Chapter 129: Chapter 121 – Return to Edgeworth

I stretched my arms and gazed up at the beautiful starscape above.

The moons weren't out unfortunately, but to me it was still bright enough that I didn't have any real issues seeing my surroundings. At most it could be compared to an overcast day or something to a human.

Managing to reach the 101st floor fountain room felt nice, but it also made me wonder just how deep the dungeon went. Even when I considered the weird quirk of having two entrances, it was far past the depth of the Knossos dungeon. While I didn't know what was the typical depth, it was pretty doubtful that there were many other dungeons this deep.

In fact, considering how special Hourai Mountain seemed to be by the world's culture, it was possible it was the deepest.

I hoped that eventually I would find the bottom of the dungeon.

No, I'll manage it, regardless of how many years it would take.

But all that aside, I looked to my left. There was still things I needed to do first. Such a goal wasn't really much of a priority and could be left until more pressing things were dealt with.

I stretched out my wings and while deactivating [Materialize], I took to the air.

 

The forest canopy blew past at high speeds. Even without pushing myself the leaves were almost a blur despite how good my senses were.

But despite the swiftness of my wings, it still took quite a while before the gaps between the trees became visible. Then further then when the trees opened up to a field where a dirt road eventually started.

The sight of familiar walls rose up from the horizon and approached.

I swooped down and when my feet touched the grass below, I erased my wings and [Materialize]'d myself.

The sky was still filled with the stars' radiance, but it shouldn't have been too long before the sun would transgress on their territory. Knowing that, I tugged on my hood and confirmed that I was properly covered before making the rest of the way on foot.

[We've really come, haven't we?]

[That's right. I suppose in a sense this is where it all started? Things keep coming back to this little place.]

[You've been to my village before, Scarlet?]

[I have. Once.]

Thinking back, it was right after Alicia had died. Way before her consciousness had returned.

To be honest, it was a sad place. The people there were incredibly poor and it felt like it was only a few steps away from being abandoned.

[I'm sorry you have to come here again.]

As someone who was born in that village, it seemed like Alicia really understood how little value her home had.

But seven still...

[Really? I'm happy.]

[Why?]

[I'm thinking of meeting your parents this time.]

[Wha?! No, but, do you really need to?]

[I do. They are your first family after all. Even if to you they're not people you feel attached to, to me, they're are people I'm thankful for.]

[Why?]

[Because it was thanks to them that I met you.]

It was an embarrassing thing to say, and was enough to make my cheeks feel like they had hot coals pressing against them.

[...]

It seemed like Alicia felt the same way, so in a sense it was worth saying.

We didn't spend long walking in silence before being forced to stop.

Like the last time I approached this village, I managed to make it to the gates without the guard on the relatively low walls from noticing. It made me wonder if the there really was that few things here that warranted his attention, or if guy was simply unmotivated.

"Hello?"

But despite calling out, there wasn't any response. There was a hit on [Presence Detection] above the gate on one side, but it didn't move in the slightest.

I didn't really want to yell, so I gave up and stood there waiting for the sun to blare out with all its harsh radiance. Maybe then there'll be a response.

Now that things had come so close, yet I had nothing to do for the moment, my nerves started to fray all of a sudden. There really shouldn't have been any reason for it. I've done all the preparations I could, repeatedly checked everything, and even confirmed all the details that I could.

The chances of anything going wrong was infinitesimal.

But even then, when confronted with the thought that maybe I've overlooked something, I couldn't help but have anxiety bubble up.

In the end, I opened up my skills and checked them once again.

"...!"

There didn't seem to be any problems, but still...

"...iss! ...ay?"

Normally the only way to make sure that there wasn't any bugs in a program was to run it. A single test run was worth a thousands checks after all.

"...ear us? ...ey!"

But I'd only have one shot at this, so testing it wasn't an option. As a programmer, it really was the worst situation. So far, my successes at running a new skill without testing was only one out of two. Pretty bad odds when failure wasn't an option.

"Master?"

Claret shook my shoulders, knocking me out of my thoughts.

"Huh? What is it...?"

As I turned to look over my shoulder, the fact that there were four people standing in front of me with worried expressions on their faces registered in my mind.

"Oh, umm...hi."

"That was quite amazing. I've never seen anyone so in thought before."

The others nodded in sync with each other.

"Well, it happens."

There really wasn't much for me to say.

"Yea, but even still while so close to the village, doing it outside the walls?"

The other three nodded in sync again.

