Chapter 22 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 22: Prisoner of Mirror Lake 08
Before Cecilia left, she untied the money pouch from her waist and handed it to Violet.
Violet didn't open it in front of Cecilia, but the money pouch didn’t seem like it contained sixty-odd silver coins as expected. She quietly thought that if the amount fell short, she would simply work to earn and repay the difference.
After Cecilia left, Violet opened the money pouch to count it and was immediately shocked.
This was a pouch of gold coins.
The pouch was filled halfway with gleaming gold coins. At a glance, there were at least twenty or thirty of them.
"Wow, this is what gold coins look like now. Did your town issue these? They're much better looking than those ugly king's heads that humans used to print." She contentedly waved it in front of Lucita's face: "How about that? Not only am I not short of money, I can even pay you rent."
As she spoke, she counted out eight gold coins and handed them to Lucita: "Here, principal and interest returned."
Violet gleefully counted her money on the side while Lucita didn't know whether to laugh or sigh.
Lucita had thought Violet saying she'd work for her was a joke. She hadn't expected her to actually refuse the high priestess's invitation and enthusiastically insist on staying.
Although she could obtain quality labor just by providing room and board, Lucita's farm wasn't large. The workload was actually at capacity. She alone was sufficient to complete all the farming, animal husbandry, and other work. There was no work to give Violet.
However, Violet obviously knew how to market herself and proactively found a job: "Your farm is too small. How much income can one quarter yield? I'll help you expand the backyard wall toward the forest behind. We can expand quite a large area, plant it all with vegetables, and double your income at harvest. Besides, with more space, it'll be much more convenient to raise sheep and geese in the future."
Lucita was tempted.
It wasn't that she hadn't thought about expanding the yard. It was just that this work showed no short-term returns, and she needed daily expenses, so she'd shelved it.
Now with an almost free labor force, it would be a waste not to do it.
So the two agreed.
Since she was providing lodging, Lucita couldn’t let Violet continue sleeping on the study floor. That would be improper.
Lucita decided to go to Skloot's the next day to order a wooden bed to put in the study. The bookshelf could be moved to the living room, turning the study into a proper bedroom for Violet.
Skloot wasn't home in the morning. Her daughter, little Jessica, was minding the shop.
Jessica's hair color was different from her mother's. Skloot's hair was short brown curls, while Jessica's was straight brownish-red short hair. With gray-blue eyes and a nose full of freckles, she looked like a lively little sparrow.
"Hello, Jessica." Lucita greeted: "Where's your mother?"
"My mom went out to buy pepper, we ran out at home. She'll be back soon.” Jessica’s bright eyes flickered with curiosity: "What would you like to order, sister? You can tell me too. I'm already ten years old."
Lucita smiled and said gently: "I want to make an oak bed, two meters wide. Can you pass that along to your mother? Just say Lucita wants it."
"Okay, sister." Jessica very seriously flipped through the ledger on the counter: "A two-meter oak bed is fifty silver coins, three-day construction period, can be delivered to your home. Sister, you need to prepay five as a deposit."
Lucita counted out five coins and placed them on the counter. She also left a message for Skloot in the message box on the counter, then left.
Setting aside the five gold coins for buying the bed, she weighed the remaining dozen-plus silver coins and three gold coins in her hand.
Her finances seemed relatively ample on the surface, but if there were another sudden expense like this, she definitely couldn't withstand it.
She decided to go hunting more often before the crops matured to save up some nest egg. Ideally, she wouldn't need to hunt anymore after spring ended.
But another problem arose.
Violet at home couldn't cook, and going to the tavern every day was impractical. When she went out hunting, what would Violet eat?
If it were herself, she could make a space to store food...
Wait!
Why couldn't she try making a space for Violet?
Lucita seemed to see a new use for spatial creation.
She decided to give it a try.
Lucita picked up a stone and casually created a small space, handing it to Violet: "I created a space inside this stone. Can you try opening it?"
Violet shook her head while accepting it, examining the stone from all angles: "What do you want to do? I don't have spatial talent. I can't open alternate dimensions."
As expected.
Lucita wasn't discouraged and decided to add a key to this space.
A key belonging to Violet.
She thought for a moment: "Can you give me a drop of blood?"
"You want to create a space I can use?" Violet curiously leaned over, while wiping her small knife across her finger: "Here. Has spatial magic advanced this far? I remember in my time, the dragon race still couldn't create spaces for others to use."
Of course not. I'm just fumbling around myself.
Lucita held back from saying this aloud.
She envisioned two ways to bind a space to a specific person: one was to integrate a wisp of soul's aura, the other was to integrate the body's aura.
For the current Lucita, the soul was a very mysterious thing, not yet a level she could touch.
But the body's aura was much easier to grasp, especially after her sense of smell gained enhancement across world layers.
Violet's blood smelled of a refreshing quality of plants and trees. Lucita didn't know if this was an elven characteristic or unique to her.
Lucita used that wisp of freshness as a marker, guiding it into the main spatial nodes of the stone.
In the world layer belonging to space, spatial nodes were physical objects, while that wisp of aura was incorporeal, something only Lucita with her special sense of smell could grasp.
Physical entities would collide with each other, but incorporeal and physical could coexist.
As that wisp of aura merged with the spatial nodes, the spatial nodes seemed to turn slightly green.
