Fresh stands outside, in front of the giant heap of wood that the market has been cleared out for. Workers run around, carrying timber from the dungeon and placing it onto a large stack in the middle of the plaza.

“What’s this for?” asks Fresh, looking at Basil. The priestess shrugs, not knowing either.

“Maybe there’s a festival?” she suggests.

Fresh blinks, looking back at the heap of wood. “Again?”

A worker stops, dusting his hands as he looks at them. “You fresh?”

Fresh blinks. Has she been recognized? She grabs Basil’s hand, getting ready to make a run for it.

“We’re new here, yes,” says Basil, reading the situation better than she had. “We made it in just before the shield went up.”

“Lucky break,” nods the man. He lifts his shoulder, tilting his head towards the stack of wood. “It’s for the start of the winter festival.”

“Oooh!” says Fresh in relief, understanding now.

Apparently, there’s going to be a winter festival in a few days. Despite whatever troubling circumstances might be present outside of the city, the ‘central-authority’ has allowed the festival to proceed, saying that it’s important for the spirit of the people. Fresh doesn’t know what that means exactly either, but she’s excited. Maybe this time, during her third visit to a festival in this world, she’ll be able to have a fun time?

Her last two attempts haven’t been so successful.

Basil and Fresh continue on their way out to explore the top floors of the dungeon that Shamrock and Jubilee had already cleared, in order to find things like seeds, plants and wood that they could use for the store.

Fresh looks around the dungeon, watching as Basil yanks on a large sprout that’s sticking out of a wall. Something about being in the dungeon feels… weird. It’s like there’s something about dungeons that she’s forgotten. Something important.

“Hmm…” she scratches her cheek, looking around herself as she thinks. Oh well, if it was really important, she’d remember, right?

Fresh nods. That makes sense to her.

“Do you need help, Basil?” asks Fresh, heading over to the struggling priestess who is fighting against a very resilient plant.

What if she burns the rare-wood?

Fresh sits downstairs in the basement that is now mostly converted to a workshop. Shamrock is down here with her, restacking the heavy, broken stones of the crumbled wall and affixing them back into place with a mortar that Fresh had made.

Normal fuels don’t get hot enough to burn and melt orichalcum. But what about rare-wood?

She frowns. But it’s so expensive and even if it could work, surely there had been people in this city who had thought of it and tried it already? It seems like too obvious an idea.

Fresh rolls the chunk or orichalcum ore around on her workbench, staring at it.

She shakes her head. That isn’t the way to go. There’s got to be something else.

Sighing, she sets it to the side and grabs the branch of rare-wood.

A wand? Wands are simple. They can make a lot of them out of little material, which means that their rare-wood will go further.

She recalls a man from the west, the one who had brought his rare-wood staff in to be repaired once. Staves too, then. Though, for a branch of this size, they might only get one staff out of it, whereas they’d likely get five or six wands.

They’re going to be expensive.

She read in the book on rare-wood that the spriggan had given her that elves once were very fond of wooden weapons, particularly ones made out of rare-wood. Through use of old techniques and practices that have now long since been forgotten, their craftsmanship was so on point with these materials, that they were no less deadly or durable than the metal weapons that their human rivals had once used.

But those days are now long since past.

The sound of a stone clacking against another stone gets her attention, waking her from her daze. Shamrock turns her way, having set another rock down into its place. “Start simple,” is all that the man says to her, before returning to his task, stacking another simple rock on top of other simple rocks.

Fresh smiles, figuring that this is good advice.

Looking down at the branch of rare-wood, she sets to work, starting simple, as it were.

