Mixed Blessing System

"Oh? And what is the advantage of it over the types of carriages already in existence?"

"I can see that this project will give rise to something a little larger than the carriages usually seen on our streets. But that alone is not enough to revolutionize transportation in our world." He commented, still looking at the details of the design made by Lothur.

"That is the part I will be involved in developing this project." Lothur smiled. "The differentiator of this model and others I have in mind will be cost and operational efficiency."

"These means of transportation will not need beasts as a power source for them to work."

"What?" The young carpenter looked incredulously at Lothur.

There were no carriages independent of animal power in Concordia. Because of this, he could not help but be interested in what Lothur was proposing.

Lothur continued. "As you know, beasts or animals are costly to acquire, train, and maintain."

"That kind of force will always depend on the constant flow of coin for food, treatment of diseases and wounds of these beings. They also have several vulnerabilities and are not always available."

"For example, ordinary horses need to rest from time to time, eat, do their biological needs, and eventually they age and die. So, when using animals like this as the driving force of carriages, the owners of these means of transportation constantly need to spend resources to keep several horses available."

"In the end, they still have to buy new horses from time to time, or at least keep some with breeding capacity."

"In any case, the maintenance costs for this type of force are not low and make land means of transportation considerably expensive." He said, drawing looks of surprise and admiration from the two people there.

"My creation will come to solve this problem. It will replace this animal power source. And with that, we will be able to lower the cost of land transportation, increasing the accessibility of it."

"In this way, it will revolutionize the means of transportation on our continent!"

"Interesting... Interesting!" The young man laughed after hearing all that, still walking from one side of his small store to the other.

"But will that work? Do you have any proof that such a thing is possible?"

Annaliese looked at Lothur in curiosity, interested to discover if this could genuinely get out of the abstract world and become something concrete.

"No, because I don't have a model to test," Lothur told part of the truth. But he hid the fact that he was still at an earlier stage of beginning to develop the formations necessary for his vehicles to function.

He was almost sure that it was possible since, unlike the people of this world, he understood the basic principles behind the transformation of different types of energy and the use of this to move objects.

He would have to build pistons, something perfectly viable, and find a way to transform spiritual energy into force to move the pistons, the complication here.

The rest of the gears and parts of his vehicles would be relatively simpler to make, and with testing, he and his team would eventually reach an efficient enough model.

So, he was confident in his plans!

Lothur then suggested. "How about this? Why don't we do a little simulation? First, you will mold the parts of it on a diminished scale. Then I'll construct this little carriage, which will be the size of an adult pig, and finish the procedure."

"We will do a test run after that. Then, we can sign a Blood Contract and eventually develop the project together if it works out."

"What do you think?" Lothur smiled as he opened his arms in confidence.

Annaliese listened to all that in silence and watched the young weirdo, waiting for his answer.

"Hmm... That's not a bad idea... But you will have to pay the value of the pieces of that miniature. I will not charge for my services since I am interested in this project. But I don't have the materials..."

"Oh? How much are we talking about?"

"Well..." The young man stopped pacing back and forth and began doing math with his fingers, adjusting the dimensions of the miniature relative to the original design. "Considering a 5 to 6 times decrease from the size of that, I think 10,000 bronze coins will do it."

Hearing this young man's response, Lothur pondered this for a moment, not finding this amount abusive. 'Ordinary carriages usually cost between 50 to 150 thousand bronze coins, depending on the materials used. These prices also take into account the production service, which costs an average of 30% of the value of the final product.'

'Ten thousand bronze coins is not a high value for that. This model is especially distinctive, so it is expected that not every material will work in it, and there will be a greater waste.' He pondered before picking up a bag with the coins requested by that young man.

"By the way, what is your name?" Lothur asked.

"Frederik Calis." He said as he counted the coins Lothur handed him.

"Well, my name is Lothur. I hope we can do good business in the future." He said, noting Frederik's status.

[Name: Frederik Calis]

[Cultivation: level 3]

[STR: 1.7] [CON: 2.2] [DEX: 22.1] [AGI: 1.8]

Seeing this, Lothur smiled, and after introducing himself to Frederik, he and Annaliese said their goodbyes, quickly heading back to the Cultivation House.

"Lothur, do you think he will be able to help you? I can't say, but he doesn't give me confidence." She said as she walked side by side with her brother-in-law.

"Haha, Anna, you are being biased by judging his ability considering only his fragile appearance." He laughed at his sister-in-law's inability to realize how impressive that young man's skill with his hands was.

Frederik had one of the strangest statuses Lothur had ever seen. But it explained his aptitude very well, which had given the silver-haired young man the confidence to leave ten thousand coins with such a person.

For Frederik's profession, being a cultivator was not a requirement. Obviously, that made a difference, but most of these professionals were either mortals or low-level cultivators.

In this way, most of the carpenters that such a couple encountered today were either mortals or individuals below Frederik's level. Therefore, Lothur knew their last encounter had helped him find one of the most skilled local carpenters, a hidden gem in that humble store.

Lothur then said to Annaliese. "Believe me. I just got a great deal."

"Really? I'll trust you then..."

As they walked side by side, Lothur was silent, considering his luck. 'It seems Frederik's frail appearance and quirky personality have diminished his trustworthiness so much that no one else has noticed his unusual abilities.'

'Sigh...'

'Although if I didn't have the system on my side, I probably wouldn't have trusted him either...'

'Anyway, I benefited from his situation, and now I have to develop my plans as soon as possible.'

Before leaving Frederik's store, Lothur had been given a one-month deadline to return to that place for the parts ordered earlier. Consequently, he had that period to develop his formation master skills!

...

A day passed in the blink of an eye.

After the previous situation with Frederik, Lothur and Annaliese trained the rest of Saturday afternoon in the Cultivation House before returning to the Frost family estate.

On Sunday morning, they followed a similar routine as the day before, training in the morning in one of the cultivation rooms of that institution. Then, after having their afternoon meal and rest, they returned to their training, arriving at the present moment, the late afternoon in this city.

After finishing his last fighting session with Annaliese, Lothur looked at his status while taking a shower in the bathroom of their cultivation room.

[Name: Lothur Ritter]

[Physique: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger]

[Bloodline: ****]

[Cultivation: level 4]

[STR: 9.4] [CON: 12] [DEX: 8.8] [AGI: 10.5]

[INT: 30] [PER: 15] [WIL: 48.2]

Seeing this, Lothur immediately felt satisfaction in his being, realizing that more challenging training could yield better results than his previous experiences with Annaliese.

However, even this type of training lost its effects as time passed. Just like the training with technique, the first attribute increases came with smaller amounts of training hours. But quickly, this increased, and the identical amounts of attribute gains required much more training time.

In any case, Lothur had already learned after the recent auction that there were alternative methods of increasing one's strength, so the difficulties of training in the short term did not scare him.

Then, he soon left the bathroom and found his sister-in-law waiting for him.

He walked over to her with a smile on his face and said. "Thank you for all this, Anna. Without you, I wouldn't have achieved these results this weekend."

"You don't have to thank me..."

"Hmm, but I want to." He moved closer to her, bringing her into his embrace and, without delay beginning to kiss her cherry lips.

"Mmmmm~"

She openly accepted his advance while playing with her brother-in-law's naked abdomen.

After sensing that she was still resistant to opening up entirely to him, Lothur thought about the solution to this situation.

"Anna, what do you think of us going out on a Cultivation House mission together? I think it will be interesting to travel around the province and get to know this place a little more, no?"

"Oh?"

...