Chapter 74 - Easter Break.

AN - Obviously it’s been awhile since I updated. I’ll give a short rundown here -

My birthday happened, which was good, then my sister moved out of state and I helped with that. Then I visited with various family members who live on the coast, and a lot of drama happened. Following that, my mom had a midlife crisis (?) and moved halfway across the country and got married 2 weeks later. She told me she was going to a reunion for her highschool and never came back.

She has a lot of health issues - one of which is incredibly bad memory issues and her body is incredibly frail due to various diseases and illnesses. When she was close, me and the rest of the family could check up on her, make sure she took her pills and stuff, but now we can’t. That’s a big worry, because when we’ve not done it in the past, she’s forgotten and almost died. In fact, the doctors have cracked jokes about how miraculous it is she hasn’t died. On more than one occasion.

Stressful.

So while that was happening, my work got a new manager who has completely different methods to the last guy who ran the place, and I’ve had to relearn my whole job, and help retrain everyone who works under me. This means more stress, of course.

Then, when everything seemed to be settling back in, about a week ago, my computer blew up. Literally set on fire due to an electrical issue a couple days prior frying my cooling system and it finally caught up and set on fire. Literally. I lost my motherboard, graphics card and a lot of data on the story, which I’ve had to reconstruct. I’ve gotten a replacement, told my other responsibilities to take a back seat so I can focus on improving my mental health, since I feel like I’ve been getting tossed like a salad for the last 2 months.

This is before I go into what other things I do for fun, and how they’ve become increasingly onerous. I help new DMs for D&D and run my own group for fun, but recently people have been using me like a google search, instead of looking up the answers to their d&d questions. So on top of the 2 hours per day I put into doing stuff for new DMs and prepping my own game and notes and stuff, I had 2-3 hours of answering mostly inane questions.

I work for 10 hours a day 5 days a week. +2 +3 = 15 hours a day of work. Then I add in my personal care time and easily reach a 16-18 hour day. On average.

Weekends ‘when I don’t work’ were mostly spent catching up on things I outright had no time to do during the week - like cleaning the house, shopping for food, doing a doctor's appointment, and trying to settle or otherwise help my family with some… issues they’ve been having aside from the big ones above - like babysitting so they can go hash out who’s hosting which holidays this year.

So you could say my life has not been fun. So I told everything but work, it gets to wait, and I was going to write. So, here we are.

This AN was written on September 12th, 2022, if you’re wondering. I expect my chapter (below) to be done on about the 20th. I will be posting this on top of the FFN update as well as the Patreon one, so it’ll be on different chapters (if you read both releases for any final edits / polish I put on between versions, since I do change some small wording, details and other minutiae between versions.

My editor will probably try to shoot me when they get here and see my AN in 2 places.

<3 - Aubrey, aka Rotsu.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With Easter break finally upon me, I find my schedule quite full. I have a whole roster of divine quests to do, politics to play and perhaps most importantly, time to spend with my friends and family. The beginning is going to be getting my politics and paperwork in line, with only night-time fun. I’ll have to try to squeeze in some monster hunting when I can.

First is the Saint Augustine Orphanage, which is located in a small town in central England. I need to get that all set up for my unofficial takeover. This shouldn’t be too hard, as I’ve been laying groundwork with Gringotts and the muggle side of things for months, and now all I have to do is show up, do the paperwork and set things down to run themselves with minimal oversight from me.

Finding delegates who I could trust to run this thing was the hard part. Thankfully, there is a whole host of very capable squibs who got into childcare, or children of squibs who are in the field. I managed to scoop up a few to sprinkle in the four orphanages I’ve picked out.

Augustines, Gregory’s, Michaels and Katherines. I ended up picking seventeen helpers. All of them have had deep background checks done by the Goblins and the Muggle government. All of them show good promise in their chosen fields. I’ve had all but the last final paperwork - which I have to do in person - done through my many proxies. Still, I need to actually sign the controlling finalities over to myself to make it official. That aside, I need to make sure the transition is clean - setting the new staff in with the old so they can begin to clean things up. Making sure this happens will have to be remotely done with magic after I take care of the bad parts of each orphanage, since I doubt I’ll have the time to manually oversee everything in each location.

Almost every orphanage in England is alright, but each of the ones I picked out of the crowd has one or two notable ‘caretakers’ who the Goblins, personal investigators hired on the muggle side, or other concerned groups have noted are quite poor. Anything from likely abuse of their authority, the fact they clearly don’t like children, or even raising them improperly - teaching them things which have been proven false is an example which came up three times. Only one case was likely guilty of all three, and is the reason I’m going to Augustines first. I’d like to go about replacing them.

My plan is to make the orphanages significantly better with my wealth of resources. This is because I have no way to really spend those resources since I got them in dungeons. I figure fixing corrupt systems will go a long way to helping the world, also allowing me to take a steep loss in the laundering of my very legally obtained funds. I don’t mind the losses, since they make the world a better place. It’s just a tertiary benefit. The laundering is just my paycheck, which being in charge of so many orphanages and then also being in charge of opera-houses and other places will look like I’m getting paid less than I should be getting paid.

They can hardly call that laundering funds. Honestly.

And it’ll complete my quest from Vesta. Closer ties to the Roman pantheon, empowered divine magics, all very useful, of course.

The paperwork, it turns out, doesn’t take very long, That’s nice, because it gives me more time to talk with all of the original remaining staff and work with them on the details of what’ll happen going forward. I use the speeches and individual talks with my newest employees to work on my plans for the Wizengamot nonsense I have to deal with after I leave.

And the nonsense there is nigh unto endless.

It takes most of the evening, but my faction comes to the decision that Fudge is going down, hard. The political climate is at a fever pitch as every faction is scrambling to try to find someone the others might like enough to vote in over Amelia. That’s utter nonsense, and I make it clear she will be our factions choice, due to the fact she is firm, fair and will be an able wartime leader. I even have protection for her set up in three factions if she lands the seat. Our faction, the Ministry Aurors and Dumbledore's faction. I don’t say this outright, but Amelia will quite literally be the most easily defended person in our nation, and there’s next to nothing which anyone could do to kill her quickly - and not get ravaged by her wards and the people who have agreed to protect her and have an easy method to do that exact thing.

