Chapter 116: Chapter 112: Mud men

"I made all my generals out of mud."

Napoleon Bonaparte

‘What did I want to do? Who did I want to be?’ Uncle Cephas question and my answer reverberated around in my head. Taking up my time as I thought about it. I had been quite addicted to making the numbers go up when I first appeared in this world which had all sorts of unexpected consequences, from Grandpa putting me forward for nobility to accidentally crippling myself.

Yes I wanted to have an impact. I wanted to build something better than what we had here in Wester, bring the town and people from medieval town I found myself living in to something closer to my modern sensibilities. Plumbing, water on tap, wind power, water power, maybe even electricity one day. I wanted to build something and have the freedom to do so which seemed to mean that I had to become a Lord in order to defend my and our independence.

At the same time this was a new world a literally magical world that I wanted to go out and see as well. But it was a world that filled with sea monsters where we lived on the edge of the map. So to go out there I needed to be stronger or I would be swallowed whole.

My mother was happy to have me stay here on the island and sing for my supper, my father would support me sailing, my sister support the building of a merchant empire while my grandfather just wanted, needed to make me strong. Lady Acacia seemed determined to make me a strong enough lord to decide my own fate. But as a Lord would I have the freedom to travel or indulge my whims. The more responsibilities one had the tighter you were tied sometimes. To the land, to the people to your family restrictions could come in many forms. Who did I want to be? Did I have to choose? I just needed more time to do all the things I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be limited I wanted to be able to do everything.

. . .

When we visited Romeo and his children, Rand, Rolf and Raina it was nice to have a break from the mental woolgathering over my future. I mean how many 3 year olds really know what they want to be? If my first mother from my former life was to be believed the first time I went through infancy I wanted to be a knight errant with a magical car solving problems which always had a happy ending but second time around I knew that for the fantasy it was.

Visiting the tile making family was a much needed break to the spiral I had found myself orbiting. We failed to pick up any skills for whatever reason but I enjoyed playing in the mud with Uncle Romeo and cousins Rand and Rolf. There was a trick to cutting the clay and making their tiles and they were experts at it. They had two versions of tiles. Ones that were baked in the sun and those that they fired in the ovens. One was cheaper than the other and didn’t last quite as long. But the cost for the more expensive was significantly higher as you had to factor in the cost of the trees that they burned in the ovens.

As I got to see the process first hand I wondered about the possibilities in improving ovens, were solar or mana powered ovens possible. We were living in a hopefully extinct volcano maybe there was geothermal power that we could tap if we went deep enough. My daydreaming was taken advantage of by Rolf the youngest of Uncle Romeo’s two sons.

“Kai.” He called out.

I turned to get a face full of mud. That was the last time I was leaving my HUD off. Too often I treated life as harmless only to come a cropper when I least expected. Although if you were already expecting it would it really be a surprise. I reached down to gather my own pile of mud. Time to put my throwing skill to work. Uncle Romeo had not called out his son for his behaviour so I assumed the morning’s work was over. The oven’s filled and the tiles already laid out for the sun to bake them they would collect them tomorrow.

“Rolf, heads up.” I lobbed a small ball of mud in a high arch up into the air. He looked up stepping aside to let it miss him by a mile. What he missed was the second mud ball I had launched as soon as he looked up.

It splattered nicely all over his head as he turned to say, “Ha, miss . . .” his words cut short by a mouthful of mud.

“Play dirty games you are going to end up muddy.” Rand laughed at his younger brother.

The verbal prod was not a lot but it was enough to unite the two of us younger siblings against him. We took caution to afford spoiling the tiles we had made or go anywhere near Uncle Romeo who by some unspoken rule was not involved in the mud brawl that developed.

After ended covered in mud we finally called it a day and headed back to their home. It had not been a bad work out for my skills Throwing, Dodge, Ambidextrous and Quick Reflexes. The three skills had allowed me to hold my own with the two boys who both had a lot more practice at this game than I had and were both significantly older than I was. But the skills that had allowed me to excel at it was the amalgamation that I had used to create my HUD. Mana Sense and Echolocation allowed me to lob the mud ball at them with frightening accuracy even when I was out of line of sight and they were unable to accurately target me in return. Timing the arcs to land on them while under enemy fire had even given me a surprise level in a skill that had not leveled in forever.

Ding! Time sense (Lv51)

As much as I was not a fan of Grandfather’s habit of lobbing things at us during training. This morning’s mud fight proved the effectiveness of his training method. Rolf and I had done so well in pining down his older brother that through some unspoken bond of brothers Rolf and switched sides to join his brother in trying to pin me down. My ability to target them from out of line of sight meant that they struggled to keep me pinned down as once I was out of their sight I could keep up a running game of peppering them with mud balls while moving from cover to cover.

