Excerpt from The Profound and Pretty Princess' Ultimate Guide to Cultivation, Captivation, Cuteness, and Carving Your Way to the Top, English Edition (the worst-selling guide in the history of Putijama)

On General Core Allocation

There are two separate types of cores you can allocate essence to: capped and uncapped.

Funnily enough, the Innate Capability core (AKA Cap core) is capped, as is the bloodline core. Your magical and physical cores are functionally uncapped though you can only allocate up to 100% of your essence in a Tier to them – at least without Innate Capability shenanigans.

Capped Cores

Each of your two capped cores can only take up to 10% of essence per Tier. Unlike the uncapped cores, where power – mana pool or regeneration or any of the physical aspects – increases depending on what percent of current essence is allocated to them within a Tier, the bloodline and Cap cores behave based on total essence allocated per Tier.

So, while on a total body level sub-Tier 0 only requires 2% of the total essence for the entire Tier to reach sub-Tier 1, allocating 100% of that 2% would not strengthen the capped core all that much, only 20% of its total potential for that Tier.

Because of the way essence allocated to capped cores works, unless there is a significant reason to allocate to a capped core early, most people save allocating to capped cores for when they reach sub-Tier 7 or later. It is rarely worth not growing at all in your magical or physical cores early in the Tier.

Capped cores are also 'capped' once you Tier up. You can only allocate a percentage of your essence in any specific Tier to a capped core. So if someone allocated nothing to their Innate Capability core in Tier 1, they can allocate a full 10% in Tier 2 but not anything beyond that.

To be clear though, if they allocated a full 10% in Tier 1, they could again allocate up to 10% in Tier 2, there is no blockage from allocation to a capped core in a previous Tier.

Capped cores lock in your choices, which is why some guides recommend throwing at least some of your essence at your Cap core late in Tier 1, no matter how useless your Tier 1 Cap is.

It can be tempting to allocate essence to your Cap core in case you are an Odd, since you will get a second Innate Capability at Tier 3 that could be great. But since so few people are Odds, it's probably not the best idea as the essence will sit in your core for a long while before you even know.

But it's all a balance of course!

The bloodline core is typically only useful for sentient beasts, rift bonds, or the extremely rare human born with a bloodline. Each has some innate power that lays dormant in their blood.

Even if that's you, unless you have a bloodline power that really is incredible – or a variant of a bloodline power – most people should probably wait until late in the Tier to allocate to their bloodline core for the reasons discussed above.

Some people that aren't born with a bloodline really believe they will be able to add one. Extremely rare rift drops do happen after all. But, as you can't tell what bloodline you'll add and the treasure dissipates relatively quickly once you leave the rift, it's a huge risk. You can read more on rift-acquired bloodlines in the On Bloodline Core Cultivation and Allocation section.

So, with all that said, it's often best to completely ignore your capped cores entirely!

Uncapped Cores

As mentioned, the magical and physical cores can take as much essence as you'll give them. There isn't a reason to wait until later in the Tier as even at sub-Tier 0, they start to have a noticeable positive impact on mana regeneration, mana pool size, and your physical capabilities.

There are general rules of growth for both the magical and physical cores but the standard splits are usually somewhere between 30% and 70% of your total essence per Tier allocated to both your magical and physical cores, unless you have very specific reasons otherwise.

That means if you allocate 10% of your essence in Tier 1 to both your Cap and bloodline cores, you'd still want to allocate at least 37.5% of the remaining essence (80% of the total Tier's essence) to each uncapped core.

To get a better sense of what allocating to your magical and physical cores will do, please see the On Magical Core Cultivation and Allocation and On Physical Core Cultivation and Allocation sections.

Ileana's hands slowly slid over mine. "See, you just give that a little flick and a—"

WRANG

The dagger I was trying to 'repair' flung out of the clamp, making a surprising noise.

She chuckled at the face I was making, which I knew showed a sense of frustration but also sheer confusion.

The first few attempts at reforging my cheap throwing daggers into something a bit sharper, entirely done for practice, had gone poorly.

"Physics doesn't work like that… I think?" I said, tilting my head like a dog who heard its name said on TV. The science had never been my strongest subject.

"You're forgetting magic," she said, pointing to the small portable forge she brought with her.

I don't understand how magic makes things fly off with a small hammer blow.

I was very glad Ileana was helping me as I wanted to learn more about some of the major crafts of smithing, enchanting, and alchemy. She only agreed, with a wink and a chuckle, to help me give smithing a try 'if I paid for it'.

