Winter is now officially over! Or at least that’s what I say.

‘Grand Archive’ would beg to differ, saying that spring had ‘officially’ started several weeks ago. But I don’t agree! Spring starts when it’s warm enough that snow melts and things start growing!

Which it has been doing for the past two weeks; the backyard is no longer just a brown patch of land it now has grass beginning to grow everywhere!

Mmmm, I love spring. Everything is alive in spring and the feeling as your body gradually gets used to the warmth after all that cold is the best!

I wonder if lemonade exists in this world or, for that matter, lemons.

If at least lemons exist it won’t be too hard for me to ‘invent’ it. I’m sure it’d make a good sell to the baker, especially if I use Claura to sell it.

Mmm……a cute little girl selling lemonade outside her parent’s shop to earn extra spending money…….that sort of heartwarming scene is enough to make anybody happy!

With such fluffy thoughts in my head I continue to chop away.

Yes, I’m still cutting wood. This chore is something that must always be done regardless of the season. I really wish I could use the price of writing to get out of this. But, that price is something I’ve already selected. Besides someone needs to do this and the Baker’s family isn’t going to do it and I sure as hell won’t make my mother do it.

Besides in a way this reminds me of my previous life….. huh? My eyes feel a little leaky.

Aahhhh, here it comes. I’m reminded every so often that I had a life previous as a human named ‘Thomas Ackerman’. For the most part I try to not think about that life. After all I have to live this life now, despite having all the memories of my previous one.

Cecily….I hope you’re okay. I really truly hope that you’ve been able to find happiness back there.

Haa, now is not the time to be depressed. I’ll have plenty of time later once I and my mother are free.

I go back to wood cutting. This time, my expression is no longer so light....... even I can tell that.

……………….

“Aaand the merchant picked up his last few coppers, loaded his donkey, and left. The end!”

“Great! Nice job Claura! You’ve done well.”

The past three hours had been grueling, or at least for myself and Claura. It was her turn to try and read the whole book, ‘The Unfortunate Merchant’, from start to finish without messing up. While she made a few mispronunciations, overall it was good. The reason it took so long was because her reading speed was abysmal. Her father was faster, though he did make a few more mistakes than she did.

Honestly though, I was proud of the two. The father and daughter pair had really impressed me. We had started only four months ago but they had already begun to get the gist of it. Granted they were both at what Claura’s reading level would be back on earth but that’s ok. It’s not like they need to be much better than this, especially for this world.

“Well with this, the two of you can now read I’d say. What’s more you can also write! What comes next is just practice. With a little bit more, I’m sure you could even do better than some nobles!”

“ehehe, thanks! You’re the best big brother!”

Uh oh…..I could feel my ears prick fully alert as my body stiffened. The Baker was oddly silent.

Claura had just dropped a veritable bomb.

‘Grand Archive’ was already observing every minute muscle movement in the Baker, waiting to see if an attack was coming. It had already ascertained that the Baker had hostile intentions; I guess you could say it was detecting a great amount of bloodlust from him.

Claura on the other hand was stupidly oblivious. Stupid Claura…..shit I’m done for.

My eyes are locked on the form of the Baker, my muscle are ready to move in a second.

Oddly enough ‘Grand Archive’ is detecting a weakening amount of bloodlust coming off of him.

“Claura.”

“Yes Papa?”

“I think it’s time for bed, be a good girl and head upstairs.”

“Alright..”

She seemed unhappy about being told to go to bed, but thankfully she was obedient and left with little fuss.

The Baker turned his head to watch her go up the stairs.

I kept my eyes firmly locked on the Baker. Though my ears were following that little cataclysm’s footsteps as she left the room where she had potentially laid waste to my future.

After sight of her was lost and her footsteps receded past human hearing, the Baker turned his eyes towards me.

I think as far as this situation goes, I must strike first.

“Just to be clear I didn’t have any hand in that.”

The Baker merely raised an eyebrow and continued looking at me.

Ugh, I wish he’d stop. I feel very uncomfortable right now.

We sat in utter silence for a few more minutes.

“ha ha, hahaha! Hahahahaha!”

He’s laughing?

“So even you, you damn Kitling can get nervous. Don’t worry, I know you had no hand in her deciding to call you that.”

I relaxed at this, though now I felt a bit of annoyance as I realized he was toying with me.

“Well, then that’s good.”

I made to leave, eager to escape now that a slight weakness had been exposed.

“Ah, you will remain seated. I’m not finished yet.”

His tone annoys me, but in this situation…..well I have to comply for now.

After taking in a breath the Baker leaned forward.

“She probably said that because you’ve taught her something new and amazing. Even at her age she recognizes that. Furthermore you protected her somewhat beforehand. You also happen to be the only ‘child’ around her age that she’s warmed up to. It’s little surprise that she’d call you something that is usually only used within a family.”

He then fixed me with a piercing stare.

