Afterward, seeing that it was getting late, Dorothy pulled Vania, who was still standing there in a daze, and bid farewell to Aldrich, setting off on the journey back to Igwynt.
When saying goodbye, Aldrich promised that he would help Dorothy travel to Tivian in a couple of days. Dorothy only needed to wait for his message. After thoroughly looting the two defeated Bonesmiths, Dorothy and Vania boarded the carriage and returned to Igwynt.
After parting ways with Vania at a certain intersection, Dorothy parked the carriage and walked back to Southern Sunflower Street. She climbed up to her apartment and entered her home, only to find it completely dark. Clearly, Gregor was still working overtime and hadn’t returned yet.
"Ah... he’s really working hard..."
With a simple sigh, Dorothy entered her room, turned on the light, locked the door, and sat down at her desk to sort out her gains and losses from this operation.
First, the losses. In terms of marionettes, Dorothy had lost a total of nine marionettes in this operation, leaving her with twelve. As for sigils, she had used the only Silent Sigil she had obtained from Bill, and there were no other sigil expenditures. Half of the explosives she had acquired from the Flooded Dockyard had been used, leaving her with the other half.
In terms of spirituality consumption, the expenditure of Revelation did not exceed the upper limit of her blue bar, which was 5 points. Overloading the Corpse Marionette Ring had consumed 2 points of Chalice. The consumption of Shadow was slightly higher. She had used the Extinguishing Black Candle twice, consuming 2 points of Shadow herself, and the marionettes had used two Shadow spiritual storage items to approach the enemies stealthily. With this, Dorothy’s Shadow storage items were completely depleted.
Next were the gains. To be honest, those two Bonesmiths were really poor. Dorothy had only found a few sigils and a small amount of money on them. Their bone artifacts were useless to anyone who wasn’t a Bonesmith. Compared to Luer, who had built the Eucharist from scratch, these two were far behind.
But then again, Luer’s Chalice path was prone to corruption, making it easier to gather ordinary followers. By corrupting wealthy individuals like Field and Buck, he could easily amass a large amount of funds to pursue mystic endeavors, so it was normal for him to be rich. Moreover, Luer seemed to have been at the Black-rank for a long time, already at the peak and ready to advance, so it was natural for him to be stronger and wealthier than the average Black-rank.
Additionally, according to Aldrich, Beyonders on the Stone path often needed to expend a lot of resources to create their constructs, tools, and technical support, so it was understandable for Stone Beyonders to be relatively poor if they weren’t shrewd merchants or lacked efficient ways to make money."Understanding is one thing, but these two are really poor."
With a sigh, Dorothy placed the few sigils she had looted from the two Bonesmiths on the table. There were four in total, all of which had been appraised for free by Aldrich.
Two of them were Illumination Sigils, requiring at least 1 point of Lantern to activate. They could create a floating light orb for illumination, which would follow the user. One was an Earth Listener Sigil, requiring at least 2 points of Stone to activate. It allowed the user to sense vibrations through the ground. The last was a Spirit-Sealing Sigil, requiring at least 2 points of Silence to activate. It could seal a spirit within an object, preferably a bone artifact.
As for money, the two Bonesmiths didn’t carry much cash, probably because they hadn’t planned to stay in Igwynt for long and only brought enough travel expenses. In total, it was around 100 pounds.
"Sigh... poor as they are, at least there’s some gain."
After sighing, Dorothy stored everything in her magic box and began organizing the hidden knowledge she had gained from this operation. Although this knowledge wasn’t obtained by reading mystical texts, she could still extract spirituality from it.
This hidden knowledge included witnessing the remains of the divine creature, the Abyssal Ancient Deer, from which Dorothy extracted 1 point of Silence and 1 point of Revelation. Learning some details about the advancement of Stone path Beyonders to Gold-rank allowed her to extract 2 points of Stone and 1 point of Revelation. Discovering the existence of the Star Numerology Scriptorium and learning the location of one of its ruins allowed her to extract pure Revelation, totaling 3 points.
Combining this with her previous expenditures, Dorothy’s current spirituality status was 13 points of Chalice, 10 points of Stone, 1 point of Shadow, 4 points of Lantern, 3 points of Silence and 14 points of Revelation.
This time, Dorothy calculated Revelation by excluding the 5 points of inherent spirituality used as her blue bar, only counting the experience points. Her current experience points for Revelation were 14, meaning she only needed 6 more to reach the Apprentice rank’s upper limit of 20.
As for storage items, Dorothy now had 4 Lantern and 2 Stone items. This was her current spirituality situation. In terms of money, after adding what she had gained from the docks and this operation, she now had a total of 940 pounds.
"I didn’t expect... my Shadow to be down to just 1 point. I’ll need to find time to buy some more from Aldrich, at least enough to meet the basic needs of the Concealment Ring.”
"Also, Chalice. Although I have a decent amount now, after the Eucharist is completely destroyed, I won’t have a stable way to replenish it. My main combat strength lies in my marionette army, and the primary energy source for the marionettes is Chalice. While 13 points of Chalice can last for a while, I’ll need to find a suitable source before it runs out, or my marionette army will be significantly weakened.”
"Finally, Revelation. My experience points for Revelation are only 6 points away from the maximum. Once full, it seems I’ll meet the spirituality requirements for advancement. I wonder if I can find a method for advancement in the Star Numerology Scriptorium ruins in Tivian."
With uncertain thoughts, Dorothy took out a golden coin, placed it in her hand, and silently recited a divination phrase.
"Does the Star Numerology Scriptorium ruin in Tivian contain a method for advancing to the Black-rank on the Revelation path?"
After silently reciting the phrase, Dorothy tossed the coin and covered it with her hand. When she slowly moved her hand away, the dull coin showed heads, confirming the accuracy of her divination.
"It seems I really have to go to Tivian," Dorothy murmured, looking at the divination result on her hand.
After sorting everything out, Dorothy tidied up the items on her desk. She took off her clothes, took a shower, put on her pajamas, turned off the light, and lay down in bed, ready to sleep. However, just as she was about to drift off, she suddenly remembered something.
"Wait, there’s still one of those Bonesmiths alive, locked in the school’s secret room. I wonder if he’s awake yet. What should I do with him...?"
As she lay in bed, Dorothy began to think about how to handle the captive.
"What can I do with a Black-rank Bonesmith captive? Turn him into a marionette? That’s too wasteful. My marionettes can’t inherit Beyonder’s abilities, so killing him and turning him into a marionette would just make him an ordinary one.”
"Sell him to Aldrich for interrogation to get information about Deer Skull? That’s an option, but Aldrich already knows I have a Bonesmith captive and hasn’t asked for him. That probably means he thinks this low-ranked minion wouldn’t have any useful information. Deer Skull wouldn’t leak important details to someone at this level. Aldrich also isn’t the type of Beyonder who extracts bones and souls, so he wouldn’t have much use for human materials. Selling him to Aldrich probably wouldn’t fetch a good price.”
"Psychological manipulation? Turn him into my puppet? If only I had that kind of ability.”
"Give him Chalice medicine and corrupt him? Would that even work on a Stone path Beyonder?"
Lying in bed, Dorothy pondered how to use the Black-rank Bonesmith captive. As she glanced around her empty room, an idea came to her.
"Maybe... I can try this..."