Chapter 2: A Craving for Ice Cream
THE next day, I stood at the kitchen counter, wearing an apron dress borrowed from one of the maids. My blonde hair was tied back.
It was a little past noon. My staff had finished cleaning up after lunch, and it wasn’t time to get started on dinner yet either, meaning the kitchen was open for my use.
The ingredients and utensils I would need were laid out on the counter in front of me.
Eggs. Cream. Sugar. A bottle of honey.
Metal bowls, cups, a large pot, trays, and a wooden spatula.
Finally, there was a pile of scrap iron that my servants had gathered for me.
…It looked quite out of place, but the metal had an important purpose.
Taking a fistful of the iron, I set it in front of me, closed my eyes, and began to focus on the inside of my body.
I shifted that concentration to my hands, and then to my legs, followed by my chest, stomach, and head. Once I felt the magic swirling throughout my whole body, I concentrated on that energy.
This was Earth Magic. I recited my spell in its entirety, careful not to omit anything until the ritual was complete.
“That should do it…”
The magic exited me and made its way to the countertop.
The scraps of iron disappeared, and in their place now rested a shiny metal whisk.
This is called “transmutation,” a form of Earth Magic.
It’s used to reshape dirt or minerals into another form desired by the caster.
The spell appears handy at first, but few sorcerers actually practice transmutation due to a couple of reasons.
First, it requires a large amount of magical energy to cast. Even transforming a handful or two of scrap metal is a mid-tier spell in terms of energy use.
The second and most problematic reason is that transmutated items lack any real durability. In fact, most items start to fall apart after only an hour or so. Practicality is a big obstacle with transmutation.
…Fortunately, that wouldn’t be a problem for the amount of time I needed with my whisk.
If it fell apart, I knew I could just build it again from scratch.
I picked up the whisk and felt its cold weight against my hand.
“Hmm. It’s a bit heavy. And the head might be too small?”
I had been trying to create something like the stainless-steel whisks I always used when I lived in Japan. With many years of experience under my belt, I really believed I could make it perfectly on my first try.
But seeing the tiny flaws in my beloved whisk just bothered me all the more.
“I guess I’m starting over.”
A heavy whisk would quickly tire out my hand, so I decided to try again from square one.
Using magic on an already-transmutated item would be difficult, so I turned my attention to the unused pile of iron instead. After four or so more attempts, the whisk finally looked and felt just how it was supposed to.
“There we are.”
I gripped the whisk’s handle. A smile formed on my face at the feeling of the familiar weight. With a perfect replica of my favorite whisk, I was positive the rest of the work would be smooth sailing.
Today’s menu was ice cream.
It was the first food that sprang to mind when I considered the things I most wanted to eat.
I passed on from that previous life before I had a chance to taste my homemade ice cream, so the craving still lingered.
If only I could make strawberry ice cream. That would be perfect.
As far as I could tell, real strawberries didn’t exist in my kingdom. Fortunately, we at least had various berries that were similar in taste, but I decided I would keep up my search for the real deal until I’d found them.
But that was a problem for another time. I washed my whisk, dried it off, and began the process of making ice cream.
My first step was to measure out each ingredient into metal cups and bowls.
Then I separated the egg whites from the yolks into two more bowls.
I added sugar to the egg whites and whisked, whisked, whisked, and whisked some more…
…It got tiring fast.
And that was still from using the whisk. I don’t think I would have been strong enough to do the same job with a wooden spatula.
When I lived in Japan, I tried various techniques like chilling the egg whites in the fridge in advance, hoping it would save me some time. But now, I just wanted to play it by the book, or else I could easily mess something up.
I continued to whisk the whites until they formed peaks.
Next, I added more sugar to the bowl of cream and the bowl of egg yolks, mixing them well.
I then mixed the three bowls together, and finally, I stirred in the honey with my spatula.
Once I was sure the mixture was properly blended, I poured the bowl’s contents into three smaller vats.
Now it was time for more magic.
I picked up a large, flat-bottom pot and used a Water Magic spell to cover the inside with ice.
After carefully sprinkling salt onto the ice, I set the vats inside the pot.
I’d used this “refrigerant” technique in a science class experiment long ago.
The salt would keep the environment much colder than ice could on its own.
…But unfortunately, I didn’t really remember the correct ratio of salt to use, so I couldn’t just lock the ice cream away out of sight.
There was a box I could use to store my vats, but it wasn’t as insulated as I needed, and for that reason, I had to separate the mixture into three different pots and keep them in the icebox with different amounts of salt each time.
I added even more salt and ice a few times along the way, feeling the amount of magical energy I still had in my body each time.
“It’s not like before. I still feel great…”
Fire Magic is my specialty.
Normally, it takes a lot of my energy to use Water Magic, since it’s fire’s opposing element.
But for some reason, today, I wasn’t exhausting myself even after making large amounts of ice.
Even before that, my many attempts at creating a whisk didn’t seem to have drained me either.
I’d felt it ever since yesterday—my magic was flowing better than ever.
I was using the energy in my body efficiently and minimizing its loss. It was a remarkable improvement.
…I bet it’s because I remember my past life now.
Naturally, magic didn’t exist on the Earth I knew.
The “me” from that life was now sensing the foreign presence of magical energy inside her body, and even as Laetitia, I felt it more keenly than ever.
It was like an invisible web of blood vessels spiraling throughout my body, and I was probably the only one in this world who experienced that sensation.
Everyone in this world was born with magical energy to some extent. It was a natural part of the body, no different from flesh or blood. Though, the fact that my magic now felt unfamiliar in my own body was troubling to me.
Even years of studying under master sorcerers never made me so hyperaware of my own energy. The change in my body was a dramatic one, and it came about from regaining the memories of my past life.
If I had been using only 10 percent of my body’s magic at best before this, now that I had my past-life memories, I was somewhere around 60 percent use.
This was even more extraordinary when I considered that master sorcerers used less than 30 percent of their magical energy—an amount I had more than doubled for myself.
Even before this, my Gramwell blood held more magical energy than almost anyone in the kingdom. I was practically cheating at this point. If Sumia, the girl known as the Goddess, was to challenge me with her Light Magic, I could almost certainly overpower her spells with a single blow.
…Not that I had any real intention of using an attack spell on anyone.
An attack spell is designed to be used on someone else, after all.
I’d had practice battles with my older brothers, but I didn’t actually want to fight anyone in real life.
Dangerous situations like that were best avoided. I only needed the magic I used in my daily life—and in my cooking, of course.
Anything showier than that wasn’t safe and could leave people suspicious of me too.
Two hours passed as I kept my head busy thinking about these things.
“It’s done…!”
The smooth, frozen ice cream in two of the vats was now glimmering in the light.
One tray looked particularly messy, probably because I used the least amount of salt and it didn’t get cold enough, but the other two trays appeared to be successes.