Chapter 30: The Knitting and Crochet Course

Chapter 30: Chapter 30: The Knitting and Crochet Course

"What’s a chicken?" Benjamin asked outright.

Liam went blank, then slapped his forehead: "I forgot the two of you don’t know the animals and plants of ancient times. A chicken is a feathered creature like a bird but it can’t fly. They usually eat insects, grain, greens... In short they’re very easy to keep. Chicken droppings are also an organic fertilizer that’s extremely good for crops."

Isabella wrinkled her nose: "But we don’t have a livestock permit, we’re not allowed to keep star-birds."

Liam shook his head: "A chicken isn’t a star-bird, sister. A full-grown chicken is exactly the size of a star-bird’s foot. It has no attacking power either, and even an Omega like me could beat it to death."

Benjamin and Isabella listened with their mouths hanging open. Then, their eyes lit up, and the questions came tumbling out:

"Do its eggs taste good?" and "How do we hatch them?"

Chicken eggs tasted good, obviously, and if they raised them by hand without any weight-gain feed then the eggs and the meat would taste better still. As for hatching the eggs, Liam intended to trade for an incubator on the system. In this world, without a livestock permit you weren’t allowed to buy equipment connected to animal husbandry such as mobile pens or egg incubators.

But their household was only keeping chickens, and didn’t need any of that. Liam knew how to make a chicken coop, a hanging feeder and an automatic waterer. He could make them himself, or teach Benjamin to make them. Anything involving handicraft, made by hand from A to Z, always drew people’s interest.

Liam explained each point in detail, and left Benjamin and Isabella full of admiration. Benjamin marvelled:

"Liam, I suspect you’re someone who came from ancient times. You really do know a great deal."

Liam had been hit square on the sore spot, and lowered his lashes guiltily.

[Ting! The freeze period is over, and the stall has been refreshed. Does the host wish to trade right now?]

The blue cat’s listless voice sounded in his head, and pulled Liam’s mind back. He asked: [Woof Woof, why do you always look so lifeless? You’re plainly a system, and you look more worn out than a ninety-year-old man.]

The blue cat yawned: [What can be done about it, that’s how the system was configured. The Master God gave me the shape and the temperament of a Ragdoll cat.]

The blue cat’s tail kept swishing back and forth in front of Liam, which left his palms itching. But apart from looking like a cat this blue cat had no physical body, and couldn’t be touched.

Liam asked out of curiosity: [Hey, do you have a physical body?]

The cat yawned: [Systems like us have no physical body but we can use a virtual one from the system shop. In that shop the host only needs to reach level six to buy items. But the thing costs a fortune, and apart from people rich enough to burst nobody is willing to spend money buying one for their system.]

That said, it flipped over irritably: [Say whether you’re trading or not, you keep dawdling and dawdling. If you’re not, I’m going back to sleep.]

Liam: "..." Damn this insolent cat, he’d asked a few questions and it carried on as though he were hauling it off to be neutered!

[Fine, fine, we’re trading. I’m going up to my room now.] Liam said helplessly, then stood up: "I’m feeling a bit sleepy, I’m going up to my room for a nap."

Isabella and Benjamin were still busy looking up information on seed improvement, and at that they didn’t even lift their heads, only waved a hand:

"Mm, go on and sleep. Leave lunch to us."

These past few days the two of them had watched Liam cook over and over, and had tried making fried Grass Worms themselves, so putting together a decent meal was not beyond them.

Liam started up the stairs, then called back down: "Oh, I’m only allowed Grass Worms once a day, so don’t cook a portion for me. Just make enough for the two of you."

"We know." Benjamin answered.

Only then did Liam go to his room, and sit down on the bed to open the system:

"Right, let’s begin."

The exchange listing appeared once again, and today there was a good deal that was new. Liam took down everything he had successfully traded for yesterday, and left only wheat flour and tomato seeds. He scrolled through hoping to find a rice cooker, and unfortunately there wasn’t one.

Liam sighed with regret, and then went looking for an egg incubator. Mercifully heaven hadn’t cut off his last road, and the system listing did indeed have one. He pressed select in delight. That done, he carried on searching...

"Oh, there’s rice seed today, wet rice and wheat both. I’ll take both of them!"

"Hm... pasteurized fresh cow’s milk? Surely it can’t be as bad as the synthetic kind? Let’s try it, if I can’t drink it my brother and sister can."

"Ah, soybeans, select!"

"What’s this, a nut milk machine as well? Select!"