Tiesa luckily was willing to provide a decent amount of mana to recharge the portable forge's batteries and she even cajoled my bodyguard as well as Vesna's to contribute some too, which the attractive brunette gladly accepted as payment.

Ileana hip checked me out of the way now that all three of the throwing daggers I was willing to sacrifice in my fiddling around were in a far worse state than twenty minutes ago.

"Now, watch me do some real work." She turned to the broader assembly of people in the large roadside rest area. It was run by a nearby village and they brought out a ton of food, all provided by Pitola.

Over 50 people were chatting around fires and eating after a long day of delves before heading into their magically reinforced tents. Ileana hollered, "Which one of you sorry sacks needs your weapons and armor repaired? Free inspections including minor enchantments! Mundane weapons and enchanted armor only tonight!"

The intrepid entrepreneur had explained, as she was attempting to teach me, that when she was first starting out as a delver, she learned smithing to do minor repair work to weapons and armor and that was still her biggest interest. The idea of forging weapons from scratch just didn't appeal.

The general idea at the time was to lower the costs of repairs of her early team as they had poor backing. Her first portable forge, one she bought for a song, could barely get mundane metal hot enough to shape. She laughed about working up a huge sweat every day and building her toned arms to wield a hammer inside rifts and out.

But beyond just lessening her and her team's repair costs, she found many, many side benefits to her smithing endeavors.

The first was any team she delved with was able to go on longer delving trips without returning to a city for repairs, which meant they delved more often.

As part of that, they were also able to go to far more remote locations and make the trip worth it. For most, the economics of delving three to five remote rifts before needing their gear repaired stunk. And if their gear got badly damaged in the first rift, or even after a few bad rift drops, it could really hurt the bank account, possibly putting them in debt to get them back out into delving.

But the remote rifts were known for the best rewards. Being delved the least often, they had high essence levels, which usually meant something far beyond the normal lump of gold, and often had low to no entrance fees. That also meant her team could advance quickly or push their essence to items, which they did for extra money.

The second reason was she was far more attractive to take along on group delves or group missions for the Adventurers Guild or other organizations. Being able to get teams back into fighting condition quickly – assuming they were healed as well – meant a far higher success rate, faster mission completion, and lower risk of financial challenges for other teams. It was good at the individual and the team level.

It also made Ileana and her team extremely popular for carry delves, which could be lucrative. I was surprised but a ton of non-noble carried delvers had pretty damaged armor and being able to repair that made her seem just that much better as an option.

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She mentioned to me how hard it had been to find a capable teammate that could also do minor enchantment repair work. Once they had that, everything really took off for her current iteration of her team.

Now, she had a line of over twenty people walking up, most holding weapons, set to fatten her coin sack.

Ileana's mage teammate, Roksana, took the people with armor to the side, though her line was not as deep. Armor was the most likely enchanted gear for a Tier 1 to have. A little extra power on a weapon was nice while a little extra protection on armor could often be life-saving.

Many teams had, at most, a single spatial storage sack between them, but nearly all teams near the peak of Tier 1 had every frontline fighter in enchanted armor at the very least.

Some of the people grumbled or haggled but Ileana took twelve weapon repair jobs while the enchanter/mage only agreed to 'repair until exhaustion'.

I found Roksana's work far more interesting, much to her smug satisfaction. Clearly she sent her teammate a message as Ileana laughed then pouted at me before turning to her own work.

While I had been abusing my self-repair enchantments on both my armor and weapon – and they were exceptionally well done enchantments from what others told me – even enchantments that were rift-dropped, essentially perfect, started to see wear-and-tear rather quickly.

For one example, Roksana showed me the effectiveness of the self-repair function of one potential customer's breastplate that took about three times as much mana to repair the same tiny scratch as my armor did.

Roksana pointed enthusiastically. "See. Small little swoop there." A rune lit up but it was slightly misshapen, looking like it had been squished and stretched. "And there." Another that looked like a shark took a bite out of it. "And there." The last one looked nearly shattered. She looked up in annoyance. "How long?" She glared at the man.

"Since it was enchanted? Five years or so. But I get it regularly refreshed." She continued to glare at him. "At least every six months." She continued to wait. He said dejectedly, "It's been almost a year… Okay, okay, it's been nearly a year and a half. I know, I know. How much?"

"Replacement seventeen gold. Full enchantment eight or nine. Almost entirely dead. Your guess?"

I knew she usually spoke in full sentences so it was a bit strange to me but I let her do her thing and kept the amusement off my face.

