Chapter 49: Port Town Tarvolas

The place we booked was just your run-of-the-mill inn. The reception area and the dining-room-slash-tavern were on the first floor, with the owner’s family’s living area in the back. The second and third floors housed the guest rooms. I felt like the owner’s family space was pretty small, but come to think of it, they could use the same kitchen, bathroom, and other facilities as the guests, so maybe they didn’t need too much family space.

The reason I hadn’t prioritized safety and gone for a higher-end inn this time was because I wanted to see what the standard of living was like for the average person in this city. I didn’t want to live in a place that was dangerous or full of problems. If the city was ruled by a crime syndicate or full of thugs roaming the street, I’d like to know... That’s why I went with a completely ordinary place rather than lodgings for rich people.

...Still, I wasn’t reckless enough to stay at a low-class inn when we appeared to be just two young girls. Sure, Reiko and I could handle ourselves with my potions and her magic, but we’d be forced to leave the country if anyone saw us. I didn’t want any trouble.

So, here we were, in an ordinary room at an ordinary inn. Our room was on the third floor. The bathroom was on the first floor, so it was a pain to descend and climb the stairs every time, but considering that the tavern was also on the first floor, they probably assigned us to the third floor out of courtesy. It wasn’t as if we needed to use the bathroom all the time, anyway.

“Let’s walk around for a week or so and check out the city while looking for our future home,” I suggested.

“Yeah. We should figure out what to do for work, too,” Reiko said.

Yes, we hadn’t decided what sort of work we would do yet. I had put that off because I wanted to find work that we could do that was a good fit for the city and would prove useful for the residents there. Of course, physical labor and time-consuming jobs were out of the question. It wasn’t as if I was desperate for money, so I didn’t want all my time being bound up in a job.

I mean, we had plenty of time with a long life ahead of us, but that didn’t mean I was okay with living a lifestyle I wasn’t happy with. I didn’t want to run a shop because of how much time I would need to spend there. No thanks to anything that required a lot of prep time, and no way was I gonna deal with anything that could draw attention from the rich and powerful. I didn’t want anything that would keep me really busy or require me to maintain annoying relationships with trading partners, either.

I could just use my cheat powers and make easy money...no, I want to help others.

Anyway, whether we would stay in this city and the type of lifestyle we would have depended on the intel we were about to gather. She who controls information controls the world, as they say.

Six days later...

“I think we checked out just about everywhere...”

“Yeah. We only looked into what a foreign commoner could, but I think we got enough information to determine the city’s atmosphere, level of safety, and the residents’ sense of morals and the general policies here,” Reiko agreed.

And...

“I like it!”

The lord of this area was a count who not only understood his privileges as an aristocrat, but was also aware of his duties. That was why it was safe and peaceful here. ...By this world’s standards, that is.

The king supposedly took his job seriously too... Maybe that was why a respectable aristocrat was the lord of this territory? In any case, I had no complaints about the kingdom, lord, or city. We could probably find other cities in other countries that were on par with this place, but it would be hard to find anything that was significantly better. That meant there was no reason to take a risk and continue our journey.

“Okay, let’s live here!”

“Agreed. We can always move again if things don’t work out.”

And so, we decided to settle in the port town of Tarvolas.

I bought a house in the suburbs. ...Okay, maybe that was a bit abrupt.

The center of the city was packed with buildings used as storefronts, work areas, and residences. There were some vacant buildings too, but they were either rentals; didn’t fit my criteria in terms of size, available facilities, location, or price; or the realtor chased me away as soon as they saw us...

I mean, judging by our appearance, I couldn’t blame them if they thought we were just kids wasting their time. We had no issues buying this place when I showed them a bag full of gold coins, though.

What? I should have done that in the first place? I couldn’t just flash a bag stuffed with money when I didn’t even know if I was going to buy the place yet, or whether I was dealing with a legitimate seller... I’d have been a prime target for con artists and criminals.

Come to think of it, Roland was around to help with the proceedings for leasing Layette’s Atelier and Convenience Store Belle. Roland was pretty useful once in a while after all... Now it was just two (seemingly) young girls.

Anyway, we planned on going through several realtors to have them introduce some properties to us, but that didn’t go too well. Next, we looked for a vacant property we liked ourselves, researched the market price in the area, then searched for the realtor who was handling that property. We asked all around the city, but...

First off, any place that was too small was an automatic no. It wasn’t like we were tight on money, so even though we were close friends, I couldn’t deal with a lack of privacy. I also had to have a working kitchen, bathtub, toilet, drainage, and other plumbing-related amenities. No rooms that could be peered into from the outside. Nothing that would invite loud noises, foul odors, or deterioration of public order in the area. I mean, living next to a blacksmith or tavern would mean dealing with noise early in the morning or late at night. Lack of sleep and stress was bad for the skin, after all.

