I am once again asking for your financial support!
...Or not...but I do have a Pat reon don'cha know, you can find it by either going to my profile and copying the link there, or just search for Fireflux Pat reon on a search engine! The timelapse recording of writing Chapter 9 is also out so you can go on YouTube and search for that if you're even vaguely interested. Patrons get early access to chapters and videos by the way, and you can pay as little or as much as you want for that!
Also, I feel the need to clarify something here. Rosa doesn't mind the idea of Charisma helping her in some regards, that's fine. But it actively manipulates people to be more favorable to her despite her doing nothing different, and THAT is what scares her. Does it mean she might be actively hampering her progression because of her own personal morals? Sure. Does that mean she shouldn't have her own beliefs? Sure, she's actively performing ritualistic sacrifices, but so far, all she's sacrificed are inanimate objects and animals.
So for her to despise the idea of manipulating free will to the point of hampering her progression is, in my eyes at least, totally reasonable.
Chapter 9
In the end, her capitalistic heart got the better of her, and so she decided to take advantage of her Charisma to try and set the bar for the price of each copper kunai higher than it would typically be.
It rankled her, and she swore that as soon as it was all set in stone, she would go straight into her ritual space and attempt to sacrifice her Charisma, but her desire for more money was louder than her abhorrence at her Charisma messing with the free will of other people. It was quite possibly one of the things she despised most, taking away the ability to think from another person. Her Charisma didn't do that, but it did still mess with their heads, and she was honestly scared of what it would do if she leveled up her Charisma further.
Maybe later on she could level it up and try to control it in some capacity, perhaps there was something in her system she could buy or upgrade that would let her make it so her Charisma only influenced certain things, but for now, she had no way to control it. Still, after ignoring all the looks she received on the way to the market, she headed inside, waited in line, and once it was her turn, she removed her string of kunai from her inventory and laid them down on the counter whilst the shopkeeper fetched the blacksmith. "Done already? Or I suppose you had them ready and just needed a seller?" The woman said plainly, peering down at the kunai keenly.
Rosa watched her untie the string and pick one kunai up, rolling it over in her fingers, inspecting the edge, the handle and the ring, flicking her finger against it a few times. "I have my ways, so believe whatever you want to believe." The blacksmith snorted in response, running her thumb delicately side to side across the edge, crudely testing the sharpness. "Each one will be near-identical to these, so if the quality is high enough, I'm happy to start producing more. If you'd prefer, I can start making them out of iron or steel, though of course the price would go up accordingly." At that, the woman frowned.
"Up instead of down?" She asked curiously, leading Rosa to realize that iron was, in fact, cheaper than copper. But she quickly recovered, pointing out that copper was far easier to melt down and work than iron was, and as such, it would take more effort, even if the base material itself was less expensive. The fact the handles were wrapped in pigskin wasn't represented, the only change the kunai had from what she took as a standard kunai, many of which were in the store around her, was the metal being copper instead of iron. The wrapping itself looked actually more like cloth than leather, so she supposed that was just her system using a higher-quality crafting resource to make a better weapon.
After that intercession, the pair entered into negotiations. Or rather, the blacksmith stated a price, and Rosa snapped it up immediately. She had sold her bronze dagger for 6,000. The kunai? The woman was willing to buy each one, provided they were of the same quality but made of iron, for a flat 7,500 Ryo per kunai. That was pretty nuts all things considered. If she was able to refine 10 kilograms of iron ore into 1 kilogram of metal, and thus make four kunai, that'd be 2,000 Ryo of ore for 30,000 Ryo of kunai. Of course, there was also the price of pigskin, but that was a negligible 235 Ryo for enough to put a handle-wrap on 8 kunai.
She could make a tanning apparatus and make actual leather, but if the flat price was set at 7,500, why incur any extra cost? "Alright, so, kunai set at 7,500 Ryo, are there any other items you'd want me to make? I can do swords, helmets, shields, axes, whatever else, so long as the price is right." And so, the pair went into another discussion, this time on what kinds of tools the blacksmith wanted made. Axes were one thing that was always in high demand, and so for each axe, again provided the quality was up to standard and it was made from iron, she would pay 12,000 Ryo.
As for the question of steel, the blacksmith expressed some interest in certain specialty items, but said she preferred quantity over quality. It was Keishi, the capital of Hi no Kuni after all, and there were tons of people who came to buy and sell things. Merchants in particular would buy things they could sell elsewhere, and so as long as she could flip a profit on buying tools from Rosa, it was a win-win for every party involved.
