Chapter 15: HomeDay 15

  Woke up early to mess up our kitchen with a little chemistry experiment. I grabbed a hand-full of soapberries, crushed and boiled them till they seemed done — never said it was going to be rigorous. OK, I’m actually trying to extract the saponins and boiling seemed the most obvious. Don’t want to destroy them so I’ll just keep them warm for a while. The guys probably heard me in here and came in to start making breakfast.

  Marcus pointed to the extra pot and asked, “What’s that, Boss?”

  Not really in a talkative mood, but I managed to reply, “I’m pretending to make soap.”

  Of course, you can’t actually make soap with baking soda, but the attempt was evidently good enough to trigger some chemistry-reted job. Besides, the actual soap I bought sort of stinks. It probably wasn’t meant for bathing. I guess it could be fixed with some actual chemistry or I could make my own. In the end, it’s more likely that I’ll just go to a fancy store in the capital and buy the good stuff — time is money, after all.

  At breakfast, nothing could be heard besides the sound of oatmeal getting plopped into the bowls. I guess my sour mood was bringing the room down. Still grumpy, I sought entertainment by skimming through my character settings.

  Despite being able to use magic and regurly fighting simuted monsters, I’ve been treating this world as real. Well, it is real, in a sense, but not like a normal reality. Maybe it’s healthier to think of this pce as really real, but the way I’ve ignored my accumuting bonus points has been inefficient. I need to pay attention to the game elements that are keeping me alive and fed.

  I had already taken the skills needed for chant omission, but have pretty much ignored the rest. Anyway, I’ll sift through the details ter and just check my list of jobs for now. Let’s see, my currently applied jobs are:

  [Explorer: 30, Hero: 27, Mage: 29, Warrior: 30]

  After getting Mage, I only use Monk when needed so it’s just level 9. Swordsman, Merchant and Herbalist are all low level and can at least be deyed for a while. The big news is that I have two new jobs: Bounty Hunter and Knight.

  These were almost certainly from my Warrior job hitting level 30 — my knowledge-cheat strikes again! Embarrassing that this little reward pretty much makes up for getting dumped st night, but the timing is welcome.

  I should be able to safely take away Warrior — could always push it to 50 ter. There may be some benefits to raising Monk or one of the others, but Knight seems useful now. Besides, I’d really like to know if Knight will lead to some higher-level jobs. I equip Knight in pce of Warrior and check its skill list. Thinking about Status Card, the skill popped into my head.

  I gotta try this — like, right now. I can’t just keep all the fun to myself and the guys look like they could use a little cheer. Just to be polite, I’ll set Mage as my first job. I stretched out my left hand and made my card pop up, right there at the table.

  “Check this out! I just figured out how to make status cards pop up. Let me try yours.”

  Marcus drops his spoon and practically shouts, “Just figured it out?!”

  Theo quickly jumps in with, “In the usual way, Marcus.” He then grabs Marcus’ left hand and shoves it near me along with his own.

  I really do ask too much of these guys sometimes. I’d expin how I can do these things, but I fear it’d just make it worse. Right now, pusible deniability seems like the best way to go.

  “Thanks. Don’t you think I could use this as a pretty effective disguise? I mean, who is going to suspect the guy who’s checking status cards?”

  “Yeah, um, it’d fool me.”

  “Sorry that I just sprung this on you. I know that some of my antics must be pretty odd, maybe even disturbing. I’m just in a weird mood since Tuuli dumped me st night.”

  Quietly, Marcus asks Theo, “Who’s that?”

  “Oh, really sorry to hear that, Boss, right Marcus?”

  “Thanks but it’s for the best anyway. I just tched onto the first woman I met in this new… area. It’s not like I’d be willing to become a farmer.” Mumbling by the end, I walked off to my room to fetch more ingredients.

  “Why’s he talking about farming?”

  “Just grab the dishes.”

  When I came back, “Oh, leave that one. It’s my chemistry experiment.”

  That statement seemed to overcome their usual behavior of avoiding details because they stood nearby and watched attentively.

  I’m not sure if the extraction is really done, but it should be good enough for my purposes. I strained the liquid through some cheese-cloth (at least that’s what I call it) and started to add a little baking soda. It fizzed — good sign. I kept stirring for a while till the reaction seemed to stop.

  Don’t really know what to do with it now. Certainly didn’t look particurly clean and it’s way too thin. I spread some cloth over a bowl and poured some in. Guess I’ll just let it sit for a while. I poured the rest onto a rge metal pte outside. A thick yer remained in the pan, which will probably be pretty hard to clean ter… might need to use some of the real soap for that.

  “Well, that should be good enough for now. By the way, I found us a new byrinth in Elven Territory. Let’s go check it out. We should bring some bread rolls since I didn’t see any food stands in the area.”

  ────────────────────────

  We warped to a spot just outside the Harba Labyrinth. A bit wasteful to start over from the first floor, but the ck of the carnival-feel of Curatar’s Labyrinth was worth it. I considered paying the attendant here to take us to a higher floor, but his gre made it feel like we shouldn’t talk to him.

  Thankfully, we didn’t see any other parties inside so I used magic freely. We jogged through most of the first floor before it felt like time for a break. I used the actual Explorer spell to move us near the entrance and we walked out normally. No need to do anything unnecessarily suspicious.

  Elves! So many elves that it looked like we just intruded on a big family reunion. Several parties of elves were preparing to enter the byrinth. Most appeared to have a mix of older and younger Knights along with support personnel like Explorers and Priests. Most seemed too busy to notice us, but the few who did didn’t exactly look friendly.