He looked confused at being asked to guess. "Four gold?" he asked, looking simultaneously hopeful it wasn't more and depressed at such a high price.

"One gold, 60 silver," Roksana said loudly and proudly with a swish of her cloak, indicating towards a bowl off to the side. The man happily tossed in the coins and she got to work.

[Incoming Message from Roksana Deda: Always find the sucker, make them think they are going to have to pay a ton, then undercut their expected price. Makes you look incredibly reasonable and prevents haggling. These are cheap and crappy enchantments in the first place so getting them back to 100% is easy. Ink cost is going to be six silvers. And free mana!]

She gave me a sly grin that only I could see as she bent over the dented and scratched metal with her delicate etching tools and glowing ink. It felt like she was willing the enchantments to change rather than using the tool to do so. Mana leaked into the environment, sending tingles down my skin. She moved this way and that, keeping her hand perfectly still like a chicken with a video camera while the rest of her body shifted to get a better angle.

I couldn't help but ask, "How much mana does that take? It feels like it would have to be your entire pool almost every few minutes with how much is leaking into the air."

[Incoming Message from Roksana Deda: I push a bit out into the environment to make it seem more impressive. With the donations from our guards, it's costing me a few points at most to make it a show. I'll be essentially flat on mana by the end of doing three repairs.]

However, outwardly she said, holding a hand to her head. "Too much. Two more at most. So tired."

Realizing she was creating demand, I just rolled with it. Five people started jostling to be one of the two customers but Roksana quickly settled the argument after looking over the pieces.

She worked on a helmet and a full-body set like my own before collapsing dramatically, proclaiming she'd be available again 'on the morrow'.

Carrying her over to a bench at her loud request and her louder sighs, I signaled for someone to bring her food and drink. She winked at me, slipping me a silver tenpiece for aiding her performance.

The next half hour, I tried to help Ileana as best I could, absorbing her knowledge as she worked quickly. Some of that was holding tools to hand to her at the perfect moment to speed up her actions and prevent the need to reheat anything.

But most of the time, all I did was watch in awe as she easily repaired weapons that looked on their last legs to near-perfect in moments.

As she returned the last weapon, a halberd that before her ministrations would probably have had difficulty cutting through water by how blunt and chipped the edge had been, she smiled as I handed her some water.

"Mighty impressive," I said with a smile.

Ileana rolled her eyes. "God, don't let Roks' mysterious enchanter persona rub off on you. Use full sentences. And thanks for the help. Did you get what you were hoping for? Anything more you wanted?" She swept the contents of her bowl, well over ten gold in total, into her visible coin pouch. I knew she had another larger purse in her storage sack.

She didn't seem to be flirting, at least at the moment, so I was honest. "I think learning about crafts will help me. At least to understand good work from bad, not get fleeced or anything. I like spending time with you— err both of you," I finished, a bit flushed.

Definitely from the heat of the forge.

Ileana laughed. It was a deep and sonorous noise with a little snort, like someone who didn't care to put on appearances. "Yeah, I can do that. We'll get more mana from your friends tomorrow but business will be considerably less. At least until we swap groups."

It made sense. At least 90% of the damage to people's equipment was probably from before the current delving trip so the people coming for basic weapon repair would probably drop.

"You two didn't do any work on something that was enchanted and actually physically damaged. Is that normal?"

She nodded as we headed over to grab some food. While still at the table, she hungrily bit into the sandwich of roast meat with an indecent moan. "Damn, that's good. Ten silver to the chef!" A few cheers rang out. She tossed a silver tenpiece to the man at the table but all knew it would get passed along to the right person at the loud declaration.

We sat at a table a little ways out of the main area of the camping ground. "Right, so your question. It's a nightmare to physically repair weapons or armor with enchantments without an enchanter around. Roks and I will do them together tomorrow. Luckily, it's pretty easy to add a self-repair enchantment to things so only about 40% of crucial armor pieces don't have it."

"Ah, makes sense. So Roks repairs anything that can repair itself and you two tag-team on the stuff that can't. I assume if you don't maintain the enchantments while repairing it, the enchantments just break?"

Ileana laughed again. "If you're lucky," she said ominously before taking another massive bite.

We chatted for a while longer, just enjoying the setting sun and nice food prepared by the nearby village.

***

"Oh no, you can't say that, are you kidding me?" Tiesa asked incredulously.

I got defensive. "And why not? There's no way to misinterpret that."

She poked at the paper on the table six times. "Here, here, here, here, here, and here."

Steve chittered and pointed at the paper repeatedly too. Tiesa scooped him up to nest in her long green-blonde hair.

