Chapter 71: Designation

[Edited by: Bunny, deathbricks, Arthur300000, and ArchmageNaoki]

"Hey, wake up." Cocoa came and nagged me in the morning.

"Five, no ten more minutes." I made a gentleman request.

"You promised to make me a new sword first thing in the morning." Oh, right, I told her that yesterday to make her stop crying, but in my book, no matter what time it is, it’s not morning until I wake up.

"Twenty more..." I bargained and intended to go back to sleep. "The furnace won't run away." I added.

"Why does the time keep increasing!?" Cocoa protested. Didn't she know negotiation 101? You set a ridiculous goal for others to bargain, and when you do, keep moving that goal further away until you exhaust all their willpower. Everyone in my previous life kept doing that to me.

"Anyway, your room is too cold." She shook my blanket, then I felt cold air leak inside. At first, I thought she would resort to the ‘taking my blanket away’-method, so I grabbed it tightly. However, it was followed by rustle and the feeling of Cocoa crawling over me instead. Did she decide to join me in bed?

"Get up!" I peeped through my eyelids and saw Cocoa's cute face looking at me from under my blanket. Well, I did turn off the heater to save on my family’s expenses. Who would have thought that I would receive a benefit from doing good deeds this quick?

Because she was way too cute, I couldn't help myself but flipped our position and used her as a hug pillow. Ahh, she was soft, warm, fluffy, and her scent was nice. I think I could sleep like this three hours more.

"Good night, Cocoa." Satisfied with the fact that she could do nothing more save some yelling in my grip, I went back to dreamland.

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"Who is the bad girl here? Your breakfast would have gone cold." My mom, Cocoa's reinforcements, came through the door. Sometimes I wished my room had a lock like the one outside my sister's room. Still, if I gave them a key to clean my room up, the point in having a lock would become moot. How about cleaning my room myself? Never, when they offered to do it for free I didn't want to do it myself anymore.

To be fair I told my mom the same thing as what I told Cocoa, "Twenty more minutes." And snuggled my chin on Cocoa's head, between her fluffy ears.

"No negotiation!" She pulled off my blanket and tickled my weak spot. It resulted in me surrendering without conditions. Damn, it must be Pristia who told her about my weak spots.

"Uh? Where is Pristia?" I just realized that my sister was missing. Usually it would be her who woke me up.

"She went out shopping with Aunos to prepare for the flying snow rabbit storm." That storm was really coming, eh? Maybe that's why Cocoa tried to nag me. My forge might not run away, but it could fly away when the storm came.

I was going to ask why they didn't also take Cocoa who just ran away and yelling "I’ll go warm up the forge!". She was the other one in my house who had a 64 cubic meter storage device, but I stopped myself as I realized that she was grounded. And part of it was my fault.

Yesterday the cat was out of the bag as soon as we got home. My mom was very angry. Not because Cocoa was arrested, but because I tried to keep it a secret from her. It was the first time I saw her like that. I thought that it was because she was worried because Cocoa went missing, but she also complained about me being inside the police station alone. I tried to tell her that Pristia and Ms. Nyatalee also were there but for some reason they didn't count as adult supervision in her book.

Even though my dad came to console me later, I still felt guilty because all of it began with me leaving my toys lying around. So, I drowned my sorrows with a new erotic game called "Pyon Pyon, my house has become a bunny girl nest." It was quite educational because it told me that bunny girls were different from rabbit girls. The latter was one of the tribes in Beastkin kingdom, but the former was a sex crazed monster girl that multiplies like crazy. That lesbian scene with them and protagonist’s girlfriend was really hot. I played it till 5 in the morning.

"I'm sorry I made you worry, mom." As I gathered my wits I apologize to my mom again, but she just hugged me tight and apologized for scolding me too harshly yesterday. No, if I compared that with what I experienced in my past life, her scolding was full of worry rather than anger.

I finished my morning routine and went downstairs to have my breakfast as usual with my mom. I saw Cocoa peeking into the dining room from time to time like she wanted me to hurry up but was afraid that I might change my mind.

The television program also changed to an emergency broadcast. It began to count down the time until the snow rabbit storm which was due in 11 hours. Hmm, talking about television, because I wasted too much time at the police station and yesterday's home drama, I missed my program, Saturday Night with Bahamut. I hope it has some kind of re-run later.

"I will take care of the dishes. The forge’s ready, hurry up." Cocoa ran in when I finished my meal and snatched the empty plate from my hand. I couldn't help but smile seeing her like that, but for some reason, I wondered who was the master and who was the maid here.

"Good morning." My dad greeted me from the top of a set of portable stairs as I walked to the forge in the backyard. He was sealing second-floor windows with wooden planks.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Good morning, dad. Do you need a hand?" I asked as I tried to adjust the forge's temperature. This time I wanted to experiment with the exotic materials of this world, so I increased the temperature a bit.

"No, thank you. We already have a barrier device to protect the house. I just closed this up just in case the barrier collapses. Also, you better keep your promise with Cocoa. She seemed too eager to have it" my dad said with a conspiratorial smile. Even my dad noticed, huh? Cocoa, you are too obvious.

Well, since I promised her. I should do my best on my end. Still, I put a mithril ingot into the furnace. I was prepared to fail because there was no such thing as mithril ingots in Skyrim, yet I wanted to test it out for the heck of it. Surprisingly, my instinct kicked in and realized that the furnace temperature was too low just by the look.

