Starting from zero: growing up with knowledge from another world

Chapter 6

Now that I had enough money to get almost any material that I previously couldn't (there were still some I couldn't get due to availability), I spent my days reading about medicines, alchemy, magic tool crafting, and anything else that caught my interest. Armed with new knowledge, money, and proper equipment, I went full force into studying potions, experimenting with different amounts of ingredients, different temperatures, different ingredients, etc., taking note of the attempted conditions and results in an experiment log.

I didn't forget about the chess set that I was requested to make either. Using a red crystal material and an almost white-gray hardwood, I made a custom set with armored knights as the pawns, standard but more detailed rooks and knights, a robed scholar/mage as the bishops, a fairy as the queen, and a phoenix as the king. I enchanted the phoenix with a tiny fire spell, carved a magic circuit in the base of the chess piece, and even encapsulated a tiny flame in the chest of the phoenix. It was a lot of work, and I failed more than a dozen times, but it felt very rewarding when I finally succeeded. I made the chess set with the phoenix as the centerpiece because the Duke's family crest is a phoenix, which means that the phoenix represents the Arrius duchy.

Jay loved the design and paid me a large gold for the set, which I did not complain about. I also sold some mid-grade health and mana potions, some stamina potions, and petrification cures, 10 of each, for 12,000 Lorn. I used almost all of that money to buy books, tools, some miscellaneous goods, and a lot of raw materials, including wood, metal ores, leather, fabric, thread, furs, and magic stones. I purchased some of those items in bulk through the merchants guild, and the rest mostly from the materials store I had been buying from for a bit now.

I've been studying a lot about magic tool crafting recently, there is a lot more to creating magic tools than I originally believed. Making a single magic tool can require proficiency in magic, woodworking, blacksmithing, alchemy, and maybe even more or other skills. The phoenix chess piece I made, was technically a basic magic tool, but even that required multiple skills and attempts to create. I did manage to get the magic tool crafting skill sometime during the process though, which only piqued my curiosity in the subject.

So I could improve my note-taking ability, I first had to craft, plant-based paper and oil-based ink. The iron gall ink used on parchment paper not only has a strong smell but would also erode plant-based paper relatively quickly. Making paper the old-fashioned way wasn't all that difficult, it took me about a week from start to finish to get an acceptable paper. The ink was more difficult to make, I had yet to find a combination of ingredients that would create a uniform ink color that didn't blot up or bleed a bunch on the paper. I did, however, manage to make some pencils using clay and soot for the lead, encasing it in a rounded stick, hollowed out via magic, with the lead glued in via hide glue.

With the paper I made, I could start practicing creating magic circuits, even creating my very own originals. After studying magic circuits and magic tool crafting enough, I decided to try making some magic tools from scratch. I started by making ones that would improve my daily life, but weren't super complicated for example, I created a kitchen range (stove and oven unit) and a sink faucet that could produce both cold and hot water. I also created a lamp for my room and ended up having to make a few more when my mom discovered it. My mom seems to have found out that I was making money through her connection with Livia, and now happily talks about how much of a genius I am. I feel a bit conflicted about my mom's response to me making tens of millions of lorn and creating magic tools at my age, I'm glad I didn't get in trouble for keeping it a secret though.

One day while tending to my garden, I met Dryad, the tree spirit, who had taken a liking to my garden apparently. Sylphy showed up while I was talking to Dryad, and I ended up with a second spirit friend, even though I haven't made a single non-spirit friend my age. Thinking about that was making me a bit depressed though, so I moved on.