Chapter 110: Going to See the Workshop

“I want to see the workshop.”

When Ren said that, Mikaila showed him the way.

They passed beside the guild counter. Further in beyond the reception room lay a passage that only staff normally used.

Ren followed behind her, a little tense.

Mikaila opened the door. It gave a heavy creak. Inside was larger than he had expected.

Shelves lined the walls from end to end. Nothing was set on them.

A large workbench with a well-used look about it took up the centre of the room. It was big enough for several people to gather round.

In one corner stood a stove, with fittings for hanging an iron pot, and he could see a chimney to let the smoke out as well.

They had said there was no space to put a bed, so he had imagined quite a small room; but there was a big wooden table in it, and perhaps what they had meant was that a bed couldn’t be fitted in on top of that. It gave no impression of being cramped. The stove, it seemed, had been provided for handling glue and the like.

“…I could live here…”

Ren muttered it without meaning to.

“Heh. Thinking of living here?”

Mikaila laughed and looked round the room.

“It isn’t built to be lived in, you know. But there’s no rent, and it keeps the wind and rain off.”

“No rent…”

Ren knew that renting somewhere to live in the village cost money, but he had no idea how much rent actually came to. The sum would depend on the room, no doubt, but renting a room meant paying out regularly. In a workshop there was no rent.

“That’s amazing…”

“Only if you deliver the goods from the provisional contract properly and on a regular basis. That’s the condition for lending you the workshop. Obviously, just living here isn’t good enough.”

“Mm.”

Ren nodded and looked round the room once more.

(The floor looks hard, but I could manage with two blankets, couldn’t I? Amazing — I can stay here!)

A place where he could decide for himself how it was used. That was what made Ren happy.

If the workshop was to be lent to him free of charge, he felt ready to settle the provisional contract on the spot — and yet, when it actually came to signing, his fingers trembled with nerves.

With the provisional contract finished, Ren came to the forest.

“Kii!”

“Small Box!”

Several horn ferrets sprang at him at once. He knocked them away with the “small box” shield and ran them through with his simple spear. When he caught sight of an orange bird-type magical beast high on a branch, he loosed a simple arrow at it without hesitation.

When he had first set foot in the forest there had still been a restlessness in him, an aftertaste of the provisional contract, but once he had finished off the magical beasts he grew calm.

《

▪️Flame Finch

Characteristics: chest and belly orange. Wing tips red. Black spots on the tail feathers.

Habitat: the shallow layer of the forest, near the riverside. Gathers on sunlit branches.

Trait: the plumage gives off a slight heat when the bird is excited.

》

He compared it against the information he had copied onto a board in the Adventurers’ Guild reference room.

“…Is Flame Finch right, I wonder? The feathers giving off a slight heat — that’s interesting…”

He plucked out a single feather to try it and channelled mana into it. Warm air drifted gently round the feather. Ren’s eyes lit up.

“If I put these in a quilt or something, it might be warm!”

Once he started thinking about bedding, his thoughts turned naturally to the workshop and the hunting hut.

The hunting hut was still in no state to be stayed in, but if he managed to make a Simple Barrier, something might be done about it. He set off for the hunting hut with a slightly lighter step.

“Water magic stone, wind magic stone, dark magic stone…”

Crouching down near the stone magic tool in front of the hunting hut, he laid the magic stones out on the ground.

The water magic stone in the centre, and round it the wind magic stones and dark magic stones set alternately in a circle.

What the book had said was that someone with the Water Magic skill put a water magic stone at the centre, and someone with the Wind Magic skill put a wind magic stone at the centre.

Ren’s skill was “Small Box”. Not Water Magic, and not Wind Magic.

But he could use a little of both.

So for the moment he put the water magic stone in the centre.

“Channel the mana…”

He pressed his index finger to the water magic stone and worked up his mana. Slowly, he let it flow into the stone.

A pale light softly wrapped itself round the water magic stone. The inner faces of the wind and dark magic stones ringing it began to take on the light as well.

CRACK—

Where Ren was — more precisely, tracing a circle with the magic stones at its centre — water burst outward.

Looking closely, a faint dome-shaped film of something like mana had formed. It was narrow, though. Barely large enough to cover Ren where he crouched.

“Is this… a barrier?”

Ren timidly reached out towards the film of mana. He felt a faint prickling resistance, but his fingers passed through it and out the other side.

When he stood up and stepped outside the dome, the place where he had laid out the magic stones wavered, the air shimmering, until it could no longer be seen.

It resembled the way an Ashveil looked when it concealed itself.

“…Did it work? This…”

It felt as though he had succeeded, but whether he could be pleased about it yet was another matter. Far from covering the hut, after all, it was only just large enough to hide Ren himself.