They all looked at me and smiled nervously. I could tell that they did not have much left, unlike me, they were not continuously generating ST during our walk. I could tell that the sun was getting ready to set. This began to make them even more nervous as they jumped at every sound. I could have gone on but they could not so I resolved to find a good spot for the night.

My good spot came in the form of a large tree with a good set of surrounding rocks that made for only one entry point. It was out of the way and felt foreboding on its own. After Akurra and I cleared it, I headed back out to the women who were nervously fidgeting.

“I think we will camp here for the night!” My declaration made for some more nervous fidgeting.

“Um Lord mage this is a bad place for a campsite the things that come out at night in this forest make that glieberfang look tame,” Sarisol says to me nervously.

“I am quite aware of that. I have been living in this forest alone for almost three moons” I say trying to keep the bite out of my voice. “I also have an advantage.”

I grab the house stone out of my inventory and toss it into the open area. Even though I have seen it several times it was still amazing to watch. This sentiment was echoed by the six women accompanying me. I had figured that since they were from this world that something like this. Their expressions said otherwise as the shock was expressed clearly across their faces. When the cottage disappeared, their faces became dismayed.

“It’s still there it is just not visible to anything outside of its area. If you take a few steps forward it will reappear. That is why I picked this spot it’s out of the way so nothing will just come into this area.”

I finish speaking and step into the area covered by the concealment. There are a few gasps and I watch as they nervously look around. Finally, they muster up the confidence to walk forward the smaller one closes her eyes as they cross the barrier. They all cross the barrier and again there are a few gasps.

I turn and head inside the cottage. It takes a while but they all enter the cottage. I can see the amazed looks on their faces as they look around. They split into groups and look around the house. I can tell there are things here that they have never seen before. I can also see that they recognize other things. They are all highly surprised by the bathrooms, and it is not long before I can hear them in use.

Sarisol approaches me shortly after having looked around.

“Lord mage are you from your land’s royal family? I have never even heard of such a treasure” she asks nervously. I can tell she is trying not to stare she is looking everywhere but directly at me.

“Not that I am aware of I am not fully sure of my heritage. By the way, my name is Van.”

“Lord Van this can only be an artifact. Outside of Alvairan folklore, I have not heard of such a thing before.” She says this while twitching nervously not looking at me. It would almost be anime cute if not for the hole showing too much cleavage. I mean at this point I could swear I have seen a nipple.

“The Alvairans might have had it at one point but they did not create it. It is much older than them, it belonged to the first ones.”

She looks at me with a nod. “Now that I have answered your question, you can answer one for me. What are you doing out here in this forest, you are not equipped to be here?”

She flinches when I ask her and I hear a slight whimper from the smallest member of the group. I know her name is Rina by now. I did not hear when she reentered the main room but she is looking at Sarisol nervously.

“It’s my fault,” Rina says shaking. “If you must punish anyone, it should be me, my lord. Our village has been sieged by a beast called a Urgix. It has been stalking our village for over a moon. We were starving I thought I figured out an alchemical way to scare the beast off, at least temporarily. I needed supplies to do it though. I convinced the others to take me into the forest to gather what I needed. I had seen what I needed close to our village before. We were not supposed to come this far into the forest. The Urgix was supposed to be on the other side of the village when we left. Somehow it knew we were out of the village and it chased us farther into the forest” Rina says this on the verge of tears before she falls crying.

I move over to her and picked her up off the ground. I was struck by the fact that her eyes were a deep shade of violet, that matched her hair. I smiled at her softly I wondered what other mages were like in this world. That she was so terrified for just crossing my path, Sarisol was shaking at this point as well. I could tell she was worried about my reaction.

“You seem to believe that I am bothered by your presence. I am not I will show you my lab later. I will tell you that I have no intention of punishing anyone though. I have been in the forest with only Akurra’s company for most of it.”

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I decide to leave out the fact that I have met the guardian tree. While I know it is an impressive feat, I know it will scare them even more. I find out that Rina had come out to get me to explain how the showers worked. They had never seen anything like them and they started to undress and get into the shower before I had even left the bathroom. Which caused me some discomfort.

I head back out into the great room both Sarisol and Rina followed me. I was now glad I had killed that beast earlier in the day.

“Now about dinner,” I say to myself as I take the beast out in the prep room.

The sight of the beast is met by a squee from Rina, and a gasp from Sarisol. It is the first time I have seen them act based on anything other than fear.

“Will this thing make for a good meal?”

“Lord Van Cavia meat is considered a delicacy. They have to be skinned properly or it will ruin the meat. If you have not prepared one before it would be best to let me do so” she says assertively.

