Time slowly went by as I waited for Myra to wake up again. She was seemingly similar to me, as she had been deeply asleep when I checked up on her about an hour ago. She would likely spend the whole night at the prayer hall, only to be woken up by the paladins outside trying to make their way into the dungeon again.
Naturally, I couldn’t have left her behind defenseless like that, so I had tasked the obsidian fox to guard her. The monster in question readily accepted her task with wagging tails, seemingly happy it had something to do. Seeing her eager like that, I had told her to only attack those who either purposefully disturbed Myra’s sleep or tried to steal the orichalcum rod she was still clinging onto even now. Luckily, the obsidian fox had understood everything, readily yelping in reply, only to then realize she was being too loud and cutting her second yelp short. Instead, she nodded twice before sneaking over to Myra and fanning out her tails, so as to block others from even stealing a glance at the sleeping girl.
Happy with what I had seen, I then made my way back to my core room, where I finally began working on a few welcome gifts for Myra. We had a rough start, all things considered, but I wouldn’t let that discourage me from trying to win her over, especially since I knew that I was both reliant on her being my last line of defense as well as her being there for me as a friend. Sure, growing a friendship would take some time, but if there was anything I had at my hands, it was just that.
As for gifts I would give her, I had no other idea than to provide her with any material I had access to, carefully sorting them into the categories they were listed in on the green board that had appeared with a single thought.
The list started with animal materials and plant materials, followed by the various types of monster loot I had acquired from outside sources. Next, it listed both Metals and Minerals, with Drinks and Food appearing at the very bottom of the rather oversized, green board.
With a shrug, I went over the items on the list one by one, walking through the room and summoning a single point of mana’s worth of each of the options. First was beeswax, which gave me easily a few hundred kilos worth of honeycombs, minus the bees or honey, of course. The pile was rather big, surprising me quite a bit. I had expected the mana to give me similar results to those of mithril, which mana value I was pretty much used to at this point, but it seemed like different materials resulted in varying costs.
Bone gave me similar results. Upon choosing to summon them, I was greeted with a big pile of assorted animal bones of various shapes and sizes, with even skulls complete with teeth being among them. Every single bone was perfectly picked clean and ready to work with if you found anything it could be used for, that is.
Leaving the rather sinister sight behind, I had instead summoned the next option, a fluffy pile of pelts in various colors and sizes, some of them familiar to me, like the pale beige pelts of horned rabbits or the shaggy fur of forest wolves, others, however, were entirely foreign to me. Out of curiosity, I had tried to summon pure, white pelts specifically, only to be immediately greeted by a second pile of fluffiness, this time looking as white as snow. They were not nearly as big and long-haired as the ones given to me by Cilia, nor did they feel particularly special, but they at least showed me that I could indeed influence the result of the summoning at least somewhat.
Next on the list was sinew, which I knew was used to make bow strings. So of course I had tried to imagine this material in long, dried pieces, ready to be used by Myra. Indeed, the resulting pile was almost uniform in size and shape, perfect to be worked with. Although, once again, it was way too much, with the pile easily reaching my chest in height.
Then there was leather, which resulted in a pile that reached my neck quite easily, with the pieces coming in various shapes, colors and sizes. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough on this topic to distinguish between the animals the various options matched to, but I could at least say that the smaller, thinner, and softer pieces were better for more detailed work, with the thicker, sturdier ones being good for armor. A shoe, per example, would require a mixture of both, though I left this decision to whoever decided to work with the stuff, should Myra not like it.
The last point of the list made me smile, as I knew that I could use it to make my bedding a little more comfortable. It was wool, a precious material that could be made into a large variety of clothing and living accessories. Upon summoning it, I was greeted by a massive pile, topping over me by several times and thus easily being the most abundant of the resources by far.
With the animal materials dealt with, I decided to summon the plant materials, one of which was plainly named ‘fibers’ and required me to actually decide on what I wanted to have. With a shrug, I had made the material long, soft, and sturdy, thus hopefully perfect for clothes. And indeed, a big, head-height pile of creme white fibers had appeared, each single one of the strings being several meters long. I didn’t know which plant they came from, but even with my limited experience, I could already tell they would be fun to work with, although time-consuming.
