Chương 106: 40 – Odd Looks

People kept looking at me differently. Normuran's requirements had gone down again, as he looked at my cleanly healed leg and judged it to be good to go. He'd tried to teach me healing magic once again, but I simply hadn't been able to gain the skill. Household magic, the precursor to everything, was the most effective method of learning the skill, and the general way a healer taught an apprentice for the first time was to have them use Household magic to clean wounds.

The aftermath of taking in so many wounded soldiers gave us plenty of wounds that needed re-bandaging, and stitches that needed to be replaced, but no matter how much household magic I used, I couldn't seem to get the skill. They'd told me it would be difficult, but I'd assumed with my ever-growing stack of free points, all I'd need to do would be earn the skill. That wasn't working, though.

"I'm sorry, Mera," he said.

"For some people, this simply doesn't come easy. Besides, you do enough for this town anyway." I blinked and met his eyes pointedly. He didn't look away. That was a remarkable change from how he'd once behaved, and it reflected in his need. To this day, he still had the strangest need bubble I'd ever seen. At its worst, he'd needed seventeen bat eyes, ether dust… uncut diamonds, with a weird gathering requirement? I'd forgotten the last two. Many of those strange requirements had disappeared entirely.

A lot of people's requirements had lowered in drastic ways ever since I'd walked dazedly into the bar and told Dobretin that Mom had sent food. I looked away from the healer, glancing around his house at all the patients lying on every available surface, before meeting his eyes once more.

"It doesn't feel like enough," I said pointedly. He still had the same need, and he still needed it for the same reason: improving the effectiveness of his healing. The difference was that it was much easier to craft now. Six bat eyes, a generous portion of ether dust, and two small uncut diamonds were its only requirements. We could get the other two, but uncut diamonds were outside the reach of anyone here. The mine did not produce them, and so Normuran's need went unmade.

He was the strangest, but he wasn't the only person with similarly unmeetable requirements. One person needed a cactus plant only found in southern Charlost. One needed rubies. Another needed a type of spice no one I'd met had ever heard of. The bark of a tree native to Eschal, tin, carbon, wax, thread made from the hair of a northern wolf… the list was endless. It didn't matter how mundane the rest of the need's supplies were.

For these strange requirements, the only method of crafting for them was to get to know them well enough that the exotic requirement disappeared, and I had no damn time for that.

"Despite your feelings, it is enough. If you laid down and slept through the rest of this war, you'd already have done more for Pemolar's Hill than anyone else. I'm here, so that's a truly impressive accomplishment." That was enough to provoke a tiny laugh.

"Arrogant old bastard," I said, fondly.

"Thanks for healing the foot." He nodded tiredly. Sheer exhaustion had sapped much of the bitter arrogance from him, leaving behind the raw core. At his heart, he was a good person. A great one, if the number of times he'd slept off mana sickness in the last few months was any indication.

"You know… there was a woman. A healer in the army named Ake." I said coyly.

"She seemed pretty impressed with you. Even after we were long gone from Pemolar, she still talked about you." He blanched before staring hard at me.

"The… young Healer Adept?" I snickered.

"If you call your forties young, sure." He scowled.

"She helped me recover. What would she have to say about me?"

"I think she liked you," I said.

"Is this really the time?" He asked. He wasn't fooling me. His ears were a little bit pink.

"Think there's going to be a better time?"

"Perhaps you could consider stopping with the childish pranks entirely then!?" I blinked. After all this time, did he really still think...?

"Norman, I'm not joking. She was truly impressed with you." His eyes widened.

"Oh…" he said. I patted the older man on the shoulder.

"Maybe after all of this is over, you can see her again?" He looked down, rubbing his beard, deep in thought.

"I did enjoy the time I spent with her. We talked about healing techniques. She bragged she'd once saved a leg that had been wounded and untreated for over fourteen hours. I didn't believe her…" It seemed I'd given him more to think about than I'd expected. I turned and left the house, but spared him a glance back before I closed the door. The old healer was smiling to himself. Good. We needed a little light in dark times like this. The air was crisp, and it had finally stopped smelling like blood and corpses.

It had been cloudy and overcast for days, but it hadn't rained, and the cold was becoming frigid enough that snow was a possibility. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. As I did every time I stepped outside now, I gazed to the north. Mom… wasn't here. She hadn't come back. Why? What could have delayed her? Could it have been just bad timing? Would she return soon? She hadn't taken the time to explain exactly how her teleportation worked. I only knew that it did.

I was grateful that she'd managed to get us the food we desperately needed, but it wasn't enough to get us through the winter. It might've been if we didn't suddenly have four thousand more mouths to feed. As it was, it had bought us a month. Maybe more. The army had their own supplies, but they'd abandoned most of them when they'd fled Vendriox. What little they had was travel rations, hardtack, and smoked meat that was tough enough to break teeth. Did she know that we were in trouble?

Was it possible that she chose not to return, even though I'd snapped the emergency beacon? Gods, what I wouldn't give to have her advice. I sighed and turned west toward the blacksmiths. My clothes felt dirty, and I needed to wash them soon. A fit of coughs took me, and I growled in irritation. Of course I would get a cold now. I should go talk with the miller… but I didn't want to.