I don’t name who, but I insinuate to my faction that if Amelia is attacked, it’d take over 100 death eaters to manage to even get her home and her life, and all 100 of those would likely die. And that’s if the 100 are lucky, skilled and powerful, or the Dark Lord is there to stop the majority of the defenders from making an impact.

This implies Dumbledore defending her, I don’t correct them that it’ll be myself.

I may not be his equal yet, but I am good enough to hold the old pile of snakeflesh at bay long enough to get Amelia out and then cut my own escape.

Voldemort can’t stop shadow stepping, after all.

Of course, after giving that impassioned point to my political allies, no one really objects, publicly, but I find no less than twelve individual requests for a meeting in my box when I leave our conference room, and check my box to see if anyone left me anything, as I am one of the last few to leave, along with the other core members from years ago.

So it comes to be that I’m suddenly being asked to come to more meetings for backroom politics than ever. By basically every family in our political group. I find, the next day, that I have three letters from people even outside my political group.

Maybe I’ve shown that I’m more than just a big vote for the group, and one of the core members with a voice, but so what. I don’t care for these fair-weather friends who are trying to hop on the boat when there’s looks like it may be sinking.

Mostly, this attitude comes about due to the fact that I find it insulting that when I was building my power base, none of the major families except the ones who had previous ties or ones I forged in adamant myself would look twice at me, now that I have a part of a major faction - which I forged myself thank you - they all want a bite and will stop at nothing to get it, and sway my faction.

Which won’t work because Amelia is my faction's candidate.

They probably think that because I’m young and new to the scene they can trick me, or get me to expose things. Doubly when I’ve shown that I have some sway over choices, and likely have access to more information than our normal members.

I absolutely refuse to do any of the things they want me to do - and send polite refusals, stating that I have a booked out schedule until after the yearly world duelling tournament. As defending champion, I don’t need an invite, after all. I don’t need to qualify, and I do need to get ready. Duelling practice with Dumbledore and Harry before the tournament will be good, I suppose. Can’t fight Harry through, but we can practice openers and counters, at least.

The only family who never even tries, I find in the following week of invitations, who probably should from what I’m seeing, is the Malfoy family.

Probably because I’ve proven to them I’m adept enough, and they hate my guts for being the absolute opposite of their lord. If I look for a potential good reason for their ignoring me, it could be they see a potential issue in me for their lord, which means they should jump to my side, and pissing me off with incessant letters asking for meetings won’t help them get to what they want.

The fun bits, though, when I get to really test my skills, come after the sun sets.

My schedule, as I designed it anyhow, goes in a nice circle of muggle world paperwork, magical and martial practice up to when I need to do my magical world paperwork or meetings for politics. Then I go to  sleep, and finally I go to break into the home of some old family who is hoarding stuff which they shouldn’t so I can complete my divine quest, recovering the supplies Mars is angry at are being used as mantle pieces.

I decide pretty early, that If I find I need to prepare something for a target - and I try to do two every night - then - then I’ll go out and kill some of the leftover beasts which have been hiding away in the wilds for a long time, and kill them with only my magical bow. The one I’m using is from a dungeon, and isn’t amazing, but it is good enough, I guess.

Then go home, clean up and do the cycle all over again.

The first night’s thefts is impressively easy. The Young family warded the house they used to store their stuff - not in Gringotts - very well - if this was 200 years ago. Really, it’s almost insulting that they tried what they did and thought that they’d be safe if someone with real skill wanted to take their stuff.

Lucky for them I wanted a pile of weapons and armour they seemed to have forgotten about in the attic, not the shiny nice looking stuff they had all over the house on displays.

I didn’t take anything I didn’t need.

This left me with plenty of time to go kill my first beast, which was a Manticore. Boring hunt, considering I’ve fought one before, have much better gear for dealing with one now and it didn’t even sense me, or figure out where I was shooting it from.

The fight was boring, since it was mostly just shoot the manticore, shadow jump to a different location, shoot it again, jump to a different location, shoot it again.

The manticore was dead by the eighth arrow.

Information on what I’m fighting, what it can do and the limitations to the hunted make the hunt easy. Manticore’s don’t have the range of a longbow which has special enchantments, and even if it’s not to the quality of my other gear, accuracy and impact increasing enchantments are plenty to blow a hole in a Manticore.

After another couple days of the same thing - except hunting a weaker species of dragon, and a corrupted nature spirit, I decide it’s time for a day off. I need a better bow - these things are taking way too many arrows. The dragon had taken over thirty, and the nature spirit - well - I had to shoot a tree down which took over 100 arrows.

So I spend an evening enchanting, as opposed to breaking into places and killing some beastie with my bow. I’m pleased with the result. Nature spirit heartwood as the main shaft of wood for the bow, combined with the fine hairs from a dragon to make the strings with is a pretty good base. Eventually I decide to add in dragon-bone to the outer edges, and cap the ends with some dragon bone. This makes it slightly larger, and also helps to increase the amount of pull, and makes it nearly as powerful as a proper recurve bow.  In the end, the creation has a plethora of enchanting possibilities. I spend another day just to make sure I don’t waste any of that potential.

[The Bow of Darkness and Light] (Part of the Divine Huntress Set)

Creator - Aubrey Hawthorne

Quality - Legendary

Enchantments -

Impact - 10

Accuracy - 10

Cold - 5

Damage (vs Normal) - 1,000

Damage (vs Unholy, Holy.) 10,000

Special Ability -

Shadow of the Light

When used against a creature with any weakness to holy, unholy, light or darkness, the arrow explodes after penetrating the target, causing massive damage. You can forcibly cause an arrow to explode in light or shadow for 10,000 mana per arrow, which can be used to blind or otherwise impede an enemy.

When attuned with other weapons or armour created for this set, you gain the effects of [Unknown].

