Chapter 203

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Those who do not work, shall not eat.

While I’ve decided to help Heinrich, I didn’t have any intention of giving him free food. Heinrich had to work in order to get his portion of food. Since he had been stripped off of his nobility status, he was bound to die in a ditch if he didn’t learn how to fend for himself anyway. 

At first Heinrich was like…

“Huh? Why do I have to?”

But then I responded with gestures…

“So? Do you want to leave then?”

He turned his gaze to the blue wolves and turned pale before he consented. 

And so, I had him help me with some simple tasks like taking care of the chickens and the horses to chopping firewood and heating up the water for the bath. However, Heinrich couldn’t do a single thing right. He couldn’t even chop the firewood. It turned out a noble truly never lifted their finger to do menial tasks. The reality was even worse than I had expected. 

Just like that, a few days had passed after I had Heinrich help me around the house. Despite the limitations of his ability, Heinrich was truly doing his best. I started making him train with sword and bow on the second day and on the third day, I started making him experience actual combat with goblins and slimes. 

At first, even a mere goblin was able to almost kill Heinrich but after a week, he was somehow able to defeat a goblin all by himself. In addition, I also taught him how to make smoked food, fish and cook. 

Then, one day, Margo came to pick up his fire daggers. Of course Margo and Heinrich just kept being hostile with each other but after I told Margo that I had decided to take care of Heinrich, they (reluctantly) lowered their fists.

Well, he doesn’t seem like he agrees with my decision though.

In the end, Margo returned to the city after he got his fire daggers. I guess after everything that had happened, he couldn’t possibly enjoy drinking while looking at Heinrich’s face. At the same time, Heinrich had a somewhat sorrowful expression on his face for a whole day.

“Heinrich. Let’s drink a lot today to unwind from today’s hard work.”

I didn’t like anything depressing so I called out to Heinrich and invited him for a drink with the sea urchins we had just captured in the river as the snack.

After that, I continued spending some time with Heinrich. We spent the day with him helping me with the blacksmithing duty like smelting and going to the woods to hunt.

Heinrich handed me a glass of warm milan fruit wine. He said that he was the one who made that wine so I took a sip out of curiosity and surprisingly, the wine was comparable to the red mulled wine I had on an alleyway in Europe during winter to help me fend off the cold. This incident was the turning point that led me to develop a thermal bottle with fire attribute together with Heinrich. We used the fire stone from a fire dagger and combined it with an iron kettle. 

This fire attribute thermal bottle would be extremely useful when working outside during winter. Being able to drink hot tea or mulled wine during the cold winter season must’ve felt amazing. You could even put the snow into the thermal bottle to make hot water or you could also use it as a makeshift pocket heater by putting the thermal bottle inside your coat. This invention would be greatly appreciated by the people working outside. 

I was thinking of selling this invention in bulk if my friends in the city gave me a positive response for it but well, let’s not be too hasty. It’d be better to take it slow instead of rushing it into production. 

And so, just like this, after the incident with Margo, Heinrich started to work diligently and completely transformed himself beyond recognition. 

One fine morning, Heinrich told me that he had something to talk about with me. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he handed it to me. I took the paper and I decided to hear what he had to say. 

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T/N: Cue Mulan’s song I’ll Make a Man Out of You.