The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

He folded the thick parchment up and sealed it with dark red wax before stamping it with the official Oresfall crest. Then he grabbed the letter and walked right out of his room.

Damien was standing right outside his door like he was just waiting for Adrian to come out and give him something to do.

Adrian handed the letter directly to the butler.

”Send this to the Emperor. I want it sent to the capital as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter if you have to drop a lot of money for a fast courier. Just get it done.”

Damien nodded deeply.

”I will make sure it reaches His Majesty as soon as possible my lord.”

Adrian just watched him turn and walk down the hallway. Then he went back into his room and shut the heavy doors.

He immediately muttered out loud the second the latch clicked.

”System. Pull up the torch I sent to you a few months ago. The one Aria made. Use that as a base model and make me an extremely efficient but easy to produce magical torch.”

He walked back over to his desk and leaned against it.

”I need the torch to have enough illumination to easily light up a small room,” he instructed. ”Basically one that’s more than enough for a standard apartment. And that is pretty much it for the power output.”

He crossed his arms over his chest.

”But it would actually be a lot better if this torch had a switch where I can either turn it off completely or switch it between two different modes. The first mode needs to act like a standard light bulb so it softly illuminates an entire room.”

He tapped his arm.

”The second mode needs to be a concentrated beam of light. Basically an actual flashlight so people can see where they’re going when they walk outside at night.”

[Affirmative.]

[Calculating runic circuitry adjustments.]

[Warning: The dual-mode design is slightly complex. The switching mechanism between the different runic arrays will cause the mana efficiency to drop slightly.]

”Not like I really care,” Adrian scoffed. ”Just do it.”

[Affirmative.]

A few seconds later a holographic 3D model popped into the air right in front of his face. It slowly rotated so he could see it from all angles.

It basically looked like a thick metal stick attached to a conical base. The bottom of the cone which was the wider part was covered by a thick layer of glass. That was basically the spot where the wide beam of light came out to act as a flashlight.

The opposite end of the stick had a similar but much smaller glass cover that looked more like a cylindrical bulb. That end acted more like an actual room lamp.

The design was pretty much good to go.

Since the base was wide and completely flat people could just put the thing down on a dinner table or a nightstand and it would stand upright on its own. It would just light up the whole room like a modern lamp.

And when they needed to walk outside they could just grab the stick portion and flip it over to use it as a standard flashlight.

It was an incredibly simple and highly functional design.

Adrian didn’t see a single reason to change it up since the holographic simulation showed it working perfectly fine. He just gave a nod of approval.

”Okay. How much mana or material is it going to take to mass produce these through the dungeon?”

He tapped his fingers on his arm.

”And actually, which is better? Is it better for you to just make them instantly or should I get some people to make it manually instead? I do have some mages apparently so I could just force them to work on etching these runes.”

He suddenly clicked his tongue in pure annoyance.

”Since I don’t really have any actual work for them to do right now anyway, giving them some manual labor seems to be a way better use case for paying them so much damn money. It’s honestly just frustrating every time I think about it.”

He aggressively rubbed his temples.

”Five hundred gold coins a week for fuck’s sake.”

But all of a sudden Adrian paused. He just slapped his own forehead.

’Wait. Why the hell am I even worrying so much about the mages when they are basically just massive money printing machines for me?’ he thought.

He quickly shook his head and dropped his hand while chuckling slightly to himself.

’I’ll just send these guys into the dungeon four times a day instead of two like everyone else. Since they’re mages they have way higher mana capacities and recovery rates. I can just hand them a mana breathing method that speeds up their recovery process. This way almost five hundred mages will be able to make me around two thousand mana crystals a day if all of them are 1st Circle.’

He nodded to himself.

’And if I ever find something actually important that I need them to do I can just reassign them to that work instead.’

He continued thinking over his army composition for a second before shaking his head again.

’No wait. The main reason I even got them here in the first place is because I wanted Magic Knights.’

That was his main goal.

He already had a great amount of standard knights at this point.

’I should probably go ask Burke exactly how many knights I currently have on the payroll. It is probably way more than two thousand but I really need the exact numbers.’ he thought. ’And now with mages on top of that I can just train them to use certain spells which can mostly be used for both wide area defense and offense. Especially if we are going against other kingdoms as an entire group. And at the exact same time I can also train them as knights with a special fighting method that is totally unique to them so they can use magic to perform much better in close combat than regular knights.’

He nodded to himself.

’Yeah. I definitely need this special group of Magic Knights somehow. And I need to get this done fast.’