[Name]: [Magic Powder]
[Effect]: The base material required to cast enhancement (BUFF) magic.
[Price]: 990,000 Valis per portion. Each portion supports 100 castings.
...
Once he'd flagged the [Magic Powder] entry as important, Leon slipped a hand under the covers out of habit and skillfully set to toying with Jeanne's softness.
"Mm..."
Deep in sleep, Jeanne shivered faintly, unconsciously fisting the sheets, her brows drawing together, her expression caught somewhere between struggle and intoxication...
Leon glanced at her reaction, then turned his attention back to the matter of the Magic Powder.
Nine hundred and ninety thousand a portion, good for a hundred castings. That works out to about 9,900 Valis a cast... pushing ten thousand.
Tsk. Not cheap at all.
But for me it's a hard necessity, the same as elixirs. Once the snow lets up a little, I'll head to the magic shop and pick some up.
Brewing it myself is too much bother. Simpler to just buy the finished product...
...
Daily expenses, arms procurement, magic materials.
After those three came the single largest share of any adventurer's supply budget: potion consumption.
Warrior, swordsman, mage, or supporter, whether they were headed into the Dungeon or not, whether they were only moving around inside the city, keeping a potion or two on hand was standard practice for any resident of Orario.
As a local, Leon knew a thing or two about the way the place worked these days.
There was no telling which day a man might step out the door and get unlucky enough to run into a spot of "zero-Valis shopping," and if he hadn't stocked a couple of potions... what was he supposed to do if he got hurt?
So potions were a hard necessity. A genuine, non-negotiable need.
And for the mid- to high-ranked adventurers pushing into the middle, lower, even deep floors, the potions they used weren't the ten-thousand-a-bottle recovery kind. They were high-grade goods, on a level with the adventurers themselves.
The starting price was ten thousand, a hundred thousand, for high-grade recovery potions and high-grade magic potions, all the way up to the half-a-million-Valis Elixirs...
Which meant the outlay in this department was staggering in its own right.
Especially on long Dungeon expeditions, there was never such a thing as too many potions, only too few. When an adventurer ran dry of supplies partway through, it was almost always down to the limits of what they could carry, not any unwillingness to bring more.
On this front, Leon's team had things enormously easier.
The Wonder Pack, standing guard over their margin for error.
The marvelous magic backpacks made through the [Item Box] magic and a tailor's craft held four to five times their base volume. Under the same supply configuration, Leon's party had four or five times the load-bearing room the other teams did, more than enough to carry extra potions against any challenge that came.
"Hold on. If we're carrying more potions, doesn't the cost climb right along with it?"
The thought of Airmid and Naaza and those smiling faces of theirs sent a pang through Leon.
"Never mind. All those potions turn into my Excelia in the end... expensive, sure, but as long as it's money spent where it counts, it's worth it."
...
Daily expenses, arms procurement, magic materials, potion reserves, and on top of the basic cost of living, these made up the main blocks of the familia's current spending.
Naturally, being a man who liked to plan, even with nearly seven hundred million in liquid cash in hand Leon wasn't about to throw it around. The initial fit-out of the new base, the "White Tower Bastion," alone was likely to run a hundred to two hundred million Valis, and that was only for the rough, first-pass work. As for the antique tables and chairs, the solid-wood bookcases, the crystal chandeliers, the art on the walls that he kept daydreaming about... those were all matters for later.
That sort of thing was a game only the old, established gods who'd been at it for a thousand years and more could afford to play. He wasn't yet in any position to reach for it.
...
"Ngh..."
Just then, under Leon's gentle touch, Jeanne finally surfaced slowly from her deep sleep.
The moment she opened her eyes, she met Leon's smiling gaze.
"Wh-what are you trying to do...?"
Jeanne came awake by degrees out of the fog of sleep, and the instant she registered a certain warm thing enclosing her, her cheeks flushed scarlet all at once. She widened her pale violet eyes, a flicker of flustered helplessness crossing them.
Leon looked down at her adorable reaction, the smile all but spilling out from the corners of his eyes:
"It's not even dawn yet. Perfect timing to do something... fun."
"No, no!"
Jeanne hurriedly braced her hands against Leon's chest, her long legs winding round him without her meaning to, trying to hold his approach at bay.
But that scrap of resistance was next to useless in the face of Leon.
He simply turned lightly, and gathered Jeanne in beneath him.
Feeling the long, soft warmth of the legs at his waist and the arms that had wound themselves around his neck at some point, Leon looked down at Jeanne's crimson face, and their eyes met.
"Ngh...!"
The next second Jeanne's body drew abruptly tight, and then, as if some tide had swallowed her whole, her mind went blank. She bit down hard on her lower lip and made no sound. She only stared, stubborn, at the man above her, her eyes brimming with shy anger and silent protest.
"Heh..."
Leon gave a soft laugh, bent down and kissed her, one hand smoothing over her long hair, the other lightly folding around her fingers.
In the space of a moment, Jeanne's already-thin resistance quietly dissolved.
"Guh...!"
...
A soft rustling, together with the gentle sway of the bed.
"Mm..."
Rose slowly opened her amber eyes, and the first thing to meet them was Jeanne's expression of having nowhere left to hide her embarrassment, and the figure rising and falling gently above her.
Her gaze traveled past Jeanne's reddened profile, and Rose's eyes met Leon's without a sound.
"My dear... did I wake at a bad moment?"
Leon caught Jeanne's hands from behind, paid no mind to the near-scattered look in her eyes, quickened his pace a touch, and lifted an eyebrow:
"Care to join?"
Rose looked at the Jeanne before her, breath ragged, face flushed crimson, and the corners of her lips curved tender:
"Gladly."
The words weren't out before she had slid down and come between the two of them. She tipped up the corner of her mouth, then bent close.
"Hss..."
Leon drew in a sharp breath as a warm, soft tingling surged up out of nowhere.
Rose's closeness nearly cost him control of his own breathing.
He let go of one of Jeanne's hands, stroked lightly over Rose's hair, and said in a low voice with a thread of a tremor in it:
"Slow, slow down..."
Rose gave no answer. She only lifted her eyes to hand him a smiling look, then bent her full attention back to her gentle work.
...
Outside Leon's door.
Persephone's hand, raised to knock, had frozen in midair.
The look on her face shifted and shifted again, hesitation, shame, and something like anticipation all tangled together. Her whole heart was in an impossible knot.
But as a certain adorable little wail from Jeanne carried out of the room, along with a faint sound of swallowing, Persephone, red to the ears, rubbing her thighs together, made up her mind in a hurry.
"Lucky you, Mr. Scum!"
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