More than half a month passed in the blink of an eye. I worked day and night, completing commissions and making potions, until I’d finally saved enough to rent a place. I found an old house on the side of Nagu Town near the river. It was simple in design: ten meters long and four meters wide, with a rectangular layout divided into three rooms. I made the largest room into a living room, the smallest into a bedroom, and turned the medium-sized room into an Alchemy lab. After all, making potions was still my main source of income, and without “professional equipment” and a proper workspace, people might start asking questions.
The only thing I wasn’t happy about was that the house didn’t have a bathroom.
If I needed to use the toilet, I had to go down to the river. That might not be a problem in warm weather, but winter would be another story. So I decided to add a small room outside the bedroom before winter arrived and use it as a bathroom. I hired some carpenters in town through the Commercial Association to do the work. While they got started, I began working with the dirt by the river.
“Transmute!”
Red sparks of electricity danced across the transmutation circle I’d hastily drawn. A clay pipe, thick as a bowl, rose from the ground. After making ten of them, I laid them in the trench I’d dug beforehand and joined them together with Alchemy. The carpenter helping me build the bathroom and his son watched in amazement as I finished the job. They thought Alchemy was some advanced art that could only be practiced in a laboratory, but that was a completely mistaken, narrow-minded view. As long as you had the transmutation circle memorized and enough mana, you could use Alchemy anytime, anywhere. My skill wasn’t quite good enough to make things with much precision, though—not nearly as precise as an Alchemy workbench.
“Miss Lancelot,” the carpenter asked, “we country folk don’t know much, so forgive me for asking, but is there some special purpose for laying these pipes?”
“They’re for drainage,” I said. “I’ll connect them to the toilet. After you’re done, you just pour in a bucket of water, and it’ll carry the waste straight into the river.”
The carpenter’s eyes widened as if to say, “You can do that?” As far as he knew, a toilet was probably just two planks laid across a pit.
A few days later, the bathroom’s main structure was finished, and the pipes were all connected. I brought out some clay I’d dug up on a mountainside while doing a commission earlier, set it on the transmutation circle I’d drawn in the dirt, and used Alchemy to make a ceramic toilet. Maybe it was the first time the carpenter’s son had seen ceramic, because he couldn’t stop admiring it. But when I explained, “This is a toilet,” his face immediately fell.
“What a waste to make a toilet out of such amazing material!”
Still, the carpenter’s son’s comment gave me an idea. Most of the tableware in town fell into two categories: pots and jars made from fired clay, and cups and plates made from wood. If I made tableware out of ceramic, maybe I could sell it! With help from the carpenter and his son, I installed the toilet where the pipes ended, then used Alchemy to connect it to them. Once I’d checked that it was secure, I carried a large bucket of water into the bathroom. And just like that, I had a simple flush toilet.
After paying them for their work, I said goodbye to the two NPCs and started on my new plan: making porcelain.
The dirt by the river was no good. I’d already tried it before, so I decided to look for clay in the forest instead. I’d forgotten where I’d dug it up last time because I hadn’t marked the spot. What a pain. Looks like I needed a “professional” to help me out. Most people in town knew me, but I didn’t know that many people myself, so I decided to ask the hunter Luka. Aside from Warren the blacksmith, Luka was one of the first people I’d met. We’d even fought off a pack of wolves together in a carriage. That made us comrades-in-arms, at least—or girl buddies.
I found Luka having dinner at Kate Sisters’ Inn. She seemed to have just returned from the forest. Her longbow and quiver were set aside, and her boots were covered in dirt and weeds.
“Good evening, Luka.”
“Good evening, Elsa.” Luka set down her cup and smiled at me. A pretty girl’s smile really was adorable. “I heard you’ve been doing some construction work. How’s it going?”
“It’s all finished.”
“Oh, that was quick.”
“Never mind that,” I said, hurrying to get to the point. “Luka, do you know where I can dig up this kind of red clay?”
As I spoke, I opened my item box. A perfectly square lump of clay appeared out of thin air and landed on the table with a thud. Luka stared in surprise, so I had to take a little time to explain the item-box magic to her.
“I’ve seen this kind of dirt while hunting,” Luka said. “But the place where you can dig it up is pretty far from town.”
No wonder Luka knew the forest better than most hunters. But because she was a girl, some of the other hunters in town looked down on her. Those idiots really couldn’t see what was right in front of them.
“Could you take me there?” I asked eagerly. “I’ll pay you for your time.”
“No need to pay me,” Luka said with a smile. “Meet me at the town gate tomorrow morning. I’m planning to hunt in that area anyway, so I can take you along.”
“Thanks, big sis Luka~~~”
Looks like I’d found a solution to the materials problem. I didn’t know you could give an NPC a quest like that. This VR game was incredible. I was finding it harder and harder to tell the game from reality. The NPCs were just too lifelike. Everything they said and did felt so natural, nothing like the scripted lines built into a game. Before I knew it, I’d gotten completely immersed. Was this the magic of RPGs?
That’s it! I was going to take it easy and enjoy a slow life in the starter village.
The main story? Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist.
Early the next morning, I arrived at the town gate right on time. To my surprise, Luka was already waiting for me. She’d thrown a green cloak over her hunting clothes, and it went perfectly with her brown hair. She gave my gear a once-over and offered a fairly reasonable verdict. I’d prepared thoroughly for this trip: a thick jacket that kept me warm and dry on top, and the “forest essentials” below—long pants and deerskin boots. I’d even put on a hat to keep the daytime sun off me and make my silver hair less noticeable.
“No time to waste. Let’s get going, Elsa.”
“Okay~~”
The trip got off to a pleasant start. We caught a carriage heading to the eastern villages, and it carried us deep into the forest, saving us quite a bit of time. The only problem was that carriages in this world were basically rectangular boxes with four wheels. They had no suspension at all, so after sitting for a while, your back and butt started to hurt.
A pale mist drifted through the autumn forest, and golden leaves fluttered down on the breeze. The maples on the distant hills had already started turning red. Before long, the whole mountainside would be ablaze with autumn color. No matter how often I saw it, I never got tired of the natural beauty around me. But in the real world outside, AI had destroyed the stratosphere, plunging the entire world into darkness. Plants were dying, and the ecosystem had suffered nearly catastrophic damage. Even if we defeated the AI, it would probably take a long time for the world to recover.
That was why I treasured the beautiful scenery in front of me even more. And Luka, standing in the middle of it, was as beautiful as a painting.