Mithril was a difficult metal to handle. Even with optimal temperature, it needed a lot of strength to bend. The method to handle it was also different. In the case of iron, all I needed to do was to keep folding it until it got reasonable strength and then temper it later, but in mithrils case, my instinct told me that I needed to keep twisting it and feeding it with lots and lots of my Magicka instead. I couldn’t help but  wonder where my instinct came from.

The temperature outside was below zero, but I was still sweating all over my body because of the heat radiating from the superheated chunk of metal and all the working out I did. Even with all my superhuman strength as showed in the tests on the show yesterday, I began to get exhausted, both in a physical and magical sense.

"Ahh, my arms almost fell off." I complained as I finished the blade. More importantly, my Magicka pool was almost drained. Maybe I should stick with known materials instead. Mithril was too troublesome. I didn't want to imagine what would happen if I tried what this world called adamantium.

Anyway, the result was quite impressive. It looked even better than the military grade sword that I used. The blade wasn't that thin, but for some reason I could see through it if I shined the light at its back. Its surface had a bluish tint, and it could reflect the light that shined on it like a mirror. However, when I swung it to test it out, the light that was reflected from it scattered into multiple colors like the sword had turned into a prism instead.

I enjoyed myself as I made a complicated movement with the sword in my hand. It felt so natural as if it was a part of me. The balance was good, the weight was perfect. If I had a thing to complain about, it would be that it was a bit too short, but that was because I factored in Cocoa's height as I made this one.

"Whoa." Cocoa who watched the entire process with sparkling eyes exclaimed. I looked between the short sword and her while wondering that whether it was prudent to give this toy to that kid, no technically she was an adult. Yet, when I moved the sword around, her eyes were glued to it like a kid...

"Try not to get arrested this time." An hour later, I handed her the complete product while hoping for the best. This time I even made it a scabbard which came from the leftover mithril and some leather. The girl in question received it while nodding shyly, but her tails were rotating like a helicopter. It made me wonder whether she could fly with her tails.

I was going to lecture her a bit about how to handle a sharp object but I felt that snow had begun to fall. I looked up to the sky and found a cluster of tiny clouds floating over us. No, they weren’t  clouds, they had wings, and when I focused my vision on one of them, I noticed that they had rabbits ears protrude from the top of it.

"Mom! Snow rabbits are coming!" I yelled. Weren't we supposed to have five more hours? And from the look of it, weren't they harmless?

"Huh? Where is it?" My mom and dad came, craning their necks looking upward, but they still didn't locate them.

"They're there." I pointed at the cluster in the sky. They didn't notice them until Skynet projected my vision for them to see.

"Wow, Kuro has very good eyesight. Right, those are snow rabbits. Cute little things that eats heat as their food." My mom said while patting my head. Huh? They eat heat?

"I want one." I told them. At least I could use those rabbits as air condition in the summer. However, my parents just looked at each other and shook their head.

"It would be difficult, Kuro. While they are harmless. They fly at a high attitude to escape from their hunters. And when they come in a horde, the temperature around them almost becomes absolute zero and twists the air around them violently, that's why they are called a storm of flying snow rabbits." My dad explained to me... That was scarier than I thought.

"By the way, did Pristia come back yet?" I was worried that she might get caught in the storm and turn into an ice statue. Even though their main population didn't come here to make a storm yet, I was still worried all the same.

"Don't worry, they just called me and said that they are on their way home." My mom told me. I nodded, relieved, and began to feel hungry again. Right, my breakfast was more than five hours ago.

"Alright, let's get something to eat." I told my mom and walked inside. But my mom pulled me back before I went into the dining room.

"Kuro, did you forget something?" Huh? Did I forget something? Cocoa already promised to cool down my forge and store it for me, so that shouldn't be it. Also, it was a storm emergency, so there shouldn't be a postman coming to deliver the erotic book I ordered online. "Wha-!"

"Your body is covered in soot. Let me help you bathe this time." My mom carried me to the bathroom while humming a strange tune.

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When I finished my bath and my mom was drying my hair I heard my sister loudly proclaim her arrival with a complaint about there being an unusually large number of people in the market. I ran to the living room to greet her with my mom in tow who was complaining that my hair wasn't dry yet.

"Ah, freshly bathed Kuro!" We greeted each other by hugging, and my sister tickled me everywhere with her nose. Was she trying to find a fault in mom's bathing technique by sniffing? Pristia, are you trying to be a mother in law or something?

"Aunos, please enchant this one." While my sister took the dryer from mom, Cocoa was nagging my brother to enchant my recently made sword for her. For some reason, she vehemently insisted that I shouldn't be the one who does it. That blinking enchantment was just an experiment, you know?

As everyone came back, the atmosphere in the house turned jovial. It made me feel like the storm announcement on the television was a lie. We happily listened to my sibling's story about the situation outside for a while then my sister went with my mom to the kitchen because  my stomach was rumbling too loudly.

As I had nothing else to do except teasing Mr. Bobo, the flying house mini-pig with a small cotton rope, I noticed Aunos and Cocoa inspecting my short sword and discussing something seriously.

"How was it?" I approached them and asked. I was confident in my product, but I wanted to hear their feedback.

"Everything about it is extraordinary, but what’s with its name?" Aunos showed me the base of the hilt. I inscribed the sword's name there as it should be. All masterpieces must have a name, right?

"Yup, it's a great weapon which everyone will be happy to die by." I nodded sagely and read it again to make sure that I didn't miss-spell it. It read: "Snu Snu"

For some reason, Cocoa looked at me with dead fish eyes.