The basic idea behind the bow is to get rid of corrupt or evil things which might be sent after me. I expect with various mythologies, and some of them not liking me, I should expect to have divine enemies. Gods can’t act directly, but Greek Mythos is explicit in the fact they can send monsters to mess with mortals. Or their servants. Or other things. This means I need to be ready to kill any of those I pick up. Then, there will of course be the unholy enemies and various cursed or otherwise transfigured beings coming after me. Because as a person who is planning to go into cursed, warded and otherwise sealed off magical places, I can bet I’ll run into some of that mess. Sealed off cursed things, sealed off unholy abominations. Or just some angry demon-god or something sending something nasty after me.

I should be ready for anything. Most gods, in most mythologies, don’t really know how to ‘relax’ as it were.

So this is a weapon to counter priests, holy and unholy beings from each religion, along with a general purpose undead killing weapon. By all metrics, this should help me in the long run.

The fact my specially designed enchantment is automatic against creatures with explicit weaknesses is great, and the option to boost the damage is good, too.

Most things won’t survive their head having an arrow through it, especially when the arrow blows up and turns their head into goo, along with a good bit of their torso.

I don’t care how much HP they have.

Of course, HP doesn’t translate 1:1 to how much damage you can take. It’s general resilience. I can survive a dragon breathing on me - most people cannot. My HP is higher. I cannot survive the same dragon cutting off my head. Which it could do by lightly biting on my head, but not my torso. Even if I have more HP than the dragon. I have flimsy bones and skin. General damage is fine, direct damage to vitals is still deadly.

HP - from everything I’ve seen doing dungeon dives and the like - doesn’t cheat death, it’s just a durability measurement. I wish I had more regardless, because it’s never bad to have more of the stuff which says you can survive being hit by lightning.

All of that aside, the days, hunts and thefts continued to go in a positive light. I didn’t have to hunt things every night, but mostly I went out on general hunts against weaker things to get used to my new bow, and all of the tricks I needed to master to make it work for me. Nothing exciting happened in my paperwork, the thefts of dusty old abandoned manors or any meetings. Just the routine of crossing all of my T’s and dotting my i’s.

It may sound exciting - breaking into old manors and hidden vales, mountaintop cliffs, and so forth. Really, all of that was done easily for the first nine nights of the break. The Orphanages were all settled within the first four days - a lot of paperwork. Schools took even less time to settle, just getting control as a shareholder in a private academy with my family name and wealth was exceedingly easy. The simple stipulations I put in place would ensure the quality of the education would go up.

The Opera-House, Theatre and Art Gallery I’m looking into all seem to be similar - a lot of paper and not a lot of me needing to do much.

The Wizengamot on Mondays hurt me a bit for time - but getting an afternoon free to go to the pool with Jasmine - for Adam had elected to go to the Nott family home instead of staying with us at our home - was nice. Mom had decided to work through, so I set up a nice picnic with her on Sunday, where we could all be together.

Of course, Adam didn’t go to that either. He even yelled at mom when she asked him - very gently - why he didn’t want to go.

His explanation of ‘not wanting to be seen with people like us in public’ was not too encouraging. It basically defied everything I had been saying to him in private as the head of the family - everything about who he should be talking to. I’d been ignoring it because it wasn’t overt, but I couldn’t do that forever…

I was very inclined to rake him over the coals in private for almost ruining the whole day I had - the only day I had - with mom. Jasmine, in the end, was the one who settled mom down and turned what had been a horrible start into an outright delightful day with the family.

With all of that going on - I didn’t have a ton of time for hunting, but I did manage to get rid of the Italian Ironbeak - sibling to the Ukrainian Ironbelly. After finishing my paperwork for the final projects I had while sitting in the Wizengamot, and deciding I didn’t want to go steal from any of the Malfoy, Tugwood, Gore or Gringotts kept items, I decided to deal with the Wolf-Monster which resides in a warded valley - which I’m pretty sure muggles don’t even know exist.

Then I’ll rob Borgin and Burke’s secondary location on my way home, since the valley is hidden a good ways north of our home, and it’ll be a very minor detour to go steal from the buffoons.

Of course, the wolf, unlike the others recently - doubly with my bow, was no push-over.

It took me about 4 hours to track down where the wolf lived in the valley - which is impressive. The thing seemed to be as smart as a man. It was extremely powerful, judging by the utter lack of any other predators in the area, but the Dragon had the same sort of habitat, as had the Manticore, so I wasn't so worried.

I was, however, worried when I heard the wind behind me moving incorrectly for a lightly forested area.

So I ducked the first blow of our fight.

The wolf - for it was indeed a wolf - had no business moving so softly. It was the size of a Dragon, and that fur looked like it was actually made of metal. The claws surely were.

Garth

Titles - The Eldest, The Apex, The Hunter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Level 98

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Age - 1607

Race - Pflaumenwolf

Sex - Male

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Str - 450

Dex - 585

Agi - 500

Con - 500

Int - 250

Wis - 250

Luk - 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HP: 879,076

MP: 626,839

STM: 1,024,501

The fight - if I chose to use magic - would have been trivial, probably. But I was doing a challenge where I killed a monster with my bow.

And movement powers.

Seeing the look in my eyes the wolf - Garth - howled and tried to pounce. I shadow lept away - into a trap which was an intentionally weakened tree which began to fall as I solidified on it. I fired one arrow off the falling tree and vanished again.

Into another trap, which clamped onto my leg and nearly broke my shin.

How long had this thing been getting ready for something like me? Seriously!

.*****.

Two hours, six hundred and ninety four arrows - a majority dodged, blocked by the wolf throwing a tree into the way with a swipe of a paw or similarly made moot, and three near death experiences with needle traps - which were made using the wolf’s metallically hard fur as needles were fired at me.

It was a bit of a shock to realize those needles were coated in the poison of a shellfish which shouldn’t exist in the freshwater near this vale, let alone be applicable by a wolf. Not without it dying. So, even though I filled the wolf full of arrows, killing it, I left the battle both satisfied, but all the more confused than when I came in.

