Chapter : 05
The next morning, I woke up to the sound of a commotion outside. The foul-mouthed man had come to our house, cursing as he installed a lock on the door. He hammered away, straightened the crooked windows, and fixed the locks, all while grumbling nonstop. Eventually, Mom smacked him upside the head.
Hmm… They must be really close. I almost caused a serious disaster yesterday.
“Uncle.”
“Uh, yeah? What is it?”
The rough-looking man seemed awkward when I spoke to him first and asked why I had called him over. Unable to overcome my guilt, I opened my mouth.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Just… sorry.”
“Don’t you know how to speak respectfully to an adult?”
“That’s just how things turned out.”
“Would you look at this crazy little brat.”
The man swore, and Mom smacked him on the head again. The man got angry, insisting that he hadn’t said anything wrong, while Mom said there were circumstances that made it unavoidable and kept calling me “Miss.”
In front of the other villagers, Mom introduced me as her daughter and called me by my name. But with this man, she casually called me “Miss” like they had no formalities between them…
They really must be close. I almost did something irreversible.
“I’m really sorry.”
“What the hell? That makes me feel even worse.”
Once the house was more or less put in order and we were preparing lunch, Mom introduced the man to me. His name was Thomas. She explained that, when he was young, he had run away from his hometown declaring that he would become a great pirate, only to be thoroughly beaten down by the harshness of the world. He had barely managed to acquire a ship and return home, and now lived as a fisherman in Ilam—a complete piece of trash.
“Nice to meet you. I’m a fellow piece of trash who almost ruined a man’s life.”
“Why are you calling yourself trash, Miss?!”
Feeling a sense of kinship with a fellow piece of trash, I shook Uncle Thomas’s hand. Mom tried to smack me on the back, but restrained herself and instead pounded on Uncle Thomas’s back.
“This woman has been beating only me whenever she gets bored since we were kids!”
I’m sorry, Uncle. I really did screw up.
Mom and Uncle Thomas gave off such a strong childhood-friends-who-had-seen-each-other-at-their-best-and-worst vibe that, while it hurt my heart a little, I was also intrigued.
If Uncle Thomas owned a boat, perhaps he could become my good employer.
“Uncle. I have a Throwing skill.”
“So?”
“I can go spear fishing. I can catch tuna, too.”
The power of my Throwing skill was incredible. I could even bend the iron bars of the Imperial prison by throwing a bed at them. If I threw a fishing harpoon, tuna or marlin would probably be pierced in one shot.
Tuna were considered valuable fish here as well, so I figured I could be quite useful to Uncle Thomas.
“No.”
But Mom seemed adamantly opposed.
She said I was talking like that because I had grown up sheltered and had no idea how dangerous the sea was. She told me to stop acting recklessly and doing things that would put a nail in her coffin.
Uncle Thomas agreed with her.
“A kid who hasn’t even had the blood dry on her head thinks she can be a sailor? I’m against it, too.”
Everyone was against it, so I had no choice.
I’d have to sneak onto Uncle Thomas’s boat later.
“Miss. Don’t even think about sneaking onto my boat.”
“Hmm…”
“If you let her onto the boat, Thomas, I’ll kill you.”
“Do I look crazy?”
Mom knows me way too well. This is a problem.
My wounds from yesterday still hurt, so perhaps I should refrain from going out to sea for now.
However, I figured I could at least take leisurely walks around the area and collect small amounts of magic stones.
I put the dishes into the wash basin, picked up my pickaxe and picnic basket, and Mom looked startled.
“Where are you going?”
“For a little walk.”
“With a pickaxe?”
“That’s possible.”
When you’re living your life, there was nothing particularly strange about going for a walk with a pickaxe. I pushed my glasses up and said it with a serious expression.
Uncle Thomas looked at Mom and asked,
“Is your daughter perhaps a lunatic?”
He got smacked on the head.
Whether Mom was worried or not, there was no one who could stop me.
After all, I was formerly Mitchell Nephtis and currently Evan Laef.
My mother, Eleanor, might not realize it, but she was also second to none when it came to reckless behavior. In the original story, after I died, Eleanor slapped the Duke of Nephtis across both cheeks and quit her job.
The petty duke put a wanted bounty on Eleanor Laef for hitting him, but the story never explained what happened to Eleanor afterward.
By now, Uncle Thomas had probably been kicked out of our house after saying something along the lines of, Your daughter is exactly like you.
I checked the map of the village and my compass as I headed toward an area where there was a vein of magic stones.
If I happened to find a Titi along the way, that would be a huge bonus. Even if I didn’t, I could mine magic stones and exchange them for money at the Adventurer’s Guild.
Magic stones were always in high demand because they could be used to make artifacts and all sorts of household goods.