She steps into the prep room next to me. I hand her the knife.

“Be careful that knife is extremely sharp.”

She looks over the knife before stepping up to the cavia. Rina steps up and whispers something to her. First, she draws the knife across the throat of the beast. I know she is bleeding the beast before she starts to clean it. I can tell she is surprised at just how sharp the knife is. The cut she used would have been a test cut if the blade would not have been razor-sharp. After she lets it drain for a while, she makes a series of cuts. I watch as she cuts by the base of the tail gently before she lifts the tail with a sharp pull. The tail came loose along with a pouch of some horrid-looking fluid. Rina collected the pouch in a bucket.

“What are you going to do with that,” I asked inquisitively?

“The liquid in this pouch can be used in several different alchemical formulas,” she says shyly. “It just has to be processed correctly. If I can get it back to my home safely, I can treat it alchemically.”

“Follow me!”

I realize that I might have been a little too excited and forceful, as she trails behind me nervously. I can tell she is on the verge of tears, by the time we get to the staircase. I don’t think there is anything I can say to her that will make her feel better. I go with taking her to my meager alchemy lab. Or at least I thought it was meager. When I opened the door and let her in, she finally looked around. She squeed again as she looked around before looking at me nervously.

“It’s okay. Can you do what you need to do here?”

She looks around nervously “Lord Van I am only the village alchemist because they have no other option. I would be worried about damaging the equipment in your lab.”

“I understand I had that same fear when I first started working here myself. Watch this” I say excitedly. I take one of the glass vials and drop it. When it hits the floor, it disappears instead of shattering. I do the same with a beaker and it bounces before it disappears. I had shattered some equipment and found that it all reconstitutes itself. The equipment was not indestructible that would be bad in a setting like this it was self-replacing. I had learned multiple times that some of the reactions could be energetic! If those interactions failed to be managed correctly the equipment needed to be able to break. A more spread reaction across the base of an item was better than all of the energy exiting a small area.

Rina went around the room looking at all of the ingredients and items I had in the room. It was like she was checking what I had against some mental checklist. She stopped to look at a few things before shaking her head.

“Almost there is almost everything I need here, but even with the sack I am missing a few key ingredients,” Rina says disappointed.

“That is if we were to go with your plan that sounds like a temporary fix. I like my plan a lot better.”

She looked at me, and this was the first time I was clued into her more animalistic nature as she cocked her head. The way she turned her head with her ears facing me reminded me of those cute animal videos on the net.

“What is your plan Lord Van,” she asked me? Her tone was both inquisitive, and nervous at the same time. It was like in an anime when one of the cute girls asked the protagonist a question.

“My plan is simple I kill the beast, and then we have a feast hopefully made from the beast itself. I don’t know if can you eat an urgix, hopefully, you can.”

“The Urgix is a magic beast its flesh would be highly prized most of the meat from this forest is highly prized. Unfortunately, like most of the beasts in this forest are too much for even a well-trained high-level group of adventurers. The urgix being a magic beast is even more dangerous than average. There are tales of even small portions of urgix meat going for enough to feed our village for a dozen arcs. But I have not heard of anyone being able to kill one” she said somewhat nervously.

“Just because you have not heard of it does not mean it’s not possible. When was the last time you heard of someone killing a gliberfang?”

She looked at me and turned her head again. I could see that she was mulling what I said over. I had just reminded her that I had killed another beast the very sight of which had terrified them with ease. After that, I helped her with the pouch. We put on nose plugs and used tongs to handle it as we drained the pouch strained it and boiled it to concentrate it. I was glad that the lab had a vent to rid itself of the noxious fumes and a cover that basically sucked them out of the lab. So, the smell never got that bad.

Once that was done, we worked on the bases for my alchemy projects. Most of this was just repetitive pouring and stirring. Rina showed herself to be a deft hand. Easily handling the repetitive work with skill and focus. She even caught an error I was about to make before I made it. After she corrected me, she looked around nervously before bowing her head. I am pretty sure that she is expecting me to chastise her for correcting me.

“Thank you for catching that, Rina. While I do have a skill for alchemy, I am not an alchemist. I have not been doing this very long so I am prone to make a few mistakes. If you see me about to error, I would appreciate it if you would correct it. I will do the same. Inside this lab, we are just two people working on alchemy, okay?” I say that while smiling at her. I make sure to keep my tone as neutral as possible It is obvious to me that this woman has some kind of underlying trauma. She looks up at me and smiles, it’s the first time she has smiled since I met the group. After that, she visibly relaxes as we work for about forty-five minutes.