Chương 114: Gift

Darren was outside, playing with the other kids, and Dad was busy with the harvest, which left Mum alone in the house. My perfect opportunity.

"Mum, while we were out last week, Cluma mentioned being surprised that you weren't... umm... matchmaking." Mum winced. It wasn't an expression I saw often on her.

"We assumed you wouldn't want us to, what with you... you know."

"No, I agree completely. I just wanted to know what was normal." It wasn't actually very interesting. The low population in a village, combined with the rarity of travel, meant that people ended up with small social networks. With the small headcounts, pairing up within a village was uncommon, not to mention the risk of inbreeding if everyone did.

Normally, when children hit adulthood, parents would arrange visits between different villages, and maybe have a meal at the houses of few people with offspring of a similar age. If a couple hit it off together, then maybe they'd start visiting that village a bit more often, and in a few years' time, it led to whatever it led to. It wasn't like there were arranged marriages or anything. I'd never really thought about romance. Back on Earth, I'd never quite got around to it. I was too... boring?

I rarely went out socialising and focused too heavily on work. Here was much the same. I'd spared plenty of thought for what occupation I wanted, but very little for personal matters. On top of that, my weird situation here made any thoughts of having a relationship creepy. Maybe when I was older, and didn't have such a disconnect between body and mind. With that minor mystery resolved, I spent the rest of autumn in something of a routine.

I'd take Darren to Dawnhold for one day, then they'd spend the next three days using the gathered data to refine their mana-concentration chamber. I spent the off days at the Sapphire Peaks, with Cluma or helping out around the village. I tried to get my hands on more gold, but news of orichalcum had spread too quickly, and demand had gone through the roof. What was previously nothing more than a rare decorative metal suddenly had great practical use.

Given that no-one felt the need to show off their wealth, the scarcity hadn't previously driven the price up to unreasonable levels. Now everyone wanted it. Even though conversion was so much harder than mythril, people had been buying it up in readiness. It didn't really matter. I didn't want raw orichalcum anyway; I wanted finished goods. As long as Grover had enough for my weapons and, potentially, armour, I was fine with it.

If I ever grew skilled enough to do anything useful with the new metal, I'd probably also be strong enough to retrieve gold ingots from a dungeon myself, as well as convert them. Shortly before winter closed in, making the trip to Dawnhold too difficult to bring Darren, Grover and the other institute enchanters declared their chamber to be as good as they could make it.

Far beyond the expected fifty percent boost, they'd doubled it, and they now had an area in which mana density was boosted to fortieth dungeon floor levels. It was more than enough for Darren to manufacture orichalcum on his own. It was enough for me to manufacture it on my own, bagging myself another set of mana manipulation skill gains over the season.

Skill [Expert Mana Control] advanced to level 11 Skill [Expert Mana Finesse] advanced to level 8 Skill [Expert Mana Finesse] advanced to level 9 Skill [Mana Sight] advanced to level 5 Skill [Mana Sight] advanced to level 6 It wasn't enough to saturate platinum, however hard we tried, but it was enough that the goal was in sight. It was also enough for Darren to manufacture adamantite, although it still took a team of three rank three mages to match him.

Delver parties with a pair of mages with [Expert Mana Control] had apparently managed it on floor fifty of real dungeons, which wasn't too inconvenient in places like the great dungeon, where lower floors were accessible by teleporter without having to traverse all the intervening floors on each trip, but we were still far from the mass production that Hassok desired.

Not that he'd explained the next step after producing it in sufficient quantities; if it required a rank four smith just to work the stuff, how many of them did they have? Was he going to have to turn the raw material into arms and armour himself? On asking, he pointed out there was no need to convert ingots. Any smith could fashion things from regular steel, which could be converted later, and then a smith and enchanter of a reasonable level could add the mythril based enchantments afterwards.

The downside was that the increased surface area of finished goods made conversion harder; even Darren couldn't convert a ready-fashioned set of plate armour. It was also more bulky to transport around than solid ingots. Mass production would either need a team of rank four blacksmiths, a team of mages with rank four mana control skills, or access to even denser mana. Perhaps high level teams could run lower-level mages down to deeper floors of the great dungeon? Thankfully, it wasn't my problem to solve.

"And there's another one," said Mum one day, while sewing runes into one of her own dresses.

"Congratulations," I offered, [Analysis] telling me that this one was an [Expert Tailoring] skill level. By this point, half of our clothing had comfort and durability enchantments. Not only would they probably never wear out through normal wear and tear, but they never needed washing and always fit perfectly. It was amazing, but of course, it required orichalcum thread. It took a surprisingly small amount, getting even smaller as Mum levelled and her work got finer, but there was still a limited supply.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. It was a different way to what she intended, and she still needed someone to do the actual enchantment, but Mum was finally living out her [Starlight Weaver] dreams. I was definitely going to need to find her more thread. Which just left Dad. He'd changed class to [Expert Farmer] at some point, but hadn't even felt the need to mention it, just plodding along daily in the fields.

It was a shame I could remember pretty much nothing about farming and had no useful Earth knowledge to share with him. Wracking my brains for a bit, I remembered the rubber that was now in use for bike tyres. It was a useful substance, and the elves had found some rubber trees somewhere, but no-one had previously been using it because they didn't know about it.

Unlike the animals, plant life here seemed very close to that of Earth, which was an interesting fact in itself, and not one I could come up with any explanation for. Knowing that, what other plants were there on Earth that gave useful products that weren't known about here? Drinks here tended to be water or fruit juice. Was that because our village didn't have anything else, or because they didn't exist? I suppose the tavern had a wider range, and the delvers bar had various beers, ciders and wines.

