Chương 36: [1.36] Stuffed (Part 2)

Obviously, selling the Quilllaced Tiara was Angelica's scheme to get rich quick. Assuming it didn't just make her stupidly wealthy outright, as long as it was a good chunk of seed money, she was convinced she could use her actuarial skills to spread it smartly into low-risk investments and then live off the accrued dividends. That would be an easy life, indeed. Regrettably, that could still be a ways off, so she really shouldn't count on the dumptruck of money burying her alive anytime soon.

However, the investment plan was still a sound one if she could get a decent enough cache to play around with. Say, about six figures; with that, she could essentially do day-trading and make enough to get by while saving any more. That was a lot riskier, and would be far more involved, but the increased effort came with higher return as long as she wasn't shockingly stupid or the market randomly collapsed in a way that couldn't be predicted.

Of course, for the poverty-stricken unemployed louse that she was, six figures sounded absurdly unattainable. She could probably start planting some saplings at five, but likely wouldn't make enough from that to live off of, even with her minimized expenses. It would be more worth her time to focus on getting money directly. And her plan to do so was the stupidly obvious one: squeeze cash straight from fat-cat Summoners. Like with Garvin, she'd trade favors for money—wait, that sounded wrong.

She would offer her services for appropriate compensation—better. Yet it would also be stupid of her to only get cash out of the deal. So she wrote down her plan, "Do Demon work to earn both money and Essence. When negotiating Contracts, attempt to get roughly an even split, adjusting as needed." Obviously, if she was Bound, she'd lose a lot of her negotiating power, but hopefully, those instances would be minimized with Divining Ear. Once she knew how best to utilize it, at least.

She also hoped that Summoners would jump at the opportunity to spend money instead of Essence, letting them save it for more summonings. Of course, there was the matter of actually taking money from them. Likely, as with her first service call, they might not have cash on-hand or be willing to pay upfront. For that, she'd need a place they could send it, since Angelica didn't want to keep stalking mailboxes or other dead-drops.

So it was time for a new bank account, one that looked the other way in regards to legality. Angelica pulled out the flier that Fioso had given her. It conveniently had the website right on it, though she grimaced when she got to the page. The aesthetics were off by at least a decade. Maybe that was the point, though. Maybe they didn't want many regular people to sign up. When she got to the application, at least, it was a lot more modernized and user-friendly.

She grimaced at the form, however, full of a lot of personal questions and requesting details she'd have to dig up, just like any other bank. Since she was dreading the process, Angelica went ahead and gave herself an Order to trudge through it, a power she wished she had when filling out college and employment applications. The form was slightly different than most others. Rather than asking for referrals near the end, this time it was the very first question.

As soon as she entered Fioso's name, the page automatically refreshed.

"Welcome, one who knows," was sprawled at the top. The application persisted, but a vastly reduced one. Presently, it only had two fields.

"Are you part of a Sect?" was the first. Likely, if she clicked yes, she'd be prompted to enter it. When she clicked no, nothing happened. Then all that was left was to enter her alias.

"Merlina." And that was it. After she submitted just those two tidbits of information, she was prompted to create a password. With that done, bam, her account was open. She was immediately taken to a screen with the account numbers, which she jotted down and pulled out her phone to take a picture of. It prompted her to deposit money if she desired, but it was not required. The screen also mentioned that cash could be withdrawn at any bank in the world for no fees.

While Angelica still had Garvin's payment in cash, her commission fees were at her old bank, so she went ahead and transferred all of it over, just leaving behind a few dollars. On the Coterie Trust page, there were a bunch of other useful features, too. She was able to request a debit card, and it didn't even ask for an address, just any post office where she could pick it up at her convenience. Or… there was also an "Express Delivery" option that promised a drop off within the hour to anywhere in the world.

She had to assume it was a Demon that did the delivery, so she'd rather avoid that. The bank also offered a credit card service through them, but she didn't want that, either. Since money was so presently unreliable, she knew better than to spend someone else's with no real means to repay it back. While Coterie Trust catered to Rogue Summoners, they, too, probably didn't take kindly to someone racking up a lot of debt on their dime. Loan sharks were scary.

Magical loan sharks that could sic Demons on her were horrifying. So, she just went with the regular debit card. And also, they had an app! Yes, that's what she really needed, an app to be able to take payment directly from Summoners using her phone so that they had no excuses. Perfect… except, her phone was still offline. Alright, guess it's time to fix that. Gotta spend money to make money. Very begrudgingly, Angelica opened up her service-provider's website.

After signing in, there was an aggressive angry notice about it being shut off and her needing to pay her bill. They didn't have to be so rude, but at least she didn't have to deal with a pissed person directly. Apparently… she was six months behind on payment before they cut her off, when Angelica's mother had apparently dissolved the family plan without telling her daughter, likely as an attempt to force Angelica to come visit her.

Honestly, she was surprised they gave her that much grace, and she should honestly be grateful. But she still had to pay off the full amount owed before they'd turn the service back on. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. It wasn't a completely ridiculous amount, a few hundred, but it still cut deep to spend that money from her brand new bank account. She was still above her needed threshold for rent, but with not as big of a comfortable cushion.