And the most important requirement was the ability to maintain secrecy. I couldn’t live in an area where it was common for the lady next door to come into my house without knocking to share some leftovers. It wasn’t that I disliked having such warm-hearted connections with people, but I planned on having a bunch of convenient things in my place...

This was the property we ended up finding: a former orphanage. Currently empty, it was a not-too-run-down one-story house built atop a cliff about twenty meters or so above sea level. Despite only having one floor, it was pretty big. There was a lot of open land here, but it took specific skills to build two-story houses, and there was no reason to get one considering how dangerous it was to fix the roof of such buildings ourselves. I figured we’d be on our own if we had to fix a leak in the roof...

Plus, since it used to be an orphanage, it made sense to make it a one-story house to lower the chance of accidents with so many little rascals running around all the time. There were many rooms in this building of different sizes, so I figured we would have the option to put them to different uses. A normal-sized private house wasn’t gonna be big enough to use as our home base.

Besides, the true value of a base wasn’t about what was above ground, but below. That the property was in the suburbs with a big lot was convenient for us. Building a secret base under a 900 square meter house in the middle of the city wasn’t very realistic, after all...

Not to mention, the price was very affordable. I mean, what normal buyer would want to live in a former orphanage with such peculiar architecture?

So, I paid it off in cash and that was that. We just had to have some professional fix it up, then build a basement to upgrade with magic. How am I going to make a basement, you ask?

With the Item Box and Reiko’s magic, anything is possible!

I had a contractor come in, not only to do repairs, but for some additional work, as well. The biggest thing I had them do was make one-meter-square storage chambers under the floorboards of my room, Reiko’s room, and several other areas in the house. He did wonder why we wanted to make such small chambers when we had so many available rooms, but I explained that we wanted to store condiments and non-perishables in a cool place, and he seemed to buy that.

Of course, their real purpose wasn’t to store anything, but to use them as secret entrances. We would be making basements under the building, so we would be using these as hidden passageways to get in and out of there. An entrance that looked like normal flooring when closed couldn’t really be made as a potion container, and Reiko’s earth magic wasn’t much help there, either. That’s why we had some professional help.

We also had wooden windows, so I wanted to change them for glass, but I endured that for now. I didn’t want to appear too wealthy right off the bat, or we might draw some unwanted attention. A glass window was just inviting thieves to come right in.

...Though, buying such a building (along with the land) with cash was already pretty telling, but we didn’t have any choice but to pay with cash as two young outsiders, so there wasn’t much we could do about that. As such, we would at least act as if we had used all of our money to buy this place, leaving us broke. That was why we had to start working right away.

Anyway, I wanted to get all the necessary furniture first. We still had everything the previous owners of the house had been using. It was one thing to buy a shop with all of its equipment, interiors, fixtures, and furnishings included, but we really wished they hadn’t left all of their personal goods. There was plenty of space, so we decided to get rid of the old furniture and equipment later and focus on buying stuff we needed for now.

“...Ready?”

“Yup!”

It was the dead of night. Anyone looking from the outside wouldn’t have been able to tell what we were doing, but we still made sure no one was around before getting to work.

“Storing!”

I stored away the dirt and rocks underground as we worked on making the basement. We had to make sure we didn’t expand too far, in order to keep the building above from collapsing. We left pillars and walls for support rather than completely hollowing it out, and used Reiko’s earth magic for reinforcement. Apparently, her magic could harden dirt so that it was like stone.

Then we expanded sideways by adding a few rooms.

...This was step one.

Then we dug diagonally downwards by using the Item Box to store more dirt, moving at an angle away from directly below the building, and ran into bedrock. We proceeded to extend the passageway into the rock and began building our underground area proper there. Instead of making one giant room, we divided the space into several rooms to maintain its structural integrity. Of course, Reiko reinforced each of them, just in case.

Yes, that first basement served as a sort of decoy. Anyone searching the house would be satisfied if they found it, thinking they’d discovered the secret room and its few gold coins stored there, never suspecting that there was another hidden basement. It was just human nature.

That said, we would still be storing stuff there, and it could still be used as a hidden room, so it wasn’t as if it was going to waste. It goes without saying that we had been digging in the direction away from the sea. If we had gone the opposite way, we would have dug through the cliff and out the other side.

This time, we changed direction toward the sea. We made our way diagonally downward, closer to the sea surface. We then continued our digging below the sea, so we could connect to the sea floor from underground. This way, we could fish and swim underground without going outside... No, it was to be used as a secret escape path. If we put a submersible boat down there, we could safely flee even if we were surrounded by enemies.

