"Fufufu…very well. The answer is that I'm not from your planet, Alara. I was born and raised on another world far away from Azura. To make a long story short, my people are fundamentally different than the people here. It's why I'm so strong, it's why I have no attachment to the human countries here, and it's why I may seem so strange." (Mizuki)
Alara stares at me in amazement for several minutes without saying a word. Then she smiles.
"That's incredible…hard to believe even, but I don't doubt you're telling the truth. Why did you come here? How did you? What were your people and planet like? I have so many more questions now." (Alara)
I smile apologetically.
"I can't answer those, but here's what I can tell you. My people were far more advanced than yours, Alara. In fact, we could make trains better than this one, fly fast enough to circle the whole world in a day, make weapons that destroyed small countries, and even travel between planets. Most commoners in my homeland new as much reading, writing, and math at Cera's age as your teachers and scholars." (Mizuki)
Alara stares at me with her mouth gaping open, and she is obviously skeptical. I just stare back at her patiently. Eventually, she stares off into the distance for several minutes. When she looks back at me, she seems troubled.
"To think…something like that is possible. This conversation has really hurt my pride as an elf, Mizuki. So, this idea that children get a free education…this was something your people did?" (Alara)
"Yes, in fact, they insisted on it. All children were required to start school at around age four, where they spent six hours per day, five days per week, and 7 months per year, until they were eighteen. The schools even served meals and had recreation, and it allowed both of their parents to have jobs. Some people, like me, even went to school for several more years after the mandatory schooling." (Mizuki)
"Mizuki…that's…there was really that much for your people to teach their children? No…I guess that makes sense, based on what you said before. This immense knowledge from your people…can you share it with mine?" (Alara)
I shake my head sadly.
"I can't share most of my world's knowledge with you or your people. Partly because I obviously don't know it all, and partly because of other reasons that I can't explain to you. I can provide things for your people to use, like this train, or I can use my own knowledge to help your people directly. However, I can't teach them like you want. All I can tell you is…that's ultimately for their own good." (Mizuki)
Alara nods bitterly.
"Okay, I understand…as much as I can, I guess. You said most of your world's knowledge, right? What can you teach us?" (Alara)
"Math, for one. I can teach you as much math as you want, but I'm not sure how useful it would be to you." (Mizuki)
Alara seems to be in better spirits now, and she is nodding thoughtfully.
"In that case, I will give your school suggestion some thought if you'd impart this advanced math knowledge onto us. That way, at least we can advertise it as a unique resource – not mentioning its origin, of course. It might make the school novel enough to be profitable." (Alara)
I smile back at her warmly.
"I think that's a great idea, Alara. I'm more impressed with you as a leader every day." (Mizuki)
Alara's eyes fly open, and she becomes visibly embarrassed. After a moment, she tries to change the topic.
"Uhm…what other suggestions to attract citizens did you have?" (Alara)
I stifle my laughter.
"Games and recreation. I could recreate at least a dozen novel games from my world that your people would love. Some of them would take Percivil and I a lot of time to make and they'd be hard for others to reproduce – those could be exclusives for your city. Other games are small and easily reproduced, and they could just be sold to people as souvenirs to spread interest in the town." (Mizuki)
Alara becomes quite excited.
"Yes, Mizuki, that is perfect! We should meet with Percivil as soon as possible and discuss recreating these games from your world. I am very excited to hear about them!" (Alara)
I nod my approval, and Alara sits back with a dopey look on her face for several minutes, deep in thought. Eventually, she becomes puzzled and looks at me.
"Mizuki, I almost forgot to ask. Why didn't you approve of the other train operator job candidate you interviewed? I'm not going to argue with you, I'm just curious. I liked him." (Alara)
I grin at her. This is so going to wreck her…I can barely wait.
"Oh, that? It was because he was a mole sent by another noble to infiltrate the train system and exploit it in some way. The most likely noble is Tessa, and the second most likely is Helena." (Mizuki)
While I smirk, Alara goes pale. Her expression is priceless.
"Mizuki…that's bad…if you hadn't insisted on screening them, I would have hired him. I'd have squandered your trust to responsibly manage the train on the very first day that you gave it to me. I can't tell you how sorry I am…" (Alara)
Well, now I feel bad…not bad enough to stop doing it, probably, but still. I shake my head and gesture at her reassuringly.
"No, no, don't worry about it. He was a good liar, and he might have fooled me under different circumstances. You still have my trust, I promise." (Mizuki)
Alara seems to relax partially, and she smiles at me gratefully. After a time, we fall into a comfortable silence, and I drop the silencing spell.
The list of people who know I'm not of this world just keeps growing. How long will it be before one of them squeaks, I wonder.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
After we returned to Eden, Alara and Zara took off with the workers to get them acquainted with their jobs. Kara and Cera tagged along, at Alara's request, so that she could show them around Eden afterwards. Now, it's just Nina, Alto, and I.
