“I-If we’ve got Lacey around, we don’t even need glacial stones! This is crazy awesome!”
“Reeve, give big sis Lacey some respect! Yeah, it’s really awesome, but even if she can make ice, it’ll melt right away!”
“I want a cooling chamber!”
“Where would we make one in our house, Yorma?! Don’t beg for the impossible!”
Allen was getting beleaguered. Seeing him be such a responsible older brother, Tricia gave a wry smile.
A cooling chamber was a type of barrier created by placing glacial stone artifacts at the corners of a room. In some cases, the room’s temperature could be lowered below freezing, which created an environment suitable for preserving food.
Lacey’s cooling chamber used glacial stones which she’d received from Wayne. While they lasted longer than ice, they would gradually start to melt unless they were periodically infused with mana. Thus, to the common folk who had no mana of their own, they were single-use items and were rather hard to obtain.
Lacey had conceptually learned this during her travels, but as she observed Allen’s family lifestyle up close, she truly realized how inconvenient summer was.
“I suppose they can’t just endure the heat,” Lacey considered, placing a hand to her lips. If possible, she wanted to help them out. Her only talent was using magic, but even so, there had to be something she could do.
She could periodically create ice and deliver it to Allen’s house, but this would be time-consuming, and it wouldn’t be good to favor just a single household in the entire village. Even Lacey could see that.
In that case, she thought further, was there something she could create that would enrich their lives even while she wasn’t around?
“A-Allen! Miss Tricia! D-Do you have any other problems?!”
Making the summer heat cooler and more bearable would be simple, but it was too rough around the edges. She could create a cooling chamber inside the house, but since it wasn’t as big as Lacey’s mansion, doing so would be challenging.
Noticing how Lacey had her fists balled up with determination, Allen and Tricia looked at each other.
“The heat’s certainly been a problem lately, but besides that... Do you mean something more tangible?”
“It’s hard to think of something off the top of my head. I mean, it’s normal for the weather to be hot.”
Unlike the young twins, the two of them had learned to tolerate the heat with age, so they couldn’t come up with anything. As they pondered, Lane suddenly started babbling with laughter in Tricia’s arms. That was when...
“I’m baaack. Oh, Miss Lacey’s here too?”
The door had been kept open to let in a breeze, so they were late to notice him. A man in his prime with prominent laugh lines had just returned. Allen’s father, Kargo, looked at Lacey and blinked a few times. The dining table hadn’t been cleared of the bowls yet.
Kargo quickly inferred the situation and sighed with disappointment. “Agh, if I knew Miss Lacey was here too, I’d have come back early and eaten with you all. It’s way too hot today. It was no fun eating crusty bread outside,” he told them, holding up an empty cloth bag.
For a while, the only sound was Lane’s laughter.
“That’s it!!!”
“Whuh— Huh?”
Allen’s exclamation made Kargo leap up. The twins high-fived each other and clapped their hands together. The family was on the same wavelength, but Lacey was left tilting her head in confusion. Once Tricia explained it to her, though, she understood perfectly:
The biggest problem with hot days was with storing food.
∗ ∗ ∗
Miss Lacey, I’d like to make a request if it’s at all possible. Can you create a no-fuss way for my husband and children to eat the same things outside as they do inside?
“Hmm...”
Lacey recalled the job that Tricia had given her. She’d returned to her mansion and was currently rummaging around the room.
Of course, she had wanted to give it some thought even without being requested. She wanted to figure out what she could do. Learning this would be essential for her. Besides, Wayne had recently been beating it into her head that eating meals was extremely important.
“I’ve heard that there are restaurants in the capital where they sell meals you can eat right away. What about those? I’ve never been to one, though.”
“You mean take-out restaurants? That’s a good idea, but they can do that sort of thing because they have lots of glacial stones. Magic artifacts are sold mostly in the capital where there are always people coming and going, so by the time they reach this village, they’d melt.”
“Oh, huh,” Allen remarked.
He’d come back to the mansion with her to provide whatever labor she’d need. One person—or actually, one person and one bird—couldn’t figure out everything on their own, so it helped to have someone to discuss things with. The two of them were currently scavenging the shelves that had come with the mansion.
