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Chapter 76 - The Material
🕑 Added 2025-07-13 17:32:39 +0000 UTCPuss and Tornado were following Vivianne, who flew ahead of them, her small green dress fluttering in the wind.
She had told the kids to behave and had called a babysitter to watch them.
The problem was that there were no fairy babysitters in Far Far Away, so she had to settle for a rat nanny.
"Why don't you hire the nanny more often to help you out? You have so many kids. It must be exhausting. And you can't be short on money," Puss asked curiously as he walked.
Vivianne kept flying forward, but turned her little body to Puss.
"Well, I don't trust the rat nanny. She always steals cheese from the pantry and thinks I don't notice. Besides, I'm the kids' mother, and it's my responsibility to be there for them, not just use money to free myself from that duty. So unless I really need to because of work or something important, I try to avoid leaving my kids with others as much as possible."
She explained while shaking her head.
Puss raised an eyebrow and nodded.
He didn't keep asking or commenting about her life, since this was already the second time he gave an opinion— the first being when he mentioned the cigarette— and it hadn't even been an hour since they met. Even if it came from concern for the child in her belly and now for her own wellbeing, offering opinions like that wasn't exactly pleasant, especially since they barely knew each other.
Soon, they arrived at a modest smithy, not very elegant or flashy. If not for the blacksmith sign, it would just look like an old, regular building.
The door was closed, and there were even a few cobwebs, showing it hadn't been opened for a while.
Vivianne waved her hand and sprinkled some magic dust on the door, which suddenly lit up and opened on its own.
Puss raised an eyebrow at that.
"Can I learn that too?" he joked, dragging a claw through the golden fairy dust.
Vivianne looked at him amused, but shook her head.
"No, you can't. That's fairy magic. You don't learn it, we're born with it," she shook her head. "But there are other types of magic you can learn. Unfortunately, I'm not the right person to teach that. They say there's a powerful and capable wizard teaching at Worcestershire Academy, but that's a school for nobles. You'd need some kind of recommendation to get in," she explained as she entered the smithy.
Puss nodded and entered too, keeping the name in mind.
"Do you know this wizard's name?" he asked, already imagining who it might be.
Vivianne flew in circles around the forge, tossing her dust onto the tools, which began to come alive and work on their own. Meanwhile, behind Puss, Tornado gazed in awe at the objects surrounded by magical dust, flying all around.
"His name's Merlin, a weird old man, but really good at magic. He once had a thing for me, but come on, me? A beautiful little fairy under 500 years old, being chased by some fossil? I told him to buzz off, but he was so childish— like a kid under a hundred years old! In the end, I trapped him in a tree. Annoying guy!" she complained, sprinkling dust on some materials, which started levitating and floated toward where her tiny hand pointed.
Her pretty face turned slightly red with anger, and her teeth clenched just remembering it.
"Anyway, he's a complete lunatic. But still, a terrifyingly talented wizard," she finished the explanation.
Puss looked at her, amused, but her words started to sound like a popular tale he'd heard in his past life, and his expression grew increasingly puzzled.
"You… wouldn't happen to be the Lady of the Lake, would you?" Puss asked with a suspicious look.
Her pretty, annoyed face changed to one of shock when she heard his words.
"I-I was young and liked bathing naked in the lake! Who can judge me! A-and I thought that name had vanished already, please don't bring that up again!" she suddenly panicked and covered her red face with both hands, twisting her little body in the air in embarrassment.
"That…" Puss opened his mouth, stunned.
That was not what he expected.
"L-Let's talk about the job you wanted me to do!" she quickly uncovered her blushing face, flew behind him, and pushed him forward, clearly trying to change the subject.
Puss was stunned by the strength of the tiny fairy, who managed to push his much larger body, but decided to let it go so he wouldn't make her more uncomfortable.
As they approached a workbench, he took off his boot, and from inside it, pulled out a frog that was all tied up, especially around the mouth, and placed it on the bench.
"I want to refine this into a more practical storage treasure. What do you think?"
