Archon of Danmachi

These few months that had now passed were beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most productive since Nox came to this world. Not in terms of status since despite three whole months, he was still a Level 2 like before but when it came to the rest of his skills abilities and magic, the progress was utterly outrageous.

Not only that, Nox also obtained two new subordinates and the heart of a new beauty other than those two beyond all the gained abilities which in his mind was equally as important, after all, one of the points of being powerful is to enjoy living life the way you want to.

Using his connections with the Hermes Familia, Nox obtained information about several criminal groups with either interesting abilities or good materials and used his improved stealth magic infused with Shade spirit magic to steal the goods and sometimes even attack the criminals so as to force them to show their abilities so he could copy them all while disguised using an upgraded version of Lili's Cinder Ella.

He obtained many things like ultra rare drop items, plants harvested from deeper floors than he could go or from special places in the world, ores mined from such places and even God's Blood, apparently there were some gods who actually gathered money by selling their blood that contained incredible properties.

His jobs with the Hermes Familia were also netting Nox quite a sum of valis and since he was stealing materials already, he also took the criminals' funds as well because why not. But he also had gained a couple of legitimate sources of income.

Nox's growing mastery of mixing allowed him to make several valuable potions. Airmid offered to sell those that met Dian Cecht's criteria of quality and giving him the maker's cut which Nox accepted. He also donated the lower quality but still successfully connected potions to the Guild so they could distribute one or two per newbie who joined as an starter's bonus.

Of course, this was not done merely out of the goodness of his heart. Nox's actions earned him the gratitude of most of the guild's personal including the female staff which was Nox's true target. After all, why should he care about the male employees' opinions of him? Airmid was also very pleased with his decision and they got closer as a result.

Another source of revenue was his smithing. Just like she promised, Hephaestus promoted Nox's creations in her famous shops around the city. This not not merely because she fell in love with the boy though. As a goddess of smithing, her divinity made it impossible for her to promote creations whose craftsmanship she did not approve.

Like all gods, she too was bound by her divinity. A goddess of the forge must forge and will never let other feelings interfere with her judgement of forged items like a goddess of sex will always by a nympho thot and a goddess of trickery will always like pranking and deceitful scheming.

No, it was Nox's skill in smithing that earned him this recognition and with the Hephaestus Familia's promotion, he made a ton of money already especially on his basic magic weapons which were always a hot item for most adventurers.

But the crafting skill that improved most of all for Nox was still item making. A big part of the process of making a magic item involved the activation of a miracle using the Mystery development ability or in Nox's case, the correspondent part of his Craftmaster ability but since this was a process with an inherently magical nature, Nox's talents made it much easier to master than other more physical tasks like smithing.

But, being the shortcut loving cheater he was, Nox had devised a way to apply his phenomenal talents in magic to his other crafting disciplines in the form of a new spell, completely dedicated for crafting and utterly useless for anything else.

He called the spell Arcana Craft. Its functions were simple even though their implementation was far from it. It created a magic circle and by placing materials inside, Nox could then use the spell to take the materials and craft something and a much faster speed and with far greater precision than through actual physical crafting.

The catch was that he needs to know the ins and outs of the process of crafting even better than regular makers since the spell relied solely on his input. Then the spell would mimic the actual crafting process with unerring accuracy just as Nox envisions it.

By studying the time flow alteration part of his Item Box and incorporating it, the whole process was also sped up greatly and even crafting processes that usually had a certain amount of time absolutely needed like cooling speed which affected the properties of materials could be done really quickly without impact.

By combining magic and crafting into one, Nox's prowess on the latter greatly improved and kept improving at a faster rate than before and he would use these improved abilities in what would be one of his greatest creations he would never share with the world and only with people he could trust fully or at least was sure wouldn't sell him out.

But other than this forbidden item, he also created something that was rising in popularity with various familias and Loki even pestered Nox to give his familia some of those items for free. Nox however was having none of that and simply settled on a preferred rate, a discount for people he got along with. These items were Magic Scrolls.

