, clearly filled with Mana.

"This is Mana overload!" Angell said.

He carefully picked up the Magic Core and examined the Mana inside.

The Mana was extremely abundant and had already reached its critical limit.

But the internal elements were extremely mixed.

The white light was not white because of purity, but because it was a mixture of all kinds of elements.

This proved that the Mana had come from different people.

Come to think of it, Angell really had changed the game's Design principles.

Since the Players could not even perform the simplest Mana manipulation, Angell had no choice but to let the game character act on its own. The Players only needed to focus their attention, meditate, and occasionally control it.

Angell forced an explanation. "It makes sense when you think about it. Every round of the game is a meditation session. With so many people playing today, it's natural for some Mana to accumulate."

"How does that make any sense?!" Mithril cried. "Even an Intermediate Mage like you would need an entire night to fill this Magic Core, meow! And the people playing the game were just Commoners!"

"But two people can play one machine at the same time! And they played all day!"

"Two Commoners do not equal one Intermediate Mage!" The Black Cat's tone became inexplicably agitated. "Do you think no one ever considered using those without talent for meditation? Seven hundred years ago, a Black Robe tried to use Commoners as the Mana source for a Mage Tower. He not only kidnapped fifty thousand people, but also mentally controlled them and forced them to meditate. In the end, every one of them died from exhausted Mental Power in just one week, while all the Mana the Black Robe collected could only cast a single wind spell."

"...Was it really that tragic?" Angell asked in surprise.

"Of course. The relevant records are still preserved in the Royal Mage Tower of the Old Imperial Capital. You can go read them. It was after that incident that people concluded those without talent had no value whatsoever."

"But people without talent started the Industrial Era."

"Hmph, meow!" Mithril heavily slapped the floor with its two tails.

"And in terms of magic, they may not be as worthless as imagined," Angell said. His voice grew strangely low. "Maybe my research project can continue after all."

"Research project?" Both of the Black Cat's ears shot upright.

But Angell said nothing more.

He carefully put away the Magic Core filled with Mana.