“But you are not family. Don’t ever be mistaken about that. Even if you have my brother’s blood running through you.”

Wow, he’s really exuding that mob character aura right now. I feel like I’m talking to an information broker in the back of some European bakery. Does that make me Bond?

Enough of that!

*Phew!*

At least the situation has unfolded like this. This makes everything easier.

I lean forward as well, I wish I could steeple my hands but unfortunately I’m a little too short for that still.

“Oh believe me, I am well aware. If you’ll forgive me I’d go so far as to say that I’m glad I’m not part of your family……”

I paused for a second or two as I looked him directly in the eyes.

“No, we are definitely not family. We, are business partners. I have things you want and you have thing I want. That’s it.”

I now settle back into my chair. Man it’s really difficult to seem serious or intimidating when your not even five feet tall yet.

“Now, keeping in line with our business arrangement. I will name my price for teaching both you and your daughter how to read and write. In fact this conversation was the perfect opening for it.”

The Baker raised his eyebrow.

“hoh?”

I leveled him with as serious an expression I could make.

“The price this time is…..that I will now refer to you and your wife by name. There will be no Master or Mistress crap. We are business partners, I’d say it’s high time we refer to each other by our names. Oh but you can still refer to me as Kitling, that’ll do for now.”

His eyes narrowed slightly as if he seemed unwilling.

“Naturally this will be kept to when not in public. Though I won’t refer to you as master in public either. Do you understand? This is the price.”

Now he too leaned back into his chair.

“Very well.”

I gave a small nod before standing up.

“good. Now then I’ll be heading to bed. Ah, before I go I have something else for you to consider.”

He raised an eyebrow at this.

“You have two options ahead of you. I could give you another bakery item….or I could show you a drink that will entice the senses. Though I will say the drink has a higher chance of existing in the world, it may not necessarily be prevalent here. We would have to discuss it with our cokolada merchant. After all it contains an ingredient that he would be more likely to come across than what we ourselves would have.”

I began to leave but paused at the entranceway to the back room.

“Anyways, take your pick and inform me sometime tomorrow or later. We can also go more in depth into what they are tomorrow should you have any questions.”

Now this part was acting, I made as if to leave before pausing and turning around to look at the Baker who was still seated at the table seemingly lost in thought.

“Oh, and by the way; have a good night Clyde.”

His eyes narrowed again for a fraction of a second before he mumbled out between his hands.

“Goodnight Kitling.”

…………………………….

Nufufufu!

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Awe isn’t she adorable!

Of course I’m referring to Claura, sitting outside with a little lemonade stand! There are two pieces of slate with pictures of lemons and writing on it facing the two sides of the street.

Naturally the writing and the adorable little girl attract people to the stand.

Recently more wealthy people have been frequenting Clyde’s bakery for the mysterious but ultimately delicious brownies as well as the fact that the names of the different kinds of bread and their prices are sitting beside baskets that contain them. The sight of the writing makes them think that Clyde is also well to do and would naturally want to frequent his bakery rather than a bakery run by someone supposedly uneducated.

Why?

Because they unconsciously associate knowing writing as a sign of intelligence, then by relation they associate it with money, cleanliness, and quality. All of which factor into them choosing to select this shop; by now it’s already gained critical mass and wealthy people show up just because other wealthy people are

But back to the more important bit!

Claura is so adorable!

She’s wearing a little pink dress with delicate white lace fringes at the cuffs and neck, further adding to her cuteness factor. Her blonde hair has been well brushed and positively gleams in the sunlight!

Her shyness even helps! The way she timidly asks passerby if they’d like a cup of lemonade causes both man and woman to swoon alike!

I’d have to say operation: make money by fluffy cuteness is a success!

That isn’t to say it wasn’t difficult accomplishing it.

At first Clyde hadn’t been entirely sold on it. But had decided to go along with it after I described the potential benefits it could provide in the form of not only making more money but causing people that already came to his shop to spend more than normal since something so tasty was right in front of them and seemed so cheap. Another side benefit I mentioned is that it might help Claura become more social. Which would raise her value as a bride prospect…….

That last bit left a bad taste in my mouth, but sadly in this world much like earth had been. Men and woman didn’t share equal power, at least not in this kingdom. This is a fantastical world after all, for all I know there could be a nation where the roles are reversed.

After convincing Clyde the two of us went to the merchant who had been selling us cokolada. Thankfully after describing the qualities of lemons to him, it turned out he had something similar on hand. Translated from his native language to Snagan it seemed that it was called a ‘puckerberry’.

Defying most of the rules I knew about plant biology it was a fruit much like a lemon except that it grew on vines like a grape. Furthermore the toughness of its skin was somewhere between that of a grape and a lemon and was slightly smaller in size.

After tasting it, I found it to be far sourer than even an atomic warhead!

Though, these were all only minor bumps on the path to the liquid Eldorado.

The real setback was the realization that this world doesn’t have plastic cups! Not only that It doesn’t have ice cube trays or for that matter, freezers!

