Chapter 80: Warmth by the Hearth

  Just before they reached the town, Trim approached Emilia and quietly began asking her about her enchants. He had witnessed their effectiveness firsthand, and Zevan often brought them up for one reason or another.

  "Emilia, our group often trains new hunters. Would you be able to enchant a few sets of armor for them, too? We older ones can take the blows, but they are still young."

  Emilia smiled, looked away shyly, and placed a hand over her mouth.

  "I am young too, Uncle Trim."

  Trim was momentarily flustered, then continued.

  "Of course, Emilia, but you have unlocked mana and you train quite hard. We will pay well, and besides, there will be a need for repairs. Periodically. Perhaps this could turn into good business. What do you say? Let us start with four sets of armor and see how it goes?"

  Emilia pondered for a moment—there were so many unknowns ahead of her. In the end, however, she agreed. Not only would this allow her to practice her skills, but it would also help her forge connections with the hunters and earn more silver.

  "Good, I will count on you. We will bring the armor in a day or two."

  "Uncle Trim... I will need bone marrow from at least level one monsters, though. It is relatively easy to extract, and I have instructions recorded here on how to store it. I can even offer a talisman that will further facilitate preservation... Would you be able to collect a bit for me? I will need it for the armor cores."

  Emilia then took out her journal and wrote down several instructions for storing bone marrow, some tricks for extracting it that she had learned from Zevan, and two talismans for food preservation.

  If she extracted the bone marrow herself using her mana, it would be significantly more efficient, and the quality would be better, but Emilia had so many things she wanted to test. Even if she had ten times more materials, she would still find a way to use them.

  "Of course, Emilia. When we catch suitable magical monsters, we will fill two jars of bone marrow for you."

  ***

  Emilia quickly thanked him, and after the group arrived in the city, she went home, where she recounted her adventures. After resting, she went with Kael to the river, where they hunted small animals and simply walked around. Emilia periodically made him write numbers and letters; they calculated with the help of sticks, and every time Kael could correctly answer a question from the multiplication table, Emilia would take small cookies out of her backpack.

  While walking, they met many acquaintances, and they stopped at a large meadow to play marbles. Kael was one of the older children, and because of his bow and arrows, he was something of a superstar there. Many children came to talk to him and often looked at his bow with envy.

  Some other children also had bows and even spears, but Kael's bow was one of the more expensive ones.

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  After winning a handful of marbles, Emilia secretly handed them out to the youngest children, telling them not to tell anyone so that no one would take them away. Afterward, one of the children started asking her how to gather herbs, and Emilia promised to give his parents a few clay tablets with herb descriptions.

  At one point, Kemora appeared from somewhere and started joking with Kael.

  The two of them had quite good chemistry, and Emilia watched them laugh and play different games. She thought about her past on Earth, her illness, and her new beginning here, then pulled out her stylus and began drawing simple figures on one of the nearby trees. She wanted to draw the children playing around, the smiling face of her brother, and Kemora, who was always by his side.

  Time passed quickly, and soon some parents arrived to take part of the children home. Even though the hunters actively patrolled near the town, it became dangerous to stay by the river after dark.

  Kael and Emilia also headed home, but not before stopping by the market to buy cabbage, carrots, some nuts, and a small jar of olive oil. Emilia had brought back mana-rich meat, so they decided to make a simple salad of cabbage and carrots and roast the meat directly over the hearth.

  "Emilia, how much are those new armor sets going to cost?" Mira asked as they ate pieces of the freshly roasted meat. On the table, there was a huge bowl of salad; the cabbage and carrots were those with the highest mana content, which made them the tastiest. Next to the salad were two bottles, one with young wine, the other with fruit juice for the children.

  Emilia had purchased two small barrels of wine and ordered more juice, which was stored in specially sealed bottles.

  "I need to make some kind of cooling formation," Emilia said. "That way, we can drink the wine cold, and it will be even tastier."

  Ronan immediately approved of the idea and asked what was needed for the formation.

  "Well, I have two bottles of blood left and quite a bit of bone marrow. I will need to select a suitable material that can store mana without too much loss. Besides that, I will be able to place two dozen mana-rich pebbles inside, which I will charge with mana periodically. But they release their mana quickly, so they will need to be recharged every day."

  "How do restaurants cool their wine? Do they use pebbles in that way too?" Kael asked.

  "No, restaurants use ready-made formations that are often powered directly by precious stones," Emilia answered. "They contain an immense amount of mana and can last for a very long time. When the mana in them starts to decrease, special techniques can be used to recharge them again. Usually, such a precious stone can be used several times before its structure begins to suffer damage. There are also truly expensive stones—called mana crystals—which are used in special formations and can last much longer. Sometimes even for centuries. Furthermore, there are also power formations that collect mana from the environment and directly activate a glyph. For instance, a glyph for chilling. However, a tax is paid to the mayor's office for this, because if there were thousands of such glyphs, the mana in the vicinity would decrease."

  "And what do they do in the big cities then? There must be a terrible number of formations there."

  "Then formations are built to charge the city with mana. Or the city is built next to a natural mana source. Our town draws mana from the forest, and the mayor periodically activates twenty-four formations to collect mana and channel it towards the town and the nearby fields."

  "That many formations? That must be terribly expensive," Kael wondered aloud.

  "Yes, it is expensive, but that is what the fees are for. Besides, most of the mana goes directly to specific businesses and families. They pay separately from their taxes for this service. Some businesses, like the sawmills near the forest, have their own formations to extract mana from the forest and power their machinery."

  "How interesting," Kael said and secretly stole a sip of young wine from his mother's cup.

  Emilia saw him and choked, and he immediately started making signs for her to be quiet and not give him away.

  The conversation then shifted to various topics. Ronan took out a game that was played on a large piece of cloth they spread on the table, using dice and simple figures that each of them had carved themselves from dry twigs.

  Emilia enjoyed the slow passage of time and the tranquility that emanated from the family hearth. How much simpler everything would be if the gods had chosen to reconcile with each other, and the Great System rewarded peace and calm among people.