Since it was a deal involving quite a great deal of Ryo, the blacksmith told Rosa to come back in a day or two, where she could sign a contract stipulating the various conditions of their agreement. The blacksmith was going to be putting a lot of money on the line after all if it turned out her products were actually inferior in some capacity, so she wanted a legal anchor to stop Rosa from fucking her over. Fair, but a bit surprising, since she expected that her Charisma would have made the woman gloss over that kind of issue out of 'trust'.
With all that said and done, the blacksmith gave her a payment for the forty copper kunai she had brought, which was a fucking ludicrous sum of 300,000 Ryo. She understood that it was an inflated currency compared to what she was used to, considering she had managed to spend 5,000 Ryo during only an hour of shopping, but that was still a hell of a lot of money, and the fact that the blacksmith had actually paid her before doing anything to seriously inspect the kunai was already telling her a great deal about the influence her scary Charisma stat was having.
She put the 30 10,000 Ryo notes away in her inventory and exited the shop with a wave, now feeling rather confident about her chances in her new world. In just a few short days, she had secured a great deal of money, she had expanded her skill-set and leveraged it into an incredibly-potent income stream, and would be financially secure enough to begin establishing herself as a totally-legal and above-board organization dedicated to crafting and trading.
But first, she headed home, entering her ritual pocket and using 60 ritual points to add more ornamentation to the circle, alongside refilling the consumable items. Sitting herself down right in the middle of the ritual circle with her legs crossed, she closed her eyes and placed her hands palms-up on her knees, taking a few breaths to steady herself. "Compassionate Chhinnamasta, Goddess of Self-sacrifice, I sacrifice to you my innate Charisma out of fear of the power it may wield upon those I dare to call my friends and allies, and I wish upon you the wisdom to never again make such a mistake."
As it turned out, speaking from the heart was a hell of a lot easier than making up vaguely-religious-sounding terminology to use to try and improve her incantation value. After a moment, what she felt was not a gaze of a being above her comprehension. No, instead it felt like something cold and...innate had been pulled from within her chest, leaving her feeling hollow and cold for a moment before reality reasserted itself and she once again felt like herself. There was a flash of white before her closed eyelids, and when she opened them again, the only remnant of the consumable candles and incense were faint wisps of smoke rising.
In a moment of curiosity, she pondered how the sealed pocket hadn't already filled with the smoke from the incense and candles, but she didn't dwell on that, and instead checked out the ritual report nervously.
Ritual Completed - C-2
Environment - C-1
Items - C-3
Sacrifice - F+3
Incantation - C
Other Effects - D+3
E̵̯͍͐Ŕ̷͚̳͌Ř̴̹Ọ̴̏Ṟ̴͍̐͛ ̸̤̈́-̴̜͒ ̴̠̒Ȉ̴̛̯͜N̵̰͂ͅV̸̢̠͆À̷̺͝L̵̺̈Í̴̧̙̂D̷̻̀̀ ̶̹̄İ̷͎͙͘Ṭ̸͝E̵͔͌M̶̞̖̑̓ ̸̉ͅS̷̹̀͗Ȃ̷͉͕̿C̵̢̦͠R̴̙͕͌I̵̗̕F̶̪̯͗̋I̶͈̅̓C̶̨͝E̵̢͕̾D̵͖͕̈́͌
̴͓̘̑̀A̷̗̓M̸̟̹̈E̵̱̋Ņ̶̹̚D̸̟͝I̶͍̐N̶̺̈Ǵ̵͎̒...
̷̛͉.̴̱͓̓̚ ̵̪͆.̵̙̍͐ ̵̺̼͑̇.̷͖͉̓
Result - Stat Control Menu unlocked, Charisma Stat Unchanged, No Ritual Points Given, Chhinnamasta Pleased
User Warning - Do Not Attempt Stat Sacrificial Again, Or There Will Be C̴̯̱̄Ơ̴͉̥͂N̶̻̫̈̽S̴̭̑̔E̶̛̥Q̷̳̈͑Ü̶͔̈́E̶̡̦͊Ń̶̦̳Ć̵̘̀͜Ę̶͛̃S̸͈͛̕
Well, that was mildly terrifying.
She'd never seen a literal glitch from the sacrifice system before, and from the user warning, it was damn clear that not only was there a sentient being controlling things, it was livid that she had sacrificed her own stats. Then again, it had also been lenient and forgiving in terms of giving her a Stat Control Menu, so there was that at least. She had no intentions of sacrificing her stats again, so at least she could rest assured that she wouldn't be discovering exactly what 'consequences' entailed.
