Chapter 236 - 236 Survive the mana season, please! part 3

236 Survive the mana season, please! part Town of Ironwoods, right after Ayumi noticed the early arrival of the mana season.

“Sophie!” Ayumi yelled to the top of her lungs, it was so powerful it resounded in the entire manor.

“Yes, master Ayumi?” Sophie replied with a stern voice as soon as she peeked through the door of the laboratory. She wasn’t allowed to get inside, not because of her status, but because she wasn’t wearing a lab coat.

“There’s the lights in the sky! Is it that time of the year already?” Ayumi knitted her brows.

“That’s impossible, the freeze happens the same day of the year every year, no exceptions.” She adjusted her glasses, keeping one hand bellow her bosom pressing it up slightly.

“Then why don’t you look at them yourself?” Ayumi faked a cough when she noticed Sophie’s intention to get inside without wearing a coat, forcing her to retrace her steps, put on the cotton lab coat and then step back in the lab.

Even after almost a year of knowing Ayumi, she still didn’t understand why she was so neurotic about it.

“By the gods! What should we do!? do we even have enough food? Master Ayumi, what are your orders?” Sophie’s hands trembled in fear, being a smart woman that put reason above everything else, the only thing that scared her were the things she couldn’t understand.

“Calm down, we need to figure this out first.” Ayumi’s words would usually be enough for Sophie to calm down, but this was an unheard event in the history of mankind.

.....

“But the people of Ironwoods! we need to contact everyone and warn them, we need to ask mister Ironside for help!”

“There’s no need for that, I bet they know it already. The only thing we can do is try to understand the phenomenon so we take the best course of action. As a friend once told me, we need information, technique and the proper tools to survive. Everything starts with the information, so, it’s time to gather data.” She was thinking of Ryu, of course, but at that point Sophie didn’t even remember him.

“There’s two choices,” Ayumi continued “we either lock ourselves down as if this was your regular cold snap or evacuate the city and look for a safer place.”

“What do you mean? Of course we should lock ourselves in our home, we’ll be fine if it’s just two weeks like always.”

“Sure, but what if it’s not just two weeks? what if, by the time we find out this is going to last for a month or even more, we run out of supplies? there’s too many questions, but luckily I can find the answers. All I need is for the girls to place fire essence vials in equidistant spots today and pick them up tomorrow. That way I can see if my theory is correct.”

“What theory?”

“I think the freeze, as you like to call it, is nothing but mana running wild. It gets soaked into the land, plants and creatures. Have you ever wondered how can there be elemental stones just lying around? Why can’t we cultivate plants with magical properties or where do magical beasts come from?” Ayumi asked excitedly, but she didn’t wait for an answer and handed a box with vials filled to the brim with a pale red liquid.”

“I’ll do as you say, but there’s one thing I don’t understand, how is this going to help you prove your theory?”

“Those vials contain fire essence that has been stripped of its mana essence, If what I think is true, the fire essence will come back to life. There’s no material so they shouldn’t turn into stone, they might react so be careful not to place them near buildings, only on the outskirts of the city and don’t forget they must be at the exact same distance from each other. Also, place them following the road to mountainside if possible.

“Thanks to my mana sense skill I’ll be able to notice the small fluctuations of mana in the vials you placed it. If the ones closer to Ironwoods are more affected than the ones going up north, then we’ll probably have no other chance at survival than taking refuge into the mines.”

Ayumi said with a frown over her face the whole time. She already knew the implications of going through the mines, she had also heard about the hardships of the travel to mountainside but there had been something bothering her for a while now.

She experienced the cold weather in the cabins they made south of Ironwoods, it was a lot colder than it was on Ironwoods even before the mana season started. She also knew that, albeit for a short while, Bob, Luke and Karl had survived ‘the freeze’ for a short period of time, right before they were able to enter the mines.

This meant that south is colder than north. This could not seem like much, but Ayumi was a woman of science. She was a college professor back on her world and physics phenomena weren’t a mystery for her, she hypothesized that they should be closer to the south pole of the planet leading her to believe that they could be in trouble.

The only problem was that Ironwoods was a fairly new town, it didn’t have a long history that she could compare, and she was also surprised by how much weather could change in such close distances. All things considered, she couldn’t raise an alarm for nothing, but thanks to her being the only mage in town she could simply say some magical mumble jumble and convince everyone they were in danger.

Ayumi was so lost in thought that when she snapped out of it Sophie had been gone for half an hour.

Since master Ayumi asked her such an important task, Sophie asked the girls for help. They used to be Hiraku’s trading company only ’employees’, but even now that one fifth of the Ironwoods population worked for the company, Sophie only entrusted such important tasks to slaves.

Being a slave herself, Sophie knew how vulnerable they were, but after serving the heroes, and particularly Ayumi, for so long she had become blindly loyal to them.

Sophie had always a curious mind and a quick brain, she was always on the look for something to keep her mind busy, even when she was a prostitute. It was only thanks to her ingenuity she had managed to live as a prostitute for so long without providing any sort of sexual service. She was actually proud of this feat.

When she was bought by Hiraku, she thought she could still get away with it, but after meeting master Ayumi, it was Sophie herself who seduced them.

She was a resourceful woman, manipulative and scheming like no one, and she was used to always getting things her way, she had also a charming face and an alluring figure. She was confident she would be able to seduce the married couple and gain more influence in their household.

All she wanted was to be a part of the company that was effectively changing the world. Every other week they came up with something new. Sometimes it was small stuff like a means of disposing of food waste and creating more fertile land at the same time, but other times they offered machines and gadgets that were like magic, but better.

Homes were now well lighted, there was enough medicine and food coming and going. And ever since they had some trading outposts built midway between Ironwoods, the mine and mountainside, transporting resources had never been so easy.

The city was clean, people were well fed, healthy and happy. Despite the town’s population being so low after the hill massacre and the riots that followed thanks to Bianca’s scheme, the town grew at an impressive rate because people were leaving the barracks and getting their own houses built. And Sophie had been an important part of the city’s development.

Although she was a slave, she was right where she wanted.

Of course things didn’t go exactly as she planned, there were a few ups and downs, but all in all she had experienced some things a lowly slave like her shouldn’t even be able to dream of.

The group comprised only of female slaves headed north of the manor, they were well armed and fully geared. Spears were their main weapons but some of them carried spare knives, others a bow and Sophie only carried the box filled with the fire essence vials.

The lights in the sky were a beautiful death omen that shined its eerie light upon the snow that covered the sides of the road.

Sophie lifted an arm signalling the group to stop and the girls quickly made a square formation that had no blind spots. If they were to be attacked, they would notice immediately, there was also no chance for the attacker to reach Sophie without being forced to break through their formation.

Sophie carefully opened the chest filled with the magical vials, but before she could even place one in the ground as Ayumi had instructed her, a strange light converged on the chest. The air around them became increasingly hot and Sophie didn’t know what to do. Her orders were to place a vial in the ground but it was red hot, bubbling, then sizzling, then...

The sound reached the manor, Ayumi opened her eyes wide as the wooden walls trembled.

The experiment had been a success.