Chapter 42 — A Morning at Work

Ria woke with the sounds of dawn, feeling fully rested and ready to face the day. She had pleasant dreams of fluffy blankets and floating in warm waters wearing a gossamer dress.

A gentle energy seemed to be enveloping her as she stretched. Her eyes opened wide. The barrier was still active!

“Deactivate #18.”

Excited, she hopped out of bed and checked the scroll’s energy level. Only about one third of the energy had been used up!

Ria let out a whoop, scooping up the scroll and twirling around happily. If she limited the affected area to a rectangular shape instead of a hemisphere, a single charge might last an entire week! She must’ve been really tired not to think of that last night. Using parchment should improve the efficiency even further…

A knock sounded from her door.

“Come in,” she called out.

The door opened and Jarrel stuck his head in. “You sound surprisingly chipper after working late into the night. Anyway, thought I’d let you know that I’ll be heading out soon.”

Ria thought about the healing scrolls she had made and came to a decision. “Wait for a moment, Jarrel. I have something for you.”

Running over to her desk, she retrieved the medium-quality healing scroll.

Jarrel had stepped the rest of the way into the room, and he had a silly grin on his face like she was going to give him a kid’s drawing or something.

His silly face turned to one of astonishment as he saw the complicated design drawn on the parchment. “What’s this?”

“It says what it is, you know. Like the instructions tell you, say ‘activate’ and the scroll number to activate the healing effect. Say ‘deactivate’ and the scroll number to deactivate the effect and preserve the scroll’s energy. The effect should be strong enough to heal a serious injury based on last night’s testing,” Ria explained.

“Testing?” Jarrel asked with a raised eyebrow.

Ria looked away. “A-anyway. That scroll is almost three times as powerful as the frost ward I did for Lord Vorshan, so you’ll want to make sure it doesn’t get damaged.”

Jarrel’s face paled a bit, and he nodded. “I’ll buy a sturdy scroll case. Thanks.”

She gave Jarrel a hug. “Stay safe.”

“You, too,” Jarrel replied, returning her hug before extricating himself and heading downstairs with the scroll.

Ria breathed out a sigh. They had survived the wilds. He should be able to handle whatever was attacking the farmsteads.

Slapping her cheeks to re-motivate herself, Ria went about dressing in play clothes and an oiled apron she bought just for days like today. She combed her hair out and tied it up so it would be out of the way.

Making a replacement medium-quality healing scroll from her remaining sheets of medium-quality paper would have to wait until later. For now, Ria settled for pouring much of her recovered inner energy into her staff. Refilling her staff would probably take several days, and since she would be working on physical tasks all morning, there was no sense wasting her natural energy recovery.

Morning routine completed, Ria headed downstairs to join everyone for a hearty breakfast.

The butchering work went fine.

They got started before Oscar showed up, so Grandpa Orlan showed Ria what he wanted done. He taught her how to use the chains and pulleys to lift the heavy carcasses onto the worktables and was impressed with her knife-work when she started cutting and skinning the dire wolf. Of course, she was cheating with her magic dagger.

She did practice with her regular skinning knife later after Grandpa Orlan had gone back to handle customers, but she went back to using her dagger when Oscar showed up so she could show-off in front of his disbelieving face. Heh.

After the initial housewife rush ended, Grandpa Orlan had her help with the customers at the front. She got yelled at about wearing a bloody apron to the front, just like Oscar did, and couldn’t help replying, ‘Yes, Boss!’ and chuckling to herself as she went back to wash up.

After a while, Grandpa Orlan left her to handle the front of the shop on her own. The customers were friendly enough—the ones that either didn’t recognize her as the dreaded witch or didn’t care. The others either suddenly turned around and left or looked nervous while making their orders.

Ria made a point of chatting cheerfully with every customer, asking them about their favorite places and where they liked to shop, what people do around Vorshan’s Hills for fun, if there were any dangerous alleyways that should be avoided, and so on. She snuck in a few questions about the ‘rumor of pets going missing’ from time to time as well.

Surprisingly, the dire-wolf meat sold well. When Ria asked, a customer told her that monsters tend to have stronger flavors because of their strong inner energy. Which made Ria wonder if she was extra tasty too…

An older girl named Wendy showed up just before lunch, and Ria told her that Emily was planning to do a tea party soon. The girl seemed interested and agreed to introduce Ria to some of the other girls living in the village sometime.

When lunchtime finally came around, Grandpa Orlan thanked Ria for her hard work and gave her 5 copper coins. Ria felt odd about receiving the money after everything Grandpa Orlan and Grandma Fana were doing for her, but she thanked him and accepted her pay.

The work really was tiring. Not the butchering so much, but constantly dealing with people and trying to be friendly all the time left her feeling exhausted. Though to say she would rather cut up animal corpses… was probably not the case. Probably.

By the time Ria had finished bathing and washing her clothes, Leon had shown up.

“Where’s Ranger?” Leon asked. “I didn’t see him on my way up.”

Ria motioned over toward the window. “He’s out back sunning. How’d your practice go? Did you end up needing the potion again?”

“Yeah, sorry. I ended up using the whole thing,” Leon admitted and handed over the empty vial. “I think I made some improvements though. I don’t get a headache anymore when moving energy in and out of my medallion, but moving it around my body is still tough.”

“Hmm… there’s an exercise for that,” Ria said, casually flipping to the needed page and handing her grimoire over.

“Oh. That looks difficult,” Leon complained.

Ria handed Leon her satchel and motioned for him to find a spot on the floor. “Dig out the writing supplies and copy it down. I need to finish making a scroll to sell before we head out anyway.”

Leon grimaced but accepted the task. “Where did you want to head first?”

“I was thinking about dropping off my extra scrolls at Master Rigure’s to get him started on certifying them for sale while we search for pets and interview people,” Ria explained while setting up her scroll making supplies.

“You’re really going to sell those creepy ones that tell your secrets?” Leon worried.

“Doesn’t this country have diviners anyway?” Ria asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s true… but,” Leon hedged. “Most diviners are priests with a temple or inquisitors, you know.”

“Oh. So, it’s like that.”

Wondering what Master Rigure would think about her scrolls, Ria pulled her staff onto her lap and got to work on the healing scroll.

“Thanks for looking them over for me,” Ria said and slid her stack of scrolls to Master Rigure’s side of the table.

“Don’t mind it. This is my job as the Enchanters Guild representative in Vorshan’s Hills, and I’m really interested to see what you’ve produced,” Master Rigure said pleasantly as he peeked at a few of the scrolls. “Hmm… interesting. I’m honestly surprised that you were able to enchant this many powerful scrolls in a single day. Anything I should know before I start?”

“Not really. I put notes for usage on each, so…,” Ria shrugged. “I’m mainly interested in their value… and if you could refill any scrolls you test, that would help me out.”

“Hahaha, guess I could do that. Scrolls always require special care to certify, since they are often single-use items. This amount should only take me an hour or so. Did you want to wait here?” Master Rigure asked.

Ria shook her head. “Leon and I have things to do. We’ll stop by again afterward.”

“Very well then. Shanna can see you out,” Master Rigure said but called out to her as they were leaving, “Ria, be aware that your provisional certification doesn’t permit you to teach licensed magics to others not licensed. Don’t teach young Leon anything problematic.”

“Thank you. I’ll be careful,” Ria replied. She had expected as much but was still grateful for the warning.