"You really think 'and grip it firmly as—'. Oh yeah, no, absolutely." I put a hand to my head in frustration.

On the table lay a piece of paper that Tiesa and I were bickering over. Since it would be quite a while before I was back in Velez, we decided to break the news to Gabor we'd be using the [Transform Self] wand and not his increasingly elaborate plans to get me into Zalano, the Kingdom's capital.

Tiesa was getting a bit frustrated, if still entertained, at Gabor's constant purchases to add to his increasingly elaborate plans to sneak me into the city.

I nodded. "Yeah, if I tell him his suit is excellent, he'll probably want to put it on me after I transform. Why we'd need a ghillie suit in the city, I just don't understand. What did he think the mission was?"

Tiesa chuckled. "He just likes crafting and any time I'd remind him of the actual goal, he'd forget about five minutes later."

I said, "While we're at it, can I talk through some things with you? We're trying to get in to see Dorota Prendi but…"

"You also want to try to meet Cornelius, don't you? Yeah, that makes sense. He's caused you so much grief."

I nodded. "I'm not sure what I even want from the meeting. Closure? Information on Barry?"

Despite thinking about it often, I still couldn't put my finger on what a conversation with my body double would do for me other than help in some way.

Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #73: Trust your gut when it keeps telling you the same thing repeatedly, even if it's not perfectly clear.

Tiesa nodded. "Probably not what most want when 'meeting' with him, that's for sure. But it's a good idea. Do you know how to even get in to see him? Even if it were for his typical sex-focused work, I have no idea."

We put the message to Gabor aside. I hoped Tiesa would be able to smooth anything over there with my friend but we started going through my main objectives for visiting the Kingdom's capital.

"First is to speak with Dorota Prendi. I don't get why she won't tell us who accessed her bank account to fund that assassination attempt. The second is to talk to Cornelius, see if he has more information on how our bodies were made, what Barry wanted with us, etc. We kind of know given that he tried to summon that one guy's soul from his body into this one. But beyond that? Maybe I can ask him to tone down causing me issues?"

Tiesa laughed. "Fat chance. From everything I've heard, he's only focused on himself. But, what about clearing your name?"

"Clearing my name?" I was mightily confused.

"You're barred from entering the city, right? At least from my brother-in-law Miklos' messages, it's more of a 'don't let him in, he causes trouble' type of order rather than anything worse, like arrest on sight. Could you meet with someone who could clear that up?"

I thought about it for a while. It was a great point but I wasn't sure who could actually set that up. "I guess I could ask Inga?"

"I think if you get any deeper with her, the balance will tip far enough in her favor that you'll owe too much and regret it. I know she's been good to you but I just don't trust her that much."

"Yeah, good point. The Velez Councilors? I know a few but… Katarina, we're still on the outs and she doesn't have much power. Nina Asani might have power but after what happened in Chazin Mark… Uros Barno seems like a terrible choice too."

Tiesa nodded, reaching up to stroke Steve gently in her hair. "Then I guess we come back to which is the least bad option. Or we give up on lifting the restrictions. It's a great city but—" Tiesa waved her hand as if to say 'meh'.

"It feels worth it to call in some favors to me. Getting in good with certain people there will save me the most headaches in the future, both on the political and business sides. I think it's a cascading series of asks and if the first person fails, we hit the next, then the next. Start with Katarina Illeva, then ask Nina Asani, and when those fail, we ask Inga. She's got to have some major pull so I think it's worth the cost to get a bit deeper into debt to her. Maybe I can sell her on the entertainment factor of when the shit hits the fan?"

Tiesa chuckled and nodded, our general plan set, before we went back to the message to Gabor. We ended up going with simple.

[Hey buddy, I really appreciate all the work you've been putting in about getting us into Zalano. The ideas have been awesome and I'm sure we can use them elsewhere.

I think we found a pretty simple way that will be easier: a wand of [Transform Self] that Pitola will loan us. Painful to use but does its job. I don't think they'll be scanning too hard for my specific spirit or anything. Still excited to head there together, let's talk when I'm back.]

"What? No!" Tiesa shouted a few seconds after I hit send.

"What? Something wrong?"

"Yeah, that moron just bought a program to create custom models for a wand like that. It was only a gold every other week but twenty out the window in one go…"

I put a hand on her shoulder as Gabor sent me a series of bizarre images for potential 'people' we could be when heading into Zalano. It was clear he wanted to use the wand too.

Tiesa gave me a grumpy look when I failed to contain my laugh.

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