C018 Please Maintain Your Safe Distancing And NO KISSING...!!!
2014 Words
Matilda and I exchanged pleasantries and as they consumed the simple tea break, I guided Matilda on how to make rice or gruel.
.....
"To make rice, rinse once and use your middle finger here to measure the water level. Touch the top of the rice and the water shouldn't exceed the ring here. It would be best set slightly lower. You will then have rice when you closed the lid tightly."
"If your water level is the same or slightly higher, you would end up with slightly soft rice. As for gruel, you may measure up to the 3rd ring of your palm. The first gruel, the base soup would be thick, but if you use about half a pot of water, the gruel would be thin."
"Measure one small bowl of rice for each person to make steamed rice or one small bowl of rice for 2 people to make gruel. There's a simpler way to make steamed rice using bamboo or a large 3 layer steamer and some bamboo bowls."
"Matilda, I think you would earn lots of skills when you are roughing it out with me. Come, let's make a thick gruel for the 9 of us."
I slowly guided Matilda on how to make a thick gruel base and make the right measurements. I used the garnishings that she had bought earlier to prepare and set it aside. A simple vegetable gruel with 5 scoops of rice for the 9 of us was slowly boiling in the pot above the fire and I halved a boiled eggs for each of us.
It was already sundown and cricket were chirping when we finally settled down to eat dinner with the 7 dwarfs. Luckily with my charisma and negotiations skills, we would be able to get the required shards just over simple daily meals.
Hahahahha...I was wondering whether these dwarfs were gullible or simply my approach to them were workable for their benefits.
=*=
When the dwarfs had their fills, they decided to head home. Since they don't have to cook at their own home, they seemed to have more time as they sat around and gossiped among themselves.
They bade farewell and picked up their pickaxes and shoulders them as they made their way home and vowed to come back for breakfast and tea the following day.
As I waved at them, I did not fail to catch sight of their pickaxes and I said, "Matilda, do you recognize their Obsidian tools? Its the top of the range materials to be made into tools and weapons...!"
"Why don't you inquire from them for their tools?"
"Eeehhh...at our levels now, I don't think we can wield such a tool. Its minimum requirement for us to even wield it is way too progressive for us."
"So right now we could at most wield steel weapons and tools? Hmmph...we humans are so unfortunate...."
"Yeah...it seems so but we could inject our gems into sockets and reinforce them to the highest enhancement levels. At this rate, we won't be able to fuse Good level gems because the chance of failure is high. I haven't even tried to fuse anything much at all but seeing these shards of super low quality and value, I would be making the Poor ones easily."
"If I start fusing them, my fusing technique and skills would be enhanced over time just like mining. Let's start fusing with those things we don't need. You hold on to the 4 pouches of shards first. Let me fuse those stones first to make something and I would give them back to you."
Matilda retrieved the 4 pouches from her storage bag and handed me the whole thing and when I peeked inside, it merely contained wood, stones, iron nuggets, coal and flint. "Stones and iron nuggets would be fused. I'm doing my meditation later and would be right back."
She nodded and went about to clear up all the bowls and utensils in the river while I meditated while holding on to the storage bag and appeared at the Realm of Mind.
"What type of nonsense does this girl had collected...!" I stepped up to the Fusion Chamber and thought to myself as I poured all the contents onto 4 separate storage crates I had visualised earlier on. She had more than 250 pieces of stones and I wondered what type of Fusion could I create with these.
I placed 5 stones into the 5 slots and I picked MATERIALS on the primary slider and FLOORINGS on the secondary slider. This is surely turning into fancy pants medieval English fantasy game indeed.
I closed the sliding door and pulled the side lever, and after a short while, I heard the familiar announcement.
*Ding* Fusion Success! 1'x1'Stone Floor.
I slid open the door of the chamber and placed it on a wooden pallet. It looked sturdy and light with a nice sheen on it. Too bad I can't add more materials into each shot and has to manually turn everything one at a time.
I've decided to make a stone flooring of a house measuring 8x5 which required 40 stone flooring slabs. I tenaciously fused a total of 280 stones to make 56 stone flooring slabs and kept the spare for other projects.
Moving on to the iron nuggets, it was the same dreary process as I turned the primary slider to FUSE while the secondary slider greyed out. Great...I wondered what this would be fused into as I placed 5 iron nuggets into the slots, closed the sliding door and pulled the side lever.
*Ding* Fusion Success! 97% Pure Iron Ingot.
