Chapter 69: A Nice Way to End the Day

  Clothes drenched in purple splatter from mashing and boiling, Wen wiped the hard-earned sweat from her brow. She’d have a nice batch of both wine and cider ready in a week, if not for Penny’s plan to bleed the wandering soldiers coming for Sigil Lake dry. To be fair, the plan was ingenious and would earn them more coin than the entire finished batches traded by Penny and Alvin to a neighbouring village would. Having practiced brewing most of her life and running an inn to boot, she knew that without demand, there’d be no coin to gain.

  Mayor Whittlebut knew just what he was doing in Brook Town when stopping Wen from brewing her own drink to sell in the old Barge. If she’d made proper beverages, there just might have been word spread to another town about it, which would bring visitors—coin—to the doomed town. He would stand to gain from it in the short term, as would the town, but surviving the first ranking wasn’t part of his plan. Two years must’ve been as long as he managed without his creature comforts back home.

  Wen headed to the door, only turning around to see her filled vats in action. In a rather devious move, Wen had snuck some water from Theo and Willam’s water storage, the one Willam used to water his crops. Water made from Theo’s odd magic. Magic that had a way of improving whatever it touched, it seemed like. So why not boil the fruit and berries with it? Worst case, it’d do nothing at all, in which case it wouldn’t matter. But Wen had seen this water increase the rate at which both Theo and Willam’s plants grew, admittedly with the help of Theo’s signature dirt. Making wine with just the top-notch berries alone would be worth a small fortune, and while she risked some fruitiness by adding more water to the mix, she’d increase the yield three-fold. Well worth the gamble.

  She turned back and headed out of her brewery. The crafter’s hall outside was filled with sawdust and the earthy aroma that followed. The new crafter was in the middle of putting a variety of smooth, shaped wood pieces together. She waved in greeting, and he waved back. Then she walked through the tavern, peeking inside the kitchen to greet the cook. She headed to the lobby, excited to be done for the day and meet everyone back at the campfire. She hoped the tradition would continue, even if Chef would serve food in the tavern rather than half a town away.

  Passing by the reception counter, Lady was nowhere to be seen, but the Town Book was free, and it had been a while since Wen had used it. In fact, she hadn’t used it at all since Brook Town. There might be some skills she’s missed getting—not that there would be anything but minor stat gains from them. She’d sense something major like an effect taking root, after all.

  She laid her hands on the book, careful to wipe them first so as not to tarnish it, then closed her eyes.

  Behind her, the door opened, not uncommon at the Barge where everyone but three new homeowners would sleep that night. She didn’t turn, focusing on the book digging inside her mind and body, finding whatever it was that ingrained more stats and power into her very being. It turned every nook and cranny, scouring her very essence. Despite the book searching her entire being, it was unequivocally non-invasive.

  But nothing. What had it been, a month since last time? What did she expect? She wasn’t Theo, after all. Smiling at the thought, she retracted her hands and turned, walking straight into a man. He wore fine silks, a shiny leather belt, and underneath it all, his body was rock hard with lean muscle. Both she and the unfamiliar man stepped away from each other, and both apologised in a choir of pathetic tones. She then raised her head over his chiselled chest.

  “Wow.”

  Did she say that?

  “I-I mean, how—no, hi!”

  The man laughed. “Hi there. I was wondering if you might help me with something.”

  Wen gazed at his blonde mane, more golden than her own, and better taken care of as well.

  “Help?” she asked, face red from her previous word-castrophe.

  “I might be entirely wrong expecting him to be here, but…you don’t happen to know a man named Theo, do you?”

  It was hours since his first ‘Search’-attempt where he proved he could search for similar materials to ones he had a sample of. While it might not always be the case, for instance, if the purity of iron diverged too much, at least if he stumbled onto a deposit, it would be a good one.

  Searching for something a touch rarer than blades of grass made the mana cost of weaving the sigils more manageable, as Theo figured its initial range was fifty metres, give or take, if he had the mana to spare for it. Without a single hit, the mana cost was only two sigils, a comfortable ten. As he trod through the town in lines, stopping about a hundred metres away from his previous ‘Search’, nearby villagers sometimes approached to both ask what he was doing and how they could help.

  To mark the locations where Theo had cast the spell, he got an armful of sticks, and he stabbed one into the ground so it stood tall. The start of his surveying wasn’t as controlled, but excluding the haphazard starting locations, he’d soon settled into a grid-based search, despite his searches being circles rather than squares. He compensated by reducing the width he moved when starting a new line, causing some overlap with his previous line, but also leaving some holes in the middle between four points. If there was a deposit within those holes, they would be too small to matter much anyway.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Crossing the distance at a slow pace allowed most of his spent mana to replenish between each casting, but not quite, forcing him to take brief breaks every once in a while. That he had found no iron yet annoyed him to no end, but he limited himself to within the town borders for now, so he wasn’t too surprised. Having already finished with iron, Theo was now on his second round, his mana thread attaching to a smooth slab of pale stone—not quite marble, not quite sandstone.

  He’d rather find useful stone near the town rather than any precious metal, at least right now. Jemma and Tinkerbold might use some of it to make fancy jewellery to sell, but importing stone and basic metal by the ton would add so much hassle to their everyday lives. When the town could stand on its own two feet, he wouldn’t mind earning some coin on fine crafts, though.

  “What are you doing?”

