Five gold coins. These small metal discs shining on the table were a fortune for this house.
Sera and Mirel looked at them like saviors. They were probably dreaming of beautiful dresses, expensive wines, or the old days of "luxury."
I slapped the table. They all flinched. "Stop dreaming," I said seriously. "This money will not be spent. It will be invested."
Sera frowned. "Invested, Sir? You mean we'll give it to the usurer?" "No," I said. "We're buying cows."
The silence in the room was broken only by the crackling of the fire in the hearth. "Cows?" asked Mirel, unable to hide her disappointment.
"But Sir, the barn is about to collapse. Besides, nobles don't keep cows, peasants do."
"We are not nobles, Mirel," I said, separating two of the gold coins and handing them to her.
"Right now, we are a household that is hungry, in debt, and forced to produce. You will buy two dairy cows. Young and healthy ones. With the remaining money, hay and feed."
I looked into Mirel's eyes. "Those cows won't just give us milk. They will give us 'continuity'. Go now."
The next seven days were the longest, most tiring, but most productive week of my life.
The house had turned into a fully operational workshop rather than a mansion.
When Mirel returned from town with two cows (she had named them Yellow and Spotted), it fell to me to repair the old barn in the garden.
The roof was leaking, the walls were crumbling. "Magic isn't just for fighting, Sera," I said, hardening a rotten plank with Earth Magic.
"Look, it strengthens the structure. Instead of swinging a sword, learn to swing a hammer; instead of destroying, learn to build."
Although Sera initially hit the boards with the hammer as if attacking an enemy, by the end of the day she had managed to repair the barn roof.
She was soaked in sweat, but on her face was the pride not of defeating an enemy, but of having "created" something.
However, when the cows arrived, a new crisis erupted. "This milk will spoil, Sir," said Mirel, looking helplessly at the full churns in her hands.
"Yellow and Spotted turned out to be much more productive than we thought. We can't drink it all, and we have neither the time nor the space to make cheese. This will sour by tomorrow."
I leaned against the kitchen counter. It was nice that the cows were productive, but it was a logistical nightmare. There were no refrigerators in this world.
Milk would start producing bacteria a few hours after milking. "They won't spoil," I said. "We will transform them."
Mirel was surprised. "Transform? Cheese again?" "No," I said. "Something much more profitable, much more delicious, and a taste this kingdom doesn't know yet."
I went out into the garden. I walked to the old fig tree in the back. Sera was watching me. "Are we going to pick fruit, Sir?"
"Not the fruit," I said, plucking a fig leaf from its branch. "Its blood." I pointed to the white, sticky liquid—fig milk (sap)—oozing from where I plucked it.
"Chemistry is nature's secret language, Sera. This liquid has the power to break down the proteins in milk and bind them together again."
When I returned to the kitchen, the milk had been warmed. I dripped the fig sap into the warm milk. Mirel looked on in horror. "Sir! That is a bitter liquid! You poisoned the milk!"
"Have patience," I said, covering the pot with a cloth. "Put it in a warm place and don't touch it until tomorrow. Let the bacteria do their work."
The next morning, everyone in the kitchen gathered around that clay pot. Mirel lifted the cloth. The liquid was gone.
In its place was a white, smooth mass dense enough to be cut with a spoon. I dipped the spoon in, took a piece, and held it out to Mirel. "Taste it."
Mirel opened her mouth hesitantly. As soon as the spoon touched her tongue, her eyes widened.
That sour yet refreshing taste, that creamy texture... "This..." she said, swallowing.
"This is incredible! Like cream but... lighter. And sour but sweet!"
"We call this 'Yogurt'," I said. "And do you know the best part? We don't need the fig tree anymore. This first batch we made will be the 'Starter Culture'. When we take a spoonful of this and add it to other fresh milk, that too will turn into yogurt. An endless cycle."
Sera looked at the pot like it was a treasure chest. "Can we sell this, Sir?" I smiled.
"We won't just sell it, Sera. We will make people addicted to it. On hot summer days, we will add ice and fruit to it and market it to nobles as an 'Elixir of Youth' and to the poor as a 'Power Food'."
By the weekend, our production line had expanded. With the remaining money, I had bought sacks of raw cotton from the town.
Mirel was spinning this cotton mixed with the fine fur we obtained from the rabbits.
The resulting yarn had the durability of cotton and the softness of rabbit fur (angora).
Scarves and shawls knitted with these threads did not itch like ordinary wool, nor did they slip like silk. It was a complete luxury consumer product.
On Sunday evening, the sound of leather pouches emptying onto the table echoed through the house like a symphony. CLINK! CLINK! Thirty Gold.
While we didn't have a single copper a week ago, now we had earned in a week what a middle-class merchant in the kingdom earned in a year.
"Yogurt..." said Sera, her hands trembling as she counted the gold. "When Baroness Valeri tasted the yogurt, she almost cried. She paid half a gold piece for a kilo. And those furry shawls... Ladies lined up."
I set aside ten gold pieces. "This is for the house treasury," I said. "For rainy days." Then I set aside five more gold.
"This is to pave the barn floor with stone and expand the coop. You will buy the materials; I will do the construction."
I pulled the remaining fifteen gold in front of me. "And this..." I said, the glint in my eyes changing. "...this is for my education."
When I went down to the city, my first job was to go to that shop in the back alley where old and dusty books were sold. "What do you have on magic theory?"
I asked the old seller. My attire had improved, my posture had straightened. "What kind of theory?" "Time," I whispered. "And manipulation."
The man's eyes lit up. From under the counter, he pulled out a book with yellowed pages, bound in cowhide. "Whispers of Chronos," he said.
"Not forbidden, but... dangerous. It tires the mind. Ten gold." I didn't bargain. I left the pouch on the counter.
Midnight. The house was buried in silence. The girls had fallen into a deep sleep from exhaustion and satiety. I was in my room. Only a candle was burning.
In front of me stood the magic book I had just bought and a rotten apple I had plucked from the garden.
As I read the book, Leon's analytical mind merged with the mystical rules of this world. Time is not a river, the book said.
Time is the vibration of matter. "Of course," I mumbled. "Entropy. Molecular movement speed. If I reverse the molecular vibration of an object, independent of the surrounding universe... time flows backward for that object."
I reached out to the rotten apple. I closed my eyes. I focused. Editor... Show me the mana. But not fluid, in a static state.
I sealed the air around the apple. Then, I imagined reversing the movement of the atoms inside just the apple, the process of decay.
It was against the laws of thermodynamics, but magic was for bending laws.
Sweat poured from my forehead. My nose began to bleed. This magic wasn't like making light; it was like tearing the fabric of the universe. Gears were grinding inside my brain.
"Turn back..." I whispered. "Decay... stop."
When I opened my eyes, the rotten, brown apple on the table was gone. In its place stood a bright, green, and fresh apple, as if just plucked from the branch. I succeeded.
I hadn't turned back time; I had merely reversed time locally for this apple. I picked up the apple. I bit into it. CRUNCH. It was fresh, juicy, and sweet.
I smiled, but this smile trembled with fatigue. "Thirty gold, two cows, a yogurt and textile empire..." I said to myself, chewing the apple.
"...and now a mind capable of bending time." I closed the cover of the book. "Until Veyra comes," I said to the darkness.
"I must be her equal, or even someone more dangerous than her."
The candle flickered and went out. In the darkness, Leon's eyes shone with the fire of that new power.