Chương 107: Preparations

Lord Reid drummed his fingers on his desk, obviously deep in thought.

"The knowledge you possess and shared with us. Would you say it was above or below average for individuals from your world?" he asked, eventually.

"Uh... Probably about average? Depending on time of death, job and hobbies, someone else could have vastly more than me, at least in specific areas. I had a good education, but that was quite a while before my death, and I had plenty of time to forget things I wasn't using in my day-to-day life."

"And then more time here," Lord Reid added, apparently to himself, before going silent again for a time.

"The Sapphire Peaks are the home of harpies and fairies, but if these individuals were former humans, they may prefer to emigrate to human territories." Particularly since Erryn was no longer around to pull her family translation stunt. It was possible these new individuals wouldn't see their parents as parents. Nevertheless, I really wouldn't be comfortable separating them...

But Lord Reid still seemed to be talking to himself, and hadn't actually asked me to try to convince them to come here, so I let him continue to think.

"Ensuring their welfare must be our primary concern. I don't want them to have to go through what you did," he said finally.

"I ask that you find them and tell them what they need to know about this world." Lord Reid hastily wrote something onto paper before stamping it and handing it to me. I glanced over it, and read that it was a letter of passage to the Sapphire Peaks via the portal network, for me and... one companion? Shifting my gaze upward to Lord Reid, he raised a quizzical eyebrow at me.

"I could hardly separate you from your catkin friend," he clarified.

"The two of you have been dying to start adventuring together. You're an adult now, so you can act as her guardian for travel purposes."

"Thank you," I replied. I was surprised how happy that made me... Maybe I'd been deluding myself about how I was willing to be patient and wait for Cluma to reach adulthood before dungeon delving again.

"You'll need to prepare some equipment. The Sapphire Peaks are, as their name suggests, somewhat vertical. You'll want climbing gear and something to protect yourself from falls." Even putting aside any specialist equipment I needed, I hadn't come equipped for any sort of long journey. I'd need more food and changes of clothes, for a start. Cluma would need to prepare too, if she wanted to come.

And arrange the time off from work; she was still serving part-time at the delvers' guild's bar, where she was quite blatantly the mascot of the entire place, as well as the means of hazing all the newbies. Each guild outpost had needed to develop their own solutions to the influx of unsuited delver wannabes that had started turning up once the profession became safe, and our branch's solution was Cluma.

Anyone wanting to join the guild needed to fight an underage, cute looking cat-girl, dressed as a barmaid instead of using any delver gear. After she soundly thrashed them, a surprising number decided that the profession wasn't for them after all. Now that she'd grown up and looked less obviously underage, it was starting to lose its effect, but the couple of times I'd watched her in action, it had been hilarious. Would I need weapons and armour? Probably not... I wasn't about to jump into any dungeons over there.

Even if I happened to run into a mana field, there wouldn't be anything I couldn't kill with a punch. It would be worth stocking up on other consumables, though. There was also the problem that I knew Erryn had found out about me prior to my birth. If the same thing applied here, it was very possible that the reincarnates I was looking for hadn't actually been born yet. I didn't want to hang around waiting for a season or two. Thus, I made my plans.

I'd pop over to the guild again to ask Cluma if she wanted to come, then take Darren back home. I wouldn't leave for a week, to give me a chance to find any equipment I needed and to give Cluma a chance to make arrangements. If we couldn't find the twins, I'd use [Detach] and [Shelter] to leave myself a teleport beacon behind, and make periodic visits on my own. We would have at least left the knowledge around for the people there to keep an eye out. Speaking of Darren, he was being awfully quiet.

I'd have thought this bit of waiting around would have been boring for him. What was he up to? I turned around, only to find he wasn't there. Spinning around in a bit of a panic, he didn't appear to be anywhere in the room. He'd snuck out of Lord Reid's office?! When? Drat, I'd been so focused on the map that I'd misplaced my brother! I noticed Lord Reid give one of his strange little smirks.

That guy had a weird sense of humour, but at least that meant he probably saw where he went, and didn't feel the need to stop it. I looked out through my new [Mana Sight] and soon found him a couple of corridors away, standing next to an adult.

"I should go and find my brother before he sets anything important on fire," I said.

"Thanks for your time." Lord Reid gave me a nod as I left the study, only to find Darren together with Cliff, on a tour of the mansion's artworks. I... had no idea how I was supposed to react to that, so I didn't.

"Are you done?" I asked my art-loving brother.

"Yup. I had fun!"

"Thanks," I said to Cliff. I was normally a good childminder, honest. Apart from the bits where I used him as research material, or got too engrossed in my own stuff and forget he exists. Or the time when I accidentally overdosed him on mana and gave him a rank five trait, leading to our shack almost getting burnt down... The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Okay, maybe it was time I got him back home and into the care of more responsible adults.

After a quick visit back to the delvers' guild, where [Mana Sight] was more than enough to avoid the flying tackle from an invisible Cluma, she informed me that she would love to come. So, in a week's time, I'd be leaving Dawnhold for the fourth time in my life, and this time I'd be the guardian. I only hoped it would go slightly better than the first time. Over the next couple of days, I packed my [Item Box] with silly amounts of food and clothing.

