Once we yelled our goodbyes, Lluisa and Maribel disappeared into the forest. I felt a twinge of pain in my heart, but I immediately brushed that aside.
“She’s gone,” Diana muttered.
“Yeah,” I replied.
Everyone nodded along. Hayate let out a small, mournful cry, and Krul and Lucy followed suit, looking gloomier than usual. We all decided to visit the hot spring. We’d been tired to begin with, and we hoped to wash away our dirt and exhaustion.
I groaned as I sank my body into the warm water. “Ah, this hits the spot...”
I feel like an old man for saying it, but I suppose I am an old man. I felt my exhaustion slowly melt away into the water. I wasn’t in a soda hot spring or a sulfur hot spring—this was a bona fide magical energy spring. But I think any hot bath can wash away exhaustion...
I gazed at the sky—the sun was setting. The snow-laden clouds had drifted away, and instead, calm tufts of white floated above us.
“Whew,” I sighed.
I saw the soft puffs of my breath mingle with the steam that rose from the hot water in the bath. I then closed my eyes and felt my tired bones relax. Maribel’s smiling face flashed across my mind for a second, but the warmth of the water caused my memory to fade away, and my consciousness was swept along with it too.
“Eizo!”
When I came to, someone was calling out to me. I’d apparently fallen asleep for a short while.
“Oops,” I muttered.
I’d heard rumors back on Earth that falling asleep in the bath was similar to fainting. It wasn’t a good habit to have, though maybe I’d drifted off because of my exhaustion. Should I take a day off where I just stay in bed the whole time? I was in a bit of a daze still.
“Eizo?!” a voice called.
“Sorry! I’m up, I’m up! I’ll get out soon!” I hastily yelled back.
I realized that the sun had almost completely set—I’d probably been bathing for almost an hour. Sure, maybe in public baths in Japan, I could’ve spent an hour in the baths while sandwiching short sauna sessions in between, but I’d never spent an hour bathing in this world. I couldn’t blame the others for getting worried about me, and I quickly jumped out of the water, swiftly dried myself off, and flew out of the hot spring.
Over dinner, I made a suggestion to Helen.
She nodded with a cup in her hand. “You’ve got a point.”
I swallowed a spoonful of soup. “Right? I realized it during our snowball fight today. I feel like we should have more ranged weapons. I think it’d be useful.”
“We’re in the middle of a forest, but this area’s practically a clearing.”
“Yep.”
Our current crossbow had been made with Rike in mind, and everyone else could use bows and arrows, giving us plenty of power for ranged attacks. But if we didn’t have our weapons on us, we needed another way to launch ranged attacks. I was hit by plenty of snowballs today, and I felt like that experience could be useful. Honestly, we could just throw stones—that would be more than enough of a weapon. Our snowball fights today proved that.
“Should we collect some rocks?” Samya asked.
I crossed my arms in front of me with a spoon in my mouth. When Diana scolded me for my manners, I hastily took it out.
“I feel like it lacks the flair of Forge Eizo,” I mumbled.
“Shall we make something?” Rike asked excitedly.
“Hmm...”
We’d been taking quite a few breaks from our usual forging recently, but we were holing up for the winter. Since we had plenty of materials to spare, some ideas came to mind. When I told everyone about my plans, I received words of agreement.
All right, let’s make one.
Only when I crawled into bed did I realize that I should’ve allotted some days for relaxation where I could do nothing at all.
⌗⌗⌗
“This’ll invoke a different type of terror from the crossbow,” Helen said as she shrugged. She was weaving together thin strips of leather. “We don’t know when the attack will come.”
She was probably the only one who truly understood how terrifying rocks could be in times of need. We all had experience fighting monsters, but only she had ever been out on a military battlefield to fight other people. Maybe Anne has some experience too. Barring Rike, everyone in our family was just too strong—it was easy to forget that the princess possessed a might that was truly unfitting for a dainty royal. However, though she might have been on the front lines to inspire others, she probably hadn’t gone directly to war. No one wanted to risk injuring an imperial princess.
“Thought so,” I said.
Helen nodded back. “And think of the sheer number of attacks. If everyone here fired at once, I don’t think our enemy would escape unscathed. We’re gonna be using a sling, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end.” She stuck out her tongue wearily.
