Proofread: CBRRacer

The banquet took pretty long time to disperse. The kids who were weary me of me, in the beginning, were now clinging to me as they merrily laughed among each other. Compared to the adults, I felt more comfortable being with these kids, but the onee-sans clinging to me was something that I didn't bother me at all. Cough, cough! Anyways, by the time everything came to an end, I was so exhausted that I succumbed to sleep the moment I reached my new home.

Speaking of home, there was nothing like a bed or any other furniture inside. There was only a single room, I think all the other houses too only have a single room. All the people in a family apparently ate and slept in the same room. I wonder if the boys don’t need private space for their ecchi stuff.

I was provided with a straw pillow, which, to be honest, felt surprisingly comfortable. There were no blankets since they didn’t have the financial ability to afford one nor the resource or knowledge to make one by themselves. And on that day for the first time, I slept on the ground.

The next day, I woke up to the sounds of loud voices. For a moment I thought we were in some sort of danger. I mean, this is all new to me and so I was overly conscious of my surroundings. There is no way I can just settle down and feel comfortable with this surrounding in a day or something. These things take time, you know. Anyways, I soon realized that the loud sounds were actually cheers of the village onee-sans and so I decided to check out the commotion. As soon I exited the house, I was immediately welcomed by the smiling onee-sans who seemed to had come back from the bog iron mine. This time, instead of surrounding me, they waved their hands at me when our eyes met. The inside of their palm sort of reddish color which I attributed to the red stone from the swamp. They had all just returned from the bog iron swamp with the first load of iron rocks, that’s why they were cheering. It seems like they will be doing two to three trips a day. One of the ladies told me that the swamp had so many red rocks in and around it that they might need years to deplete these red rocks. That’s a good news I guess, as they won’t have to worry about the taxes for some time. The advantage of this kind of iron ore source is that the underwater spring will keep on bringing deposits of iron, so in time the number of rocks will go up if we leave it be for a year or so.

After I saw off the energetic ladies, I decided to take a stroll around the village. I actually wanted to meet with the grandma, so this short stroll will end when I meet with her. Like I told you before, the grandma is the highest authority here. And this authority isn’t hereditary as she can pass it over to whoever she deems fit. But the new chosen one has to be supported by at least half the villagers, that includes children that are 16 or older. In other words, when a child turns 16 he or she turns to an adult. That’s why, Euthe-kun who is 17, is already an adult. Sensei said she had classified the population in this village using criteria from my old world and hence she had concluded that there were no kids here. But now that she has obtained new information, she properly classified Euthe-kun to ‘adult man’ category.

On the way, I met with the kids from yesterday. The energetic lot were playing in the vast open spaces, running around and having loads of fun. And when one of them spotted me, he dashed towards me while shouting out my name. Soon the entire gathering of kids was surrounding me, my clothes being clutched in their small and cute hands. Soon I was dragged into their little games but I actually had fun with the kids. The games we played didn’t change much from the ones I knew, like tag, hide and seek etc. Of course, I held back my self so that I matched with the kids, but it was fun playing around without a care in the world. W played around for some time then some of the more curious bunch wanted to know more about me. They asked for my name, where I was from and a few other questions. By the time I split up from them it was already noon, but the time we spend together made us grow closer, I felt like I had become the older brother of the brats.

After I bid them goodbye, I continued my leisurely stroll. I was a little hungry but decided to continue anyway. While I was busy observing the village and gathering information about it, I came across Euthe-kun. He had a gentle smile on his face when he started talking to me, which was a little refreshing as it was different from his usual serious demeanor. It was then he told me that he was just about to fire up the furnaces to check its functionality. And thus it was decided that I will accompany him while he fires it up.

The boy sure works fast, I mean, he had already finished seven furnaces in less than a day’s time. Well, I did draw a rough diagram of a furnace on the ground after sensei advised me to, even then this earth magic thing really makes things much easier. I was thinking that they would need at least week or so to finish with the furnace construction. Apparently, the earth wall with fireproof lining was all achieved with magic. So were the pipes to blow air and the air compressor too. The compressor had an earthen piston. Even if I say piston, it’s not that flashy. It’s just a fifteen-centimeter or so thick hollow cylinder with an earth handle on top.

The cylinder body was of knee length, I approximated it to be of 50cm or something. The body had an outlet to the furnace connected with clay pipes. Two small holes were carved out of the cylinder body, some 20cm from the cylinder top. On its way down, the piston will block the air from escaping by the closing the inlets with its body and on its way back up, the inlets are uncovered, letting air to fill the body once again. The top part of the piston had a layer of clay, think of it as a coating of sort. This was to make sure air did not escape because of the uneven surface of the piston circumference and the cylinder body.