It was overkill for sure, but better to have too much than too little. I wasn't certain how long we'd be, after all, and from what I'd heard, the Sapphire Peaks wasn't exactly friendly landscape to those without wings. Or insulation, in the case of the peaks themselves, which were supposedly freezing cold, leaving me needing lots of warm clothing too. I checked the delvers' guild store in case they had any enchanted items that would let me fly, but alas not. I did at least stock up on rations and potions.

Climbing gear wasn't something they had in stock, but I would be able to pick up some stuff from the Emerald Nest on the way. With everything prepared and my departure date due, I returned to the institute to see what they'd made of my shiny new materials. I had tried to play with a bit of adamantite myself back in the village, but all I'd succeeded in doing was destroying Remous' tools. The stuff was tough, and a few minutes was enough for me to decide it was best left in the hands of the experts.

Once I found Grover in one of the fenced off fields outside the institute, surrounded by what I could only describe as debris, I decided I might need to reconsider my classification of him as an 'expert'. I fired off an [Analysis] as I walked past an anvil that had been sliced cleanly in two. Mana Reinforced Steel Anvil (Quality: 50) - Enchantment: Durability (Rank 2) - Enchantment: Sharpness (Rank 2) That made me pause...

With the material's enchanting penalty, the anvil must have been made by a rank four enchanter. Probably Grover himself. It was the world's hardest known material, with durability and sharpness enchantments on top, and yet it had been sliced cleanly in half.

"Peter! At last," exclaimed Grover the moment he saw me.

"Where's Darren? We need more of this stuff!"

"He's back in the village, and, dare I ask, what happened here?"

"Adamantite. Utterly unenchantable. Can't even get a rank one durability on it. Upside; it doesn't need it. The stuff is practically indestructible. Makes it very hard to work with. Which brings me on to orichalcum. A little harder than mythril, and shares its property to hold an enchantment without decay, but in this case it strengthens any enchantment I put on it. I made a knife out of that ingot, slapped sharpness on it, and, well." He gestured around himself at the significant amount of surgical destruction.

Point taken.

"It could even cut the adamantite. Actually working the adamantite properly will take some time, but both materials are incredible. But we need more orichalcum! How soon can you get Darren here?"

"Actually, I'm headed to the Sapphire Peaks tomorrow, so not until I get back." Grover stared at me as if I'd just told him the world was ending, before suddenly perking back up.

"Wait, just you? Of course, you wouldn't take Darren somewhere like that. I'll just send someone else to pick him up then. We have Kari to help out too... Yes, that's fine." Grover nodded to himself, as if it was already decided. I wasn't convinced Mum would let Darren out just because someone turned up and asked for him, but I wasn't going to spoil his delusions.

"But that'll still take a couple of days to arrange. I don't want to wait that long," he muttered, leading me to take some amount of pity on him. I didn't think I'd ever seen him this excited, and I still needed climbing equipment. He probably had some useful enchantments to offer.

"I've still got the other four ingots, and it's not like I'm going to have a chance to use them myself while I'm away," I said, causing him to instantly bestow upon me his full attention.

"I'll lend you the rest if you can make us something that will help with the Sapphire Peaks terrain. There's two of us going."

"Hah, piece of cake. Feather fall and high jump. I'd go for mass reduction too, but that could lead to you being blown away, given the winds up there. Better off with a strength boost to help you do more with your normal mass."

"I'm only rank three though, and Cluma is two. We wouldn't be able to use your stat enchantments."

"Pah, that's what [Quality Control] is for. Anyway, are you visiting the harpies or the fairies?" Really? I'd never heard of that skill, and I'd looked through all the rank two crafting classes and a good chunk of the rank threes. Had I never checked [Expert Enchanter], or was it a rank four skill?

"I don't know yet. I have a set of coordinates, and know they're somewhere around there, but don't know exactly where."

"Ice resistance for the last slot, then. The peaks get cold, even in the summer. This time of year, they'll already be icy, and will only get worse. Not really the best time for you to be visiting, to be honest."

"Possibly not, but something came up, and I don't have a lot of choice." I handed over the rest of my orichalcum ingots, having some doubt whether I'd ever see them again despite his promise. It took him less than ten minutes to knock out six rings from one of them.

Orichalcum Ring (Quality: 50) - Enchantment: Comfort (Rank 4) - Enchantment: Strength (Rank 3) - Enchantment: Dexterity (Rank 3) - Enchantment: Endurance (Rank 3) Orichalcum Ring (Quality: 50) - Enchantment: Comfort (Rank 4) - Enchantment: Intelligence (Rank 3) - Enchantment: Wisdom (Rank 3) - Enchantment: Charisma (Rank 3) Orichalcum Ring (Quality: 50) - Enchantment: Comfort (Rank 4) - Enchantment: Feather fall (Rank 4) - Enchantment: High jump (Rank 4) - Enchantment: Ice resistance (Rank 4) Despite being the same rank as my current rings, these gave me plus seventeen to each stat.

Cluma's versions gave the same twelve as my old rings, despite being only rank two. How much of that was the orichalcum, and how much was because it was Grover making them? Either way, they were impressive. On my way back to the town, I crouched, then leapt what must have been over ten metres into the air.

I could already beat any Olympic athlete at a high jump purely on weight of stats, but the high jump enchantment had more than doubled it again, enough that without feather fall, I would have undoubtedly broken a leg on landing. Without the endurance stat, I'd likely have outright killed myself. I shuddered at the thought of what this was going to do to Cluma's flying tackle-hugs...