Selling them with Asfi's assistance but under his own brand. He made considerable profits. They were like a cheap alternative to a magic sword that could only be used once but it had a lot of options to choose from like various forms of attack magic, defence magic and even healing magic each more expensive than the last.

They were great for emergencies and were incredibly useful consumables for expeditions and a major hit among all adventurers since there were different levels of scrolls making them useful and relatively cheap for Level 1s while still helpful but much more expensive even for Level 5s and 6s.

As I side note, during all of his business with the Hermes familia, he managed to find the user of the Kokonoe spell. He was a Level 3 renard from the far east with the Mage and Mystery development abilities, no doubt the source of the grimoire Aisha would steal in the future.

He took the opportunity to copy his magic and it soon became one of his obsessions. He created a version to gift Haruhime once he got her and was working on creating an awesome spell for himself for which Kokonoe was only the base.

Back to the forbidden item, due to its very nature, Nox didn't even tell Loki about it. It all started with a rather useless spell. This spell Nox named Status Window could do exactly as its name advertized, allow him to see his current status.

Since he could only see it and not update it or do anything, it was quite useless. It didn't even work on others so he couldn't use it to peek on the status of other adventurers.

But then, an idea came to Nox and he got to work on one of his labs. There already existed an item called Status Thief, manufactured by someone with the Mystery development ability from the blood of a god or goddess.

Nox had acquired some and figure out how to make it but wasn't quite interested in the item but now he wondered . . .

'Can I make something better?'

He certainly could! Not because his skill was greater than the creator of the Status Thief item but because he had thoroughly analysed the process of falna bestowment, locking and status updating when Loki did those things one him.

It was like that that Nox created his status window so it stood to reason that with his superior knowledge of the process, he could make something better.

And so he did. What could be considered one of the most illegal items ever made if its details ever got out, Status Pick. Named after the picks to open locks, the liquid made from god's blood could fully unlock a status and thus allow Nox to use his status window to modify it.

Even if Nox couldn't actually make a falna from scratch, he could actually use this method to take over a falna and completely strip it from the control of the god that gave it. The god would only feel his blessing disappeared as if the child of his familia died while in truth, it was tracelessly taken over.

Even its appearance could be changed so that even by looking at it, it would be impossible to tell its origin. By adding his own blood to the Status Pick and use it in conjunctions with the Status Window, Nox could change the falna to grant him access even without using a special item the second time. This way he would only have to use Status Pick once per individual.

Now, hee could recruit unhappy members of other familias or outcasts expelled from theris and should he fall out with the Loki Familia, he could do the same with his falna although he very seriously hoped it would never come to pass.

The first individual to benefit from this process though, was the ever smitten with her Nox-sama, Liliruca Arde. When she listened to Nox's explanation about his achievement, her first reaction was disbelief but knowing he would not lie to her, the disbelief turned to worry and fear.

"What would happen to Nox-sama if this was discovered!?" She shouted.

"Well, probably something horrible but I trust you'll not rat me out and now, I can make you strong enough for you to solve the problem with you familia yourself! Wouldn't that feel much sweeter?" Nox asked the little beauty as he patted her to calm her down.

'It would indeed . . . But maybe I can now be more useful to you! That's what's most important to me . . .' Lili thought as she blushed under Nox's headpatts.

Nox then performed the take over of Lili's status and changes its shape from the two goblets of the Soma Familia to a chakram alluding to a magic circle. Hieroglyphs covered the chakram and its inner circle with Lili's updated status. It was enough to start a level up once she had performed a great enough accomplishment but Nox told her to increase her status further before that.

And so Lili's training got a lot more intense since her status didn't increase as easily as Nox's but he was already on his way to change that . . . Hehehehe.

'If there's something I enjoy doing the most, it's breaking the system with cheats and exploits!'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba  without the extra dots of course.

You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.

There's also my other novel Kage of Kages, do check it out!

I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.