Sophia and Maya were still experimenting with the heating ore to find the right mixture to use it for heating up the floors in their mansion. All they created up until now was a lukewarm pile of sand and a few craters in their garden after the mixture had exploded because the couple used too much of the raw ore at once.

“Our gardener that came over last week will kill us when he comes back…” Maya was looking at their slightly destroyed garden that was riddled with craters from various explosions.

“Funny you’re saying that. Most of the craters, including the giant first one, are the result of your doing because it happened after you tried a too highly concentrated mixture, after all.” The tiger put all the blame on her.

“I-I really don’t know what’s wrong with me today…” She hung her head.

“Ahaha~.” Sophia let out a chuckle. “I think it’s a lot of fun that way.”

“Well, sure… Still, I like it more when you’re the one who’s causing the catastrophes.”

“Yep, that’s fun, too~.” There was no reason, or chance, for her to deny it, after all.

“We’re getting close, though.” The cat-girl held her hand over the latest pile of the sand and heating ore mixture. “It’s super warm but still stable.”

“It has to be hotter, though.” We have wooden floors in most of the rooms, including our bedroom. If we put the stuff below it, the wood’s going to reduce the warmth that comes through it because it’ll act as an insulator.”

“True…” She nodded in understanding. “Wait, how are we putting the stuff in there, anyway?”

“Lots of construction work’s going to happen.”

“Not sure if I like that.” Maya had mixed feelings about the idea.

“The alternative would be no heated floors.”

“Let’s tear down the entire mansion!” She quickly reconsidered.

“Ahaha…” The tiger responded with a chuckle. “I don’t think it’s going to be that hard. I can teleport the furniture into our storage as is. I might even be able to do the same with the wooden floor. After that, we need to modify the actual stone below it…”

“Modify?”

“We need to carve it out a bit to add some insolation and the heating ore mixture itself before adding the wooden floor again.”

“Ahh…It would get too high otherwise, huh?” Maya saw the issue. “What’s the insulation for, though?”

“We want to heat up the room above, not below, right? Without it, we would also have heated ceilings downstairs.”

“Good point.”

“Insulation can also act as soundproofing if I remember right.” She paused for a moment. “That’s one of the reasons why I got so much of it.”

“Ohh!” The cat-girl liked the sound of that. The two had a slight noise issue, after all. Them being too loud at certain times, that is.

“We first need to find the right mixture, though.”

“True… Maybe the mixture being, uhh… dry could also be a problem.”

“Hmm?” Sophia tilted her head.

“If the heating ore gets actually combined with the sand into something more solid, it might work better?”

“That sounds like a good idea. Let’s give it a try!”

“How, though?”

“We could just add some water for the time being. It won’t hold, but it’s enough to test, I guess?” Saying so, the tiger created a bit of water with magic and splashed it over a pile of sand. Afterward, she added the heating or and started mixing everything together. Interestingly enough, the ore began to dissolve completely, and the whole mixture slowly turned into a homogenous mass. “W-We really should’ve asked how the raw ore works…”

“Yeah…” Maya, too, was awkwardly scratching her cheek after seeing how easy it was all of a sudden.

“Let’s see if it’s any better now.” Sophia placed her hand on the mixture and poured some of her magic into it. Immediately after, it started to heat up. It also got way warmer, not to mention that it evenly heated up now. “Ohh!”

“How is it?” The cat-girl got closer and touched it as well. “Feels nice and hot. I like it! Looks like the mixture got solid, too, huh?”

“Yep, it’s near perfect. I think we can add a little bit more of the ore. It would be five-kilogram sand mixed with 500 grams of the ore and enough water to make it a homogenous mass.”

“Sounds good. Though… What happens if you pour in too much magic…?” Maya’s expression changed a bit. “I kinda see someone using way too much while being half asleep and blowing us up already…”

“Ahh…” She turned her head away. This scene felt way too real for her. “L-Let’s test it out first…”

“Sure…” While Maya agreed, she increased her distance from the blonde.

“Okay…” Sophia placed her hand on the already hardened mixture and started pouring more of her magic into it. It heated up in an instant, but nothing else happened. “It doesn’t work… While I can use quite a bit of my magic… It eventually stops… It seems like I could overpower it, but it feels like I really shouldn’t…”

“Is that so?” She sounded relieved.

“Yeah… That’s probably one of those limitations Canir mentioned. His magic doesn’t care about it, but my tiger magic is warning me to stop.”

“I love your tiger side more and more with each passing day.”

“Me, too~.”

“What now? Should we get our bedroom ready?” Maya wanted to know about their plan going forward.

“Do you mind if I make a sensible suggestion?”

“I would be confused, but I certainly wouldn’t mind.”

“Ahaha… I kinda don’t want to ruin our bedroom first thing… How about we try it out in our underground portal room first?”

“I am very confused.” Maya stared right at her. “I’m a big fan of the reasonable Sophia, but it's a really weird feeling…”

“Shut up.” The tiger started pouting. “Let’s go and blow up our bedroom!”