"By the way, you two, I told Alara that I'm not from this world. It seemed necessary to convince her to build a school here with free education for all the children." (Mizuki)
Nina just smiles in amusement, but Alto looks surprised and conflicted.
"Mizuki, I'm happy that you want such a thing, truly. If every elf learned basic reading, writing, math, and magic during childhood…the common people might prosper faster than I ever expected. Still, can you trust Lady Alara with so much personal information about you? She did repeatedly scheme to kill you." (Alto)
"Fufufu…I would not worry, Alto. The only thing greater than Alara's fear of betraying Mizuki is her desperation to prove herself to him and earn his trust. I see no issue." (Nina)
Nina's endorsement seems to calm down Alto, and she smiles and nods her acknowledgement. Perfect, I didn't have to justify it at all. Now, on to next steps.
"Nina, I think you'll like another thing Alara and I talked about. I'm going to talk to Percivil about helping me build dozens of games from my world – items meant only for fun. Some of the large, novel games are going to be put in a city-owned building in the center of town, while the smaller and easily reproduced ones are going to be sold as souvenirs and allowed to spread in this country. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in joining me for?" (Mizuki)
Nina's eyes light up like a child on Christmas morning, and I sense a rush of excitement from her. Figures she'd like that. I smile at her in amusement.
"Mizuki, are you serious!? You've been keeping that many fun things from me!? We must go this instant and correct your mistakes – there's no time to waste!" (Nina)
Nina rushes forward and loops her arm through mine, then starts dragging me off towards the southeast border of the valley where Percivil's workspace is located. As I'm dragged off, stifling my laughter, I look over my shoulder to Alto.
"Alto! Do you want to come?" (Mizuki)
Alto smiles and shakes her head.
"No, that's okay. I want to go practice manipulating photons on my own and try to learn this invisibility spell of yours! Now that Zara has that ring…my pride just can't take it anymore." (Alto)
That sounds like Alto. I just smile and nod approvingly. I'm not worried about her experimenting with radiation on her own. I've already explained to her that higher energy photons, or shorter wavelength radiation, than the light she can see is dangerous. This will probably be good for her.
Nina and I make our way over to Percivil's workstation, and we see him messing with the heating on his forge. There are stacks of iron ingots, and some copper, gold, and silver ingots, piled around him. I synthesized the last batch for him a few days ago, and it looks like he has plenty still. He looks to us in surprise as we approach and waves.
"Hey Percivil! How's it going here?" (Mizuki)
Percivil shrugs good-naturedly at us.
"Aye, the work itself hasn't been an issue. The elves and wolf-kin just ask for a lot of the same boring metal components for their construction. Sometimes they'll ask for unique furnishings or adornments in the buildings, or for enchanted items. Apparently, enchanted items are very rare here. Plus, yah know, I've gotten to talk with Art a lot about designs around the city, and they've even incorporated some of them! So, it's still fun!" (Percivil)
He doesn't sound unhappy, but I do feel bad about him getting bored with most of his work. I sold him on coming here to help me with cool otherworlder things, but I ended up not needing him for the train after he explained enchantments. I nod at him sympathetically.
"Well, I'm glad it hasn't been all boring – I'd hate for you to regret me dragging you here. On that subject, would you have time to help me with a number of special projects?" (Mizuki)
Percivil begins stroking his beard, and he eyes me with cautious optimism.
"Aye, I could find some time. What are yah thinking? Anything fun, like a new way to get up that mountain to the hot springs?" (Percivil)
I shake my head.
"Not that, but I do think you'll like it. It's making items that have too complicated of materials for me to synthesize on my own, and I can only trust you to help me with building them. Some of them might even be too complicated for you…interested?" (Mizuki)
Percivil's beard stroking intensifies, and I see the glint of curiosity in his eyes. He smirks at me.
"Hmm…too complicated for me, huh? Aye, I'm interested. Are yah going to keep teasing this old dwarf or give me some actual details?" (Percivil)
"Yes, Mizuki, you are wasting precious time!" (Nina)
Nina and Percivil both give me impatient glares. Jeez…they're tag teaming me now? I shake my head in exasperation.
"Fufufu…sorry, I couldn't help myself. I have dozens of items for recreation and friendly competition that I want to build. Some of them are bigger than a person, and some of them have lots of moving parts but fit in the palm of your hand. They may use metal, wood, leather, stone, and who knows what else. The only thing they have in common…is that they're all unique items from my home world. You ready to discuss the designs?" (Mizuki)
Percivil's eyes go wide in shock, and a giddy smile forms on his face after a moment. He nods furiously and takes off towards the construction site, calling over his shoulder as he goes.