If she was frugal, she could stretch the remainder for the roughly remaining two weeks, so she'd still survive, regardless. However, that would not work for "Get Stupid Rich." She needed to keep actively making money. So it was time to get started; well, almost. From her little bit of time being a Demon, Angelica had definitely noticed that the calls of Summoners were more commonplace in the later evening and well into the early morning.

Calling upon the forces of Hell was generally night-time activity, it would seem, at least in her part of the world. For that reason, it was probably better that she stick to those hours to try to limit the chance she'd be called to the other side of the globe, at least until Tongues was maxed. She'd have to go back to being a night owl again, instead of waking up early like she had been. Oh, noooooooooooooo.

It probably wasn't quite late enough yet for her to get a good Summons, so she'd spend the remaining time prepping. First, she installed the Coterie Trust app in her phone and fiddled with it a bit, to make sure it fit her needs. And it worked perfectly. She could present a payment screen that would take cards directly, or they could scan a code to get her account information if they wanted to pay later. Angelica meant to move onto something else after that, but her eye was caught by the notifications on her phone.

She'd missed quite a few texts. As promised, there were some from Ms. Gate, who had actually sent several warning texts before ambushing Angelica on that fateful morning. She had sent one more since that simply read 『Please message me when your phone is working again. 』 Of course, Angelica wanted there to be no reason for additional contact with her landlord, but understood that it was a reasonable request. So she replied with a curt 『It's working. 』 and left it there.

Other than that, there were quite a few spam texts about the upcoming political season. She wished there was a way to block them all. And they were out in earnest especially early this time, since the election was still most of a year away. There seemed to be a lot more buzz about this one.

She paid no attention whatsoever to politics—her only concern being not starving to death—so she didn't know why this vote mattered more, but boy, did they want hers, and also generous donations to the campaigns from all the money she didn't have. She was hit with a bit of anxiety when there were a couple messages from an old friend from college. She had apparently been in town a few weeks ago and wanted to get dinner and catch up. Angelica absolutely wouldn't have gone then, but maybe she would now.

It was a friend she was quite close to in the past, one that she didn't want to fade into obscurity completely. Well, no, she still wouldn't accept that invite, not yet, at least, not until she was well off enough that her existence wouldn't invoke extreme pity. But she also elected not to reply and keep that spark alive, deciding it was better to say her phone number had changed the next time they met up when fate allowed than to make her friend think she'd been rudely ignored.

There were also other ways either party could contact each other if they really wanted to. What filled her with the most hollow feeling was the fact that there were no messages from her mother. Well… that wasn't quite the truth. There had been several messages from her, so many to the point that Angelica feared looking at her phone for months, but one day, they'd just stopped. She'd been left with a final text and then nothing since. 『When you're ready to talk, I'll be here to listen.

』 It was honestly the most understanding, loving thing she'd heard from the woman in a long time, which made it that much harder to respond. She still didn't deem herself strong enough to do so. But… soon, she hoped. I'll reach out, mom, when I think you can be proud of me. It won't be the daughter you wanted, but it also won't be one that will embarrass you. Angelica shook off her sappy, sentimental feelings. She still had prep to do, most notably, practicing with Second Stomach.

Whether it worked like she expected could drastically affect how she approached the jobs she took. First, she wanted to clarify a potential misgiving. Poison Eater only healed her from ingested poison. While in her mind, sending items to Second Stomach was still technically eating them, since they entered through her mouth, but it could negate that qualifier when the transfer to her main stomach happened.

So to test this, Angelica took a single spoonful of stir fry and stuck it in her mouth while activating the skill. The food never actually hit her tongue before it vanished, as if a wormhole opened in the middle of her mouth and vacuumed up the food. It tried to take the spoon, too, but she held on tight and deactivated it once she knew the nourishment had departed. That gave her a strange feeling. It hadn't felt like her stomach had doubled in size, or anything, but in a way, she knew she had another one.

And she could also tell that there was a single bite of food in there. Not in the way of just having knowledge of what she'd eaten, but rather, as if it was producing an unwritten list and feeding the information to her. Very helpful. Hopefully, she wouldn't forget what was stored. Additionally, she now had a rough idea of how big the stomach was, since she could gauge its fullness. It was definitely a decent size, possibly even more than her actual stomach, but certainly not unlimited.

Gelic winced and prepared for the transfer process, dumping the new bite onto her previously eaten dinner. She felt the weight of it in her belly immediately. Fortunately, it wasn't too bad, since some of what she'd already eaten had already been digested, but it made her feel borderline full again. She kept a keen eye on her DGS screen. Notably, or rather unnotably, that one bite hadn't cost her a single point of MP because it cleared the "fits in the mouth" condition.

Though currently, nothing that wouldn't fit in her Imp mouth would also fit in the small space. Maybe in the future, she could store a whole-ass cooked bird, or something. But what she was really concerned about was her Health, whether the stomach transfer would make it go up or down. Angelica gave a bit of a self-cheer when she watched it tick up a percentage. Alright, more tests!