Then, from point to line, the pale green aura began to travel along the spatial connections, finally permeating the entire spatial barrier.
She had marked this space with "Violet's imprint."
Lucita handed the modified stone back to her: "Try it again now?"
Violet raised her eyebrows with interest and reached out to accept it.
The moment it entered her hand, Violet felt something.
This stone gave her a very intimate feeling, making her want to feel it more.
Her consciousness slightly immersed, and she saw a pale green square space.
She picked up a cup of goat's milk from the table. With a thought, that cup of goat's milk steadily appeared in the space, while her hand was already empty.
"So this is what using an alternate dimension feels like." Violet played with the stone in her hand with great interest.
Lucita’s mind raced.
Guiding specific auras to permeate space could mark the space, allowing people without spatial abilities to use alternate dimensions.
Then, if she left aura channels in advance—that is, left a place in the space for marking—wouldn't any person be able to claim the space and use it freely just by dropping a drop of blood on it?
Lucita picked up another stone, wanting to try again.
This attempt encountered difficulties.
First, auras were incorporeal in the spatial world layer and could initially merge with physical spatial nodes entirely through her guidance.
Then, if stable channels were to remain in space, the channels had to be physical entities in the same dimension as the spatial nodes. But how could a physical channel guide incorporeal auras?
Unless the channel and the aura to be guided were in the same dimension.
Did auras have their own dimension?
Lucita suddenly remembered that night when her sense of smell recovered.
Countless aromas drilled into her nostrils, far or near, thick or thin. Between heaven and earth, it seemed only scents were real.
That was—the world layer of scents!
Elves could enter the life layer, dragons could enter the spatial layer, merfolk could enter the mental layer, humans could enter the magical layer. So far, the main world layers Lucita knew of were only these four, but a world couldn't possibly have only four layers.
The void where Violet had been, the souls Violet could see... These were all world layers.
Then why not scents?
Thinking about it now, the "life" and "death" she smelled couldn't be smelled in the surface world, they probably also came from the scent layer.
And Lucita happened to have a nose that could perceive the real.
She entered that world again, the world full of scents.
This time opening the stone space again, the spatial nodes were intangible incorporeal entities, while the aromas became physical.
With a thought, she drew a hollow aroma channel along the spatial veins, merging with the phantom of the spatial nodes.
Stable, physical, capable of containing aromas, merged with spatial nodes.
All four conditions were met. Lucita's purpose was achieved.
She returned to the surface world and experimented with Violet again: "This time, drop a drop of blood on it?"
Violet complied.
From an elf's perspective, of course no change could be seen, but in Lucita's eyes, that wisp of pale green aroma diffused from the blood, permeating the entire space along the aroma channel.
She nodded with satisfaction and asked Violet: "Now try opening it?"
"Wow." Violet successfully opened this space and was immediately somewhat surprised: "It's hard to imagine that after the extinction of the dragon race, darlings of space, mixed-bloods with only a trace of spatial power could accomplish what even the dragon race couldn't."
Lucita didn't know how to tell her that spatial power was indeed very weak in mixed-bloods' hands, and today's progress was something she'd just figured out. It probably wasn't due to any wisdom but rather her own special constitution.
The main reason was the contradiction between not having money to buy frost boxes and the urgent need for food preservation.
Lucita's mental energy was greatly depleted. She collapsed on the sofa and caught her breath, but her eyes were bright and shining.
Now that spaces she created could be used by others, she could process stones and sell them as frost boxes!
The maximum size of the space Lucita could currently create was ten liters, with a time limit of maintaining it for one week.
This size was a hundred times smaller than frost boxes that were easily one cubic meter, and the maintenance time was too short. It could only be used as a short-term consumable, very impractical with difficulty finding a market.
But that didn't matter. Now that she grasped the basic principle, with her spatial ability expanding tenfold in one month, the day when she could manufacture and sell frost boxes at no cost was truly just around the corner.
And this was also a monopoly!
Lucita's lunch today tasted especially good. A bowl of tomato and egg noodles seemed to taste like a grand feast at a festival.
After lunch, having recovered some depleted mental energy, she created three ten-liter spaces for Violet in one go. Pebbles of various sizes arranged on the dining table.
Then she took Violet shopping for vegetables—incidentally teaching Violet to recognize vegetable varieties. They visited both Aurora's mill and Ida's butcher shop, even making a detour to Mavis's place to buy half a wild boar.
When people asked about Violet on the road, she said "a friend of mine who recently moved here." Since Irttat and the elven race's relationship had recently begun warming up, no one questioned it.
Of course, after a few days, when other elves traveled great distances to move back to the nearby forest one after another, Violet became even less conspicuous.
Speaking of which, they bought a lot of meat and vegetables. Lucita worked in the kitchen for an entire afternoon. By the time all the bowls and plates in the cupboard were occupied and she was covered in cooking smoke smell, she'd finally prepared Violet's food about right.
Sealed in the spaces for these few days, she could eat fresh meals every day.
Lucita really had the exhausted feeling of raising a child.
Fortunately, Violet was very hardworking. After watering the vegetable garden in the morning, she'd already started dismantling the backyard wall in the afternoon and seemed to be working with great enthusiasm.
Lucita counted out her feathered arrows from the toolbox, wiped down the longbow once more, and put them back. The next day she could depart anytime.
The sun had set. Tomorrow it would rise as usual again.
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