"Aye! I'll grab my design tools and tell Art I may be unavailable for the rest of the day! Let's go to the conference room in your house!" (Percivil)
I can't help but chuckle as he runs off, and Nina looks mildly impatient. Eventually, he comes running back carrying a pack with papers sticking out. When he arrives in front of his, he's slightly out of breath.
"Aye…I'm ready…let's go!" (Percivil)
I shake my head at him in amusement, then teleport us all to the conference room after I confirm that nobody is watching. We take seats on the couches, and Percivil begins spreading papers out on the coffee table. After a few minutes, he nods to me expectantly.
"Aye, I'm ready Mizuki. Tell me about all these items, as much as yah can. I'm assuming yah weren't a craftsman in your other world, so we'll need to discuss what they're made of and such." (Percivil)
I nod at him approvingly. Then, I tell him about all the items I had in mind. I start with the big games I want to put in a recreation center – pool, air hockey, foosball, ski ball, and ping pong. They're all popular games that I think should be doable with enchantments, Nina's and I's syntheses, and Percivil's craftsmanship.
The hardest part is ironically the pool balls. We can't synthesize modern Earth ones, and I'm unaware of elephants or other ivory sources here, but Percivil thinks orc tusks would work based on my description.
Percivil is extremely committed to a lot of the finer details, and questions me for almost two hours about the exact dimensions and materials, their properties, and how much error there can be in their design.
At several points, I shape my magic into the items from my memory and will the magic surfaces to reflect visible light. It lets me generate a crappy hologram for his reference, which seems to help. Nina is bewildered by the magic holograms, and she keeps trying to touch them to no avail.
After the large game tables, I move on to describing smaller game items like chess, checkers, connect four, and reversi. Percivil insists that these will be relatively simple from a crafting perspective, and we don't spend much time on them.
He becomes absolutely fascinated when I describe something that I envisioned as an Eden-specific souvenir – the Rubik's cube. Fortunately, I had an eccentric applied math professor in college, and I wrote an entire paper on how the swivels in these things work. So, I can give Percivil detailed information.
After a few hours, he nods confidently.
"Aye, I'll need yah to use your strange magic to make small metal pieces for me, but I think I can build this. It will be the hardest one you've mentioned! These items will be more than enough work for me right now. Do yah have any preference about which ones I start on?" (Percivil)
I nod appreciatively.
"I knew I could count on you! Thanks, Percivil. If you don't mind, I'd like to start with pool tables to put in a public recreation building. I'd also like to make the reversi game as a simple souvenir to sell. We'll of course give you a profit share. Just tell Alara, and she'll work it out fairly. Also, feel free to use the third floor of this mansion as a workspace for all these items." (Mizuki)
Percivil nods and looks thoughtful for a moment.
"Aye, I can start with those. I think that I should just need wood, smooth stone, and leather for most of it. If Nina can make the stones I want, I can get the other materials through Art's suppliers. I'll need one of yah to collect or buy orc tusks though." (Percivil)
Nina is quick on the draw.
"Fufufufu…I will take care of this. How many do you need slaughtered for this game…will a hundred suffice?" (Nina)
Bad dragon! No orc genocides over a game!
"Nina, I don't think you need that many. Why not start with half a dozen tusk pairs and see how many he needs after that?" (Mizuki)
Nina eyes me suspiciously, like she's not sure whether she should listen.
"After all…if you spend too long hunting orcs it will just delay Percivil starting. Plus, you may miss the completion of the other game, and I might start playing it without you." (Mizuki)
Nina's face contorts in horror.
"M-Mizuki, there is no need for threats! I will just get the six orcs' tusks and come right back…you won't let anyone else play the other game before me, right?" (Nina)
I act like I'm thinking about it for a minute, but I'm just stifling laughter. I think Nina senses something through our connection because she glares at me.
"Hmm…for my beloved mate, I can do that. You have my word, Nina – we'll play the game together first." (Mizuki)
Nina's face becomes very satisfied.
"Fufufu…good, that is a smart decision, Mizuki!" (Nina)
I give her a puzzled look, and she just stares back with a polite smile. Is that…a threat? Thinking about it is too scary, so I don't.
I notice through the room windows that it's already sunset – time really flies. Percivil notices as well and nods.
"Aye, it's getting late, so I better wrap up my smithing duties in the valley." (Percivil)
Percivil collects his design notes and walks out of the room with a polite farewell, leaving Nina and I alone. I look over at her to see that she's gazing at me with a mix of amusement and excitement. I give her a puzzled look.
"Fufufu…would you like me to reward you in advance for all these fun games you're sharing?" (Nina)
We're alone in the mansion, and her tone doesn't leave much uncertainty. I grin excitedly and nod. I can't believe I ever said no to her before.