First, she measures the branch out, marking it with a knife and then uses her abilities to cut the branch into five segments of equal length.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: {Carpenter(Cut)}] x 4

Then, she strips them of their bark, removing any twigs and old leaves. Maybe she should have done this part first? Oh well. The inside of the wood, beyond the healthy, dark bark, is surprisingly bright and yellow, verging almost towards white, like Jubilee’s mask must’ve once been, before both the sun and time had come to stain it.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: {Carpenter(Shear)}] x 4

Grabbing the shorn bark and twigs, she scoops them into a bag. There’s certainly a use for this as well, no sense in wasting anything. As for the five, bright pieces of wood before herself, she begins shaving them down into wand shapes, making the ends fatter where the grip is and the front stubbier and pointier for the tips.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: {Carpenter(Carve)}] x 8

Fresh wipes her forehead, feeling a slight bout of dizziness for a moment as she lets out a satisfied ‘phew’, looking at the five wandy things on the table. They’re currently only wandy things and not wands because they aren’t ready yet.

She isn’t sure what force it is exactly that determines such a thing, but she is on the same page with it right now that these aren’t ready. They look like wands, but they’re not ready.

Life, huh? She recalls Jubilee’s words about the material. Rare-wood helps properties related to ‘life’. Life in the context of being, of healing, of nature and nurture. Reaching into her inventory, she grabs one of her bottles of harvest-moonwater and shakes it off, before popping open the lid and dipping a rag into it.

With that harvest-moonwater soaked rag, she hums and polishes the wand, lovingly making sure that drops of it soak into every pore and crevice of the thirsty wood. Now, usually getting raw wood wet like this is a sub-par idea for most crafting applications. But it’s magic wood and she’s using magic water, so honestly, it evens out.

How?

She isn’t sure. But that’s just what it is. Fresh has found that in life, it’s often better to ask fewer questions than more.

Once that has been done, she sets it to the side and then works on the other four wands, repeating the process.

They’re still not ‘done’ though and it’s not hard to see why. They need a coating. How does she know that they need a coating? She isn’t sure. But they do and she knows about it.

Humming to herself, she sets her work down, heading into town with a bag to buy a small bottle of resin, made from the sap of the great tree and then comes back down to the basement, just as Shamrock is finishing up the wall. Grabbing another rag, she takes a wand and then starts polishing it, coating it with the sticky resin before setting it down again and holding her sticky fingers over it.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman (Harden)]

The resin crackles and stiffens, coming together into a hard, thick shell that encases the wands, coating them and trapping all of the magical energies of both the rare-wood and the harvest-moonwater inside of the material, condensing and compressing it.

The wand glows, rising up into the air for a moment and then falls back down to the table. It’s done.

[Witch-crafting: 9]{Hexenjagd} [Rare-wood wand of healing]{Holy}{Nature}(Masterwork) A thin rare-wood wand, coated in a strong layer of resin. It has been masterfully hewn and is covered in ornate designs and engravings that help the channeling of magic through it. When pointed at a party-member: Allows the user to heal their target for HP equal to 10% of the user’s MAX-SOUL Quality Effect: Restores an equal amount of STAMINA at no additional cost Rare Wood: While within 1km of the great-tree, use once a day to summon a PET spriggan to use the wand for you. Weight: 0.28kg Value: ???

Fresh beams, looking at the little thing. A healing wand? What a novel idea. This way, party-members will be able to heal each other even without a healer!

She tilts her head. She bets the priests in the north wouldn’t like these… they’re bad for business. Oh well, they’re not in the north now. They’re in the center and now that it’s winter, the world needs as much tending to and healing as can be offered.

She takes the wand and gives it a flick.

“PAKEW!” says an excited spriggan from next to her, popping up out of nowhere.

Tiny steps run down the staircase as the ‘real’ spriggan comes from upstairs, perhaps having heard the disturbance.

“Pakew!” it calls.

The two of them look at each other. “Pakew!”

“Pakew!”

Fresh beams. What a great turn of events. Jubilee peeks around from upstairs, looking down the stairwell.

“Pakew!”

“Pakew!”

Jubilee groans and roll their eyes, but Fresh continues to smile. This is a good item.