"Well, it can happen."

"It did, since we saw it."

Once again the three others nodded in sync.

"Umm...anyways..."

I moved to their side.

"Oh yea, sorry. Let's go."

This time without nodding, the trio followed their leader out from the open gates while I turned to continue inside.

"Hey miss, aren't you the one who came last year?"

Stopping in front of the guard manning the open gate, he asked that question.

"I did come last year..."

(Who's this guy again?)

I couldn't remember him at all.

"Ah, I suppose you don't remember me? Well, I remember you. Not many people come through this gate, and almost all of them are people from this village. In fact, you're the only outsider to have used this gate in the last year!"

"I that so?"

If that was the case, it made sense for him to remember me despite how long it had been since I had come.

"Still, looks like you struck it rich! Those robes are really nice!"

"Thanks. I got to know a really good tailor."

Really, Anthousai was really amazing. If only she could tone down some of her more difficult quirks a bit.

"Anyways, welcome back to Edgeworth!"

The guard waved his hand and stepped to the side.

"Don't you need to see my ID or something?"

"Nah! Don't worry about it. That's mostly just for people I don't recognize! And how can I waste the time of someone who did so much for our little village!"

"What do you mean?"

Nothing really came up when said that.

"I mean, you sold a lot of food for quite cheap at the Adventurers' Guild, bought lots of things at Mint's shop, donated tons of food to some of our people, and I heard you even started some sort of business with Mint? He's been bringing in so much more food lately, you've really saved us all!"

"Ah, umm, well, I'm glad things are working out then."

At best, I could only actually remember half of those things, but I couldn't see any reason for the guard to lie about it, so the others must have been true, even if they were likely blown out of proportion.

"Well, I mean, things are better, though only barely..."

But against my expectations, the atmosphere grew dark in practically an instant.

"But that's not your problem! It's nothing for you to worry about!"

As if that grimness was a lie, the guard immediately perked up.

"Anyways, again, welcome to Edgeworth!"

And with those words, he finally let me through the gates and I quickly took advantage of that.

 

[I think this is the one.]

[I think...so too...maybe?]

[You don't sound very sure.]

[I didn't really walk around by myself before after all.]

[Well, true.]

We were standing in front of a particular home. It, like pretty much all the buildings of this village, was of a simple design. Straw roofed, brown uneven walls with what might have been bits of hay sticking out of the brown material it was made from. The windows were large to let lots of light inside, but half of them were covered to block the cold autumn wind.

If I remembered right, this was the one I had found that was probably Alicia's home. Though I could be misremembering, or I could've been wrong the first time in general. I didn't exactly do a good job confirming it after all.

And Alicia was blind in life, so figuring out one location from another would have been quite difficult. She had been lead around by hand by her siblings or parents any time she went outside after all.

Hell, she was usually lead or carried around even inside of her home most of the time, so it wouldn't be a surprise that her sense of direction was completely abysmal.

[Well, all we can do is try it.]

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[...Yes.]

[You nervous?]

[I am...I mean, what do I say? What should I do?]

[Frankly, nothing.]

[Nothing?]

[That's right. You shouldn't say nor do anything. At least to anyone aside from us.]

[Why?]

[Because it would incite trouble. The very idea that it's possible for the dead to return to life would be quite disrupting.]

[You mean, like someone would ask you to bring back their dead family or friends?]

[If it was only that far, it wouldn't be so bad. Refusing them would be easy. But what if it was someone with a serious regret? Regretting not being able to do or say something for someone who had died? If it was a regret they had carried with them deeply for years with no indication of it weakening? Something to the point of being obsessed about it?]

[I see. Even if you refuse someone like that, even if you have the perfect argument against it, someone like that wouldn't listen, would they?]

[Exactly. And if they had a chance of being able to let go of that regret, that chance would go away the moment that they think it was possible for the dead to return, even if it actually wasn't possible.]

[It won't only be bad for us, but for that person as well is it? Then letting people know, or even suspect that reviving someone is possible is really bad then.]

[It is. Though technically this will be a reincarnation rather than a revival though. But to others, the difference is merely incidental.]

I stepped up to the door.

[Well, anyways, tell me when you remember which room was the one you slept in.]

[Alright.]

With the conversation over for now, I knocked on the door. There was a tired sounding acknowledgement from inside, and a few moments later a gaunt man appeared from behind it.

"Yes? Who might it...be...?"