“Let’s not do that.”

“Fine…” Still pouting, Sophia went back to the stable and put all the materials into her storage. Afterward, the couple went inside the mansion to continue their experiments down in the portal room in their basement.

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“We don’t really have to carve out the floor here, do we?” Maya looked around to guess how they should tackle it.

“Not really, no.” She agreed. “It’s not a problem if we raise the ground a little. We can just add the insulation, the mixture, and then top it off with some wooden planks for the time being to roughly recreate what we have upstairs.”

“Do you also have some planks in your storage?”

“Sure.”

“Again, why?”

“Why not? I saw them a while ago and thought it could be useful someday.” Sophia gave her a casual reply.

“Useful for what...?”

“For testing out the new heated floors in the basement of our mansion we received from the king of this nation.”

“I see… Yeah, you always have to be ready for this absolutely common situation, right.”

“Definitely.” The tiger sounded a bit smug for some reason.

“Anyway,” Maya didn’t want to deal with this, or her, any longer. “Let’s get to the testing.”

“Sure~.”

“What should we do first?”

“The insulation, I would say.” Saying so, Sophia pulled out the square sheets of it and put them down.

“Just covering the whole ground, I suppose?”

“Yep.”

----------------

Doing that for the next 20 minutes, the duo eventually placed the last wooden pane on the floor and got together near the stairs again.

“I’m not sure if I’m imagining things, but it already feels warmer… I guess the insulation is working, huh?” The cat-girl tried to feel the temperature while waving her hand around.

“Yeah, thanks to the insulation, the cold creeping up from below is gone now.”

“That’s a promising start.”

“The question is how to apply the heating ore mixture…” Sophia tilted her head.

“Just evenly spread it out all over the ground?”

“I thought about the same, but we wasted a lot of the raw material while blowing up our garden. There are only around three kilograms left… If we use the 10 to 1 mixture with the sand and add the water on top…”

“It’s not nearly enough to cover the whole ground, huh?” Maya finished her sentence.

“Exactly.” She nodded. “According to the wolf guy seller, three kilograms should be way more than enough to heat up a room of this size.”

“So?”

“How about we apply the mixture in lines all over the ground instead? This way, we won’t need nearly as much material, but it should still give off enough heat.”

“I see. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll just get five times as much for our bedroom.”

“I like that idea!”

“Hehe.” After that, Sophia let a big container appear from her storage space and dumped all the remaining heating ore together with ten times as much sand in it. Once she poured water all over it, she used her magic to move the materials to let it all mix together, and it soon formed into a homogenous mass again.

Once the consistency was right, the girls spread it out on top of the insulation all over the room in a snake pattern. To finish it, the tiger then pulled out a whole lot of veneer-like planks of wood which they placed on top of the insulation and the heating ore mixture.

“That was a lot easier than I had imagined.” Maya looked at the finished basement that now featured a wooden floor.

“Maybe we should become carpenters in the future~?”

“How about no?” The cat-girl didn’t like the idea.

“Yeah, I’ll pass on that, too. We’ll leave that to the experts.” The blonde had only made a joke, after all. “Alright, let’s test it out!” Saying so, she put her hand on the newly built floor and started pouring her magic into it. “It’s working, but we might need to use some of the conductivity ore stuff to transport the magic faster below the wood. I might make some sort of switch thingy on the wall that connects to it… We can simply touch that then to get it going.”

“You sure are dedicated to the plan. I kinda like it when you are like this.”

“Ehehe- Ohh, the floor’s getting warm~.” She finished pouring her magic into the floor, and the wood began to heat up after a minute or two.

“Really?!” There was a hint of excitement, and the cat-girl immediately kneeled down to feel it for herself. “Ohhh~!”

“Great, isn’t it?”

“Very!” Her tail was sticking straight up while Maya was happily patting down the floor.

“Glad you like it.” While saying so, Sophia took off her shoes and socks before stepping on the wooden floor. “Haaa~… I’m in heaven~…” She let out one of the most comfortable sighs the cat-girl had ever heard from her. “This the beeeest~. Try it out, Maya~.”

“Sure!” Wasting no time, she immediately took off her boots and got rid of her overknees, as well. Afterward, she joined the tiger on the heated floor. “Oh no, this is bad…” Her expression changed. “T-This floor is dangerous… The warmth below your feet and how it slowly soaks up while spreading through your legs…”

“Ehehe.” While letting out a chuckle, Sophia sat down on the floor before letting herself fall on her back. “Haa~.” She had sprawled out her limps all over the wood.

Maya immediately did the same, and the two rolled around on the floor for a good while before eventually settling down next to each other. Afterward, the two started cuddling while being warmed up by the heated floor beneath them. Eventually, though, the wolves appeared in the basement after coming back from working on the maze and spotted the two there. Fen and Aura naturally were a little confused over the sight, and the couple had a lot of explaining to do.