Word was she was being unreasonably fickle in her distribution of the new grain, but I suspected I would agree with her more than whoever was lodging complaints against her. Eight wagons had seemed like so much yesterday when it was being tossed into the new granary, but Dobretin's estimates of how much actual time it bought us had crushed my expectations. The army growing ever closer wasn't helping matters much either.

A young boy, holding a sword that looked far too big for him, was heading back towards the bar on the other side of the road. He spotted me, and his eyes widened. To my consternation, the boy bowed at the waist as I walked past.

"M-m'lady," he said nervously. A refugee. He was incredibly grateful for the bread. It was one of the first times he'd felt truly full in days. He hated being so far from his home, but didn't want to seem childish. He was also… attracted to me. Just on the edge of puberty. I was probably his first crush. There were a multitude of ways I could improve my relationship with him, from greeting him to completely ignoring him.

"Uh… carry on, kid?" I said, unsure what to do with the information Networking let me glean. It was good to know that at least some people were grateful for the food.

"Yes, Ma'am!" he said, straightening, before turning to run back down the road. People kept looking at me differently. No matter how hard I tried to keep the rumors quiet, there was no good way to hide a fully functional mine cart springing out of the ground overnight. Spontaneously producing enough wheat to give everyone a roll was only adding to my legend, and I had no idea what to do about it. I'd had no explanation, and I'd offered none. What could I say? Mom's magic was probably a bigger secret than mine.

Nobody was complaining. I had food. If they wanted any, then silence was a part of the price. Silence did nothing to quell thoughts, though. I sighed and kept walking. It was nice having my ankle back in working order. The next time I broke the thing, I'd make sure to be closer to a healer. The smithy on the west side of town was open at all hours, and plenty of soldiers who'd come with Neogon had proficiency in the skill. Weapons were being forged constantly, and whenever one shift ended, another began.

Fedenat was facing the other way, staring at the rounded barrel that had been giving him trouble for days now.

"Hi Fred," I said.

"How's it coming?" He jumped and spun, standing ramrod straight.

"Mera!" He exclaimed, shocked as he turned around.

"I… ah… Not as well as I'd hoped." I sighed.

"Kind of expected that. What's the problem?"

"It's just too damn big. It's heavy as an ox! If we didn't have all these soldiers to help move it we wouldn't even be able to attempt this. I've tried getting it on wheels, but even then it's a massive amount of steel. I don't see what use something so heavy would be against an enemy. Do you plan to roll it at them?" I sighed. I supposed I'd held the thing's purpose close to the chest long enough, and maybe if he knew what it was for, he'd have some insight into making it better.

"Fire magic," I said.

"Hmm?"

"Tacuria has loads of fire mages. More than any other country, right?" I asked.

"Yes…?" he questioned.

"This is called a cannon," I said. Technically, it was exactly that. The only difference was that I had no idea how to make gunpowder. Neither had April. Eventually, though, I'd realized that I didn't need it. Fire mages were limited by the mana pool and mana regeneration skills, but Mom's fire magic worked like oil or gasoline and could be ignited. It could make explosions, and that was all a cannon needed.

If a fire mage could set off comparatively mana-conservative explosions inside the barrel of a cannon, it would allow them to have the one thing all mages in this world lack. Range.

"It's a stationary weapon. Sit it on top of a wall or a tall hill. You load the cannon with ammo of some sort. Preferably a metal ball, or loads of heavy sharp metal. Then a fire mage makes an explosion in the back of the cannon. The ammo goes flying at the enemy hundreds of yards away!" The man's eyes widened.

"Gods… I… gods! This sounds incredible."

"I'll let you in on the patent if you can get it to work. We even have fire mages handy to test it… but I'm worried the explosions might be too weak to propel the ammo, or worse, destroy the barrel. It will take practice on the mages' part, and skill from the smithy to make sure the barrel is strong enough." It would also take the most crucial component of all. Mom's approval as a fire mage. Until then, I couldn't even test it because none of the fire mages knew Mom's method, and I couldn't teach them! Well.

I could. And perhaps I should. I wasn't even sure if there was any point to hiding my secrets anymore. We might be dead in days anyway.

"I'll keep working!" He said excitedly.

"For fucks sake if you'd told me days ago, I'd have put off all the armor and crossbows we've been makin'. We've got nearly enough to arm half the army now."

"I trust the crossbows more than this. It's an idea. One I'm almost certain will work, but I don't know how powerful a fire mage's explosion is. Hell, I don't even know if they can make explosions!" I lied.

"Still sounds like a good idea to me," he said. I nodded.

"I suppose I probably don't need to mention this, but it should be obvious that this needs to stay secret?" He nodded emphatically.

"Won't tell a soul m'la—err. Mera." I grinned and patted him on his sweaty shoulder.

"Good man. I'll talk to Burnom about getting him to make ammunition for it, just in case this does pan out."

"Still can't believe he's turned a new leaf. Have you seen the building he's making? The huge one, down close to the beach? He's calling it a hospital. Supposed to be a place to house all the wounded folks." Of course I knew. I'd given the man the idea.

"I'd heard," I said.

"Don't make this your main priority, though, Fred. My trust is in the crossbows."

"Aye, Lass," he said, trying the old affectation. He'd called me it a thousand times growing up, along with Tom and Omoali, Mularet, my parents, and every other adult in this town. Somehow, it sounded a bit odd to me, now. Like an old garment that no longer fit.

"Sorry. Elmerina," he corrected. I gave him a sad smile. People… kept looking at me differently.