The cups issue was solved relatively quickly. We bought a large amount of relatively cheap cups at a pottery store, the idea being that the people would drink there or could pay extra to take the cup along with them.

The biggest problem facing us was how to keep the drink cold.

This singular thing stood in our way. To some it might seem like a minor issue but if I met someone like that I’d declare them mentally disturbed. Who in their right mind would ever think warm lemonade was fine!?

Anyways it was singlehandedly the biggest problem.

But at the same time, there was already a solution…….magic.

Claura was already used to using her own mana. She was even better than her parents by now, despite the fact that they were the ones that taught her. This is probably due to the fact that they entrusted her with powering the singular magic device in the house, the magic oven.

It seems that using mana leaves you exhausted if you use to much of it. So the parents naturally were hesitant to use it since they had to be able to efficiently bake and serve customers. Therefore they decided to have their daughter become their ‘battery’.

After some minor questioning I found out from Claura that whenever she gave power to the magic oven, it felt warm.

Curious about her description I asked if she could try infusing a slice of bread with the same kind of mana. None of us 

really knew how magic works…….

…Well I did but that involved a lot of british accents and wand waving…..not exactly the same as how magic seems to be here.

At first she said it didn’t work, something about how it couldn’t leave her without a reason.

This stumped me for a bit before I suggested she tried replicating the exact feeling she gets when giving power to the magic oven, except with bread.

Lo and behold after a few tries it worked!

I had had a hunch that magic might require some kind of construct before it could be used. This was given by the magic circle that Claura infused her mana into to power the magic oven.

When Claura had said that the mana needed a reason before it could leave her body I hypothesized that what it actually 

required was a construct or, in this case, a will imposed upon it.

That’s where replicating that warm feeling she got whenever she powered the magic oven came into play.

I believe she was willing her mana into ‘fire’ mana which seems to be the case because when she succeeded with the 

piece of bread it was promptly burnt to a crisp.

Though, afterwards she had to rest a while. It seems doing that much on her own without a magic circle had exhausted her.

………….

Fast forward to the present and you’ll see that I was able to successfully train her to cool things rather than burn them by changing the feeling she had when infusing it with her mana.

I was pretty happy about this, except for the part where ‘Grand Archive’ began making extrapolations about the magic of this world based on that from memories I had from reading certain books, from a certain country that, instead of just words, had lots of pictures in them. They weren’t comic books though, no they definitely weren’t. Anyways I read them at 

period in my life where I didn’t really want to interact with anyone. I honestly didn’t want to remember it, but that damn archive forced me to!

I guess I’ll just look at Claura’s cute image!

Aaaah, the sight of her soothes the soul!

“Damnit you useless cat!”

Oh boy there goes Gertrude, Clyde’s wife, she’s in a particularly bad mood because she now has to pick up some of the slack left by her daughter not being able to focus all of her mana on powering the magic ovens.

Really, she is a rather annoying twit. Furthermore I don’t  appreciate her taking it out on my mother. Though I can’t do much a peel my eyes away from the rosy glow around Claura and head over to the kitchen.

The sight of me stops any continued harassment of my mother. It seems in the month since I had finished teaching Clyde and Claura to read, my status in the household has been elevated. To the point where the sight of me, while its enough for disgust to be plainly etched on her face, causes Gertrude to cease any hostile actions towards my mother.

After narrowing my eyes slightly I run up to my mom and talk about inconsequential things like a normal kid would until Gertrude leaves.

Thus the first day of the lemonade stand passes and it’s a resounding success!

I should also mention that I finally have a grasp on the monetary system in Snaga.

The smallest form of currency is ‘copper chits’. They’re nothing more that a square piece of copper with a face stamped in them. Above that there are silver deniers, which are proper coins with another face stamped on them!

At least the other side had some interesting designs.

Finally there was the Snagan Crown, which was the biggest monetary denomination. This coin was made out of gold and had the Snagan flag on one side with the face of the current king on the other.

In terms of relative value to each other it went; twenty chits for one denier and fifty deniers for one crown. As can be seen the crown is a form of currency only nobles use. It could be thought of like a hundred dollar bill.

While cool and flashy, it isn’t really used in day-to-day transactions.

Also, it was five chits for a nice quality loaf of bread.

A brownie square was worth then chits now. Clyde had bumped up his prices after he started noticing that his typical customer was richer than it had been previously.

Things have been looking really pleasant. It’s already been almost half a year since I re-awoke in this body. Hopefully my plans will proceed smoothly into the future as well!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Next

Well here you have it, no matter how you look at it this is definitely a more respectable chapter than the one from yesterday. But man is my brain tired!! Also shout out to Kylelust and dune291 thanks for reviewing and rating me. I hope I'll get to hear the opinions of the rest of you guys out there as well. Also on a side not to Kylelust, it's funny I numbered my chapters and then  saw your review! Guess great minds think alike!  ;)