Puss asked, turning to the fairy who was flying with her little butt slightly raised and her body leaned forward, one hand on her chin analyzing, and the other holding her large pregnant belly. Along with her beauty, she looked very cute.
Puss's eye twitched slightly when he realized he was admiring her tiny, adorable figure.
'Bad cat! Bad cat! She already has 11 kids! You don't want to be the stepfather of 11 children, do you?!' After mentally scolding himself for thinking with the wrong part of his body, he snapped out of it and waited for her analysis.
The little fairy seemed very impressed with the material as she sprinkled magic dust on it, apparently analyzing it.
"It's been centuries since I've seen a material of such high quality. If the world had more materials this good, I wouldn't have had the financial struggles I did before meeting you," the fairy nodded, satisfied.
Before she started doing business with Puss, her life hadn't been so easy. Enchanting things wasn't cheap at all, and besides needing many precious materials, there were high chances of failure, and with the relatively common materials she had access to, the effects weren't very impressive.
Then Puss became her first valuable client—he paid a fortune for equipment that didn't even have magical effects worthy of the price. It was a terrible cost-benefit deal, and only a client like Puss, a warrior with more money than he could spend, would agree to pay such an absurd fee.
"What can you do with it?" Puss scratched his chin and asked seriously.
"Uhmm, apparently the materials this guy swallows get broken down and shrink by a factor of ten, taking up almost no space. They don't disappear into another dimension, but rather disperse into his blood and bones. So, the more he eats, the bigger he gets. There are also some very advanced weight-reduction properties, lowering the total weight by a hundredfold… I must say, whoever made this was a professional."
With a serious and impressed expression, Vivianne analyzed everything using just her magic dust, which quite impressed Puss.
But the end of her statement surprised him.
"Made? It's not a natural creature?" he asked, confused.
The fairy turned to him with an amused smile.
"Nah… everything about this little guy screams 'I was made to be a walking pouch!' So yes, probably a magical creature created by some powerful wizard in the past. Maybe it wasn't that strong at first, but after so many years alive, its properties grew a lot stronger." She explained with a casual tone, as if it wasn't anything too important.
After hearing what she said, Puss couldn't help but look at the frog with a bit of pity. If he had known, he might've tried to tame it instead of killing it. It would've been amazing to have such a useful pet.
But he knew there was no way. When he fought it, he had no idea about the frog's magical properties—he had just assumed it was a giant, simple frog.
Vivianne, seeing him silently reflecting, didn't mind and kept answering his previous question.
"As for what we can do with this material, I can apply some intent and containment runes so you can take out what you want and keep what you don't want sealed inside. Besides that, some resistance runes for better defense, and tracking runes so you don't lose it. This material doesn't get along very well with summoning runes, so the best I can get out of it would be similar to your sword's effect..."
She explained while circling the material, her wings fluttering—until she stopped when she reached the front of the frog.
Frowning, she approached and placed her tiny finger on the cut on the frog's head—the one that had caused its death, when the obelisk pierced it at high speed.
"This is going to be a problem," she murmured.
"What's the problem, Señora Vivianne?" Puss asked with a serious look, seeing that something was apparently wrong.
"This cut is degrading the quality of the material. The runes would lose part of their strength because of it. Normally, in cases like this, we patch it up with other materials, which basically solves the problem… but I don't have anything like that on hand, and even with your money, I think it'll be hard to find a proper replacement for something of this level. I could use lower-quality resources, but the effect wouldn’t be nearly as good."
Vivianne furrowed her brow.
"How much of the rune effects would be lost in that case?" he asked.
"About one third," she said after thinking.
Puss didn't like what he heard. He didn't want his pouch—one that would accompany him for years—not to be at its best.
His gaze turned to the fairy, and firmly, he asked:
"What material would be ideal for this case?"
Vivianne looked back at him for a second and murmured,
"Something that can stretch and shrink, and that is of equal or higher grade than this frog… I can only think of..."
She hesitated for a moment, then spoke.
"...Dragon scales."