  Grace approached him from somewhere, and he turned to see her polite smile. He couldn’t penetrate her defences enough to see whether she was withholding her anger at him, or if it had gone, but Theo would rather guard himself against the former while hoping for the latter.

  “Hey. I’m hoping to find a stone deposit somewhere around here.”

  “Why? We don’t want a quarry in the middle of town.”

  That…sounded both noisy and disturbing, now that she mentioned it. Why hadn’t anyone else said anything?

  “Right…just checking along the border,” he lied, happy this was where she found him.

  He’d ended his search for iron in the far southeast of the town, a location devoid of anything important but flat grassland. The forest lay directly across from there, and the farm lay to the north. It was prime land for either industry or housing, though the houses on the hill to the west had plenty of space and might get more in an expansion towards the dungeon in the forest, depending on how the expansion worked.

  “Smart.”

  Smart? He didn’t expect that.

  “I’m confused.”

  “It’s smart. Might be affected by town bonuses if parts of it are inside the range of the town, and if it’s on the edge, it won’t cause as much disturbance.

  “Right. Exactly my thoughts.”

  “You know I see all the sticks, right?”

  “What sticks?”

  She exhaled, still with a slight smile on her face. “Doofus.”

  Theo laughed, then weaved another set of sigils before attaching a mana thread to his slab. The magical symbols chimed in harmony with each other and sent a wave of translucent light out all around them. The light darted across the ground as Theo and Grace looked around.

  “This is what you’ve been doing?”

  A pillar of light blasted into the air, then another, and another, all clustered together in tight formation further east. As more towers popped up, Theo’s mana took a nosedive, reaching two points. It seemed that wasn’t quite enough to search any further or at least mark another slab.

  “Well, I recognise that from earlier, at least. What does it mean?”

  With a prideful smile and his hands firm on his hips as if to say he’d done a good job, Theo answered, “That, Grace, means we’ve found stone! Or whatever this thing is.” He tossed the stone sample towards her, sure she’d catch it without warning. She did.

  “Marble? No, not quite. Looks familiar, though. I think churches use this a lot.”

  “All I can say is it’s not the same as Arcana’s effigy over there. And that we seem to have at least a small deposit right at our border.”

  “Those shafts of light show that?”

  “Yeah!” Theo pierced a stick into the ground where he stood and dragged Grace over to the still-standing pillars of light by her hand. He then continued past them as the light dissipated, shedding glitter above them.

  “I thought it was over there?”

  “I already know there are stones there, now I want to see how far it goes! Just give me ten minutes.”

  An hour went by where Grace followed Theo in a random pattern, and he weaved the pillar-making symbols in the air every few minutes. No matter where he went, more pillars rose from where he cast the spell. Having marked a rather extensive area already, some parts of the deposit inside the town border as well, Theo called it a day, sick of feeling cold and drained from having his mana at a constant state of empty.

  Standing under the last pillars of light for the day, bathed in glittering sparkles from above, Theo said the words Grace must’ve come to him to hear after their moment—and Theo’s subsequent total annihilation of said moment—earlier that day.

  “I’m sorry for earlier. I didn’t mean to accuse you of lying or pretending. The moment I said the words, I regretted them.”

  She looked at him. “You regretted them…but you still worry it’s true?”

  “Of course I do.”

  She frowned.

  “But me worrying is only because I don’t want it to be true. I want you to look at me the way you look at me because I’m me—just Theo. Worrying isn’t the same as not believing.”

  “It still hurt, you know. I know I’m not the easiest person to get along with, but I didn’t think you’d expect me to get close to you for Arcana’s sake. I’m a priestess, Theo, not a fanatic.”

  “I know. Please forgive me?”

  “Sunup tomorrow. You and I are going to the dungeon. Wen needs abbles, she’ll get them. Also, I owe you some answers from our bet.”

  “Does that mean…you forgive me?”

  “That would’ve been a nice way to end the day, wouldn’t it? I’ll consider it.”

  “I couldn’t ask for more,” Theo smiled as Grace’s face shifted a tiny amount, the teeniest flush ever seen revealing itself.

  “Unrelated to the highest extent…” Theo started, taking her hand by her wrist so as not to push his luck. “How about you and I go sit down in the Barge and have dinner?”

  “As long as it is within our capacity as fellow council members, that seems fine,” she lied.

  “Of course. We’ll keep it strictly professional,” he lied.

  Slipping his hand down her wrist and joining his fingers with hers without so much as a sound about it from either of them, the pair wandered towards the Barge together.

  The smell of roasted abbles and mushrooms filled the air on their approach, waking Theo’s empty stomach, causing it to growl. Having played it off with a joke he couldn’t quite remember himself, Theo opened the main doors of the building, showing Grace inside as she laughed with—or at—him. Wen stood staring at a tall, athletic man with a golden mane on his head, and Theo was about to welcome him when he remembered there wasn’t anyone else they were waiting for. Jemma and Rocky were the last ones, weren’t they?

  In a flustered red colour, Wen noticed Theo and took a step back from the man, her eyes shifting between them.

  It must be a visitor, not the first to have come to see the effigy by far, but Theo supposed they could shift the sleeping arrangements to have a paying customer sleep in a room alone.

  “Theo!” Wen said, her voice loud and cracking.

  The man turned, revealing the handsome, unblemished—and familiar—face.

  Grace and Theo both asked the same question, with the same disbelieving tone:

  “Chaste?”