01.26 - Harem in the Outskirts of Another World

“You're late,” Reiko said with both hands against her waist.

“You know, you got a lot of nerve,” Isabella said with her arms crossed.

“Yes… No… I mean…what?” I asked in confusion.

“After all, Tia is your familiar, right?” Akane asked with a hint of blame.

“The whole thing is kinda your fault,” Koharu said in an accusatory tone.

“You didn't really expect us to go for the two old men, did you?” Loreley asked while tilting her head.

“Now that I think about it, you are a bit young…” Akane began.

“I think he’s fine, he did want our services back then,” Loreley said while mustering me from head to toe.

“...I guess beggars can’t be choosers.” Akane said with a sigh.

“I hope you are ready to take responsibility,” Koharu said as her clothes slowly slipped to the ground.

…

To sum it all up, Akane and Loreley were not two timing, but they were both involved with Koharu. And each other. Turns out I was not hallucinating after all. As for Reiko and Isabella, both were mad at me for apparently edging them on forever.

I really don’t get women.

Well, technically, I did.

Just now.

Five of them.

Though not at the same time.

For purely logistic reasons.

Not for a lack of trying.

Akane, Koharu, and Loreley sure knew what they were doing, and it seemed like they had taken Reiko and Isabella under their wings.

Morale improved significantly after that night.

We ended up making a schedule.

With the last leaves falling, I made a final attempt at converting some of the cleared areas into future fields. I mostly ignored the manual part of the Farmer Classes ‘Soil Tilling’ and went straight to combine it with my Geomancy Skills instead. Worked like a charm.

We had built a big storage shed, a small shag to smoke meat, and a big workshop before the first snow began to fall. The later one was intended for Geber and Isabella. Though we were missing most of the essential tools to practice any kind of advanced Alchemy.

Our main source of food were still our regular hunts and we kept trading most other monster parts with a few of the nearby villages. When I say close, I mean a couple of hours by air. My Transformation Skill Level was finally high enough to copy Tia’s draconic form for long durations of time.

The sight of two dragons landing on a dirt path was enough to send the locals into panic mode, but most had gotten used to it around the time of our third visit.

The locals themselves were usually not too interested in most of our goods, but some of them took advantage of our relatively cheap prices to store some of our goods and resell them later at a greater market in a town, or trade them with traveling merchants.

With enough fabrics, sacks of flour, pickled vegetables, and other preserved goods on top of our own production of smoked meat, cleaned furs, and firewood, our preparations for the coming winter were mostly done. And not a day too early.

It got harder to hunt, not just because of the snow, it seems a lot of monsters either went into hibernation, or went to warmer areas.

Though we were still busy.

Day and night.

Especially night.

There were still a lot of other things to do.

Planning for next year, Sketching out new buildings, estimating the material requirements, and creating additional furniture for the houses.

Plus, there was the mountain next door.

I still did not yearn for the mines, but if our escape from the dungeon beyond the church and my experiments with the fields had shown anything, it was that Geomancy was a potent tool to substitute otherwise back breaking labor.

I invested enough Skill Points into the ‘Miner’ Class Skills ‘Ore Vein Identification’, ‘Support Beam Placement’, and ‘Excavation Safety’.

What I found was gold.

Not ‘gold’ gold, though there were some small traces of that too, but rich veins of other materials, first and foremost a few great depots of iron, lead, and copper ore, at different places within the mountainside, some platinum veins, and the occasional tiny lump of mithril ore.

We ended up constructing a smelting furnace and repurposing parts of the workshop. Not like we couldn’t build a new one once we had gathered the required tools. I did invest some Points into the Blacksmith Class for myself, and unlocked and boosted it for Alfred too.

One part on the agenda was indoor plumbing using Copper pipes.

A real bath, running water for a kitchen to be, and maybe the outhouse too, later on.

But that had to wait.

We continued trading a lot with the nearby settlements.

Slowly collecting a lot of everyday household tools, furniture, and raw materials for further refinement and use by us or others. Some wheels of cheese, a few barrels of beer for Alfred, Geber, and Kentaro, as well as wine.

We also traded some of our goods for a few chickens to provide fresh eggs. Maybe we should also add a couple of cows once we had enough to trade for them and a barn was ready.

Anyway, life got more comfortable by the day.

Thanks to the trade, Isabella and Geber had finally enough tools to restart their potion production.

Kentaro, Reiko, Tia and I still went on the occasional hunt, even if the results were not as good as before.

Alfred, Dawn, Akane, Koharu, and Loreley did most of the chores and odd jobs around the house. Dawn doubled as a magic teacher for the three former courtesans. I occasionally boosted their progress with ‘For the Good of The Many’, but Dawn seemed to have a knack for teaching and they made solid progress on their own.

The three of them knew how to read a write, making the whole process easier. They also carved pieces and boards for a couple of games to pass the time, some of which we later also added to our trade goods. Guess their former workplace wasn’t fancy for nothing.

Those days and nights flew by.

Then, shortly after the turn of the year, Tia called everyone for an important announcement.