Having had the mana to spare, I had then decided to give Myra a head start by summoning several blankets of tightly woven plant fibers, only to once again be greeted by weird, fox-like additions that had been made to it. One of the blankets had cute, little foxes on it, others were simply colored in red, black, and white, just like my hair and fur. All in all, there were dozens of patterns, and the pile, although neatly stacked, easily reached my hip.
With the plant fibers done, I decided to do the same with the wool, summoning dozens of thicker, colorful blankets that could be used for crafting clothes worn during the colder time of the year. Although I had most of my rooms rather hot, the very next floor could be the exact opposite, so it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
When I then checked on the next item on the list, I stumbled over a slight issue. The material in question was called ‘Amber Sap’ which meant it would give me something liquid or at least gooey, meaning I needed to prepare some sort of container for it. Reluctantly, I had decided to summon several wooden barrels, all of them secured by strips of iron. Doing so required me to close my eyes, and the results didn’t look perfect as well, but for a single point of mana, I could summon ten barrels that each reached up to my hip in size.
Filling them had been quite easy. I simply had to imagine the sap flowing into the barrels while I summoned them, and indeed, instead of growing out of the ground like all other materials and even the barrels themselves, my mana instead condensed into five big balls of glue-like sap that had floated above a few of the barrels only to slowly drop into them. All in all it took about a minute for the containers to fill, enough time for me to roll the remaining ones off to the side, where I would likely need them later.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Next on the list was simple charcoal, which gave me a massive pile of black chunks, some of them smaller, others larger. Being a blacksmith among other things, I knew Myra would appreciate having a lot of it, so having the pile easily be twice my height was more than welcome. We still had to build a forge, though.
Next on the list were two variants of wood, which slightly surprised me. One was simply named ‘wood’ and the other one ‘Iron Wood’. I knew Iron Wood was a very hard, sturdy, and fire-resistant type of wood that was mainly used to craft magic equipment of various sorts, as it readily accepted most weaker enchantments.
For these two materials, I imagined boards and rods of various lengths and thicknesses to spring into existence, and indeed, they came out as neatly stacked, almost polished-looking pieces without a single knothole in sight. Myra would certainly love those.
With the wood done, I had completed two whole categories of materials, so I decided to give myself a little break. Instead, I hugged my core and closed my eyes to summon two beds into existence, using wool, wood, plant fiber, and iron as materials. It took me quite a bit of concentration to get it to work, but soon enough, I felt the familiar feeling of mana leaving my body. For just two points of mana each, two beds sprang into existence surrounding my usual pile of sleeping furs, just waiting to be used. They weren’t fancy or even good-looking, but it still felt incredible to have them. Still, Myra would be stuck sharing a room with me for the time being. A storage room, even. I could only hope she wouldn’t mind.
I was just about to test out the new furniture when I remembered I still had over-capped my mana, meaning I was actively losing the chance to do anything useful with it should I waste any time. And given how much a single point of it had proven worth, I didn’t even dare to think about lingering around for a single moment longer. Instead, I made my way over to an empty spot and summoned three piles of material.
The first I had received back when I had repelled the would-be slavers my former father had sent. The lizard-man had worn armor made with wyvern scales, which I knew were highly durable and valuable while also being resistant to many elements to some extent. It was unlucky for him that he hadn’t worn a helmet made of them.
The resulting pile was much smaller than most I had summoned previously, reaching only my knees in height. Still, that much should be enough for several pieces of equipment, so I wasn’t about to complain.
As for the second and last option the category of ‘monster loot’ was giving me, it was the silk of Crimson Weavers, a large spider that could be found mostly in caves, where they used their highly durable webs to trap any other monster they could get their claws on. Just like with the other kinds of fabric, I had summoned both a pile of blankets ready to be worked with and a second, slightly bigger pile of string, making especially sure neither of them would be sticky.
Next, I had summoned bars of metal of each kind I had access to. As for copper, I was getting a rather big pile, which reached my stomach, same with tin, zinc, and lead, metals I didn’t even know the uses of other than that they could be used to make alloys of some kind. Iron was giving me the biggest pile, reaching my neck. The rarer metals left me with more reasonable numbers of bars. Gold was giving me several dozen of them, silver about a hundred, mithril sixteen, and orichalcum a mere five, which meant I had wasted some mana by handing Myra a single rod of it.