Returning to her primary interface, there was a new box, and upon opening it, she could see her different stats. Clicking on her Agility Stat, there was a 'primary ability strength' bar, and then there were a bunch of other bars related to different aspects of Agility. Leaving that menu, she entered her Charisma menu, and within, she could see that again, there was a primary strength bar, then a bunch of other bars, way more than Agility had. There were some related to organizational loyalty, which was exactly what she wanted, then there were some related to prices, interpersonal relations, and every other Charisma-based thing.
She spent at least a good quarter-hour just trapped in that menu adjusting sliders, with anything that she approved of staying untouched, and anything she didn't like, for example, the interpersonal relations bar, she slammed right down to the bottom. Once she was done with that, she exited the ritual pocket, and popped out to immediately spy Kentaro leaning against the entrance of the base, his eyes outwards.
He looked behind himself almost instantly, apparently detecting her with the invisible eyes in the back of his head, and gave her a close look. "Made another change. I...uhh, may have fucked up a bit and so you might not have been acting the way you should have towards me, and I'm really sorry and swear it won't happen again." He merely gave a shrug, apparently utterly unflapped by anything weird he might have detected about her. "Also, I acquired a deal with the blacksmith, whose name I still don't bloody-well know, so now I can sell kunai to them. Already made a cool 300,000, so, you know, just another day." She said flippantly, buffing her nails on her jacket and smirking at him.
Well, smirking for a moment, before she then pouted upon realizing he literally didn't care. "Just a head's up, a shinobi can earn anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 Ryo doing a single B-rank mission, which is Chunin-level." Rosa didn't know what that meant, but a single mission, and it paid that much money, made it obvious to her, at least from how Kentaro put it, that 300,000 Ryo in one day, whilst probably somewhat impressive, wasn't much compared to a medium-level shinobi...maybe high-level, maybe low-level, she had no idea, she just had to work off assumptions, and her assumption told her that Kentaro was being a smug bastard.
"Spoilsport." She muttered faux-petulantly, before replacing her pout with a small smile. "Well, I think now that I have 300,000 Ryo, I can afford a better apartment, so looks like you're going back to find a different place for me to stay. Preferably close to here, or to somewhere with a larger room for me to work with. If it's an actual house, even better, so long as it has somewhere I can shove one of these and some other stuff." She gave the forging apparatus an elbow, smirking at his done-with-her-bullshit expression. "Hey, not my fault my stuff is such a hot commodity. Besides, weren't you claiming before that you promised to stay and help me for a week, this counts. Might not have been what you thought you'd be helping me with, but a good place to live is still important, it's getting dark after all."
Her tone might have been casual, but she was a little nervous about the time. Signing for the spot she was now in was simple, sure, but an actual apartment was probably a bit more involved. Just as she was about to ask Kentaro if there were any hotels she could stay at for the night, he took out some folded papers from one of his bigger pouches and opened it. "Well, aren't you glad I'm a forward-thinker then." He said with an equally flippant and insufferable tone, handing her the papers and revealing that he had actually collected information not just on local apartments and houses, but also on storage areas near those locations. Each place was fairly affordable, the most expensive only costing 35,000 Ryo a month, and each had a storage area she could repurpose as a place for her crafting stations that was at least ten times bigger than her current place.
"You aren't secretly a foreseer are you?" She asked with a happy smile on her lips as she continued to leaf through the pages before..."This one. I'm buying it." She said flatly, removing the page from the rest and examining it more closely. An L-shaped two-story two-bedroom house with a fence, a small stone path through a front garden, and a large back-garden. The house itself had a sizable basement, and she thought of that not only for the value that it would have in placing her crafting stuff, but also for placing anything related to sacrifices that she couldn't keep in her inventory or ritual pocket for whatever reason.
There was also a coal chute into the basement that would be absolutely gorgeously-perfect for deliveries of ore to be poured down, straight into the basement to be crafted into metal. It was, in a word, perfect. The house itself wasn't super-large, but that didn't matter, because the pictures made it clear that it was just...gorgeous. Of course, pictures wouldn't do it justice, she outright NEEDED to see it in person to decide for certain, but she was 99% confident that it was the home she wanted to buy. "I don't think so, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten stabbed." Rosa smiled in response, reaching over and patting him on the shoulder, earning herself a surprised look in response.
"Well, and I mean this in the kindest and most genuinely not-malicious way possible, I'm glad you did."