In two days, the tannery's rough structure was complete. Rino thanked the cement mixture powder for filling in the gaps between stone bricks in his soaking tanks. He also used runes to resolve the water filling and draining issues. It might not be the smartest use of mana, but it was what Rino was accustomed to.

His snake lady skin was already soaking in the salt bath, and Rino fashioned a hasty lid out of a stone slab. The spectres were busy building his storage house, and Rino busied himself creating the details of the mana web array, expanding from the main web so that it would reach the edges of his town's territory. He could not deal with an attack from monsters during his town-building phase, and Rino felt he would be low on mana for a while teleporting between Cypress County and his unbuilt town. A basic defence barrier will do a lot of wonders.

Four days later, Rino looked at the beautiful black leather made from the snake lady's skin.

Ping!

===

Daily Quest #14 (complete)

Objective: Tan leather

1/1 Tanned Leather

Time Limit: 5 Days. (late)

Tutorial here.

Reward: Tanning Skill

Claim your reward here.

Penalty: Deduct 24 hours of sleep upon failure and [Curse of Overtime] until quest is forcefully completed.

===

Rino did not need to consider. He simply accepted the quest's completion and collected yet another skill he would probably not use because he had tannery workers to do it for him.

With threads, bone needles, and leather splayed in front of him on the floor, Rino decided that it was time to craft a new pair of shoes. He had a new house, heavily improved, a tannery far from the town centre, a magic tree growing fruits as strange as that sounded, and a living cave to start with.

Although the logistic arrangements for transporting things from Noir Province was still a work in progress, Rino had enough building materials. His mana reserves were also recovered to almost seventy percent after some more strenuous uses over the past few days. No, Rino did not use time acceleration magic to get his leather, even if it was a tempting idea.

Instead, the lich spent his magic on building a better cottage so that it would be comfortable when Noir visited if the cat decided to drop by. At the same time, he put the ecology system in the living cave in place while taking advantage of the gargoyles he owned to farm mushrooms and mine resources.

The last few days had been non-stop working, and Rino even forgot to claim some of his daily sleep reward from the shop, much to his chagrin. However, the results paid off, and Rino could boast of a functional town without needing too much support from Noir Province for the time being.

He found some clay by the river a little distance away from the town's location, and Rino decided to assign one spectre to gather clay and build a little kiln. He also repurposed the vault into something akin to his personal study and linked the mana web array all the way up to that vault so that he could have lights when he wanted. The important things were stored here, such as glowing ore, paper, ink, and some of Kragami's tea leaves. Rino also made himself comfortable by adding a table and some chairs made from stone because wood was hard to come by with the hemp seeds still growing into trees.

Honestly, cypress wood was better to build with, but it was difficult to grow them in the valley. Hemp was considerably easier and multi-purposed. He made the right decision asking for hemp seeds. At the same time, Rino wondered if potatoes could be grown here and took a few potatoes to test in the field. So far, nothing was happening, but it was too soon to tell. Rino could only hope that they would show promising results with nature magic.

On that topic, he found it odd that he did not encounter a single fae in this area. It was odd because Rino was used to seeing them everywhere.

Armed with a paper cutout of the boot design, Rino looked at the lamia leather nervously. This was more precious than the cloth he could mess around with. There really wasn't another lamia he could skin for precious leather. Hence, Rino made sure to mark out what he needed with charcoal before he got to cutting, ensuring that the spaces in between leather pieces were as close together as possible to minimise wastage. The portion for Kragami was already set aside, and Rino wanted to make more than just shoes. He really wanted to make that grimoire too.

The wooden shoe soles sat at the corner as Rino carefully exerted force at his fingertip to cut the leather into the shape with an enchanted bone knife. Although the lamia skin still retained its magic resistant properties, it was still leather in the end and sliced nicely. The enchanted bone knife went through the lamia leather like a hot knife through butter, and Rino controlled his speed, going slow so that he wouldn't make a mistake.

Ten nerve-wracking minutes later, Rino had his cutouts. Now, all he had to do was stitch them together and nail them into his shoe soles. He did this for his cloth boots, so he could do the same for this leather.

The stitching was hard, Rino had to admit. Working with leather was very different from working with linen. If he made a wrong stitch in the cloth, he could undo the stitch with little consequence. However, with leather, that hole would remain. It was heartbreaking, so Rino simply left the crooked stitch there. One crooked stitch became two, and eventually, he looked at the seams of the finished product.

The magician only thanked his luck that the threads were black on black leather. It wasn't too obvious if nobody scrutinised. However, the poor craftsmanship on premium leather pained him. He should have troubled the brownies for help instead of trying to do it by himself.

Whatever. There was no use in crying over spilt milk. At least, Rino was a self-made king. He didn't need to rely on his subjects like some sort of invalid.

As he slotted the suede leather in between wooden soles, Rino checked the insoles and pondered if he should glue them to the wood. Leather shoes should not be washed, and suede leather was a pain to care for even if they were comfortable. When he was still a teenager, the magician boots he wore often moulded because he did not have time to care for them.

Even if Rino had no idea if lamia leather is the same, he did not want to take any chances. He had no sweat as a lich, so socks mattered little as long as his pants covered his naked shin bone. The boot laces also pulled tightly to secure the boot around his ankles, so there should be no requirement to remove the insoles for airing the boots out.

Hence, Rino used tree sap to glue the spongy insoles onto the wood and attached the leather to the base. Then, he used magic to speed up the sap drying process before layering cement onto the bottom of the wooden sole to attach it to his bulkier heel piece like a puzzle.

Satisfied with his creation, Rino checked the system smugly. He might be a few days late in turning the quest in. However, Rino was glad that he still had a few more days of vacation time to enjoy. Moreover, he brought back the important things so that he could do what he came to do.

Nothing beats a relaxing day by the river fishing. The shoes were drying at the moment, so Rino padded around his cottage barefooted for a while, gathering the remaining lamia leather. He would leave the suede shoes under the sun while it was still day and head over to the vault by hopping onto the teleportation pad. He had a grimoire to make.

Ping!

The system's late notification came promptly as Rino found himself in the dark secret vault turned into his personal study.

"Lights!"

On command, the vault lit up, and Rino checked his reward.

===

Side Quest #17 (complete)

Objective: Craft Tanned Leather

1/1 Leather Product

Reward: Leather Crafting Skill

Claim your reward here.

===

It was about time too! Rino claimed his new skill would help increase his success working with leather.

Screwing up a pair of boots was a lot better than screwing up a grimoire. Rino could live with poorly sewn shoes but not a shabby looking grimoire. He had no excuse for a poorly made grimoire as a magician, and honestly, it did not look good if pages of his grimoire fell loose during a battle. Even if he was lazy, he still had standards to keep up with as a powerful magician, and a crappy book was unacceptable.

With renewed vigour and a few days of idle time, Rino cracked his knuckles before starting his new project. As an apprentice in the tower many years ago, the art of bookbinding was already in his blood. There was no way Rino would mess this up. After all, this just might be the very first book in the world.