The man's almost glazed expression quickly sharpened up as he saw me, obviously seeing something he wasn't expecting at all.

"Did you have a daughter named Alicia by any chance?"

"Ah, umm...I...yes, I did."

Shock and confusion, then sorrow flickered on his face as he looked down, but eventually he looked right back at me and confirmed it.

"Do you mind if I come in? I have something to talk about her."

"Right, right. Sure, come right in."

Worry and more confusion was on his face, but it looked like he had resolved himself of something.

The inside the house was quite simple as well. Immediately after the entrance was a large open space with a dirt floor and an open fire pit in the middle with a large pot of something simmering hanging from a simple cooking stand. Simple items like woven baskets or clay pots were standing along the walls, some on crudely made shelves. There were dried plants were hanging from the ceiling or the walls. I wasn't sure if they were decorative or if there was a practical reason why they were there, as most weren't flowering. There were some open doorways to other rooms but I couldn't their purposes from my position.

Near the burning fire pit was a large table surrounded by crudely shaped seats. There was a tired looking woman and extremely thin looking children sitting at the table working on something. They all looked up at me as I entered.

"Ah, umm..."

I should have known, and expected it, but being confronted by Alicia's whole family was surprisingly daunting, especially with what I was about to say. But it was far too late for me to turn back now, on multiple fronts.

"Before anything, I wanted to thank you all."

For starters I bowed my head to all of them. It quickly turned into a flurry of surprised and flustered shouts and exclamations, but I ignored the details.

"I know it's confusing, but let me explain. I come from a settlement quite a distance from here, and by chance, while I didn't realize it at the time, I was saved by a child of this household, Alicia."

"Alicia?! Is she...?"

The older woman asked with tears running down her face. But obviously I couldn't give her the news she wanted, no matter how I felt about it. And that very fact suffocated me, like a vice that crushed my chest.

"She succumbed to an illness close to a year ago."

The woman, Alicia's mother, fell back onto her chair as if the strings were cut from her body and she gazed despondently into her lap. The children's' responses varied, mostly by their age. Some had sour looks on their faces while others shook their elder siblings, asking what I meant.

From there, I continued to explain what had happened, leaving out any details regarding where we lived and Alicia's fate after her death.

In turn, they were able to make a connection with some things I had done in the beginning of the year and thanked me. Even though the donation I had made to this household was entirely just me thanking them for raising Alicia in the first place and I was just being too embarrassed to give it to them directly.

"By the way, what is it that you're working on anyways?"

After a while, all the thanking for both the food I had given as well as the things I had done for Alicia were making things quite awkward for me, so I decided to change the subject, no matter how obvious it was.

"Oh, we're spinning thread."

"Really?"

I looked over at the tools on the table. There were clearly spindles and bundles of some sort of fibre on the table.

"Is that linen then?"

When it came to threads, there was linen, cotton, wool, and silk for the most part. Some more odd materials could be used, or rather nearly anything if you were willing to let it be pretty rough. But of those materials, linen felt like the most likely.

First of all, there was no way a poor village in the middle of nowhere could produce silk. If they could, they wouldn't be poor. Or at least they wouldn't be destitute to this degree. Wool wasn't likely, as again this village was incredibly poor. If they had livestock, they should have been doing a little better, or the people who owned them would've simply sold the livestock off and used the money to move somewhere else. It couldn't be cotton, simply because it didn't look like the fields were growing it. There were no large numbers of short stalks with or without white puffs at the top.

That only left linen, as flax couldn't as easily be distinguished from many other plants at a distance.

"Ah, no, it isn't. Our village haven't been able to make flax grow very well, so we're making it from milkweed."

It seemed like my reasoning was completely wrong.

"Like its name, it really grows like a weed around here."

Alicia's father, Philip, added to his wife's words.

"I see..."

Making my way over, I had a closer look. There were two types of fibres being spun together. One was long and dull while the other was short and glistened a little as if it was wet. Together they made an ash grey thread. It seemed like quite a lot of work, as the entire family was working on making the thread itself. There wasn't any signs of it being further processed into a finished product in this house.

"By any chance..."

Looking at these threads reminded me of something, and I pulled out little pouch from my bag. It was a roughly woven bag the same colour as the thread I used to carry some of my money in.

"I heard you bought some of our village's bags from Mint's store, but seeing you still carry it makes us feel warm."

The rest of Alicia's family nodded and agreed to Philip's words.

"Well, it's come to use for me, so I have no regrets in buying it."

