Hopp's Period

"Hopp! Are you all right?"

Stepping over the scattered debris around them, Carl did not even bother to get dressed and rushed forward to hug Hopp.

The moment their bodies touched, Carl realized that Hopp's temperature was frighteningly high.

"Was she injured earlier? No, that can't be right. Hopp didn't..."

Anxiously checking where the blood had come from, Carl quickly recalled the scenes from their hunt.

But soon, Carl's movements stopped, and her face slowly flushed red.

"She, she got her period..."

Menstruation, also known as a woman's monthly cycle, was a normal metabolic phenomenon that occurred after a female entered puberty.

The amount of bleeding varied depending on one's health.

And Hopp's condition was already considered quite severe.

"Thank goodness. It's not some sudden illness or an old injury acting up. Since that's the case..."

After placing Hopp back on the floor, Carl turned around and took her Wrench from her Bag of Holding.

Muttering a spell, Carl gestured in midair with her free hand. As a gentle energy appeared at her fingertips, she immediately crouched down and touched Hopp's body with one finger.

The energy rapidly seeped into Hopp's body. Hopp, whose consciousness was hazy, suddenly curled up before slowly relaxing again.

"Ca, Carl..."

Opening her dazed eyes, Hopp looked at Carl in confusion, feeling as if her body had become extremely heavy.

"Do you know that you're on your period?"

"My period?"

At that point, how could Carl not understand? Hopp probably did not know much about women's menstrual hygiene and had no idea that she had recently been "out of sorts."

"Forget it. I'll explain it to you after you've recovered. For now, I'll make you a deck chair. Sleeping directly on the floor is a little too cold."

With that, Carl took out her Alchemy Jug and a wooden bowl carved from a log, then mixed some diluted salt water for Hopp to drink.

Electrolytes had to be replenished promptly after losing a large amount of blood.

"Tap, tap, tap..."

The sound of Carl chopping wood with flint echoed throughout the house. Hopp, whose strength had recovered somewhat, leaned against the wall and quietly watched Carl work.

The atmosphere gave her a bit of a "homey" feeling.

After quite some time, Carl placed a barely level deck chair beside her.

"Lie on this for now. Once I reach level 3, I'll refine it properly."

The Artificer would undergo a tremendous leap in power at level 3.

That was because, upon reaching this level, an Artificer could choose a specialization, or subclass.

There were currently four Artificer subclasses: Alchemist, Artillery Mage, Field Engineer, and Armorer.

The subclass Carl had taken at the academy was Armorer. Once she reached level 3, she could begin training in the Armorer's class features and guide her Artificer abilities toward that specialization.

This transformation could not easily be changed, much like changing classes in certain games.

Once Carl gained the Armorer features, she would no longer be able to obtain the other Artificer subclasses.

However, thanks to the Artificer's marvelous ability to use any magical item, Carl could also teach herself the abilities of other subclasses.

But without the corresponding features, their effects and power would both be inferior to those of the proper subclass.

"You know so many things. Why were you only level 1 when we first met?"

Lying on the deck chair, Hopp watched Carl resume her busy work and asked the question that had puzzled her for so long.

Carl rolled her eyes in exasperation, turned around, and looked at Hopp.

"Because when I was at school, I spent most of my time studying theoretical knowledge. Spellcasters have a lot of theory to learn!"

"Why do you think I was able to use the corresponding abilities not long after leveling up?"

"Before I even became a proper Artificer, all the theoretical knowledge required for Artificers from levels 1 through 4 was already part of our mandatory examinations!"

Recalling the days she had spent studying for exams at school, the corners of Carl's eyes actually grew moist.

"Looks like things weren't easy for you either..."

Seeing Carl's utterly burned-out expression, the corner of Hopp's mouth twitched. For the first time, she felt that being a spellcaster was not easy either.

"Sigh. The only ones who have it hard are those of us with merely decent talent. The highly talented understand everything as soon as they hear it, while those with poor talent can't even cross the threshold."

The foundations of wizardry and Artificery encompassed knowledge from many fields, including mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry.

The runes of spells also had something in common with computer code.

When it came to the sciences, chemistry and biology could be understood somewhat through rote memorization. But with mathematics and physics, if you could not learn them, you simply could not learn them.

The reason Carl had been able to become an Artificer with an Intelligence of around 12 was largely because she had studied computer science in her previous life. Only after finding the knack for learning Spell Runes had she successfully become an Artificer.

Hearing Carl talk about academy life, Hopp grew curious as well.

"The highly talented? Just how talented are they?"

This question left Carl at a loss for words for a moment, and she even set down the work in her hands.

"Hmm... How should I put it? During the second half of our first semester, there was a fellow student who wanted to become an Artificer as a side profession. I studied the basic knowledge for an entire semester, while she stopped coming after one week of classes. In the final exam, she came first and I came sixth."

"Sixth? That's still pretty good, isn't it?"

"Ahem! There were only ten people in the entire class."

"..."

Thinking about her terrible performance while learning woodworking, Hopp regretfully realized that even if she were not a Tiefling and had received a proper education, she might not have had the talent to become a wizard or an Artificer.

Seeing that Hopp had mostly recovered, Carl mixed some more salt water and had Hopp go to the corner to clean herself.

Carl herself began making a wooden tub, preparing to tan lizard hide and make several changes of clothes for the two of them.

Traditional leather tanning required wood ash, and fortunately, all the sawdust from when Carl had built the cabin and furniture was still there.

After using Prestidigitation to light a strip of wood, Carl used Mage Hand to gather a large mass of sawdust in midair.

She brought the strip of wood near the sawdust, and the flames instantly spread across the entire mass.

Because she had awakened psychic abilities, Carl's Mage Hand could almost be maintained indefinitely unless she stopped concentrating.

Once the sawdust had completely burned into ash, Carl placed the wood ash into the wooden tub filled with water, then repeated the process until all the sawdust had been burned.

She first selected two of the less intact pieces of lizard hide and threw them into the tub. Then Carl rose again and, while the alkaline solution worked on transforming the leather, began processing the lizard's meat and bones.