The hardest part of my hunt, without using some combat magic anyhow, had been staying ahead of the wolf. I had to have a sightline to fire an arrow at it, and that meant I couldn’t be too far from it, and the damn thing was very fast. It didn’t help that it genuinely seemed like the whole forest - or the good ambush and archery posts - were all trapped. The traps were infernally put together, devilishly clever, and annoying enough to give me trouble.

Those traps had thoroughly ruined the legs of my hunting garb, nearly broke both of my legs, actually managed to fracture one of my ribs, and got a few nice slashes into my torso.

Thank god for healing magic leaving little traces if applied in a timely manner.

Of course, this just means I’m going to have to make the replacement gear for hunting powerful beasts something impressive. Generic hunting attire, because hunting in full on heavy armour is hard, slow, loud and smelly.

The last thing is, of course, my hair. It’s a mess. And I have to actually clean it properly before I can try to fix it, because it’s so thickly caked in forest refuse, that when I tried to clean a bit of it, I lost that bit.

Only 2cm off the ends, but that’s not what I was hoping for.

Considering how impressive the beast was, I harvested it for eating and crafting clothes and other stuff - to replace what it ruined - later. I will waste nothing. It had been a good hunt and a hard earned kill. You don’t waste what you hunt. Especially when it’s this impressive.

I know the last thing is a classic Apollo test - he wants me to either kill or herd the Khalkotauroi which were stolen so he can put them where they need to be. But I have to either get them out of where they are so he can take them, or I have to kill them.

The main issue is that leading them away will be hard, and killing them probably harder, if this wolf is anything to go by.

Bronze flaming bulls are, after all, probably very, very hard to shoot with an arrow.

Unless I can shoot them through the eye and explode their brains before they have a chance to notice me and make my job harder. That, however, will require a lot of skill - as I’ll need to shoot two arrows at once, and shoot them through a literal bulls eye. Which means I’ll need to get lucky. If they blink the arrow may well bounce off their metal, divine, hides.

So I guess I’ll just have to get lucky.

All of that aside, this was a good hunt, and now I have a shady businessman to steal some lost artefacts from. Then I can look into what this pelt can be made into.

The leathers of the Huntress, to go with my bow, I’m thinking…

.*****.

In the end, I wind up stealing from both locations of Borgin and Burkes. The one in Knockturn, and the one over in Edinburgh. They clearly didn’t realize I’d stolen from some of their warehouses and storage properties. They had a lot of properties - with poor defenses - which were easy to steal from. The two shops were pretty hard.

The final three houses I have to steal from are the Malfoy, Tugwood and Gore families. Malfoy should be the easiest, especially if Tugwood and Gore have any reason to put up their wards. All three are prolific in high society, and I should, probably, hit all three in one night so there’s the minimum of chances they can alert each other to raise their wards.

With this plan in place, I decide to spend tonight scouting. A relaxing day with the family followed by a nice day of scouting a target.

And maybe slipping something in Malfoy’s food stores while I’m there. Maybe he’ll drop dead and my life will be easier?

Either way, it’s not long into the night before I’m glad I decided to look over the locations - because the wards on the three properties are all impressive as I’ve seen - aside from Hogwarts and Gringotts.

Malfoy’s wards are the kind which you can tell lots of money were spent on, but the power and layering of ancient wards isn’t there. They’re very good - but compared to the Druidic house protections - it’s not much.

Alarms, disabling wards, detection layers, transportation layers to send intruders to the dungeon, anti-apparition wards, all very good.

The modern method has a flaw though. When the lord, lady or heir goes through them, they register on the wards as a specific signature.

My magical control is enough to trick the wards into thinking I’m one of them. I’ll pretend to be the Lady of the house, just to keep it all clean.

The Gore and Tugwood clan manors, though, are much worse for me.

The wards are layered, complex and seem to do random sweeps of the area they contain for intruders. I can hide from the sweeps, but getting through them will require me to either be attached to a vehicle they’re riding in - which I can do for Tugwood. He likes taking carriage rides out on the country for some reason. Which I manage to confirm is daily with the nearby village, an hour ride out on the nearby country to impress visiting nobility or something.

Probably political maneuvering, business deals he can’t do in his house, or similar.

Still, good enough for me to latch onto the underside of the carriage and ride right in, cloak myself in shadow and then steal from him.

Then I have to get out. Which I can’t do unless I walk through the wards - triggering the alarms - or risk using the Floo, which will probably get me noticed but not set off alarms.

I’ll leave a dark-lordish kind of message on his table in blood, and then leave it at that.

So, Gore.

Gore does not have bad habits, equal warding to Tugwood and actual manor guards, who are equipped with what I’m pretty sure are illegal firearms. They sit in guard posts, and on the wall of his ancestral keep.

Because a manor was apparently too mundane for the Gore clan.

So I observe the wards, for hours, and come up with an idea.

The guards have to come in and go out - they live in the village. This means they must be keyed into the wards. The easiest way to do this without just giving them access, is a token which will allow them into the grounds but not the house - because the sweeps will detect if they go to the house, and if they’re inside of the house the alarm will go off.

The sweep cannot detect me, though.

So, I watch and listen for four hours, determine which of the guards is on his final day of work for the week - there are two - and then follow him to his home, stealing the badge, and leaving a reasonable looking fake in its place. It’ll last for 48 hours, and I’ll be done, returning this badge by the time it’s needed again.

So I rest, and get ready for my final political meetings of the break, followed by a night of larceny.

I’m three days ahead of schedule, which means I have three days to kill, capture or forcibly move the bulls.

Delightful.

.*****.

Aside from mixing in a tasteless, clear poison into some of the spirits and a milky white one with their milk - each and every one of the three I steal from - I don’t do anything other than steal from them. The idea is to kill the patriarch dead and start a succession war.

Maybe one of them won’t die, or they’ll only be knocked out if they’ve done rituals, but it could cause chaos, with the message in blood on one guy's table, then he collapses after his morning tea, Or shot. Or whatever he does.

