Kargo blinked in surprise, then noticed that there was a small pocket inside the sack. This was the part Lacey had altered after Allen left. The pocket was sewn on, so he couldn’t look inside, but when he touched it, he could feel something small and hard. Once he surmised that it was a mana stone, he immediately understood why the inside of the sack was cool.
“I see now, it’s got cooling magic in it. I’m surprised. But wait, hold on, you said you put magic in last night... Can small-scale magic really last this long?”
Kargo had figured that Lacey had basically made something akin to a glacial stone, but that didn’t explain how cool it was. A small mana stone would interact with the surrounding heat and quickly return to room temperature.
Lacey shook her head. “I did put in cooling magic, but not into the mana stone. I just blew it into the sack. The mana stone is actually imbued with absorption magic. It’s usually meant for leeching the life energy of monsters and demonkin, but I reformulated it so that it would just absorb surrounding heat or cold.”
“Er...is that any different from a glacial stone?”
“Glacial stones just radiate cold air. If they’re not regularly infused with mana, they’ll quickly melt and become useless. But with absorption magic, it can suck in the cold automatically and will constantly circulate the inside air around, so it can be used again and again,” Lacey explained.
Kargo’s eyes went wide. He stared in bafflement at the item in his hands that looked no different than an ordinary sack.
It was all so sudden, he couldn’t believe it. But the interior of the sack was definitely cold.
“So, for example, I could open the sack’s cover in the winter, flap it around, and just get cold air in it that way?” Allen asked, miming the action. “Like this.”
“Yes, exactly,” Lacey nodded.
“Whoa, that’s really convenient... Hold on! Big sis Lacey, does that mean if it takes in the summer heat that’s going on right now, or if we light a fire in the winter to warm up the surroundings...”
When he’d seen the sacks before they’d had a mana stone in them, Allen had commented that they would just keep heat in. He’d just remembered what he had said yesterday.
Lacey slowly smiled. “Yeah. In the summer, you can use it to keep things cool, and in the winter, you should be able to keep things warm.”
Allen’s whole family suddenly buzzed with excitement. On the other hand, Lacey hunched her shoulders and made herself smaller. All of a sudden, she’d lost confidence in herself. She cast her eyes downward and started to mumble.
“Um, although, you can just light a fire to make it retain warmth, but finding a source of cold air in the summer to retain cold will be tricky. So I think it’d be best to have two sacks, one for hot and one for cold. That makes it kind of inconvenient...or well, just not good enough...”
“It’s not inconvenient at all!” Allen hastily stood up. His chair clattered backward and he slammed his hands on the table. “It’s amazing, big sis Lacey! If we use this, not only can we have cold food in the summer, but we can even have warm soup outside in the winter without lighting a fire, right? I always thought that it was an unchangeable fact of life that we can’t eat good food outside. But I guess it doesn’t have to be that way. You being able to use magic is incredible enough on its own, but what I’m trying to say is, the way you think, is just...”
Allen was earnestly focused not on Lacey’s magic, but on Lacey herself.
At that moment, Lacey felt a strange twinge in her heart. She had thought she was just an empty shell whose only strength was magic. But something warm had quietly trickled into her and seeped throughout, just like the words that Wayne had said to her.
The whole time that Lacey was making the sacks, she had been hoping that they would make the lives of Allen’s family a little easier. In order to accomplish that, she had been thinking over and over about how to craft the sacks. She wanted to leave an impression on the people who had so kindly welcomed in a shy, suspicious mage like her.
The experience she’d gained on her quest with her companions hadn’t been in vain. Because of it, she’d been able to come this far.
Lacey looked down and bit her lip a little. She felt that if she didn’t, she would cry.
Tee, sitting on her lap, seemed to notice. “Kwee?” It poked her with its beak.
“Hey, big sis Lacey, if it’s okay with you, let’s make tons more of these sacks. Then you can advertise to the whole village that you can make awesome stuff like this. I swear they’ll all be shocked!”
“That sounds great. What are you calling it, a cooling bag? Well, the cooling part doesn’t matter so much. It’s just so cute. I want to show it off to anyone.”
Lacey wanted to shake her head and insist that it really wasn’t a big deal, but she just couldn’t say anything to the family when they were having so much fun.