Some of them were even served hot, but I didn't remember any traditional Earth hot drinks. No, that was wrong; the slime not known as Blobby had tea. Where did she get it from? It was a shame that trolley I'd seen the maid with in Lord Reid's waiting room had been covered in a cloth.

"Dad," I asked at breakfast, when winter had settled and the only farm work left was looking after the livestock.

"Do you have drinks here like (coffee)? Umm... (Coffee) is something you make by roasting the pips of a small fruit. It's strong and bitter, and provides an energy boost to the drinker, or causes jitters if you drink too much."

"Doesn't sound like anything I've ever seen. Perhaps that stuff that Kendra swears by? Why, missing Earth?"

"Not really. In my opinion, (coffee) is disgusting, but that opinion was in the minority. I was just wondering if it existed." Kendra? Henry's wife? I was pretty sure coffee trees grow in warmer climates than here, so Henry must get it from Dawnhold on his trading trips, but it must be in too short supply to have become widespread. Our summers may be fine, but our winters would kill off any Earth variety of coffee. Oh, that was a good point. We had glass now. And fire crystals. Greenhouses should be piss easy!

"Dad, if you want to grow a plant that, say, can't survive frosts, how would you do it?"

"What, here? You'd have to grow it indoors."

"So you don't have a skill that can let plants grow in unsuitable climates or something?"

"Not long term, no. Short term, you could get a [Wood Mage] to compress a couple of years' growth into a summer or something."

"So you say indoors, but have you considered building a large structure just for plants, rather than growing potted plants in a shack?"

"Yes. It's rare, but not completely unheard of. I'm pretty sure there's one in Dawnhold, for growing some spices that are only needed in small quantities." What? Someone had invented greenhouses already?

"Since when? We only got glass recently."

"Why would they need glass?" I stopped and reworked my thought process with my this-isn't-Earth-and-they-have-magic filter switched on. On Earth, greenhouses let light in without letting heat out. Here they'd just fit a normal wood or stone building with fire and light crystals. No electricity bill or natural sunlight required. Dammit... At least that meant that if I did find tea or coffee, we could grow it here, but so could everyone else.

Not really any help to Dad, as much as I could imagine Lord Reid with a steaming cup of coffee on his desk. Or Cliff making tea. Maybe I was doing this backwards... I'd heard about Mum's old infatuation with the magical tailoring class, but Dad had never owned up to wanting anything.

"Dad, did you have any dreams for your future, like Mum's [Starlight Weaver]."

"What?" he asked in surprise.

"Where did that come from?"

"Well, my description of a zip let Mum invent them, and now she's here helping to make enchanted clothing too, so it's unfair that you're left out."

"Ha. Then you're out of luck, I'm afraid. I've been living my dream since before you were born." I peered incredulously. I didn't remember him doing anything special.

"I know exactly what you're thinking, but not everyone wants to be someone special. A hard and fulfilling day's work in the fields, a loving family to come home to in the evening, and an occasional drink with friends in the tavern. That's all I ever wanted." I was about to berate him, but that was pretty much the Earth version of me, wasn't it? In fact, the Earth version of me was worse, because I'd skipped the whole family part. In my case, it was more going home on my own and curling up with a book.

He was right, I guess; I was never unhappy. But that didn't preclude me trying to do something nice for him; it just meant that I was once again left without any clues as to what I could do.

"You're still thinking something weird, aren't you? Right, that's enough. Come on."

"Whu?" I exclaimed as Dad lifted me up and walked out of the shack.

"Hey! I can walk on my own!"

"Walk? Can you? Mostly it seems to be running or teleporting these days. I've even seen you use [Weft Walk] in the house. Ever since turning fourteen, you've been running around between Dawnhold and the Sapphire Peaks without stopping. Even when you're in the village, you're always working. For tonight, you're coming to the tavern with me."

"That's not true; I play with Darren all the time!"

"Only as a way of training your magic." Okay, that was fair... It was true I'd never been to the tavern even though I'd been allowed for a while already. And so I ended up with Dad at a table full of other adult villagers, most of whom I'd never had a long conversation with before, but who Dad was on good terms with. All other farmers, according to [Appraisal], although that wasn't a large surprise, given that this was a farming village.

"Get me two of your strongest," Dad called to the dogkin at the bar.

"Two? You trying to get me drunk?" I asked, causing the already tipsy villagers to burst out laughing.

"Get our village's wonder kid drunk? Aren't you rank three already? You'll have to drink a dozen of them to even notice the alcohol."

"More's the pity," muttered Dad as the barman brought over a couple of mugs.

"Rank three certainly has its downsides." I sniffed at my mug, which smelt like beer, and took a sip. Yup, it was beer. Strong beer, but beer nonetheless.

"The strongest drink they have is beer?" I asked, surreptitiously using [Item Box] to remove my endurance boosting ring. If my own dad was going to encourage me to get drunk, who was I to argue?

"Bah, my kid's gone all posh. Now he wants wine." I blinked and then stopped to consider how alcoholic drinks were made.

"Dad? If you have a barrel of beer, and you want to make a stronger drink from it, what would you do?"

"If you've got a barrel of beer, you've got a barrel of beer. If you mix it with anything, it's going to get weaker, not stronger. And stop it; that's your work face! I brought you here to get rid of that expression for an hour or two, not encourage it!" Oh boy...

"Dad, let me introduce you to the wonders of distillation."