Assassination, incapacitation of your enemies and silent removal of issues. All very useful things to practice.

So I have three days to kill some bulls, steal from Gringotts and make new leathers for hunting. I remember the trick for shooting two arrows from a single bow - the issue is if you have enough distance for the arrows to spread enough, enough skill to manage the string, and a sting with the extra slack to handle the extra arrow, due to how you have to hold the thing.

I can retrofit mine to meet all three, and if I get the bulls on open ground, I’ll have plenty of space. I’ll have to make them look at, or walk to a certain place. I suppose making a noise in a spot will do the trick - they are just super magical bulls, after all. Not very smart.

That plan in place, I decide to focus on what kind of hunting leathers I should make for myself - and quickly come to a decision.

They should improve my skill with a bow, knives and shadow magic. They should help me hide more effectively, they should also have the standard defensive things, though those can be lower than the metal armour, since most hunting shouldn’t see me getting hit with a sword or claw, because it’s ambushing. Not fighting directly.

So I begin by making the gloves and the boots, since those are the most precise things I’ll need. They’re very simple enchantments, like the bow, but very effective. After seeing the result, I decide to finish the work up, before I go check out Gringotts, going back to ‘sorting through my vaults’ - where I will just steal from the vaults where the items I need are kept after I’m left to do my sorting. Gringotts has no defence against my shadow teleportation.

Still, I’m removing a good chunk of my family's fortune using my inventory in a non-obvious way because I’m pretty sure they’ll figure it out at some point. It might take a few years, but a steady pull out of all of the money after an initial withdrawal of the family artefacts “So I can study them and figure out how to replicate or improve them” I will tell them - well. I don’t see how they won’t figure it out. When they see I don’t trust them, acting like I will, they’ll come to the proper conclusion. The only reason I wouldn’t trust them - from what I’ve learned of their culture - is if I’ve cheated them in some way.

Like stealing.

Which they will confiscate everything they have of mine as a result of.

Knowing that, I don’t want to have my family lose the books, arms, armour, and other piles of fine goods in our vaults. Because we have a lot of vaults, with all of the stuff I’ve been gathering with my time jumping.

If they side with Voldemort over this, then I’ll just have to - unfortunately - make a forced change in management for them. Somehow. Goblins are really good at self defence and it’ll take a lot of doing to make them get a chance, but I could do it, in time. A few goblins here, a few there, and the whole system will probably just crumble. And in wartime, like what’s probably going to happen with Voldemort - well.

Mistakes and really odd stuff happens sometimes.

Petty kings make for poor ones. And the Goblins are all notoriously petty.

Then, when done with all of that, I’ll have a whole day to myself for going and getting rid of some bulls, because these should make that possible - if only just.

[Gloves of the Shadowbow] (Part of the Divine Huntress Set)

Creator - Aubrey Hawthorne

Quality - Legendary

Enchantments -

Accuracy (Missile Weapons) - 10

Control - 10

Protection - 5

Special Ability -

Shadow Weaver

When you use any shadow abilities while wearing these gloves, you can use them in conjunction with any missiles fired while wearing these gloves. This includes imbuing an Arrow, Crossbow Bolt or even daggers, handaxes, etc. With the energy of shadows. This allows for minor control over the objects after you fire them on your enemies, increasing your aim immensely - even those behind walls may not be safe, anymore.

[Boots of the Shade] (Part of the Divine Huntress Set)

Creator - Aubrey Hawthorne

Quality - Legendary

Enchantments -

Silence - 10

Scentless - 10

Trackless - 5

Special Ability -

Death Walking

While wearing these boots, if you are trying to hide using shadow magic, the effects of the shadow magic are many times stronger than they would be for visual hiding, and weaker in the aspects these boots cover.

Control over the shadows is increased when wearing these boots, to a range of 150 meters.ontrol over the shadows is increased when wearing these boots, to a range of 150 metres.

[The Feather on the Wind] (Part of the Divine Huntress Set)

Creator - Aubrey Hawthorne

Quality - Legendary

Enchantments -

Reinforcement - 10

Weightlessness - 10

Speed - 5

Special Ability -

The Storm

You can create clouds of darkness in an area which nothing can see through. You control this darkness, and can cause minor harm to people inside of the darkness.

The clouds do not move unless you wish for them to move, and they can always be teleported to with a shadow jump from any range, as long as you are wearing these leather tights.

A cloud will last for 24 hours, or until it is dispelled or you make a new one or take the tights off.

[The Final Light] (Part of the Divine Huntress Set)

Creator - Aubrey Hawthorne

Quality - Legendary

Enchantments -

Reinforcement - 10

Control - 10

Concealable - 5

Special Ability -

Last Gasp

When wearing this, if you are struck by a killing blow which comes from a hidden foe who struck from surprise, this armour will destroy itself and you will survive. Once this happens you will lose 15 levels and 50 points from every stat, along with all perks, skills and other benefits you have gained from all of those things.

If anything is reduced to 0 by this item’s destruction and the cost of the magic, you are rendered unconscious for a number of weeks equal to the severity of the loss. It is calculated as follows -

1 thing is reduced to exactly 0. - 1 week.

1 thing is reduced to -1 or greater -- -1 week/level below 0

2 things are reduced to exactly 0 - 1 month unconscious.

2 things are reduced to -1 or greater -- -1 month / level below 0.

If you have three or more skills, stats or other things hit 0 when this happens, the item will not activate, and you will die.

When attuned to the weapon and all armour created for this set, you gain the effect of

“Hunter”

When you strike an enemy with a ranged attack, they are marked as Quarry. The first strike - if done from stealth - deals your level x 100 points of additional damage. This damage does not harm anything which might be valuable in the body if this strike manages to kill an enemy outright.

Having made my gear - I retire for the night - two days to steal from Gringotts and then another one day to kill some bulls.

.*****.

Breaking into places in Gringotts is impressively easier than I thought it would be - especially for the high security vaults I’m going into.