I found an area that barely overlapped with the Beast King’s territory. I put down my picnic basket and began striking the rock with my pickaxe.
I couldn’t expect to find particularly high-purity magic stones, but it seemed like this would be enough to earn some pocket money.
After clanging away for about an hour, I heard someone approaching.
Someone unpacked his belongings near me.
The man simply went about his business as though I didn’t exist. He didn’t look entirely human.
A snake beastkin? A lizard beastkin? Whatever type of beastkin he was, beautiful scales were visible around his neck. His skin was nearly pure white. His pupils were thin and vertical, his eyes were red, and his white hair shimmered brightly.
At first glance, the man practically screamed, I am not human.
He took bowls out of his luggage one after another, and as though they had been waiting for that exact moment, wild cats and stray dogs came rushing over for mealtime.
Whoa. He’s a cat dad. A cat dad.
This was my first time seeing a cat dad.
The pure-white beastkin nodded in satisfaction as the animals ate. Then he pulled out a piece of meat from his bag and waved it around in the air.
At that moment, a wandering albatross appeared from somewhere, circled around the man several times, and then charged straight into his arms.
The man tried to withstand the bird’s landing but was knocked over with a loud crash.
The two of them got back up, casually dusting themselves off as though this happened all the time, and the man fed the albatross.
For reference, I had never seen a wandering albatross until I worked at a zoo. You can think of it as looking like an enormous, gigantic duck.
When it spread its wings, they easily exceeded three meters. It usually lived around the coast, and it was absolutely terrible at taking off and landing, so it spent most of its time gliding through the sky.
It was a rare sight, but it had absolutely nothing to do with me.
I rested for a while as I watched the beastkin man, then went back to striking the rock.
Once I had mined enough magic stones to fill my picnic basket, I returned home before it got too late and ate dinner.
◇ ◆ ◇
Starting the next day, I went on outings to the mining site I’d discovered and brought back magic stones.
Since our schedules happened to coincide, I ran into the beastkin man every day.
After seeing each other for about three days in a row, we began awkwardly nodding at each other before going our separate ways.
After doing that for an entire week, the man finished feeding the animals and approached me.
“Are you a miner?”
“No.”
“I see.”
The man nodded and walked away.
I might spend every day clanging away with a pickaxe, but I wasn’t a miner.
N) Mining Lv.1 skill has been acquired.
“……”
Well, now that this had happened, I couldn’t exactly say I wasn’t a miner anymore, could I?
Wait. Aren’t these kinds of lifestyle skills supposed to appear in experienced miners or professional farmers?
Skills are incredibly easy to acquire.
Could this be the effect of my Extra skill?
I’d heard that obtaining skills was relatively easy, but isn’t this too easy?
Something that normally would have taken several years had been reduced to one week.
Anyway, since I’d acquired the skill, I decided to test it.
I swung my pickaxe into a rock larger than my head.
CRACK!
The rock split into eight pieces.
“……”
This skill is amazing.
If level 1 is already this powerful, then by level 10, I’d probably be able to dig an entire tunnel by myself.
Feeling more confident, I began striking the rocks with renewed vigor and returned home with a basket full of stones.
The next day, I went to the Adventurer’s Guild and exchanged the magic stones for money.
They didn’t pay me very much, saying that the cost of extracting the magic stones from the rocks would probably be higher than their value.
Still, I managed to earn the pocket money I’d been aiming for, and I bought a large bamboo basket from the market.
It could be carried on my back and hold a lot of minerals, so I felt like I’d made a good purchase.
Now that I had the Mining skill, splitting rocks no longer took much effort.
I could spend my spare time sorting out the magic stones and bringing them home.
“Ehehehehehe!”
The next day, I went to the mining site and started clanging away like a woman possessed.
Then I spotted the beastkin man arriving with his luggage and proudly approached him.
“You can call me a miner now.”
“Why?”
“I acquired a Mining skill.”
“Congratulations.”
The man nodded expressionlessly, but I could tell he genuinely meant it.
For some strange reason, that way of speaking sounded familiar.
Where had I met someone like this before?
The beastkin man was knocked down by the albatross again today, and he got back up after dusting himself off.
I thought he was simply going to pack up and leave, but after looking around the mining site, he asked me a question.
“Miner.”
“Why?”
“Do you intend to destroy all the rocks here?”
“Yep.”
“And after you’ve destroyed them all?”
Hmm…
If I went deeper from here, I’d get closer to the Beast King’s territory. The quality of the magic stones would improve, but so would the danger.
Once I’d conquered this entire area, I’d probably only come here occasionally to look for Titi.
“Do you intend to enter the Beast King’s territory?”
“What are you going to do if I do?”
“I will kill you.”
Hmmmmmm…
That way of speaking…
I really feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before.
