บท 60: Moving Into Our New Home
After that night, things finally began to calm down around me. Therese and Luna were staying at their Inn while the rest of us stayed at our small, cozy house.
Therese joined Zenith in helping out at the local chapel. They happened to meet Aurora during one of their services and the three of them became good friends.
Paul was taking small jobs at the adventurer's Guild. Surprisingly enough, he hit it off with Soldat when they happened to meet at the Guild one day. Soldat tried recruiting him to Stepped Leader, but Paul assured him that he was retired. He had a family now and had no interest in taking on dangerous work. The jobs Paul was taking now were the safer ones like gathering missions.
Hope continued her work as a seamstress while Laws found a job as a city guard.
Lilia watched Norn and Aisha while everyone else was out working. She also took the kids out to the market to help with the grocery shopping.
Sylphiette continued taking her classes at school and I spent most days at the Academy too. Since I have completed all the stone lithographs I was contracted to sell and I now had plenty of money, I spent most of my time at the Academy doing... academic research.
Now that I have free time opened up, I decided to focus on my magic research. Each day I spend a couple hours in the morning practicing getting complete mastery over my Magic Power Eye. I've already mastered the basics, but I've found this Demon Eye to be far more useful than everyone seems to give it credit for.
I've learned to sense the presence of other life forms when using this eye and at this point I've gotten used to keeping it active at all times. I've also learned how to differentiate different types of life forms and objects by their mana.
For example, I can easily tell the difference between a monster, a common animal, and a living humanoid. Humans, Beastfolk, Elves, and Demons all have a slightly different mana signal as well so I've learned to tell someone's race at a glance, even if they are hidden from me.
This could be incredibly useful for seeing someone hiding behind a wall, or determining an opponent's strength or detecting their battle aura. Unfortunately, it does have its drawbacks as well. Since I have to visually see the mana, I can't use this ability to detect someone who is behind me or see someone if I have my eyes closed.
The Magic Power Eye has also given me an even deeper understanding of my own magic now that I can visibly see the mana take form and how it interacts with the world. My thoughts are that this could help me learn to cast healing magic without incantations. That would be an incredibly useful skill to learn.
Unfortunately, healing magic is a bit troublesome to practice. You see, it's not like there's an overabundance of people bleeding out on the street or walking through town with missing limbs. I could offer to help out at the local chapel, but that would take work from lesser skilled healers who need that income to survive.
What I've been doing in the meantime is giving myself a small scratch on the arm or finger and healing it while keeping a close eye on how the mana interacts with my body. It's fascinating, really. The mana seems to seep into my flesh itself and fuse together with it. It's as though the body, energized with mana, is stimulated into overdrive and the cells reproduce at an alarming rate.
Over the next two weeks of practice, I've started to make small strides in learning silent casting for healing magic. At this point, I still can't even call myself at the beginner level without incantations. It takes me about ten minutes to close even the smallest scratch the size of a papercut, but even this smallest amount of progress is enough to get me excited. The fact that I'm able to make any progress at all tells me that it's possible. I can do this!
Finally, the day has come! Every day on the way home from the Academy, I've been stopping by my manor to check on Balda's progress. Today, on the way home I was greeted by Balda with his whole team of dwarves standing proudly behind him. He told me that his work was finished and guided me through my newly renovated home to show off the finished product.
Needless to say, I couldn't be happier with the result. Everything is just how I remember it, down to the tiniest detail. I paid Balda the rest of the money he was owed and threw in another gold coin as a tip to be split among his workers. They were ecstatic. A gold coin is one hell of a tip after all!
That night, I told everyone that my manor was ready to move into. Paul had already known about the manor previously, and Zenith knew I had a lot of money, so they weren't THAT surprised when I offered for them to move in with me.
I excitedly invited everyone over to take a look at my new place. The manor was completely furnished with new beds in every bedroom with matching desks and wardrobes. The only thing missing were things like plates and forks for the kitchen.
"This place... it's... perfect", Is all Zenith could mutter in a barely audible whisper as she was shown around the house. Even Paul, who had seen the place before, was shocked at how completely different it looked now that Balda was finished with it.
"I've never seen such a big house before!", Sylphy yelled out in wonder as we stepped into the main lounge. "Are we really going to live here?", she said with an excited grin.
"This is going to be a lot of work to clean", Lilia thought silently as she walked behind us.
Hope and Laws actually seemed intimidated by their perceived extravagance of the manor. They didn't really say much as they stayed at the back of the group as I guided everyone through the manor.
"So, what does everyone think? There's plenty of bedrooms. You're all welcome to move in if you would like!"
"I call dibs on the one at the end of the hall!", Paul yelled out shamelessly.
"Uh. No, that one's mine", I said with a deadpan look on my face.
"Isn't that bed a tad big for little ol' you", Paul said with a smirk.
'The master bedroom. That's not going to be just for me. Sylphy, Roxy, and I are going to be sharing that bed together.'
Instead of answering Paul, I just dazed off with a stupid grin on my face.
"Fine. I guess I can make due with the one on the other end of the hall."
Snapping out of my trance, I nodded in agreement. That was the second largest bedroom and the one I had intended to give Paul and Zenith.
"Yeah, that's fine. There's also another bedroom for Norn and Aisha and one for Hope and Laws as well."
"I don't know...", Laws said. "This place seems a bit... much... don't you think?"
"Yes. This is too much Rudy! You don't have to buy us a place to live! That's your money. You earned it", Hope added.
"Nonsense, you guys are family too. I wouldn't force you to move in, but please know you're more than welcome here!"
"Please Mom and Dad! Please can we stay here? This place is amazing!", Sylphy begged them.
"...Fine", Laws relented with a sigh. "If you're really sure about this Rudeus, we'd be happy to stay."
Sylphy took the day off at the Academy and helped us as we all moved our stuff to the manor. I was helping carry a bag of Sylphy's things and without thinking carried them into my bedroom with my stuff.
"Uhh... What are you doing, Rudy? I hope you don't think Sylphiette's going to be sharing a room with just the two of you", Laws pointed out with a stern look on his face.
"Oh. How silly of me! I just got her bag mixed with mine. I'm sorry about that!"
"Hand me her bag, I'll put her things away in our room."
'Nice Save!', I thought as I handed the bag over to Laws. Disappointing as it is, Laws is right. We're still too young for that sort of thing. I guess I just got carried away moving into this place with Sylphy. It reminds me of the good old days when we were a happily married couple.
Regarding the small house we all just moved out from, we decided to give the place to Therese and Luna. We hadn't stayed there long, but we all had grown attached to the house. It would be a shame to have to sell it.
Another six weeks went by as we all acclimated to living in the manor together. We all got back to our daily lives and work. I continued practicing my healing magic. In addition, whenever I got tired or frustrated practicing healing magic, I worked on a new project I had thought of.
I was designing a stone gauntlet with built in magic circles on each fingertip. Whenever the fingertips would make contact with the thumb it would teleport me to a predesignated magic circle. This would only happen if the gauntlet was also being supplied with mana in order to avoid accidental activations.
Simultaneously, I also was working on designing kunai with magic circles engraved on the handle. Using these two magic tools in combination would allow me to throw the kunai to a location I wanted to teleport to a short distance away. I got the idea from a certain flashy yellow ninja.
I configured one of the four destinations to be the basement of the manor and the other three were paired with kunai.
One day, after walking home with Sylphy from the Academy, Paul stopped me at the entrance to the house with a concerned look on his face.
"Rudy."
"Yes, father?"
"I was just contacted by the Adventurer's Guild today. It seems we finally have word on Phillip and Hilda's whereabouts."
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