  Another, much fancier party approached the crowd. Everyone quickly made way and lowered their heads. Of course, we moved aside as well. Unsurprisingly, they held fancy jobs, st names and one was even a duchess. Well, there goes the neighborhood.

  As the only non-elves in sight, we were way too conspicuous. It’s not like we were breaking any rules, as far as I know, but it’s obviously a bad idea to hang around nobles, especially as an obvious outsider. In my reliable experience of reading a vast number of completely made-up stories, nobles can’t be trusted.

  Once we were safely out of view, I warped us to Bode’s small adventurers guild. The situation wasn’t bad enough to scare me away from Elven Territory completely, but we should at least avoid their top resorts.

  “Hello. Can you suggest an unpopur byrinth in the area?”

  “Why?”

  “The one in Harba seemed to be some sort of training ground. Don’t want to get in their way.”

  “Ah yes, Harba has been rather busy. Well, if you don’t mind roughing it, you could try Selmer’s territory. I’ve heard some nasty rumors though. Don’t know if they’re true, but at least it should be unpopur.”

  “Perfect. Know anyone who can take us?”

  “Hey Rolf, you’re from Selmer, right? Can you take these guys to that creepy byrinth you talked about?”

  “Huh? Who would want to… oh, just you humans? Sure, no problem. Three silver each, one-way only, no need to wait for anyone else to join.”

  “Sounds good, let’s go.” Of course it didn’t sound good, but I could just warp us out of there at a moment’s notice. It was worth paying for all three of us for the directions alone.

  “This is Nordselm. [1] Good luck.” With a smirk, the Adventurer departed, probably never expecting to see us again. Certainly haven’t had bad interactions with all elves, but seems like quite a few would rather not have us around.

  “Man, this pce is a dump.” The small vilge a short ways away looked run-down. Maybe not as bad as Vale’s urban slum, but definitely poor. We should bring some extra bread next time.

  “Now this is what a dungeon should look like.”

  “Huh?”

  “Labyrinth, but this pce is grungy enough to be called a dungeon.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “Yep. Wait, do you guys think that this is a bad idea?”

  “Honestly, Boss, with your power, nowhere is too dangerous.”

  “OK, but tell me if I say something weird.”

  “Um…”

  “Sorry, I meant foolish… or, whatever, you know what I mean.”

  “Sure do, Boss.”

  Of course, the inside was just as fake as usual. An actual dungeon would have an esthetic appeal, but I’ll still take this comforting predictability in practice. This is my job, not just a game, or so I need to convince myself for the sake of safety.

  Bothersome to start on a first floor yet again, but we haven’t gotten very far anywhere else anyway. The goats here were insta-killed by Durandal, but took an extra shot of magic or hits for normal swords. Maybe goats are tougher than other monsters, but I suspect that it’s reted to the byrinths unpopurity.

  Well, even if it turns out to be twice as tough, it’ll be worth having practically exclusive access. Injured goats tried to flee, but they were easily caught with warp… or simply ignored. After wasting time elsewhere, we didn’t get very far before it was time to return home.

  ────────────────────────

  When we arrived, I went outside to find that the hot-tubs had been delivered. Guess no one would effectively risk their lives to steal something so common — online shopping would do well here. No good pce for them indoors so we decided to put them under the awning on the back porch. Could use greater separation ter, but convenient for now so I could fill and heat both at the same time.

  The guys started making a simple meal while I checked on my experiment. The slurry hadn’t really dried all that well, but most of it was retained when I pulled up the cloth from the bowl. I’ll use this today and leave the poured-out portion to dry a bit longer.

  While the guys were still cooking, I tried filling the tubs with water walls. The tubs I ordered were rectangur with an outer base of about 200 x 140 cm. My water wall, and probably all wall spells, looks to be a bit over 150 cm wide. I could center the water walls over the tubs and only lose a little due to the spsh from the abrupt fall. It took about three wall spells each to leave enough space for the ter occupants.

  That much wasn’t a great drain on my mana, but I’ll heat them after dinner — obviously not before. Could try to arrange a little insution around the outside or make lids, but it’d be easier to just bst them with a little extra heat when needed.

  We were anxious to try the baths so we ate quickly. I grabbed the ‘soap’ and went out to start heating the tubs.

  “Here is the simple cleaning agent I made today. It should be pretty mild, but just try a little at first and make sure it doesn’t get in your eyes.”

  Using firewalls didn’t seem efficient and it’d certainly damage the tubs. Instead, I fired off a series of fireballs set to detonate just below the surface of the water by imagining little, invisible monsters. It’d really suck if the tubs got damaged. If necessary, I’d just heat water in a rge metal pot — like a witches cauldron.

  Starting from a little below room temperature, it took over a dozen fireballs just to heat a single tub till it felt to be hot-tub-ish. It was quite tiring to heat both, but I could manage and the rexing bath was a nice reward. Theo announced that the ‘soap’ was OK and I we got in our respective tubs.

  Marcus praises, “Boss, this is fantastic. I haven’t had a hot bath in years.”

  Theo adds, “Boss, it was really generous of you to even get a bath for us to use.”

  “To be honest, I was hoping to have a guest and didn’t want you guys waiting around, but the ‘generosity’ expnation sounds better.”

  Wish I hadn’t remembered that, but no need to bring their mood down with mine.

  “Well, enjoy the bath guys. Probably better to just leave the tubs like this tonight and we’ll dig a channel for drainage in the morning.”

  I warped to Curatar’s 2nd floor, which has become my favorite spot to take it easy. Resisting the temptation to check on Vale, I went home to sleep in my comfortable bed… well, it’s better than the inn.

  ────────────────────────

  [1] Nordselm’s Labyrinth gets mentioned much ter in the LN (day 96).