We were currently weaving slings. Simply put, these contraptions had cups where we could place stones, and there were ties on either end of that cup. One end of the tie would be attached to the wielder’s wrist, and a stone would rest in the cup—the wielder would then grip the other end of the string and fling it around until a high speed was achieved. Finally, they would release, launching the stone forward. I think it’s easy to get the gist of how this works.
And so, we’d all gathered in the forge because it was a large space that allowed us to work together. We weren’t using fire today. I wasn’t obsessing over Maribel or anything, but the unusually quiet forge made me think of her absence. We cut the leather that Samya and Lidy had tanned into thin strips as we each wove our ties. This allowed us to adjust the length to our specific body proportions. As expected, Rike was the most skilled at this kind of work. She deftly wove the strips together. I’d seen people on Earth smoothly weave friendship and paracord bracelets, and Rike reminded me of them.
“I’m no match for you for stuff like this,” I mumbled.
“You don’t think so?” Rike asked.
I was able to do a decent job thanks to my cheats, but this wasn’t forging, and only my production-related cheats kicked in. Mine didn’t look as pretty as Rike’s, and I could tell that my weaving was more crooked than hers.
Helen was next in line after Rike when it came to skill. Saying that it was unexpected was quite rude, but Helen was good with her hands. Maybe she can handle more detailed items in the forge one day. That is, if she’s willing.
Lidy was an excellent weaver as well. She employed a different technique than the rest of us, allowing her to also create an intricate and beautiful pattern. Comparing her to Rike was like apples to oranges. Samya, Diana, and Anne were all very skilled too. Samya and Diana were elegantly weaving along; Anne, with her large hands, created a wider weave than the rest of us, but that was still good enough if we accounted for her size. To increase portability, instead of adding a cup, we decided to weave the divot for the stone from leather too.
“Isn’t that kind of big?” Diana asked as she pointed to Helen’s sling.
Indeed, I saw that Helen’s cup was a good deal larger than everyone else’s.
“Yeah—this is perfect for me,” Helen replied.
“You are strong,” I added.
Perhaps Rike, Samya, and Anne wielded a lot of raw power, but when it came to skillfully wielding that power, Helen was second to none. Since kinetic energy scaled with weight, she’d probably decided that it was better to throw a larger stone if she could.
With each of us having a goal in mind, we ended up finishing our slings. I gripped mine and swung it around, but since there was no rock in it, it looked a bit awkward. Still, it wasn’t like my woven leather was unraveling or anything.
“Okay, let’s test them out,” I said.
As everyone else agreed, we grabbed our slings and stepped outside. Almost all of the snow had melted away—it was still cold, but not enough to keep the snow, it seemed. I noticed a small pile of snow that had remained, shielded from the rays of the sun. Our yard was in a clearing, which often soaked up the sunlight, and the snow on the field we’d used for yesterday’s snowball fight had all melted away, save for some small mounds we’d built as defensive barricades. Krul and Hayate used their snouts while Lucy used her front paws to push the lingering snow mounds around. They seemed disappointed that it was mostly gone.
They’d done the same when we’d gone for our morning water jug run, but the snow had melted even more since, leaving very little behind. If snow here was rare, they’d be lucky if they could play again next year. Since they’d need to bid it farewell for a while, I wanted my daughters to enjoy the last bit left while they could. Honestly, we’re pretty grateful for this weather. If there was still snow, it’d be a pain to find the rocks we would fling.
We all scattered, hoping to find a few rocks. They couldn’t be too big—otherwise, they wouldn’t fit in our slings, or they’d be difficult to fling around. We chose carefully.
In less than an hour, we had a sizable pile. I mean, if we couldn’t gather our ammo quickly, our slings would be useless in a pinch. Our biggest advantage was that we could find ammo quickly to use our weapons.
“All right, I’ll be the one to kick things off!” Helen said.
I nodded. “We’re counting on you to be our role model.”
“Sure thing!”
Helen created a loop with one end of the tie, put her hand through it, and attached it to her wrist. She gripped the other end of the tie in her hand and made what looked like a large leather circle. She took a rock, set it in the middle of the sling—which we’d fortified with a bit of cloth—and swiftly got into position. At no point did she show any hesitation, which was proof that she must’ve used this technique before in some past war zone.
“All righty,” she said.
She flung her sling around. We were already a safe distance away, and I didn’t expect Helen, of all people, to cause any accidents, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Our targets were the ones we usually used for archery—the fronts of these targets were horribly splintered from the many arrows they’d taken, and it was time to change them out, so I didn’t at all mind if the rocks shattered them.