“I’ll help!” “I’ll help!” The twins both clapped their hands together, and Kargo gave a wry smile.
When she saw them like this, Lacey slowly took a deep breath. She noticed that her mouth had curved into a soft smile.
“Would you all care to help me? I’d be really happy if you could tell me which design is best.”
“Of course!” they all agreed simultaneously, their voices overlapping. Then they all looked at each other and grinned.
As a rule, a small star mark was added to the corner of each sack. And that was how Lacey’s second magic artifact, the insulated thermal bag, was completed.
∗ ∗ ∗
A new trend slowly started to take root in the village. On hot summer days, one could pack lunch into a sack and eat the same kinds of foods both inside and outside the house. Chilled vegetables were a delicacy.
A merchant regularly came through Plume Village. This was the man who had bought Lacey’s sachets and spread them to the capital. Demand had fallen since the initial rush, but orders still came in.
The man with fox-like eyes twitched his nose and sniffed. He was sensing an unusual change in the village.
As a merchant, he could spot the beginnings of a trend from a mile away. He caught sight of and overheard the villagers enjoying lunch to-go, and then ran to Lacey as fast as his legs would carry him. He was sure that she was behind this. He bolted over to Lacey’s mansion.
“MISS LACEEEEEEY!!!!!!”
“Wh-What is it?!”
Someone had been banging on Lacey’s door, and when she opened it, there was a man with tears of exertion in his squinted eyes. Lacey took a few steps back. Tee was bristling at her feet. Tee and the merchant had a complicated history and they didn’t get along well.
“Wh-Why?! Why, why?”
“Pl-Please calm down! Can I get you some tea?”
“If you’d be so kind! But that’s not what I’m here for! Why didn’t you tell me immediately?!”
“Immediately?” Lacey looked up at him, confused. She’d echoed him without thinking.
“Yes, immediately!”
She was already acquainted with him, so she let him into the house and sat him in front of a table.
“I can’t believe you had a bestseller product on your hands and you kept me in the dark! In the dark! Urk, hic, nrgh...” The merchant cried and drank down the tea Lacey had offered him.
“And this tea is co— EEEEEEH?! It’s cold?! Is this okay?! Of course it’s okay!”
He’d just come from the scorching outdoors, so a cold drink was just the right thing. Some people might’ve gotten upset, but Lacey had correctly judged that he wouldn’t. He didn’t dismiss new things automatically; he tried them out first. He likely set aside his preconceptions to judge whether or not an item would sell.
“Allen and everybody else gave me their opinions, and they said that since it’s summer, cold drinks are good too.”
“There’s a slight bitter taste, but that doesn’t matter so much. How did you alter the tea leaves and brewing time? This has so much potential!”
Lacey had hoped for exactly this kind of response. It made her feel a little happy. “Well...” As Lacey answered, even her tone of voice was light.
The merchant was curious, even about the vessel. Since it wouldn’t contain hot tea, something that could be carried more easily with two hands might be an option as well.
“Very well, I understand. We can sell this. After all, it’s cold tea! You could set up your own shop for it, but that might not give you time for anything else. We can sell the recipe once it’s perfected instead. This seems like it would appeal more to commoners than nobles. I’ll make the arrangements with the trade guild.”
“Actually, well, I haven’t thought quite that far yet...”
“And those sacks! They’re called insulated thermal bags, correct? I’m just so very distressed about them! Please, let’s sell them! How much are you asking per unit?!”
He was talking faster than Lacey could answer. It wasn’t terrible, but it did make her feel awkward. Her one comfort was Tee bristling “Kwee-oh-oh!” at her feet even more persistently than usual.
“For the sacks...um, I don’t have the material to make that many. I need the tree bark you gave me previously to make them.”
“Fylachtó bark?!”
“Ah, so that’s what it’s called...”
When Lacey was making the sachets, in lieu of specific ideas, the merchant had given her all kinds of cloths and tools. There had been so many that she didn’t think he’d be able to remember it so quickly, but given his profession, he probably had a good memory.
“I’ll procure it! At once! On my honor as a merchant! Swifter than a horse can run!”
“You don’t have to rush...”
The phrase “swifter than a horse” reminded Lacey of Brook’s muscles. The young man in front of her was somewhat, or actually, considerably more lean.