CH149

After the girls had left to work on figuring out how they would get rid of the frost bats, Ben began his own goal, earning Myriad faith amongst the town.

It started out easy enough, Fontesh showed him all of the enchanted items she possessed, which wasn’t too many. The cold box for storing food, a water jug for collecting water from the air, a stove for cooking, and a few simple lights. None of the enchantments on the ones she owned were overly complicated and Ben was able to improve them all. It looked like they had all been produced with lower levels of magic than he was capable of enchanting with, so he was able to get them all working better while being more mana efficient in only a little over an hour.

The problem came when he wanted to start repairs on the house and asked about a resource he was certain would be available, given that all of the houses seemed to be made out of wood.

“Wait, what do you mean there isn’t any oil in the village?” He asked, shocked.

“We all have some around for cooking of course, but the quantities you’re looking for just aren’t something we can manage. Why is it so important?”

Ben could only groan. He suddenly understood why the village was so beaten down. The entire place was rotting. The wood the houses had been made from hadn’t been treated beyond just charring it. Sure, that would help to increase the lifespan, but that was no substitute for properly sealing it all.

He had to wonder if that meant that the villagers had made their homes themselves without properly understanding how to do it, or if they’d been ripped off when they hired someone from outside, but that didn’t matter. All that meant was his workload had just drastically increased.

Or did it? He was in a village full of plant mages after all, maybe they’d be able to do something about it.

“Hey, this is a random question, but I don’t suppose you could stimulate a tree to yield its sap or extract the oil from some seeds?”

“Um, it might be possible, but if it is I’m not sure how. We typically use our magic to speed up the growth of a plant or to increase the yield of our crops. I could probably make a tree grow more seeds if that would help?”

“It would be great if you could do that! Considering that it sounds like your house hasn’t been treated at all, I’ll need a lot. Would you be free to go to the woods now?”

“Alright, since I’ve already tended to my garden and the sacred forest is off-limits for the time being I’ve nothing else to do during the day. I’ll just be a minute to find Delair.”

“Cool, pretty sure my worker has had enough time to sleep so I’ll grab him and meet you out front.”

He made a pitstop to the room to empty out his bag before running to the back of the house to bang on the shed door. It took a few minutes, but eventually a groggy Skoe answered and looked up at the sun.

“I could only have been asleep for a handful of hours.”

“And I haven’t slept at all, don’t be a baby. I need to collect some more things from the woods so I need your help. The sooner this is done the better off Sachel will be.”

<Isn’t this part to help you?>

Helping me create a favourable evaluation of you in town will probably be good for her too, now hush I’m not losing my free labour.

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