A month or so had passed since Vespera joined us. During that time, she taught me a lot about the world while I taught her different cooking recipes.
She even showed me a spot in the forest where these giant bees were located and produced a lot of honey. Thanks to that, I was able to make some sweet bread and a honey sauce for our meals, and just as I thought, Vespera was the type of girl who loved sweet things.
I also told her the truth about who I was and how I got into this world.
She was my familiar, so I felt like I could trust her more than anyone else. She didn't seem to care much about my story, but she did ask me to cook more recipes from my world.
It was that same aloofness that made me feel good about telling her my secret.
One day, while she was teaching me how to read, I remembered something that Jackson had told me when I first visited End Village and saw the beastkin people for the first time.
He said that beastkin originated from the union of humans and legendary beasts. At first, I imagined the worst, but I decided just to ignore it.
Now that I knew that the legendary beasts looked… Well… Like supermodels, it made more sense to me.
I did ask Vespera if all the other legendary beasts had a humanoid form like her, and she confirmed it.
I also asked her what the "ranks" meant whenever I inspected a monster. The redback boars were ranked "D," goblins were ranked "E," and I remembered seeing that Vespera's demon spiders were ranked "C."
I assumed that it was how powerful they were, but to be honest, I hadn't felt a difference between the ranks that I stumbled upon.
They all felt almost equally weak, except maybe for the demon spiders that could actually avoid some of my attacks.
There were 8 ranks in total to identify monsters: Rank S, Rank A, Rank B, Rank C, Rank D, Rank E, Rank F, Rank G.
"S" being the most powerful monsters and "G" being the weakest ones.
Apparently, moonwolves like Yoru, were normally equally as strong as a ranked "A" monster. However, Vespera told me that moonwolves didn't really live in this forest.
When I told her the story of how I found Yoru, she deduced that his parents were probably running from a more powerful monster somewhere else.
Even then, it made no sense to her how they made it all the way to this forest since apparently they weren't even supposed to be from this continent.
"How the hell did you get here, Yoru?" I pondered as I saw him taking a nap.
__________
A few more weeks later, the snow was starting to melt in the forest. My first winter was finally coming to an end, so I decided it would be good to scout the forest for a bit to see if we could find more clues about the goblin cave.
Now that winter was coming to an end, they were most likely going to try attacking End Village again.
I planned on sending each of us in a different cardinal direction, of course, leaving one for later, but Vespera stopped me before I could even relay my plans to them. She then summoned 5 demon spiders and dozens of the small ones.
"I'll send these guys to look pretty much in any direction we haven't checked. How's that?"
"That's… actually very helpful! Very well then…" I responded.
That was definitely a good call. With that, we all went scouting in different directions.
A few hours later, I came back to the house after my search with nothing but redberries. Vespera wasn't there yet, but I saw that Yoru was hanging around behind one of the giant roots from the tree.
"Hey Yoru, found something?"
He looked at me, then turned his head to the spot that was getting covered by the roots. When I finally caught up to him, I saw 10 big black dogs, all gathered in a circle, eating a piece of boar meat. I inspected one of them and got this:
<Shadow Dog
Rank C
Can cast shadow magic.
Mostly hunt in packs.
Can be extremely dangerous when hungry.>
"Shadow dogs? This is the first time I've seen them…"
Yoru turned to me again, then nodded his head at the dogs.
'Hmm, I think he is trying to tell me something…' When I got closer to the dogs, I realized that they were all injured.
Some of them looked exactly like the injuries that Yoru's parents had when the goblins trapped them.
'I get it! Yoru is trying to tell me that these dogs were attacked by goblins!'
"Yoru, are these dogs our friends now?"
Yoru nodded.
'Pfftt, he nodded! My wolf is so goddamn smart!' I thought.
"I see. Let's take care of those wounds then…"
I went inside the house and picked up some healing potions, then treated each of the dog's injuries.
Now that they were healed and their bellies were full, they all sat in a very straight and organized row right after Yoru let out a bark.
"Is he giving them orders?"
"Alright, guys! We are looking for goblins… Although, it's kind of late today, so let's take it easy for now. Tomorrow we hunt!"
All the dogs let out a bark.
'Do they understand me?'
A few minutes later, Vespera arrived back at the house along with her spiders, carrying a bag full of something.
When I asked what it was, she opened it and showed me a bunch of different flowers. The ones I recognized instantly were lavender, chamomile, and roses. They smelled really nice.
"Where did you find these?" I asked.
"There is a flower field a few hours south from here!"
"A flower field? But how? Winter just ended. How did they grow so fast?"
"Well…"
From what Vespera told me. This was her first time visiting that flower field, but she already knew it existed since it was created a few hundred years ago.
The creator was a witch who loved flowers, and just like me, she wanted to stay far away from people and made the forest her home.
However, she couldn't grow the flowers she loved the most, so she infused the entire field with magical energy, then buried magical totems containing nature magic underground.
These totems, along with the magic that she herself infused with the field, made it so flowers bloomed at any time of the year except when it was snowing.
It didn't matter how cold the temperature was. All that mattered was that there was no snow for them to grow.
"Heh, I have a pretty good idea what to do with these…"
Before I could put my plan to the test, I had to get "Phelena's Tutorial" and read the nature magic section one more time. A few minutes later, the answer to my question had been answered.
I could use nature magic to separate the oil components of a plant. In other words, I had the materials to make shampoo and soap. 'A classic…'
I inspected the flowers, and all of their names were different from how I knew them, but I was certain which type of flowers they were. Like, roses were called "blood flowers."
'Seriously? That's a scary name… Just because it's red?'
It took me a lot of tries, but after a few hours, I had successfully separated the oil extract from the flowers with magic.
I used the chamomile extract, or "milos" extract, which was the name of the flower in this world, and mixed it with lime juice, water, and honey.
I also used MP to make sure that all ingredients blended well. When I inspected the final product, I got:
<Shampoo
Creator: Ichiro
Substance that helps remove dirt, sweat, and oil from hair.
Good for dry and damaged hair.>
"I did it!" I yelled, waking up both of my familiars who were sleeping downstairs.
They both came up to the second floor pretty quickly, so they must have been curious.
"What did you do?" asked Vespera, inspecting the shampoo bottle.
"It's shampoo! It's what people used in my old world when we took showers."
*sniff sniff* She sniffed the bottle. "Oh! It smells really good! And you put this on your hair?" she said while pouring some shampoo in her palm.
"Y-yeah, but wait! You have to take a shower and rinse the shampoo off with water. You can't just coat your hair with it when it's dry!"
"I see…" said Vespera, looking a bit embarrassed.
'She was about to smear the shampoo in her hair right here, right now, wasn't she?' I thought.
"Anyways, we don't even have a good shower. I'll have to work on that after I make soap…"
"Soap? Hmmm, I believe that does exist in this world…" Vespera said.
"It does? I've never seen it in End Village."
"I think they are supposed to be a luxury item, you know? For nobles and the likes."
"You know, for someone that was stuck in a cave for hundreds of years, you sure know a lot about the world."
Vespera giggled. "Thanks!"
'I'm not sure if that was a compliment… Maybe it was?'
"Well, either way. If soap is a luxury item, then I might as well make my own."