Really, when I’d gone down to the bottom levels to get my stuff from my vault and sort through what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to leave behind in case the Goblins got wise, well, I did that in about twenty minutes for the first three vaults, and spent an extra ten minutes to shadow-jump off to the vaults I can detect with the gift Odin gave me.

It’s really boring and simple work. Turns out that the Goblins put all of the wards on the outside of their vaults, nothing inside. Not the normal ones, anyways, and that means that the vaults I’m breaking into - ones which have various war trophies from a good pile of houses - aren't very interesting to me.

Well, not until the third vault. That one is very interesting, in that it’s the first vault which is owned by Goblins, which holds treasures they’ve pilfered from humans in wards, or by theft, or whatever means.

I know this because most of the really good items have plaques, telling me how they got them, and a few gloatingly tell tales of theft.

“Before we were guards on treasure, of course” is implied, but I’m not sure I believe it.

I’m considering repossessing the third such object I’m seeing, a very simple-on-the-surface dagger, which you can meld into your skin, and does damage based on how skilled you are with swords instead of daggers, and has really good modifiers for when you’re attacking from stealth, when I notice something almost calling to me out of the corner of my eye.

I give it a quick once-over and see a boring, plain, wall.

So I go to check out the boring plain wall.

After a more thorough investigation, my eyes snag on the art-bust of a middle aged witch who is holding a glass ball. The arm that can be moved -- trap?

Well, best to be careful. I observe the thing.

Bust of the Time Witch

This is a bust made to resemble the owner of the Time Regalia, who lived until 0092 AD. She went missing, and was never seen after that date, still apparently young, in spite of being over a century old.

This is the Key to opening the Vault of the Hoard. (Dungeon Level 100)

Durability - 100/100

Mana - 50,000/50,000

A vault? Dungeon? I give a glare at the statue and begin picking the magic apart with my eyes.

Ward anchor, alarm, species detection, identification, opening… I see.

I glance at the wall where the magic leads and then intentionally grip all of the shadows in the vault, and within 50 feet of where I stand. This should be a wall, with nothing on the other side, but…

A cave?

I have everything I need from here, so I’m just fine to go through.

I sink into the shadows of a nearby pedestal and appear, on the other side of the wall.

Neatly arranged all along the walls, and on shelves making neat rows are thousands of artefacts. Not normal ‘really good weapons and stuff’, but actual divine stuff.

Right in the entrance is a cap of the shadow lord, which works like a lesser version of Hades’ helm of Darkness. Blessed by him and all. Next in a spear blessed by Athena.

Quickly I get a grip of the organization. Where things are in relation to what they are. I notice that the further in the shelves go, the better things seem to get. So I go right onwards, keeping sharp for secondary wards which I might miss otherwise.

Near the end of the row, I stop.

“Royal Section, any intruders will be executed per code 33b, subsection C.” I murmur, reading the plaque. Then very, very carefully, I scrutinize the ward in front of me.

It’s a dome ward. Basic, but very well made. It stops all kinds of movement in or out, even shadow magic. This makes sense, as they have a set of boots which allows for shadow jumping. “The Boots of Nephthys” they were called. So, I begin very slowly combing over the wards to see what kind of identification they use, and am happy to find it’s personal verification.

They use a mana signature.

I carefully pick apart the nuances it looks for, and then happily - though carefully - mime the mana signature, like I’d done the other night to the Malfoy family.

And I step into the Royal section of the room, and walk to the very end of the hallway.

At the end, there is a sort of dome, with 13 pedestals set up, all of which are empty except for one. There is an orb, a cloak and a necklace on the pedestal. I carefully examine the area, and after finding that there are no wards, I bound up to the place and give them a very, very careful look over with Observe.

By all means these should be the best items in the whole place, right? I observe all three in succession to see what they..

Oh.

The Orb of the Time Lord

Mythic Artefact

Qualities: Control, Time, Space.

Durability - Infinite.

Mana - ???.

???

???

???

This Orb is the first piece of the set of the Time Lord, stolen from the previous owners by the Goblins, who have been using it since to allow their kings - along with other nobility - to get free time whenever they need it. They use this time to master skills, and once every 100 years, use it to train the crowned prince in a perfect time loop, where no one ages, and nothing changes about them except for their skill and power. They do not age, mature or otherwise become altered, they just gain skill and power. This is a result of the Time Loop Mechanism wiping all memories of the loop from the user when ONLY the orb is used.

This Regalia can be used by anyone.

Part one of three of the “Time Lord’s Regalia”

Set Bonus

???

???

???

Would you like to Claim the Orb of the Time Lord?

Y/N

The Cloak of the Time Lord

Mythic Artefact - Divine Tier.

Qualities: Memory, Time, Mastery

Durability - Infinite.

Mana - ???.

???

???

???

The Cloak of the Time Lord is the second Piece of the set of the Time Lord. Stolen from the previous owner by Goblins. They have not been able to figure out the use of this item, though it should be obvious. When worn by someone using the orb, they retain all memories gained when using the Orb. This also allows for more minute uses of the orb than the centennial Looping power. Those powers are only revealed to full-owners of both pieces of the set, however.

Set Bonus

???

???

???

Would you like to Claim the Cloak of the Time Lord?

Y/N

The Necklace of the Time Lord

Mythic Artefact

Qualities: Power, Time, Control.

Durability - Infinite.

Mana - ???.

???

???

???

The Necklace of the Time Lord is the third Piece of the set of the Time Lord. Stolen from the previous owner by Goblins. They have not been able to figure out the use of this item. This item acts as a Time Turner does. It is also a badge of office - as only one whom the necklace accepts can wear it, and any who wear it go with the blessing of the Master of Time.

Any other benefits this may give you are hidden.

Set Bonus

???

???

???

Would you like to Claim the Necklace of the Time Lord?

Y/N

I mean, obviously they’ll know if this goes missing. I carefully pick them apart with my eyes, looking for bugs or tricks or traps or problems, and, finding none, I accept all three prompts, ignore the sudden alarm bells wailing and jump through my shadows into my vault, and toss the items into my dimensional storage, while warping my mana back to normal, and purging all magical effects on my person, making it look like I’ve done no magic all day - except my morning self cleaning spells.

