Giving
I received a message from Maria saying the copper foil tape was finished, so I headed to her workshop.
Carlo had also been asked to come, and Raziel was there too.
“Raziel, is work okay for you?”
“The preparations for opening the capital branch have settled down, so I’m fine for now.”
When he was still hung up over the Delm Company incident, he had been in a bit of a daze, but once that issue was resolved, he returned to normal. He’s probably here to keep watch again this time too.
I had asked Carlo in advance to prepare and bring pieces of colored glass, 15 cm tall and 5 cm wide.
I gave directions while Carlo did the work.
We used a brush to coat the sticky substance from the Skeleton Flower leaves onto the copper tape, then applied the copper tape around the edges of the glass. Any excess copper was folded and stuck onto the glass plate. Then, the glass pieces wrapped in copper tape were stuck together again using the sticky substance from the Skeleton Flower. We repeated this several times.
When we held the finished product up by the window, it looked beautiful in the sunlight.
If we painted pictures with this, it’d look like faux stained glass.
“Combine different colors of glass to paint pictures with glass. If the copper foil is too bright and doesn’t match the picture, you could paint the copper darker or something. I’ll leave it to your artistic sense, Carlo.”
“Where would you like to use this?”
“The church. Wouldn’t it look beautiful if we fit these glass pictures into the windows above the statues of the gods? I think it would be nice to depict each of the gods with stained-glass-like pictures. Or we could even make lamps.”
“For the church, you should ask the lord’s permission first. Let’s start with the lamp instead,” Raziel said.
So Carlo returned to his workshop to try making the lamp.
“Hardt, why are you making products to be involved with the church on your own?”
“Exactly. You're already busy enough, how are you going to deal with the church too?”
“You may be trying to show gratitude for receiving three blessings, but I think it’s better to refrain this time.”
The idea of the faux stained glass was opposed by my family.
Stained glass = church is the general image, so I spoke too lightly of it—it was careless. I think it would be beautiful once completed, but we’ll hold off on offering it to the church.
It’s time to visit the World Tree. Two months pass by so quickly.
When we arrived at the World Tree, the Alraune came over, so I said,
“Alraune, can I give you the clothes and drawers my mother entrusted to me now?” and took them out from the magic bag.
Though they’re called dressers, they’re Alraune-sized—small chests to hold clothes for 30 cm tall dolls. They’re waterproofed to withstand rain.
Inside each chest were two dresses. There are three chests, one for each Alraune.
Upon seeing the little dressers, Alraune said,
“I can’t carry this. Tie it up where I tell you.”
So I had to ask Captain Kyle to tie the chests to the branches the Alraune designated.
“Thank you, Captain,” the three Alraune said in gratitude.
When I protested to my mother that it was once again impossible to tell which dress belonged to whom, she said she had chosen fabric colors and embroidery to match the ribbon given to each of them, so whichever dress they wore, the ribbon would always match.
I thought it was impressive how she fulfilled both my request and Alraune’s—but I kept that to myself.
I asked the Alraune to guide me to three locations where Skeleton Flowers could be found.
We would subjugate two spots and use one for an experiment Maria had requested.
“Young master Reinhardt, regarding the coloring of the Skeleton Flowers, I couldn’t get it to work well. So I’d like to propose something—could we test what happens if we scatter colored water in a densely populated area of Skeleton Flowers?”
“Can you prepare more than one color?”
“Understood. I’ll prepare the materials used for coloring glass. Just mix them with water and sprinkle it,” she had told me during the stained-glass-making session.
This time I brought four colors (red, pink, blue, and light blue), so I divided the area into four sections and sprinkled each with a different color.
I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next time we come.
As usual, we subjugated two areas of Skeleton Flowers and recovered 38 magic stones.
Since we have a good number this time, I decided to hand them over on our next visit in three months.
We’ll probably be visiting the dragon by then, and if anything happens, Ripka’s parents would likely come flying.
Just as we were about to leave, three fruit-like objects, each about the size of a volleyball, dropped from the World Tree.
When I asked the Alraune, she said, “The World Tree is giving them to you.”
When I asked what they were for, she said, “I don’t know. But Reinhardt, you should understand.”
Apparently even Brother Gerald and Meyer didn’t know either.
For now, I’ll just store them in the magic bag.
What do you think about this chapter?