“That’s enough boys.” Uncle Romeo called an end to our impromptu battle.

“Aw, Dad. We were about to get him good.” Rolf said as he stood up from where they had been creeping to where they thought I was.

“I’m not sure about that.” Uncle Romeo said sardonically. “Stand up Kai.” I stood up from where I had been crawling up behind them. The benefit to my stature was I could hide a lot better than they could behind cover that would never have covered them. Allowing me to circle round behind them without realizing.

“Dang it.” Rolf grumped as he silently resolved to practice a little more with his brother.

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Rand snorted at my success of making my way round behind their larger figures. I had two balls of mud ready to throw and due to my skill Ambidextrous I was ready to do so with both of them one for each of them.

Thankfully they had both pulled their punches with me using smaller mud balls when aiming at me than when compared with one another and taking care that the balls were more mud than clay which would have been painful. Not that it wasn’t anyway. I returned to their home with a few more bruises than I had left with in the morning.

. . .

Once again Aleera and I had been split up that morning before we headed off. Outside of our family and Uncle Aaron there seemed to be a clear declination of what was considered man’s and woman’s work in what was being passed down to their children. Aleera had stayed back with Raina but it turned out that they had gone to her mother’s to work there. They had made smaller pieces from clay in a smaller oven but had glazed them and added pigments to bring colour to their work. I had laughed at my sister’s work. It looked much like a primary child’s effort at making a pot. I wondered if it would even hold water. It was a pale imitation of the piece that Raina brought home from working with her mother.

“Lucky, we don’t make our money from pottery otherwise we would soon be impoverished.” I laughed as Aleera showed us her piece. She scowled at my critique but could hardly refute my point. It was not a beautiful piece unlike the piece that Raina had made.

“I’d like to see you do better. At least I don’t look like I spent the day rolling around in mud.” She came back with a critique of her own. “Mother is hardly going to love the state of your clothes. Let alone Lady Acacia if she catches you looking like you do.”

“It’s a piece only a mother would love. The mud was Rolf’s fault,” I paused, “and Rand’s.” I had not got away scot free in the initial chaos of the great mud battle. I might need to go for a swim on the way back home. It would be hard to get any dirty than I already was and hopefully the water would loosen up the dirt that packed into the clothes I was wearing.

“So what are you going to say to Mother about your clothing?” Aleera asked.

“That Grandfather suggested some play fights with my cousins.” I thought out loud always happy to blame on my Grandfather any thing that I was going to get into trouble for. I mean he would have approved of the Great Mud Battle and the improvement in my skills. It would have been really nice to get Danger Sense or something similar from it but I guess the mud meant I was never in too much danger.

“At least you gave as good as you got judging by the state of their clothes.” She replied in commiseration.

We sailed our way back home with a little dip at the beginning to allow me to try and get the worst off before attempting to dry it off on the way back to the island. We had nearly made it home when we were caught. It was all very well having my HUD on keeping me aware of my hidden surroundings when Lady Acacia was sitting at the end of the hall waiting for us anyway and could see us as soon as we could see her when we entered the hall.

“At last the wayward duo returned.” She raised an eyebrow taking in the state of our or rather my clothing. “Looking a little the worse for wear.” She added. “We cannot have the Lord of the Silversea looking like he has spent the morning rolling with pigs. I was under the illusion that there were no types of domesticated swine on the island. Have you found some Kai?” she asked.

Aleera stepped out of the line of fire.

“Has your long weekend been productive at least?”

“Yes, very. I have gained the skills Blacksmithing, Measurement, Carpentry, Mining and leveled up several other skills.”

“Gaining skills is always a productive use of your time, but you are aware that the number of nobles who specializing in tradesman crafts are far and few between. They are hardly going to test you on your ability to forge nails, build a door, dig up lump of metal . . . or throw mudballs at one another.” She added pointedly.

“There’s no reason I can’t excel at both.” I defended our use of the last couple of days.

“Maybe, maybe not. But you must excel at your magical studies, your martial training, your governance and the arts first and foremost before you look at what your cousins can teach you. Else you will not be able to defend whatever you might make later on down the line.” She argued. “Especially, your magical studies if you hope to increase the number of magicians your house can command.”

“Let’s tidy you up a little bit before your mother sees you young master.” She said before she opened her mouth once more “Take a big breath now.” Was all the warning I had before, "Nerano Katharizo." I found myself enveloped in a ball of water which scoured both me and my clothes clean.

"There much better." she said. "Time for lunch. Don't forget to dry yourself off."

Aleera sniggered as I found myself drying myself off for the second time.

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