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“I’ll go make some soup or porridge, then. Can you stay with Mia awhile?”

Nadi seemed apologetic as she asked, so I readily agreed.

While the simple scent of porridge started to drift up the stairs, Mia and I passed the time by talking about spirits.

Of course, without Nadi around to be my trusty interpreter, I wasn’t able to piece together the full details about spirits from Mia’s short words.

Sprinkled in among unhelpful adjectives like fluffy and sparkly, I managed to gather that they were creatures that “make underground veins flow,” “channel mana,” and “have attributes.”

I also gained two skills from the conversation, “Elvish Language” and “Decryption,” and apparently won over Mia as well.

I’d gained the “Elvish Language” skill when I asked Mia how to say “good morning” in Elvish. I think the reason I learned “Decryption” goes without saying.

After eating the porridge, Mia started to look sleepy.

“I’m sorry for staying so long. I’ll be heading home soon.”

“Mrr.”

I started to stand up from the chair next to the bed, but Mia stopped me by grabbing on to the sleeve of my robe.

“Stay,” she requested anxiously.

Well, I guess I can stay until she falls asleep.

“This letter means chair, right? That makes ten cards for me!”

“Whoa!”

“Arisa, you’re too good at this, ma’am!”

“Tama, Pochi, don’t waste time being envious. Focus!”

“You’re so smart, Arisa.”

I heard everyone’s excited voices coming from a corner of the courtyard of the Gatefront Inn. That last voice tipped me off that Yuni was playing along with my set of kids.

I didn’t see them when I entered the courtyard, so I looked at my radar and found them gathered in a small hiding place in the shadow of a hedge, playing some kind of game.

They were all sitting in the circle around a spread of facedown cards set up like a game of Concentration.

Oh, those were the cards I’d bought yesterday.

Watching them for a moment, I gathered that they had to guess what vocabulary word the face-up letters represented in order to acquire that card.

They could confirm the answer by looking at the picture on the back, so even players who didn’t know the letters yet could learn from playing.

“Looks like fun.”

“Master, sir!”

“We learned letterrrrs!”

Pochi and Tama spotted me in the shadows and immediately rushed over.

“Look at this, sir!”

“Three carrrds!”

The pair held up the cards they’d won, clearly hoping for praise as they looked at me. Just as they had hoped, I patted them both on the head. “Great job.”

While I was at it, I thought I’d ask them about the cards they’d learned.

“What’s this card called?”

“That one’s meat!”

No, it was a goat.

“And what’s this one?”

“That’s meat, too.”

Nope. It was a rabbit.

I looked over at Arisa, who surely knew they were wrong.

“Well…they looked so confident when they said ‘meat,’ I couldn’t bear to tell them they were wrong,” Arisa confessed with a wry smile.

I tried to teach them the correct words.

“Were we wrong? It’s a goat, but it’s still meat, sir.”

“Huuh? It’s a rabbit, but it’s meeeat.”

The two girls looked puzzled.

“Then does that mean this card is bird, not bird meat?”

Liza joined in on the conversation, looking surprised. If you know what kind of animal it is, why do you need to add “meat” at all?…was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t quite do it.

I guess that was how Arisa felt.

Instead, I ended up teaching them the words one card at a time.

“How do you write meat, sir?”

“Like this.”

There was no “meat” card, so I added one by hand.

Drawing a single card netted me a windfall of skills.

As a bonus, teaching Pochi and Tama the word for meat had earned me the “Education” skill. This seemed useful, so I maxed out its skill points.

Maybe I should keep a list of ideas for actions that might earn me skills and have a skill-acquisition rally or something.

Chatting with the girls as I made the card, I learned to my surprise that Arisa couldn’t read or write Shigan letters.

“The kingdom I came from was terribly chauvinistic. I couldn’t get anyone to teach me—they said even royal ladies didn’t need to know how to read! I snuck into my older brothers’ classes to learn to read and write the official language so that I could read my magic books.”

Arisa usually acted spoiled, but she was actually quite worldly.

“So learning cards like these won’t take me more than three days, just you watch!”

Supporting her bold claim, she already knew thirty of the one hundred cards in the deck.

“That’s amazing! What’s your secret?” Yuni still hadn’t managed to memorize a single card, so she asked Arisa for help.

“I remember the groups of letters as a single picture. Why not try it with some words that interest you?”

“Oh, Yuni! So this is where you’ve been hiding!”

There was a rustling in the hedges, and Martha appeared. Her hair had gotten tangled in the thin branches, so I helped free her.

Arisa’s nostrils flared, and she muttered something incomprehensible like “They’re not daphne bushes, but they’ll do!” Maybe it was a reference to a manga she’d read in her previous life or something.

When Martha appeared, Yuni looked flustered.

I guess she’s probably still on the clock.

“I’m sorry, Martha.”

“Goodness, you’re such a child. Come on, then. I’ll help you with cleaning the stalls in the stable and changing out the hay, but only until lunchtime.”

Martha scolded Yuni lightly, then rolled up her sleeves, ready to make up for her little protégé’s error.

