After returning to my room and thinking about what to do some more, I realize that the weapon practice I thought of earlier isn't going to work. I can't start swinging anything around, weapon or not, without drawing way too much attention from the other girls. So I end up finishing out the night by meditating on and off, and kind of mentally practicing my weapon skills instead. I don't know how useful it is, just imagining the strikes and movements as best I can. Reciting every bit of it from memory, even if I can't do it with my body right now. It'll have to do until I find a better way.

The next morning, I bring the bag of food along with my normal stuff, plopping it down on Eryk's table beside my basket. He raises a brow, simply tilting his head toward the bag to ask, so I explain the rough outline of my plan.

"Hmm," he considers it, then offers a solution to my biggest problem. "He's made it pretty clear that he only cares about your value as a- servant." I catch his stumble, but don't mention it. "Between the restrictions on staying in the house, going out of town, and all that, he definitely cares about your health, if nothing else. That will be the key to convincing him. If you phrase it like..." he gestures vaguely with his hands, eyes roaming the ceiling in thought. "'I have severe allergic reactions, therefore it is in your best interest I do not eat these foods-' or something along those lines..." his gaze falls on me again, with a vague hand-shrug to show that's his best idea.

"Mm," I agree, "Yeah. That sounds like it should work." I nod a few times while turning the words over in my head. Is there a good way to write it? And what am I writing on?

Before I can ask about any of that though, Claire arrives for my lessons. After we go through our usual greetings, she also turns her eyes on the big sack of food, and I end up explaining everything to her too.

Unexpectedly, a big smile stretches over her face. "I can make a lesson out of this!" she declares, way happier about it than I would think. Eryk, looking somewhat dumbfounded as well, just waves us on through to the back room, where Claire sets her usual bag with her normal lessons and papers, off to the side.

"So," she gestures, and I carefully dump the contents of the bag out on the table. "Yes yes, let's see..." She looks everything over for some time, hands hovering until she plucks them up and sorts them out across the table between us in some way I don't understand. "You said you have allergic reactions to these foods?" she asks as she's finishing up.

"Well..." I consider how to answer. Even if I can't tell her everything, I still want to be as close to truthful as I can. Not to mention, I'm terrible at outright lying. "Not exactly allergic reactions, but something close I guess? Like... each one has these weird... sorts of effects on me. I don't really know how to describe it better."

"Mm," she nods faintly. "This is a particularly odd selection, even among noble foods." It is? Why? She clearly understands my unspoken question, because she explains, "Some of these are among the very best noble foods, while others are not nearly as popular. This for instance," she notes while picking up a round fruit. It looks similar to a tamaran, but dark red and smaller, a good size to fit in her palm. "-Is a moul. It is one of the most popular fruits enjoyed by the nobility. It is grown widely through the southern flood plains of Melphira, so it is a highly available crop. Even so, it is only sold to the nobility since they use it to make nearly all noble wines."

I'm not sure I understood all of that, but if I remember right, that food had a sort of smoothing effect on my mana, so it all kind of flowed together well when I ate it. It was one that was alright for me to eat, though the caretakers stopped giving it to me since I couldn't exactly explain all of that to them. At least I know what it's called now, though I have other questions like what 'wine' is, but I leave that for now since Claire is in the middle of speaking.

"This one on the other hand, is significantly more hard to come by," and this time she picks up another fruit, nearly the same size, but green. That one... I remember it stood out because it was one of the worst tasting noble foods. Really bitter. Most of them are so tasty, it made an impression at the time. I spat it out, since it gave a kind of weak, numb-like feeling, a bit similar to lele fruit. "This is a pellin. A much more recent crop, originally from Shonamakase. Introduced to Melphira..." she pauses to think. "Within the last fifty years I believe? It grows in dry, rocky climates, so it hasn't spread far beyond the Great Knife Mountains. As your homework said the other day, there are limited growing regions for such crops in Melphira."

I nod a few times. She goes on from there, picking out each of the fruits and vegetables and talking about them in varying amounts of detail. Sometimes about their history, or what they're best known for, or where they grow. Or even, their special qualities, like the diaki or 'hot bean' as she calls it. Apparently it's an extremely popular export from shonamakase which helps keep people warm in cold weather. That one did feel like it had a warming effect on my mana, even without swallowing it...

Claire continues on, and I take careful note of each name, until she arrives at the potato-looking one and says, "This is- well, it's actually named 'super potato.'" With a sigh and a gesture of her hands that tells me she thinks it's as silly as it sounds. "I'm guessing whoever named it wasn't feeling particularly creative that day."

"Haa..." I breathe out a non-response.

"In any case, most people have taken to calling it a 'sotto' instead. A very interesting vegetable, this one. Named for its borderline-magical health benefits." I blink when that word suddenly comes out.

