CH 17

“Ellis, it’s dangerous there!”

While shouting out her warning, Frau mercilessly crushed the head of a Bipedal Bull Minotaur which had looked at Ellis.

“Mistress, leave it to me!”

Reeve swiftly swung her shamshir and cut off the head of a Sleipnir which had turned to face Ellis.

“Ellis, are you okay?”

“Mistress, are you okay?”

Ellis sighed. “Annoying.”

◊

The construction of the large public bathhouse had begun in earnest, and Ellis and her family had decided to spend this period of time until its completion as follows.

In the morning.

Frau prepares four breakfasts and boxed lunches for Claire and the other craftsmen. Reeve does the laundry. Ellis makes magic tools while yawning. Claire holds a morning assembly as the field director with the other craftsmen.

Noon.

Frau, Reeve, and Ellis go to labyrinths where Minotaur and Sleipnir emerge. While continuing on-site supervision, Claire hands out Frau’s boxed lunches to the craftsmen. After that, she brings in the laundry Reeve had hung out to dry.

Evening

Frau starts preparing dinner in the kitchen. Reeve prepares the washroom for bathing. Ellis begins copying experiments and organizing the magic tools acquired during the day’s exploration in the living room. Claire makes her final rounds at the construction site and produces the worker’s daily wage.

Night

Everyone enjoys the dinner that Frau prepared before jumping into the bath that Reeve prepared. After that, everyone changes into their pajamas, and everyone enjoys Ellis making her rounds.

Peaceful but boring days pass.

While Claire is building the bathhouse, the other three set up two goals.

The first is to acquire a two-handed mace that is sometimes dropped from killing minotaurs in labyrinths. If Ellis copied the Flying Swallow ability onto that mace, a super rare “Flying Swallow Minotaur Mace” would be completed. Once they collect it, they can sell it to the adventurer guild for a large amount of money.

The second goal is to mercilessly and maliciously kill every sleipnir they can find to collect a Magical horse for everyone in their party.

To complete these goals, the three have been going around to the Ox Labyrinth, where a minotaur is the boss, the Stallion Labyrinth, where a sleipnir is the boss, and the Gozume Labyrinth, where the sleipnir and minotaur can both appear as middle bosses. (Gozume: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox-Head_and_Horse-Face )

To be honest, as long as no more than four monsters come out, in these intermediate level dungeons at least, these monsters are toothless before the blue dragon girl with her sword and the red tiger girl with the scary iron ball. You can do whatever you want.

If one monster appears, Frau quickly beats its brains in with her morning star. A second monster would die the same instant with Reeve’s Shamshir separating its head from its neck, and a third monster would not be able to accomplish anything because it would be instantly frozen by Ellis’s ice before being brutally beaten to death.

Even if four or more appear, it is still not necessarily a match because the girls will remain calm, and the instant they realize too many monster have appeared, all three of them will activate their Ice rings and reduce the numbers. There is nothing to stop the morning star and shamshir from ripping apart the rearguard which cannot move to defend itself.

This is the power of three innocent looking girls having Ice rings which are supposed to be super rare by themselves. Add that to the two girls carrying Spirit rings and the situation becomes ridiculous. With Ellis who can continuously refill those Spirit rings, the monsters of the labyrinth had no hope of survival.

This seems to be fun for Reeve and Frau, but Ellis found it boring. This continued on for 30 days until the bathhouse was finished.

Once the month had passed, the three of them had managed to kill fifteen Minotaurs and received five Minotaur maces. They had killed 15 sleipnirs, and received 5  Magical horses from them as well.

The three had also received two rare magic tools during the exploration. A [Mourning Mace] drop from the Ox Labyrinth’s boss and a [Purification bastard sword] from the treasure chest located behind the boss of the Gozume labyrinth.

There were some other magic tools as well, but since they were all variations of abilities that they had already collected, they were all sold for a total of 3.6 million ril. Ellis further sold off four Minotaur maces which had the Flying Swallow imparted to them for 9 million ril each leading to the grand total of 39.6 million ril. Ellis’s share of that money is 13.2 million ril, but as a thief adventurer, she pays 1.2 million ril as her 10 percent dues to the thief guild.

While sewing through labyrinths, Ellis also looked around and purchased a Luminescent stone and a Cooling stone for refrigeration from the magic tool shop. The Luminescent stone cost 100,000 ril while the Cooling stone was a little more expensive at 500,000 ril.

Ellis picked up a number of stones from the construction area and experimented with [Copy Item] after dinner, and all the lights in the mansion had now become Luminescent stones.

In the kitchen, Frau was enjoying her new stove that had replaced the firewood dependent one with one that uses Fever stones to warm up a plate-like stone that they picked up from the construction area.

Ellis had also brought one of the treasure chest’s from a boss room to the mansion. After disabling the trap and carrying it home in her Bag of Gluttony, she put in a few Cooling stones to turn it into a fridge.

Every Luminescent stone and Fever stone appliance in the mansion is also equipped with a Spirit ring. This way anyone can take the mana from the Spirit ring and use it to activate the appliance instead of using their own. All Ellis has to do is make a round through the house to refill the magical power in the Spirit rings.

As a result, Ellis’s mansion has now become completely eco-friendly.

Meanwhile, the day of delivery came.

The boss and Claire guided the other three from the northern stream to the southern drainage, explaining everything that was built in order.

There is little worry of anyone sabotaging the water sampling port as its entrance is well disguised. Additionally, the port is designed diagonally so as to not go against the flow, and a stone fence is applied. This way it can prevent foreign matter from entering to the utmost, and any stray aquatic creatures can return to the original flow.

A wooden fence has been set up 5 meters to the east and west of the entrance which extends to Ellis’s mansion showing that this is within the mansion’s premises.