As I finish picking up the final item box in my vault - to carry out with the other few I’ve taken out of my vaults so far, the door is flung open, and I’m ushered through some impossibly tight security - scanned by about fifty different spells and sensors and detectors, and then shown out of the bank.

I walk to the Apparition point, and show myself home.

Now, to read what these things do…

New Title - Lady Time

You can freely open a time rift whenever and wherever you want, and stay in the past as long as you like. There is no limit on how much time does or does not pass while you’re in the present day - though staying more than 1 hour in the past will cause time to move in the present unless you’re using the Regalia of the Time Lord to facilitate the jump, and if you do that and stay for more than an hour, then you’ll drain power from them, which you will have to provide somehow.

New Perk - Timeborn

You are the Chosen child of Time, and have complete mastery over chronurgul forces. You will innately grasp any chronomancy magic you attempt to learn, and master it at an absurd rate. This stacks with all other learning buffs you have.

Current speed with which you learn Chronomancy -

1,450%.

+300 to “Chronomancy” skill.

You have Attuned the “Orb of the Time Lord” One of the Three Regalia gained.

You have been given the Quest - Regalia of the Time Lord.

…

You have attuned the Cloak of the Time Lord.

You have Attuned the Necklace of the Time Lord.

…

You have completed the Quest Regalia of the Time Lord!

+15 levels.
+3/10 Relationship with Time.

As you are Soul Bonded to the Divine Regalia of time you can rename them. Would you like to do so?

Y/N

I choose yes and rename them to the Wanderer’s Orb, Cloak and Necklace.

+1/10 Relationship with Time.

Wander’s Orb

This Orb is bound to Aubrey Hawthorne, and cannot be used by anyone else. It allows the user to manipulate time in a local area however they wish. It also gives the user the ability to see people who have messed with time, and remove any benefits they may have gained from time-compression or other methods of Chronomancy which has been discovered by Mortals.

This is the Anchorstone of the Divine Regalia, and as such, it is what holds the power for the other two.

Once every 100 years, this orb will have absorbed enough mana to give the user of the orb 100 years inside of a “Time Loop” which is the same month repeating itself. This can be ended at any time, and then the remaining time used on a different month, if the user wishes.

This does not gain charge while it is holding time, so unless all of the stored 100 years is used, it will not gain more time.

Only the owner of all three divine regalia can use this without repercussions.

The Owner of the Orb can supply it with mana and it will speed up the process of recharging.

4,972,733,500 mana needed to activate the loop currently.

Would you like to give the Orb your current mana pool of 5,951,692?

Y/N

“Two thirds, and keep it there. I want to charge this as soon as I can, and over 800 mana draining things sounds like not fun, so just giving a constant stream will be better” I tell the system, and feel suddenly much more tired. But it’s working.

I’ll just drink extra coffee.

When the Orb is in the active stage - and you’re either inside of or outside of the Time Loop, you can spend 1,000,000 mana to get 1 hour of time without any time passing in the real world - this time can be spent in the past. This is useful to get variety in the Time Loop.

Wanderer’s Cloak

This Cloak is bound to Aubrey Hawthorne, and cannot be used by anyone else. It allows the user to ignore others manipulating time near them, and keeps them from being forced to manipulate time for others. Further, this cloak protects the user from most forms of magic, though not completely.

+25% resistance to all forms of damage when worn.

Grants immunity to mental tampering of all kinds - memory manipulation, compulsion spells, etc. None of those can work on you when wearing this cloak - no matter the source.

Increases the sensitivity of all senses twice-over when worn, but filters out painful or distracting stimuli automatically.

Makes the owner completely untraceable, and makes the owner seem completely neutral in all magical scans - as though they have done nothing to anyone at all, ever. Doubles magical sensitivity and perception.

Gives +30 to all martial combat types while worn.

Wanderer’s Necklace

This Necklace is bound to Aubrey Hawthorne, and cannot be used by anyone else. It allows the user to make minute, personal changes to the timestream, allowing them to go back in time to their own body at the time they return to, or to their current physical form.

This can be used to relive an entire day up to three times. It has a personal capacity for time travel tied to the amount of mana in the orb. If the Orb has no mana, this property will not function. When it is used when the orb is active, and enforcing a time-loop, the owner can go outside of the time loop to a time before it, if they wish.

This Necklace also grants bonuses to learning speed in relation to most magical forms, so the master of time can make the most of their new lease on time.

+50% to everything not specifically covered while this is worn.

+100% to Transfiguration, Combat Magic and Stealth skills.

+150% to Wards, Tactics and Languages.

+200% to Chronomancy.

You have the Divine Skills - Read and Write Language - All.

Language (All) has been added to your skills list.

Due to your prior knowledge of a variety of languages, Language - All has been upgraded to 8/10.

Due to Language - All having been brought above 5/10, you have unlocked Magical Dialects.

Due to knowing 3 magical dialects, and 2 extinct dialects, your Magical Dialects skill has been brought to 3/10.

Prior skill in particular languages retained. Overall mastery of languages updated.

Apologies for the headache.

…

You have over 150 stat points to assign, and 8 Perk Points to Assign, would you like to assign them now?

Y/N

Of course I do, and I’m not in a happy mood with this headache it just dumped on me, so I hope this is fast.

You have unlocked the Time Mastery Perk tree.

Great. I don’t care. All points to int and wis. Yes, confirm, 550 int and 500 wis is fine, yes, wonderful.

Perks.

6 points - Time Management

You can now manage your personal time exactly how you want. At will you can wrap yourself in temporal strings to make yourself faster - up to a magnitude of 10. While in this state you cannot harm other living beings, but you can use this to get training done, or reposition in a fight, or otherwise make yourself move faster than anyone could possibly hope to track you. You age at the speed of time relative to the rest of the world while in this state - which means you just have 10 times the, well, time. While this is activated anyways.