All in all, a pretty good setup. It might not be very efficient, but for such a small startup, this isn’t that bad. Everything obtained simply through magic.

Speaking of magic, I gathered some really good information. This world doesn’t encourage chants and spells, they are chantless. The requirement too is not anything hard, you just need a good imagination about the effect, properties, and other parameters. Just because that is the only requirement doesn’t mean anyone can use magic. Seems like, you need to have an aptitude for magic or else you won’t be able to invoke magic at all. Those with magic affinity are required to undergo elemental affinity test. There are four elements in total, fire, wind, water and earth magic. The thing about elemental affinity is, if you don't have an affinity for a particular element, then you won’t be able to use the magic of that particular element. In other words, fire users can only invoke fire based magic and can’t invoke magic that falls under water or wind or earth.

But from what I heard from sensei told me, there are three more categories: holy magic, dark magic, and space-time magic. Seems like only the first four are common and the other three extremely rare. I should ask sensei to give a detailed report later when I have time. And when I asked her why she knows all these things, the answer she gave was,

That’s what I was told. A living library, I guess. At this point, I have no other option but consider as a living being. That AI has gotten so human like that it scares me sometimes.

Anyway, the furnaces were loaded with iron ore and charcoal, and once it was adequately filled, Euthe-kun used his fire magic to light the charcoal. Since there was just the two of us, I became his assistant and helped him with the air compressor.

My task was relatively simple, I only had to push down the piston on his signal. It was simple in the beginning, but when the process lasted more than a couple of hours I was exhausted mentally as well as physically. Once he put out the flame, Euthe-kun thrust his hand into the furnace to grab the smelted iron and then began hammering it, with a proper hammer. I was thinking that he was going to do that with his hands too. Like I thought, magic has some downsides which I am yet to understand. After a long hammering session, which lasted almost an hour, Euthe-kun inspected the iron carefully. He tilted the iron in various direction, sometimes smelling or even licking it. And when he was done, he turned towards and started glaring at me. There he goes again with the glares.

‘Sensei, did something go wrong? He’s glaring at me more intently than the first time?’, I started conversing with google sensei telepathically.

‘Is the quality too bad? Else he won’t stare at me like that, will he?’, I arrived at a conclusion based on Euthe-kun’s reaction.

‘What are you saying sensei? If it’s good then why can't we use it? Ah! I see that’s what you meant’

‘So when the information about such a high-quality iron reaches the duke or other men in power, they would with all their might want to snatch it away. Sigh! This has gotten troublesome in an instant’

From sensei’s words, I could clearly understand what he was trying to imply. Another war might break out for this iron ore mine and its smelting knowledge. Did I make things worse than they were?

That is the only option for now, isn’t it? I think that with the flame and earth magic unless you have hell lot of mana, it is impossible to keep up the smelting process for a long time. So I guess, the chances of people trying to smelt it again will be next to none. Also, people seem to not want to overuse their magic, the reason to which I am yet to discover.

With a long sigh, I slowly walk towards youth who was still glaring at me. And when I was sufficiently close to him, he averted his eyes away, maybe because he realized he was being rude to me.

“Euthe-kun, let’s stop it here, ok? You have already realized that ‘once’ is more than enough, right?” I tried to be as calm and friendly as possible. I didn't want to sound threatening, but I feel like my words were on the threat side.

Fortunately, instead of feeling threatened, as if he understood the hidden meaning behind my question, he nodded his head vigorously.

Once the experimenting phase was done with the next phase, of teaching others how to smelt, was put into action without delay. I too took part in the process as I had nothing else to do. The hammering work was left to Euthe-kun while the others tried to smelt the iron. Failures would only lead to bad quality iron, which in this case was not a problem at all, as even the failed version was good enough to be considered as good enough. In between, Euthe-kun gave me lessons on how to hammer iron and so when Euthe-kun got tired, I took over the hammering process. It goes without saying, but 90% of the ones I hammered were failures.

For the next few days, the village women altered between housekeeping and iron smelting. The children were playing around most of the times and the only time they became busy was to run errands for their mothers. It was the same with me too, either pushing down the piston or hammering the burning red iron, my next few days at the village was a complete hell. But during these hellish days the bond I shared with the village deepened even more. We talked, laughed, teased each other as we worked out bodies hard. The onee-san’s would often tease me how bad my stamina was, even going as far as saying my wife wouldn't be satisfied at all. My ears always turned bright red with embarrassment from those type of comments. Shame on you ladies.

The iron ingots kept piling up as days passed but the iron ore deposit was yet to show any signs of depletion after all the swamp was freaking huge. The village in the outskirts of the Rayhaven slowly began to transform from a settlement without men into a village of lots of sisters, brothers, mothers and a grandma.