Creating just these bricks was boring so I set a limit of fifteen a day and used the rest of the days time for other pursuits. For example I was currently creating the first ever battle exoskeleton. A frame work creation that would in theory allow the one wearing it to exert force at a much higher level then they are. Additionally the materials it was made of also served as a poor form of armor which was a nice bonus. -
"Mark one combat exoskeleton test begin." I said with a grin as I held a clipboard and pencil to note down the performance.
"Are you sure this thing is safe?" Ophelia asked concerned as she looked warily at the strange metallic structure covering her limbs and torso.
"It's only got a thirty two percent chance of catastrophic failure no worries." I said brushing aside her concern.
"Catastrophic failure meaning what exactly?" she asked definitely not reassured.
"Nothing major, just your limbs being bent in the wrong direction as the frame breaks you like a pretzel." I said casually.
"Nope! Get it off!" she yelled in horror but I ignored that to activate the exoskeleton.
The whole thing lit up brightly for a moment as the energy flowed from the stone at the base of the spine area to the entire thing. Ophelia stiffened as the exoskeleton locked up from activation before creaking ominously as the whole thing failed to work. I frowned at this and used my technique to see what the problem was before sighing.
"Mark one model is a failure due to joint structural breakdown under the synth muscles force." I noted before removing the exoskeleton from Ophelia.
"I thought I was going to fucking die you ass!" she yelled angrily.
"You are being dramatic. Even in the case of catastrophic failure you wouldn't die since I'd just fix you good as new." I said rolling my eyes at her.
"that's not the fucking point! Just because I won't die doesn't mean I want to experience what having my body rearranged feels like!" she said not backing down.
"It's only a slight inconvenience, I know since I've done it a few times now." I said dismissively.
"You're insane!" she said horrified.
"Yep, any other keen observations or can we move on to mark two?" I asked holding up the exoskeleton.
"You didn't even change anything!" she said backing away.
"On the contrary. I reinforced the joints while we were talking and decreased the synth muscles density. Took me only a split second really. Even the chance of catastrophic failure has decreased to twenty five percent." I said proudly.
"That's still a one in four chance!" she said backing away even more.
"No a one in four chance is that there is only four possibilities, there are many possibilities here but a quarter of those lead to catastrophic failure, big difference." I said stepping towards her.
"It's still too high!" she said rejecting the idea of putting the thing on again.
"That's what this testing is for. In order to find all the flaws I need to test it on the target demographic it's designed for, which is weak adventurers. Once I get enough data I can refine the model to get rid of the chance of catastrophic failure almost entirely. Not that complicated to understand right?" I explained and she looked conflicted.
"And you are SURE you can fix anything that goes wrong?" she asked cautiously.
"Yep, not a problem at all. Hell you could literally be rendered into a fine paste and I could still save you so long as you had even a spark of life left." I said with a nod.
"That's .... unpleasant to imagine." she said looking a little sick.
In the end she agreed reluctantly to help me with my tests and only suffered a tiny bit of bodily destruction and repair for it. Still I had to go all the way up to mark seven before the exoskeleton was as close to perfect as I could get it. I created exactly a dozen more of these exoskeletons before giving Hestia the go ahead to recruit as many new members to the familia. -
Naturally I screened the MANY applicants for too many sins, decent talent and even personality. The last one was actually Hestia's doing as she had an innate sense about people that let her know if she can accept their personalities or not. A fun fact was that I myself just barely was acceptable to her since I wasn't, strictly speaking, evil natured when she first met me. I kinda lean more heavily that way now but not to a totally unacceptable degree. Anyone at my current alignment without having been part of a familia before though was outright rejected as my leaning was from my growth path and not truly innate, these other people didn't have that excuse.-
Still we did end up getting five more new members for the familia. Evrain, Jin, Alucard, Sasha and Gion. Evrain and Gion were both Amazons who were born in the boundary between Telskyura and Orario closer to the dungeon city and both had loving families and thus didn't see men as living dildos only. Jin was a werewolf like Bete and Rose with Black hair and golden eyes. He was also only ten and thus an adorable fuzzy little sucker with big dreams.-
Alucard was a human from a merchant family that chose to become an adventurer. He had short neatly combed brown hair lightly oiled back and pale aristocratic features. He was also kinda blunt and straight forward. Sasha was a surprise though as she was an elf of all things. She had the usual long smooth blonde hair and light skin tone with smooth features. Thankfully she was born to an elven couple in the city and as a result didn't have the racism that elves native to the forest had.