After finishing this part of my task, I moved to the remaining empty wall to finish the next category of items, which were minerals. There were only four of them, fire stones, mana stones, flint, and, curiously, glass. The first was a dark-red stone with a shiny appearance that released flames when struck and were thus often used to ignite fires by those who could afford them. A single point of mana went a long way for these, summoning a pile that reached my hip. As for the mana stones? They were much, much more expensive. My mana gave me only nine of them in several sizes and colors, the largest of them being about twice my fist in diameter and a deep blue. I knew mana stones were dropped when monsters were defeated and the main income of most adventurers, as they could be used for many different purposes, such as fueling artifacts or being crafted into magical items, or simply being a backup storage for mana. But for them to be more expensive than orichalcum was still a surprise.
Flint gave me a large pile that once again reached my neck, but I knew it would have limited uses, as there were better and more advanced materials to make blades and arrows from. Still, we would surely find a use for them, if only to decorate one of the rooms with their black, glassy appearance.
The very last item on the very long list was glass, which I used to summon about a hundred bottles of many sizes and shapes, ready to be filled with any liquid I could get my hand on. Yet, that much had to wait for another day, as I already had an idea of what to do with my food and drinks, which brought me to now, that I was making my way back to the prayer room.
Going by everything I had experienced during the last hour, even a single point of mana would overshoot my needs by far, meaning I could very well use this as a chance to ensure the men and women outside of my dungeon were seeing me in a slightly better light, which hopefully meant they would be more open to listening to my demands and offers.
Myra was still resting when I reached the place, and even the obsidian fox was sound asleep despite being tasked to guard her. But things looked fine at her side at least, allowing me to leave behind a generous offering of peace.
Alone on the side of drinks, there were several options I could choose from here, namely grape wine, blessed water, and mead, with blessed water being used mostly to give soups and drinks such as tea some beneficial effects like boosting one’s mana regeneration or improving the taste somewhat.
Not having any better idea on how to go about it, I knelt down, closed my eyes, and summoned five barrels for each of the options. And indeed, doing so worked well, with a big cloud of mana soon spreading out and condensing into fifteen already closed barrels, every single one of the containers marked with a branding in the shape of a fox’s head and a few words describing their contents for good measure. It would be Myra’s duty to get our share once the men had rolled the barrels out of the dungeon, but she surely wouldn’t mind carrying back a few bottles if she wanted to have a taste.
As for me, the food options I could choose from sounded a lot more interesting. Bread alone was nice to chew on, especially if slightly roasted over fire, so I summoned five crates of them each, making all of them darker kinds of bread as I knew that would make them last a little longer before they spoiled.
All of the crates came with a single word on them, bread, and had once again the silhouette of a fox marking them. They looked nicer than my bridges at least, likely because I knew exactly how crates were supposed to look like, compared to bridges, which you could not find a single one of in Abervale.
Out of all of the dozens of things I had summoned today, only cheese and meat remained. As for the first of the two, I summoned entire wheels, already stored in open, fox-branded crates. Doing this resulted in different appearances and sizes without me telling my magic to do so, meaning I could decide on my favorite kind if only I decided on which one I liked the most. But that was something for the future me to deal with, as there was one last item on my long list: meat.
I could already feel saliva gathering in my mouth as I thought about what kinds of meat I could summon. But in the end, the meat being able to be stored for a long time was once again the most important factor, as I couldn’t say when the men and women would be leaving if they intended to do so in the first place. So for this gift, I summoned dried and smoked meat only, once again using open fox crates to store it all. I then selected a few pieces of each, before making my way over to Myra and my not-so-trusty fox, placing their share right in front of their sleeping faces.
Even after preparing all of these materials and the food, I was still twenty-seven mana over my natural limit, so I summoned four Liri Foxes at my side. I greeted the group with a few pets and a strip of dried meat each, before joining the other two. Luckily, there was just enough space for me left on the blanket, so, with a yawn, I hugged one of the more-than-willing little foxes close before closing my eyes for some quality time.
Hopefully, things will change for the better.