“Oh, um…I did it already.”

“Huh?”

Yuni spoke up apologetically, peeking up at Martha with her eyes round and innocent.

“Pochi and Tama helped me, you see.”

Apparently, she’d finished her work early thanks to the pair’s help, which was why she was playing with the others.

“We went like, ‘Raaah!’ and got water from the well, sir!”

“And we took care of horrrses.”

The two girls explained the work they’d done with the help of vigorous gestures.

“Very good,” I praised them, petting each on the head. Tama nuzzled my hand happily in response; Pochi stayed still except for her tail, which wagged back and forth so hard, it looked like it’d fall off.

In the end, after warning Yuni that she should always report in when her work was completed, Martha ended up joining me in watching the card game.

“Hello there! My name is Arisa.”

“I’m Pochi, ma’am!”

“Tamaaa.”

The three young girls started introducing themselves as soon as the door to Mia’s room opened.

The sound of the girls running up the stairs must have frightened Mia, who had pulled her blanket up over her head and was peering out cautiously through a little crack.

When I mentioned over lunch that I was visiting not just the ratman knight but also the princess he was protecting, everyone insisted on coming along to meet her.

I figured Mia was probably lonely anyway, and we could give Nadi a break from watching her.

Of course, Liza and Lulu came along with the younger kids. Those two were downstairs helping Nadi. The medicine Lulu had taken this morning seemed to have worked; she had eaten lunch normally, and her complexion looked much better.

“M-Mia.”

Mia pulled the blanket down just under her eyes and shyly introduced herself with as few words as ever.

I couldn’t hide my surprise when I looked at Mia’s bashful face.

Her eyes, which I was sure had been silver before, were now a beautiful emerald green.

It didn’t seem like she’d been replaced with another person or anything, so maybe the color of a person’s eyes changed when they were using Spirit Vision?

“What the…?”

“She’s a princess, sir!”

“Your hair’s prettyyyy!”

Arisa was staring at Mia’s face in shock, too, though for a different reason.

She was probably misunderstanding the same way Nadi had.

“Didn’t you say she was a rat princess?!”

“No, I didn’t. I said she was a princess being defended by a ratman, remember?” I corrected her. I had to admit, I’d used rather misleading words in hopes of messing with them a little.

I guess Arisa wasn’t able to tell with Status Check that Mia was an elf when she was under a blanket, though. Unlike my menu AR display, it seemed like she needed a visible target to analyze it.

Egged on by Arisa’s boldness, Pochi and Tama quickly became comfortable with Mia.

“I’m going downstairs for a minute. Take care of Mia for me.”

“Okeydoke.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Gotchaaa!”

“Mrr…”

My kids were happy to comply, but Mia grumbled reluctantly. Her hand shot out from under the blanket and grabbed my sleeve, releasing me only when I insisted I would be right back.

Why was she so attached to me?

Downstairs, Nadi was shoveling food into her mouth at an alarming rate.

“Thanks so much. All I’ve eaten today is a tiny bit of porridge in the morning.”

Finishing her simple meal of rye bread and soup, Nadi sat back contentedly and took a deep breath, enjoying the scent of the light herbal tea Lulu had poured for her.

“Herbal tea” made it sound fancy, but it was really just hot water with some aromatic leaves floating in it. It wasn’t as strong as mint, but the aftertaste was quite refreshing. It was apparently very cheap, too, with a full bag of leaves selling for a single penny coin.

“Mr. Satou, you’re a merchant, right?”

Taking a sip of her tea, Nadi casually started a conversation.

Oh yeah, I guess that is what I’ve been telling people. It was getting a little awkward, since I hadn’t done a single merchant-like thing since arriving in the city, but I stuck with it anyway.

“Then you have a horse-drawn carriage?”

“No… I did have a pack horse, but it ran off on me after the starfall a while back.” I was pretty sure that was what I’d told Iona, too.

“Oh, that’s terrible. Well, if you happen to have the funds, why not buy yourself a carriage now?”

She made a sudden proposal with a look of concern.

According to her, an acquaintance of the store manager’s was a merchant who was retiring, so he was looking to sell his carriage and the two horses that came with it.

Once I was done sightseeing in this area, I was planning to bring the beastfolk girls somewhere that they could easily live in peace, so this was a perfect opportunity…but there was one problem.

“That would be excellent, but I don’t have any experience driving a carriage…” I had a normal license, but I’d obviously never driven anything horse-drawn. I fell silent for a moment, unsure whether to decline the offer or ask if she could introduce me to someone who could teach me the basics.

At that moment, I noticed that Lulu looked like she wanted to say something, so I changed the subject. “Lulu, if you have something to say, feel free to do so.”

“U-um, well, I’ve actually driven a one-horse carriage before…” She trailed off and bit her lip a few times, but finally Lulu managed to force out the words to say that she had some experience.

“Well, then, I suppose you can teach me. In that case, Nadi, I think I’ll buy it after all, if I may.”

“What a quick decision. But don’t you want to know how much it costs, Mr. Satou?”