I highly doubted our enemies would predict this and have boats waiting for us out on the sea, and even if they did, we could still get away with a submersible. If Kyoko was around, she’d have chimed in saying, “Just who are you fighting with here?!” but unfortunately, Reiko and I were the same type of person when it came to this sort of thing. We were big proponents of going out of our way to prepare things “just in case.” It was just in our nature...

We took the ebb and flow of the tide into account and built a waterway connected to the sea, then withdrew for now.

On the way back, I used the Item Box to make detailed adjustments on the corridor I dug out, staircasing the pathway as Reiko reinforced it with earth magic, making it easier to walk on. If we hadn’t done that, we were just asking to trip and slide all the way down eventually. I mean, we could also trip on the stairs, but still...

We ended the day after building the rooms and corridors. With the major construction work out of the way, all that was left was to make small adjustments as we installed the furniture.

We finished most of the work within a few days. The basement directly under the floor of the house was used for storing unneeded goods, like the stuff the previous residents had left behind, non-perishable food, consumables, and rooms for when unwelcome visitors happened to come by. I could put all of our resources into the Item Box, but it was best to be prepared for unexpected situations. It wasn’t as if we went out to the city to shop every day, so it would have been strange for us not to have certain things stocked up.

We had installed a bunch of things in the main base in the bedrock and along the escape path into the sea. Yes, all sorts of “potion containers”...

Reiko was exasperated as she complained, “My magic isn’t much of a cheat power compared to this!” but never mind that. It was difficult to make the above-ground areas completely impenetrable, so we made arrangements to make them not stand out if someone happened to catch a glimpse of them. Anything that could draw unwanted attention was moved underground.

Although I wanted to enjoy modern conveniences, I couldn’t just put air conditioning or a TV right out in the open. I merely wanted to enhance the lifestyle of this world, not recreate life back on Earth. We were no longer the Japanese women known as Kaoru Nagase and Reiko Kuon, but residents of this world, Kaoru and Reiko.

So, we had purchased our beds in the city, and bought all of our other daily necessities normally. We had to contribute to the economy, so we couldn’t just hoard gold coins in the Item Box forever. I wanted to do anything that could be done through normal means normally.

Still, there were some things I couldn’t compromise on. That’s why we had been using potion containers for cookware and chairs. No way was I gonna light logs in a stove every time I wanted to make something! Who would want to cook with such an unstable heat source?! Sure, all of the chefs and housewives in this world cooked with this method, but it was too much for us.

...And chairs are very important! This is a key point, so I’ll say it again. Chairs are very important! I mean, I could just drink a potion if I hurt my back, but still...

And then there was laundry. We obviously weren’t using a fully automatic washing machine or dryer. They would have been way too out of place... But I wasn’t about to use a laundry tub and washboard to scrub my clothes, either. It was too much work, and it damaged the fabric.

Yes, there was a convenient solution. I could just store my clothes in the Item Box and order it to remove any dirt particles. But I didn’t want to do that. It didn’t feel right.

And so, I decided to put my clothes in a laundry tub and step on them. I was using a potion that would instantly remove dirt, so I just had to step on them a few times and it’d be done with.

...One could say that my solution wasn’t much better than using the Item Box to clean my clothes.

I don’t care, as long as it looks fine if people see me!

We had been using the water from a channel that was dug from a nearby stream. Of course, it wasn’t as if we could get underground water by digging a bit into the cliff we were on. Below an old manor atop a rocky mountain is a raging underground river... No, this wasn’t some swashbuckling novel from the Taisho era... Where would the water be coming from on top of a rocky mountain, anyway?

As for that channel we had been using, it seemed the previous residents here had dug it out. It was completely uncovered, so it was full of leaves and debris. Using it for laundry and bathing was one thing, but I wasn’t quite brave enough to drink it, so I added a device to filter and sterilize the water.

Of course, wastewater was sent into the sea through a cleaning unit (potion container) underground.

Now we’re all set!

The story of the little girls who bought the land and building from the former orphanage had probably spread to some degree already. When paying the realtor and the contractor, I had emphasized that we had used up all of our savings buying and fixing up this place, so we needed to work to support ourselves. The gossip lovers of the city, starved for entertainment, were sure to be curious about the mysterious girls who had just arrived, so there was no way they wouldn’t ask the realtor and contractor about us. They in turn would prioritize their relationships with their neighbors over the privacy of their clients.

I decided to see how things went for another week or two. From there, I could take my time figuring out an easy job that wasn’t too time-consuming, wouldn’t draw attention from weirdos, and earn me enough that I could make somewhat expensive purchases without looking suspicious.

There was a time when I believed that, anyway...