"Magical?" I ask, before I can stop myself.

"Yes-" then she pauses. "That's right, I don't believe we've gotten to speaking on magical plants yet, have we?" I shake my head, forcing myself to keep a straight face. "In that case, I should mention that there are special plants, primarily found in a forest on the western side of Melphira. It's simply called 'The Magical Forest' due to its unusual abundance of magical creatures and plants. These plants have extraordinary features like magical creatures do. Sottoes are sometimes compared to them since people find their health benefits similarly hard to believe."

With that explained, Claire finally pauses for questions, but my head is spinning with so much new information, I don't know what to say. "Sorry, let me think..." So, some plants can be magical? Does that mean all these foods I've been dealing with are actually magical plants? But they don't come from the magic forest, so are they different? I have no idea. No one else seems to think they are, anyway. But none of them can even feel magic, so maybe that's why? I mean, plenty of them have direct effects on mana, so they have to be magic, right?

Maybe it's like with monsters. People don't have a specific thing they can see to separate them from animals, so they just guess one way or the other. And with plants, anything magical about them wouldn't be nearly as easy to see unless it was really obvious. But that also means magical plants are way more widespread than people think, since they believe the plants only really come from one forest...

"Ok," I finally speak up again. "I think I understand." I nod and ask her to go on, and Claire works her way through the rest of the plants. She also has me write down all the names when she's done, so I can spell them all right in my letter to Karl Liffan. Even though there aren't all that many of the foods, she still takes most of the morning teaching me all about them, even getting into things that I don't really understand yet, like growing seasons for the different plants. She says we'll talk more about those things in later lessons, so I leave those questions aside, and we finish up with the magical foods.

After that, there isn't enough time for whatever lesson Claire had planned for today, so we simply cover more Ternian instead, until the eighth bell rings and she goes home for the day.

I end up sitting for a bit after my lessons, still vaguely stunned, despite all the time that's passed since this morning's discovery. It feels like there are a lot of things - monsters, plants, animals - so many different things that have some relation to magic, that people don't even realize.

Ok, it's not that weird since they can't actually feel mana at all, but still... I can't help but be surprised how much knowledge there is, all around us, that no one seems to know. "Hey, Eryk," I speak up, and he stops writing. "I just learned about magical plants today."

"Magical... plants?" His questioning tone has me turn toward him.

"Do you... not know about magical plants?" I ask, dumbfounded. How could he not know about this?

Unbelievably, he shakes his head and says, "No. I'm assuming they have some effects related to mana?"

"Well- uhh," I fumble my words, "yeah. Miss Claire told me they come from 'The Magic Forest' on the west side of the country."

"Oh yes, I've heard of that," he offers, perking up. "Word among my family is a couple of my relatives left that way to find their fortunes. One hasn't been heard from since, but I think one still sends letters sometimes. Over from Timberfort, right next to the forest."

"Oohh..." I mumble. I don't really remember hearing of the city before, but I keep the name in mind.

"Sorry, I don't know much more, none of this was ever really part of my education, you know?" he offers with a tiny bit of guilt in his face.

"Oh no, it's fine," I try to assure him as soon as I see it. "It's just, you're an adult and you're so smart, so I always feel like you know everything, you know?"

"Hah," Eryk chuckles. "I'm glad you think so highly of me." Then he comes over and ruffles my hair. "Sorry to disappoint. I'm sure you'll find out one day - adults are just as human as everyone else."

"Ahh," I try to hide my response to him using 'human' like that, but I don't know if it works. Either way, he just rubs my head a little longer, before changing topics. "So, I finished up with the slag last night and got it to Ebbin as soon as I could. Called in a favor, so he'd test it out right away. Let's head over and see if he has anything for us yet. Sound good?"

"Yeah," I nod strongly. I'm really grateful that he's pushing this through as quickly as he can, it'll help me figure things out in the time I have left. With that, he waves us out. I grab my basket with my stuff in case I need it, and Eryk pulls Patrick along with us.

John scoops me up and follows along, and the four of us walk down the street to the Ebock Blacksmith.

We don't get more than a few paces out of the refinery when I suddenly get the feeling of being watched, and I twitch, eyes scanning our surroundings without moving my head to make it obvious. Unfortunately, Eryk is clearly an important person around here, so there are plenty of people watching us walk. But still, the feeling this time is different. It's not just like the feeling of people watching our group. This one is like... like someone is watching me specifically, and it feels somehow different...

More importantly, I have absolutely no idea where the feeling is coming from. I cycle through a few mana types. Nothing helps, whoever is watching me is hidden so well, I can't find them.

We make it a couple blocks down the road, when all of a sudden the feeling is gone. So they stopped watching me...? I squint a little and shift in John's arms. Thankfully, I don't have long to worry about that, before we arrive at the blacksmith's shop and head inside.