Crap, I’d gotten carried away because of all the gold coins I had in Storage.

I glanced outside and found a horse-drawn carriage passing through the plaza, using my “Estimation” skill to check the price. A pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself.

“I trust you on that, Nadi. As long as we can keep it within this budget, it’s not a problem. You can keep whatever’s left over for yourself.”

I handed Nadi a bag full of gold coins, trying to model my expression after a trader in an old movie with ulterior motives.

The bag contained the market value plus an extra two gold coins, so it should be plenty as long as we weren’t being duped.

If the negotiation broke down here, my “Negotiation” and “Haggling” skills would have to come into play.

“When did you…”

Nadi looked perplexed, but she dutifully counted the coins and issued me a temporary receipt.

I guess my performance was a little too good. It would’ve been more natural if I had proposed an amount and provided it to her later rather than putting the coins in a pouch in Storage and offering it right away.

All right, enough regrets. I’ll just be more careful next time.

“Let’s practice camping before we go on a journey!”

At Arisa’s suggestion, we decided to set up a practice campsite in a vacant lot in the west quarter.

Nadi had gotten permission from a person in power for us to use it. Normally it would be fine to just use it without permission, but since we’d be using fire in this case, it was better to ask beforehand.

The lot was full of grass and other weeds, so I used a sickle I’d bought from a nearby hardware store to start making a place for us to practice.

I had sent Arisa, Lulu, and Liza to buy more necessary tools and supplies that we’d use for camping.

“Cutting weeeeds?”

“Leave it to us, sir!”

Pochi and Tama happily started cutting the grass.

I worked along with them, making a heap of all the clippings in one spot. In the area where we’d be making our impromptu kitchen, I pulled the weeds up by the roots instead of cutting them.

Next, I stacked some stones Pochi and Tama had gathered to create a makeshift stove. I was relying on my memories of camping as a student, but I think I managed to do a pretty good job.

Since we had time to kill before the shopping group came back, the three of us lay back on the bed of clippings to look up at the clouds.

I’d noticed movement in the skill acquisition log while I was working, so I checked it then. I had gotten even more skills than I’d expected. There were six in total: “Weeding,” “Farming,” “Cultivation,” “Collecting,” “Masonry,” and “Camping.”

“Camping” seemed like a skill that I should’ve gotten a long time ago. But I guess all I’d really done in the labyrinth was hang a tent over some rocks and take a nap, so maybe that didn’t count. The requirements were still very unclear.

“We’re back, and we brought supplies!”

Arisa returned, with Liza and Lulu close behind.

Liza fine-tuned the temporary stove, then put a pot on the fire. It looked like she’d already drawn water beforehand.

“Eh-heh-heh, look, look!”

The item Arisa was holding up to me proudly was a kettle, complete with a whistle.

I wasn’t sure if it was for outdoor use or just because there were no gas stoves in this world, but it looked like it was meant to be hung on a pole and heated over a fire, just like the pot.

Lulu put some tea leaves in the kettle and hung it up next to the pot.

The menu for today apparently featured a stew made with dried meat and three kinds of chopped root vegetables, with a side of rye bread.

It turned out that white bread could only be bought on the other side of the inner wall. I had no problem with rye bread for now, so I figured there was no need to go out of my way unless I got sick of it.

Liza had put aside her spear for a kitchen knife today, serving as our cook. Lulu helped out with smaller roles like peeling vegetables, and Arisa cheered them on. Pochi and Tama had been put on kettle-watching duty.

I headed over to a corner of the vacant lot to retrieve a tree stump. We could use it as a table.

Nobody was watching, so I pulled up the stump with brute force. This normally would’ve been impossible without heavy machinery, but the help of my abnormally high STR stat made it an easy feat.

I lopped off the thick roots of the stump with the magic hatchet that I’d “borrowed” from the red-helmeted ratman.

Before long, I heard the kettle start to whistle. But for some reason, instead of taking it off the fire, Pochi and Tama came running over to me.

“The kettle’s maaad!”

“Help us, sir! The kettle man is angry, sir!”

…The “kettle man”?

Pochi and Tama had apparently never seen a kettle with a whistle before, and they were startled by the keening noise that the steam made.

“That’s just the sound of the whistle telling us that the water is boiling.”

“It’s not maaad?”

“Why does it whistle when the water boils, sir?”

I tried to explain the mechanics of steam to them, but they didn’t quite understand.

“Of course they wouldn’t. They’re children, not science majors. How are they supposed to understand that water’s volume multiplies by one thousand when it vaporizes?”

That’s wrong, Arisa. It multiplies by 1,699.

Of course, I didn’t actually voice that objection to Arisa; instead, I opened the lid of the kettle and lifted it up lightly.

“Look at this.”

The kettle’s lid was rattling in the steam.

“When water gets hot, it turns into this white smokelike stuff. The smoke is very strong, so it can easily move something light like this lid.”

Arisa tore up a nearby piece of grass and made a waterwheel. Or in this case, a pinwheel.