Also, you can make time pass 10x faster around you - so if you’re in a boring meeting, you can skip the whole thing on fast-forward. You can get the boring plane ride over with, or you can skip past the boring wait in line for something. Just fast forward and walk with the crowd. You age 10x slower while this is active. You’re good enough with time magic to manage that much, at least.

+200 to Chronomancy (All)

+100 to the Personal Time Manipulation skill.

Unlocks Restart.

10 points. Restart.

You’ve become so attuned to your Divine Regalia that they automatically record and make anchors for you to jump back in time to. You can use these anchors for free, but only once. These anchors are up to 10 days past, and they make one on the morning of every day. If you are killed in your sleep, they will activate the one furthest back automatically.

You can also make two personal anchors which have no limits, but will cost mana from the orb to activate - 1,000,000 mana per day you want to go back - capping out with the maximum mana the Orb can store for time travel, which will allow you to go however far back you wish. (This is 100,000,000,000 mana.)

The Regalia - by divine law - can only save your life automatically once every ten years. So if you die more than that - this will not save you, but it is surely better than nothing, eh?

+500 to Chronomancy - All.

Unlocks The Witch Queen of the Rift.

20 points. The Witch Queen of the Rift

Rift Queens (or Kings) can only be someone who holds a divine Regalia. They can play with the laws of reality in relation to their divine regalia and adjacent elements of reality. For time, this is Heat, Light, Cold, Darkness and Space, in reverse order of strength. You will gain the basic abilities of the Divine Regalia holders of those levels, and your mastery of time will be something which cannot be matched.

+200 to Heat, Light Magic.

+300 to Cold Magic.

+400 to Darkness Magic.

+500 to Spatial magic.

+1,000 to Time Magic.

Mana Pool is doubled in size.

I don’t have the points for even two of those, but I buy the first one and then buy two highly utilitarian 1 point perks to help with my political stuff.

1 point - Confession.

As long as you stick to telling the truth, people will always believe you, no matter how outlandish or impossible it might sound. You’re no better than normal with ordinary deception and lying but something about the way you talk has people just accept that your truthful words are in fact truthful.

1 point - Maneuver.

You are simply good at political maneuvering. This doesn’t make you the best who ever was, but it does give you a knack for being in the right place at the right time politically, and also pushing people to the right place at the right time. Just like anyone else who has been in politics for a few years, but with this you can skip the hassle.

+30 to Politics Skill.

Wonderful. Now, I’m going to go get a cup of coffee, and plan how I’m going to shoot some bulls clean through their eyes. I am tired, and I have a headache, and it’s only 3pm. On a Saturday.

AN: This took me longer than I thought it would, but I saw an opportunity to introduce why the relationship between her and the Goblins is going to take a sharp nosedive, and took it. Then figuring out how I should write it took longer.

While I’m not 100% happy with this outcome, I am happy enough, and so I’m posting this version of it. There’s basically no interactions because just narration of what she did in broad terms took up the word count.

-- Spoilers I guess if you don’t want those? --

Interestingly I was always going to have the majority of the Goblin population turn out to be villains, but I wanted to make a good shot at showing it before everything goes to hell - and stealing Divine Regalia from them is a good way for her to realize the goblins are not as honourable as they seem, along with their bloodthirsty tendencies (encouraging her to kill old houses (which they will profit from)).

So she’s going to have a bit of a think on this next chapter.

-- End Spoilers --

You’ll probably want this - so here are her stats as of the end of the chapter, along with stat perks.

Aubrey Hawthorne

Titles - Queen of Ravens and Shadow, Morgana, Dragon of the Wall

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Level 127

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Age - 16

Race - Half-Human/Devil (Lustkin) (Draconic (Fire))

Sex - Female

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Str - 450

Dex - 520

Agi - 500

Con - 511

Int - 750

Wis - 700

Luk - 634

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HP: 815,924 (1,556,783)

MP: 3,588,393 (5,951,692)

STM: 618,120 (2,131,862)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stat Points - 0

Skill Points - 0

Perk Points - 0

Diplomatic Visibility - 10**DR**

Perks -

650 Intelligence - The First (U17 only)

As the First to get to 650 int as a human before the age of 17, your mana pool is doubled in size.

650 Wisdom - The Alpha (U17 only)

Your control of mana is the best of anyone who has ever lived - for someone not yet 17 anyways. This allows you to convert your mana into a liquid state, condensing it into a more potent form.

Unlocks Qi (Magic+Stamina).

700 Intelligence - The Last (U17 only)

As the only person to break three records of int in one go - before 17 - your mana pool will not stop growing until you stop growing in Int and Wis.

700 Wisdom The Omega (U17 only)

Due to the fact that you have unlocked both Ki and Qi, your innate soul can triangulate how to unlock Chi, which is Mana+Health.

750 Intelligence - The Only (U17 only)

You’re breaking the system at this point. This should, technically, not be possible. After you complete your life, we’ll have to patch some things. For breaking the game, you are rewarded. This is literally what we asked you to do - and we know you weren’t even really trying. You were just trying to be so strong nothing would dare try to be evil with you around.

Well, you’re surely getting there.

+200% to all training gains.

450 Strength - Compression.

You can compress your strength into one point on your body, down to the size of the tip of your pinky finger. If you were to do that, you could probably punch a hole in concrete with a blow from your pinky, but other than intimidation, this isn’t very useful. More useful would be to put it in your fist and break some bones.

500 Agility - Dodge the Explosion

If you have a 2 second heads up, you can always find a way to get out of the radius of a hand grenade sized explosion, the lethal range for sure. Almost always is for the horrible injury range, too. So yes, you can ready a grenade, drop it at your feet, and dodge the explosion. Well, as long as you’re not literally tied in a sack with a grenade and have no way out, or something similar. That’d be stupid. Still, most people wouldn’t have a shot in hell of doing that, so, good on you.

Due to breaking 450 in the final stat cap, you have completed the physical transformation into a devilkin. Your race is now Half-Human Half Devil. You have Wings, a Tail, specialized organs and features to reflect the sin you were born of.

Enjoy your life as a half-devil!