I’ll be able to make something fancier than usual today, Lacey recalled Wayne once saying with a smile.
Preserving food had been a perennial issue on their quest as well. With the brawny Brooks around, they could capture as much game as they had needed. But sometimes, there wasn’t any game to be had, and besides, constantly going hunting was time-consuming. That was why they would stock up on preserved food along the way, which Wayne would then turn into a tasty meal.
In the case of Kargo and Allen, they could eat their meals right where they’d been prepared. But when they were doing work outside, returning to the house each time was a hassle. That was why they packed lunches to take with them. However, the sun was scorching. They couldn’t take a chance on their food spoiling, so there was a limited selection of what foods they could bring. Their summer staples were crusty bread and lukewarm water. In the winter, they could bring soup, but it would have completely cooled off by midday.
A way to keep food in its tastiest state, huh?
Whenever he finished cooking, Wayne would always make Lacey and her companions sit down and eat it right away. When he saw his companions cheer up in front of a steaming hot meal, he’d grin broadly and his eyes would soften.
Lacey had been reminded of this aspect of him when she saw Tricia wishing that her family could enjoy fresh food. That was probably why an idea had immediately come to her as soon as Allen had told her more.
“Ah, I found some. This is what I need.”
“It’s cloth? Wait, it looks like cloth, but I don’t think that’s it. What is this stuff?” Allen looked with curiosity at the clothlike material that Lacey had pulled out of a chest.
Lacey regularly bought cloth from the traveling merchant whenever he came by Plume Village so that she would have material for her sachets. Sometimes, she’d get a sample of whatever other interesting materials he had as well, and this “stuff” was from one such purchase.
“This feels a lot like cloth to the touch, but it’s actually a special kind of tree bark. I gave up on using it for sachets since the bark smell would clash with the other ingredients, but it’s more durable than regular cloth, so I think it would work well for what I’m trying to do here.”
“O...kay.”
Allen handed over the tree bark, fixedly staring at his hands with some skepticism. Lacey gave a small chuckle. Naturally, the bark alone wouldn’t do the trick.
Lacey could simply fulfill Tricia’s request by handing over some glacial stones and periodically coming over to pump mana into them, but that was a half measure.
A stopgap solution won’t fix anything, Lacey thought to herself. She needed to come up with something that would work for Allen’s household even when she wasn’t around.
“Say, Allen, could you hold this for a bit? Spread it facing me.”
“Like this?”
“Yes, exactly.” Lacey stuck up two fingers, quietly chanted a spell, then swiftly swung them down. The tree bark split right down the middle and gently draped down. Moments later, a slight wind swept across Allen’s face.
“Ah— AHHHHHH?!”
“Mm-hmm, just like I thought.”
“Hold on, I don’t care about what you thought! Did you just cast magic toward me?! You did, didn’t you?!”
“I didn’t even need my staff for that, it’s fine. Anyway, Allen, take a look.”
Lacey showed Allen the bark that had been split all the way through. It was thin bark, so all that he could tell by looking at the cut edges was that it had come apart rather cleanly.
“Well, I’m looking, but it just looks like a clean cut.”
“That’s what’s so important!”
Lacey held up a piece of bark and repeatedly stretched and pulled at it. After confirming its durability, she nodded multiple times. Outside, she had been speaking in a whisper, but right now she was quite peppy and seemed to be enjoying herself.
“I used cleaving magic just now. It does more than just cut things. The magic formula needs to be changed each time depending on the material. I modified the formula so that the material would be given certain qualities that I envisioned,” Lacey explained excitedly. Meanwhile, Allen frowned and wrinkled his forehead. He didn’t understand what she meant by “formula.”
“When you need to cool things down, ice is best, right? Well, on my travels before, we once had to set up camp in a place called the Infernal Belt that bubbled with lava.”
“When the heck was that?”
“I tried making an ice barrier, but it melted instantly. I could’ve just stayed up and kept casting all night, but Wa—um, my companions stopped me from doing that.”
“Well, yeah. Why did you even have to set up camp there in the first place?”
“I did some experimenting and found out that it worked if I stirred the surrounding air in addition to casting ice magic.”