The water from the stream is drawn in and travels down the waterway, and it is filtered by a net and charcoal before heading to the kettlehouse. The water warmed in the kettlehouse flows into the two bathtubs. From there, the water is either directly ejected in the drainage port or it supplies the water for the toilet, and it is finally drained into the wetlands.

The waste water passes through several deeply dug holes to help purify the water before it is ejected. The top of the purification facility is covered with wood boards and surrounded by wetland plants. With this, the dirt from the bathtub will not damage the environment too badly, and there is no worry about attracting perverts who would be interested with the used bathwater.

“Is this OK?”

The three people could not complain. It was a perfect job.

On behalf of the three, Frau thanked the boss. “Thank you. I will come by tomorrow to pay the second half.”

The boss nodded satisfied. “It was a fun job.”

Then the boss briefly grasped Claire’s head who was standing behind him, and dragged her up casually in front of himself.

“You girls are hiding something, right?”

Four people, including Claire, have their hearts skip a beat at the boss’s observation, but he kept talking while pretending not to notice Ellis’s reaction.

“I won’t pry into it further; just do me a favor and take care of this one.” While saying that, the boss took his hand off of Claire’s head and pushed her towards Ellis.

Huh?

Claire became restless towards the sudden parental behavior from the boss. She was planning on moving on past the boss, but now he was pushing her forward before she had the chance.

“Claire. Will you need any extra hands taking care of the hot water or lighting the interior?”

Everyone became stiff at the boss’s question, and Claire couldn’t allow herself to look at him.

“As I said before, I don’t need to know. However Claire, will you be able to do this alone?”

Oh……

Everything was overlooked by the boss.

Claire was touched by this sentiment.

And she started to sob.

“Master…..”

Claire squatted down and cried into her lap.

Ellis bent low and whispered into her ear, “What are you doing, Claire? Times like this, shouldn’t you thank your master with a kiss?”

After that, Claire jumped up and kissed the boss on his cheek.

In this way Claire officially became a member of Ellis’s group.

◊

That evening.

“Can you hear me Reeve?”

“No problem mistress. Can you hear me?”

Ellis and Reeve were using the Intelligence headband and piercings to communicate over a long distance.

“Oh, it’s convenient.”

Claire was impressed and stared at the piercings Reeve was wearing.

Reeve smiled back at Claire. “It will be great if Ellis’s voice could be transmitted to us at any time.”

Currently, Ellis and Frau were next to the kettlehouse while Reeve and Claire waited at the bathhouse.

“Then I will go little by little.”

“Okay. I will report on a case by case basis.”

After hearing Reeve’s reply, Ellis began creating Fever Stones, and Frau sunk them into the water in the kettlehouse. Once a number of them were submerged, Ellis took out a special tong and touched one of the stones.

“{Turn red}.”

Then as the first stone began to change its color, the water around started to bubble up.

“Reeve how is it?”

Reeve and Claire were left in the bathhouse to check the temperature of the water flowing into the bathtub.

“A little more.”

Ellis created two more Fever stones and added them to the water tank as well. The steam rising from the boiling water was steadily becoming more intense.

“Oh, it’s a nice feeling. Come here and try it once.”

Following Reeve’s reply, Ellis and Frau moved from the kettlehouse to the completed bathhouse.

“Yeah, it feels good.”

After confirming that Ellis and Frau were satisfied with the heat of the bath, Claire asked them to turn the heat down so that they could easily clean out the bathtub. Agreeing to her request, they headed back to the kettlehouse. They deactivated the Fever stones as Claire requested, and they added in two more dormant Fever stones to be activated once it becomes winter.

In the bathhouse, Claire and Reeve temporarily blocked the drainage of the bathtub and monitored the state of the running water moving through the bathtub. They watched the water overflow out of the tub and bring with it any dirt that had accumulated during the construction. They concluded that this method should work to clean the tub in the future, and it should be find to just leave the water hot during any other times.

“Well then, shall we prepare the lights while the bath warms up?”

The girls pulled out Luminescent stones that were placed in rattan baskets in advance. The rattan baskets were used as a shade to dim some of the released light after Ellis activated them, and they were all hung up one by one on clasps that were tailored to the ceiling of the room. The Luminescent stones’ light seeped through the rattan’s mesh and gently illuminated the room.

With the lights properly working, Claire told Ellis she could reheat the water through the piercings.

While the four waited for the tubs to reheat up, Claire checked the bathrooms to make sure the water was flowing correctly in the toilets and that the water was still a comfortable temperature.

“Since we all have so much free time, shall we all take a bath?”

Three people nodded happily toward Ellis’s proposal.

Everyone returned to the mansion through the door behind the reception counter to take off their clothes. After grabbing the towels that were prepared by Reeve in advance, the four headed back over to the bathtub.

It was a fantastic space upon reentering where the light leaking from the rattan baskets beautifully showcased the polished stone while the sound of the running water made the four naked women naturally relaxed.

The four sat on prepared low chairs in front of the elongated bath to begin wiping themselves down. They took out hot water from the bath and rinsed each other off before turning to the larger tub. The four gathered together and decided to enter at the same time.

“This is paradise.” Reeve’s body grew weak and it almost looked like she would melt in the tub.

“The fatigue of the day seems to be just falling off.” Frau narrowed her eyes in pleasure and relaxed her shoulders.

“Ellis, it feels so good.” Claire happily chatted away with Ellis.

Oh how I missed you.

Ellis was remembering the bath she had before her incarnation. In those days, I had a narrow tub that I didn’t care for, but it wasn’t so bad looking back on it.

The bath was so pleasant.

While watching the three beautiful girls feeling weak, refracting, and forgetting their worries, the hikineet laid back and enjoyed the bath with them.