A bag was a bag, and I needed it to sort and hold my things in the first place, but if the money paid for them was going to people in desperate need, all the better.

"So...you process milkweed and make threads, which get turned into various things that are sold off to other places?"

"That's right. The whole village helps out to make bags or rope, which the merchant Mint usually goes and sells in other places, then brings back food for everyone."

"I see...just bags and rope?"

"Milkweed doesn't really make many good items. Milkweed isn't very popular for clothing and the thread doesn't sell for as much as complete products, so it's easier to sell everything if we make things like rope or bags."

"Is that so...?"

That made sense. But at the same time, I couldn't see the products they made from them earning them too much, especially after you take transportation costs into consideration. Doing that again for the food they're buying with that money would make things especially painful when it came to profits. On top of that, it was obvious this was an incredibly labour intensive work.

Everything about it was bad, though specifically because the entire village relied on this for their income. If it was only one or two families, this wouldn't have been a problem, as transportation would be less important as they could sell the product within the village and only the excess would be exported.

But if there was a better way...

"Do you mind if I try something?"

"Oh, sure!"

Bringing some of the fibres close, they looked decent enough, and they were reasonably soft as well.

If I remembered right, there were a few more ways that milkweed and other plant fibres like this could be used. One of which was quite important to me as well.

I pulled out some wood and a mithril ingot from my bag, then reformed them. The ingot became a wide but shallow square basin and a fine mesh sheet. The wood became a pair of frames, one of which the mesh was attached to, and the other could be lain over top as a matching pair.

Next, the basin was filled most of the way with water from my spell. I took a bunch of the loose milkweed fibres and submerged them into the water, allowing them to soak and disperse.

Removing off my gloves, I submerged the mesh and frame combo, then lightly shook it, allowing the wet fibres to float their way over the frame's lip and onto the mesh layer. I raised the frames and angled it in different ways letting the water move the grey fibres around as it drained. But before it could finish, I resubmerged the mesh and repeated the earlier step.

But looking at the results after the second wash, I furrowed my brows.

"They're too long..."

Muttering that, I separated the frames and wiped the mesh clean in the water before taking it out and put it aside. I dunk my hands into the water and started to rip the longer fibres apart by hand.

Pretty soon, my sleeves started to feel a little weighty.

Looking down at them, I saw that the cuffs must have gotten wet and my robes were licking up the water.

Squeezing most of the moisture from them, I rolled up my sleeves and used two of the pins Elli gave me to hold them in place before I continued my work.

For a little while, everyone's eyes moved from my work to my arms, but I ignored their whispering and went back to tearing the wet fibres into a usable length.

Once I was finished with that, I dipped the mesh frame into the solution three times before I fully drained it.

I stretched and flattened the leftover mithril ingot into a wide sheet and once I separated the frame into two, the lower one was lightly pressed against the metal plate upside down. Using the last of the ingot, I made a second plate and laid it over the first before lifting both and pressed them together, squeezing out as much of the water as I could without deforming the metal.

When I was satisfied, I carefully separated the two plates.

There on the table was an ash grey sheet of milkweed fibres stuck on a pearl white plate.

As carefully as I could, I scratched at the corner with one of my claws, lifting it up off of the metal plate until there was enough for my to grab between my fingers. From there, I slowly peeled the sheet off of the plate and lifted it to the air.

There was some 'oohs' in the audience, but I wasn't done.

A quick application of my patent pending evaporation spell instantly dried the fibres.

Too bad there wasn't any intellectual property rights. I could make a killing just registering every invention I could remember from Earth as patents and licensing those all over the world.

Not like I had any real need for more money in the first place.

I examined the sheet on both sides, quickly feeling the surface and lightly testing it for bending, folding, and even tearing. It wasn't perfect, but frankly the results might as well have been. It was everything I wanted, aside from the fact that it was a little dull. The ash grey shade wasn't exactly perfect for paper, but making it any better would be quite a lot of work, and probably too cost prohibitive.

But on the other hand it could be compared to those artisinal papers, so if this was Earth it could be sold for a decent price. Too bad I haven't really seen any hint of a market for more rustic things.

Not like it really mattered to me. Regardless if this could be mass produced, I wanted it. Lots of it.

"So what do you think?"

Turning to the family, I asked my question.

"I'm not sure what I'm looking at."

Philip ended up admitting.

Thinking about it, that should have been a given, but I was too excited by my creation that I had forgotten about it.

"What you're looking at, is money."

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