"Pure Iron...? Seems we are moving back in time now. Helloooo...we have Refined Steel now, so what is Pure Iron? At least this is Matilda's and it's a way for her to accumulate her wealth one way or the other. At least it's a start for her and a chance to upgrade her equipment." I said to myself aloud as I continue to fuse 85 of the iron nuggets to make 17 pieces of Pure Iron ingot.
I retrieved all the pure iron ingots and changed the primary slider to MATERIALS and secondary slider to PLANKS and I slowly placed a log into the slot and closed the door and pulled the lever and it came out as 4 planks per log. I had combined my logs and hers and had broken down 12 more logs to create 48 planks.
Once I had completed the task, I placed all the fused items into her storage bag and logged off my meditative state and returned to the real world.
"That was fast...! I thought you had forgotten about me and fallen asleep while sitting there holding my storage bag. Hii...hii...hii..." she chuckled as she stoked the fireplace with thick branches. The timing still stands at 3:1 between the Realm of mind and the real world.
"Here's your storage bag. Take a look at it and it's all yours. I had stashed the flints and coals aside and that would be made into something else later on in the future." I said as i handed the storage bag to her as she peered inside and took out a pure iron ingot and a stone flooring slab.
"What am I going to do with these two items?" she asked while she tossed the pure iron ingot in her hand. I suggested to her that she could trade it with other NPC or adventurers she would meet along the way and these stone flooring slabs would be used for the floorings our new hearth. The planks would be used as wall panelling for the hearth.
"Do you intend to make a permanent place here, Robyn? I mean, we would be far away from Granny and we won't know how she would be if I don't occasionally make tabs on her." she implored to me as I reached for the maps.
"Come and see this. We are here in Featherstone and right now Yorkshire would be right over this spot here in the other maps. We could build hearths along the way within a distance of 10-15 kilometres each until we reach the outskirts of your granny's. Would that be alright with you? Every location of mines would be hearth for us to stay. Near a river with a complete set of cookware and utensils."
"There's another mining spot at Brotherton and it's near a stream too. We would be moving there... Let's say in about 14-30 days from now? I am sure the mines would have been depleted by then and our skills at mining would have tremendously improved as well. I would be learning archery in my spare time so at least I have a primary and secondary class with other subclasses as well."
"Can I learn a secondary and subclass too, Robyn? At least I could be useful rather than being only a swordsman and have common skills like mining, chopping trees and cooking, washing and gathering firewood."
"Hahahahhaha..... Washing and gathering firewood doesn't include inside the skills list, Silly...! It's not every little bit we do would be included in... Such as snacking and sleeping... Hahahaha."
Matilda threw a friendly punch at me and I caught it and feigned being punch and when I recovered, I missed the top of the hand and she withdrew it and used a hand sanitizer to wipe the part where I had kissed it.
"Eeeeeeeeee..... Germs... Germs..." she said as she washed her whole hands with SebaMed.
=*=
"What am I supposed to do with these stone flooring slabs currently? How numerous stones did you expend to create this? And how do you develop this without even budging from the spot where you were sitting? Come one... Let me in on these... I swear I won't tell anyone..."
Once again, I managed to avert her questions and redirected it to some explanations. This is not the time to explain spiritual matters.
"I would require you to mark a place so we could establish a hearth for ourselves. Grab the twine and bang a piece of wood into the earth and then mark a straight line where you need to align it."
"It could be the posterior or the front of the house, and if it's the front, just leave a clearance of 4 feet of its front for a pathway, a porch or a terrace. It's it is for the rear, don't have to leave a clearance much, as long as it is not too near the banks of the stream."
"Ok, its a reasonable task for me. How about yourself?" she asked as she searches two pieces of wood to peg into the ground and twine to align the perimeter of the floorings.
"I'm going to fuse the shards together and make lots of Poor quality gems. There are 49 gems in each pouch and it would be enough to make 9 poor quality gems at this moment and you can safeguard them. No worries for me."
"Ok...sounds fair to me. Help me to set up a shelter after this, ok? I will ready the items once I've marked out the hearth. Won't it be too small for an 8x5 floor space? I was thinking of a 24x24 kind of floor space."
"Then 24x24 floor space it is. We require more stones in that case and we could focus on the iron mines tomorrow morning after the dwarfs had their breakfast."
I received the 4 pouches from Matilda and straight went into meditation and appeared before the fusion chamber. I slid the primary slider to FUSE and placed the Ruby shards into the 5 slots, closed the door and pulled the side lever.
*Ding* Fusion Success! 1 piece of poor quality Ruby gem attained.
I kept at it until I got 9 pieces of poor ruby gems and I moved on to emerald next. When it comes to sapphires, the success rate seemed to be lower than those two.
*Ding* Fusion Fail. Sapphire shards diffused.
- Writer