"Ah! Mangoes!" 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Liam kept pressing select, and in the end he had all ten items he wanted. Today’s requested goods included: wheat flour, heat-tolerant tomato seeds, wet rice seed, wheat seed, an egg incubator, pasteurized fresh cow’s milk, soybeans, a nut milk machine, mangoes and gelatin. Once he had finished, Liam remarked:

"It’s rather like a shopping cart on Shopee, isn’t it? Whatever you fancy goes in the basket."

The blue cat pressed upload on the request, and said: "It is rather like that, except the difference is that you’re buying with goods. And the items refresh at random, so it isn’t a case of finding a thing just because you look for it..." The blue cat’s voice suddenly cut out, and then it whooped: "Look at that, a Random Newbie Gift! Host, your luck is absolutely obscene!"

Liam’s eyes went wide, and he asked: "What’s a Random Newbie Gift?"

The blue cat explained: "It’s a random gift from the system for new users. It’s never anything especially precious but the chance of receiving one is only 0.000001%, and only the genuinely lucky ever get one. Host, open it quickly and let’s see what it is!"

Liam looked at the pink gift box with the red ribbon on the system screen, and put out a finger to press "Open". The lid burst off the box along with paper confetti flying across the whole sky, and then a stiff mechanical voice sounded:

[Congratulations to Woof Woof Stall on receiving Random Newbie Gift "Handicraft Knitting and Crochet Course" x1. The item has been transferred to your storage bag.]

Liam’s face went slack. Thinking he had misheard, he hurriedly opened the system storage bag. What met his eye was an icon of a ball of yarn and a knitting needle sitting neatly in a storage slot. Liam stared at the icon for a long while, and said darkly to the blue cat:

"Damn the lot of you, what use is this supposed to be? I don’t know the first bloody thing about knitting!"

The blue cat tapped into the item description, and then said:

"It’s a course. This course is an electronic book containing a great many video tutorials on knitting and crochet with all sorts of different patterns such as sweaters, hats, scarves, bags, stuffed animals, flowers,... It also comes with seventeen kinds of yarn and the tools to work with such as knitting needles and crochet hooks in every size, yarn needles, safety eyes, stuffing,... All of it top-grade, available only in the system shop."

The blue cat read the whole thing out, and advised Liam quietly: "Host, nothing in the system shop is useless. Take these tutorial videos, every one of them is a high-grade pattern that isn’t sold on the market. Or these seventeen kinds of yarn, anything crocheted from them regulates temperature. For instance in hot weather you put it on and feel cool, in cold weather you put it on and feel warm. Compared with those hideous climate-control jackets sold online this is far better. You could try crocheting things for the baby that’s coming, it’d be rather fun."

The blue cat even dug out of its own memory a picture of a baby in a knitted sweater and a knitted hat that looked impossibly adorable.

Liam stared at the picture for a long while, and then said helplessly: "Leave it there for now. Open the notification board and show me the stalls that have goods for me."

This time, there were as many as five orange stalls, and Liam clicked into each one and sent an exchange request. His own goods were still the same ten items as yesterday, because they were all high technology and very valuable. On top of that, there were plenty in the house, so there was no fear of running short.

This time the trading went very quickly.

Liam gave up: 3 tubes of low-grade medicine, 2 tubes of mid-grade medicine, 3 tubes of low-grade nutrient fluid, 1 handheld water filter, 2 sheets of alloy-fiber fabric, 1 meteorite energy lamp; and received: 10 kilograms of wet rice seed, 10 kilograms of wheat seed, 20 kilograms of mangoes, 5 boxes of gelatin, 30 kilograms of wheat flour, 20 kilograms of soybeans, 10 packets of tomato seeds, 30 liters of fresh cow’s milk, 1 egg incubator, 1 nut milk machine.

The problem now was, how to get all of this out into the open legitimately. Everything else could be passed off as stock sitting in the spatial bracelet that he hadn’t taken out, but the egg incubator couldn’t. He had only just told Benjamin he would find a way to buy one, and having it suddenly appear really was rather off. If instead it became a case of his buying goods somewhere like a scrapyard or a secondhand market and having them sent over, that would be more reasonable.

In any case Benjamin and Isabella knew he had an information channel of his own, and wouldn’t doubt anything he told them. They also never asked whether the provenance of these things was clean, because in their eyes, their younger brother was the best person alive.

Liam opened his account balance, and looking at the lonely figure of seven million two hundred and five thousand silver stars on the screen, he considered what he could buy that came with delivery to the door. After a moment’s thought, Liam decided to buy a smart baby cot at five million silver stars that came with a home delivery service. He had to buy one anyway, so he may as well buy it now.

Watching two thirds of the balance disappear, Liam’s heart bled.

At this rate, sooner or later he was going to end up out there with a sack picking scrap...