The plan was to get back to the village, forge a cauldron, and get started on alchemy.

Instead, both Tabitha and Runa could tell that they were pushing their bodies as hard as they probably should by the time they returned, so they opted for resting some more instead. Neither one of them wanted to push their body to the point where it would be out of commission the next day, Tabitha especially. She already had to go a few days doing nothing but recovering in bed! She wasn’t going to let that happen again no matter how much it annoyed her to sit around doing nothing.

Fortunately, Hanne didn’t mind taking care of them once they made it back to her place. She would much rather them rest in her beds and eat a healthy dinner made by her than see either of them overwork their bodies, so that was exactly what she did.

The dinner wasn’t exactly anything impressive, though. It was a stew made with a meat that had a strong gamey taste to it with various different vegetables mixed in. The stew overall was very hearty, but what Tabitha really wanted was a cheap cheeseburger with bacon on it, some fries, and a chocolate milkshake to dip said fries into.

Instead she had to eat a wholesome, healthy meal! The horror!

If there was one horrible thing about suddenly being in a fantasy world instead of the real world, it was not having fast food restaurants to get questionable, unhealthy burgers from.

That entire line of thought got Tabitha thinking about a bunch of different things she would need to invent at least.

Like a mobile freezer.

If she wanted to travel all over the world with a wagon, without relying purely on preserved and fermented food, she was going to need to find a way to keep things cold. Like inventing some sort of storage device that froze everything in it. Seeing as how, back on Earth, such a thing would probably end up being an electric cooler inside of a van hooked up to a battery and some solar panels, she wasn’t sure how to recreate that in a fantasy world.

Even after the sun was down, the candles were put out, and everybody else was asleep, Tabitha lay in her bed rolling from side to side as she thought about how she could do something like that.

Magic? Magic was a possibility. The world had magic as far as she was aware, so there was probably something like ice magic, right? Fantasy worlds with magic always had some form of ice or freezing magic.

But that wasn’t a crafting solution to the problem, that was a magic solution. In other words, it was an inferior solution that was dependent on magic. Even if she found somebody who could, hypothetically, use magic to cool something to the point of freezing, they would need to keep on doing that every single time it warmed up. The magic user would end up being like a factory worker whose only purpose is to use the same spell every couple of hours in order to freeze something again.

Tabitha wanted a solution that could work without anybody but herself and the power of technology.

Unfortunately, inventing electricity and cooling systems that used it was beyond her capability. She had no idea how electricity worked. When she thought of electricity, she imagined somebody holding up a metal rod and getting zapped by lightning.

Even if she could somehow store the energy from a bolt of lightning in the fantasy equivalent of a battery, how would she then go and convert that into freezing temperatures?

Wait. Ya gotta think about how this place’s world works. We’ve got tags here, Tabitha thought to herself while hanging her head upside down off the side of the bed, her eyes barely able to make out the sleeping Runa in the dark room next to her.

That was something else about being in a fantasy world. She wasn’t used to how dark things got. Even back on Earth, there was always some light pollution shining through her blinds to light up her apartment. Then there were the lights from her computer and TV even if the screens were off. And if there wasn’t that, there was the light from her cellphone’s screen coming to life every single time she got a new notification.

There was none of that in the back room of Hanne’s house. There was only darkness. The window was shut as well, so there wasn’t even any moonlight coming into the room.

Fortunately, she wasn’t afraid of the dark.

Alright. So, we’ve got tags. What if there’s an item that has a tag that makes it super cold? That’d be kinda cheatin’ the problem away, but I’m all for it! Like how there are fire stones or water stones in some games. A water stone that gives off an infinite amount of water. A fire stone that is permanently burnin’. Stuff like that. All I’ve got to do is find an ice one, throw it in a box, then put whatever I want frozen in with it. But… that ain’t the same, either. That’s just throwing somethin’ cold into a box with things that ain’t cold.

Despite how easy the world made crafting, Tabitha couldn’t help but to be reminded of her past failings as her lack of creativity tortured her mind throughout the night. Sure, taking a few different things and putting them together to make makeshift spears and potions was fun and all that, but she wanted to actually create things. She wanted to invent things, too! What good was being the world’s best crafter if she couldn’t actually invent anything?

And she didn’t want to just copy what she knew from Earth, either. That was lazy and she wouldn’t be able to truly take the credit for any of those inventions, even if she was the first person to create them in this fantasy world.

It was impossible for her to not eventually fall into the line of thinking that she didn’t belong to be there. For the first time, she really thought about why she was there. Why me? What did I do to get summoned here? Aren’t there plenty of folk way smarter than me who could’ve come here? I ain’t gonna revolutionize farmin’ or defeat an evil demon king or anythin’ like that. I’m just some girl who wants to make stuff but barely knows how to. The old man had to hold my hand through every step of blacksmithin’.

It didn’t take much more of that thought process to lead to Tabitha groaning and grumbling into her pillow.

She might have been extremely grateful to be granted the opportunity to start over in a new world, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still have an inferiority complex. There were so many others on Earth who were more deserving of her spot as far as she was concerned. People who had better skills than her, people who were smarter than her, people who were stronger than her, people who were in worse positions than her—the more she thought about it, the less it made sense for her of all people to get summoned, the worse she felt.

“Nngh… Tabitha…”

Tabitha pulled her head out from her pillow when she heard her name. “Runa? You up?”

That was definitely Runa’s voice she heard, but she didn’t get a response from her. At least, not for another few moments until she mumbled, “How did you… even think of that? You’re so… smart…”

Tabitha blinked a few times as she listened in on Runa’s sleep talk.

“I want to… get even more things for you… so I can watch you make more… stuff…”

Ah… gosh darn it, Tabitha thought. How am I goin’ to be sittin’ here all mopey when Runa’s over there dreamin’ about me?

Whatever self-doubt Tabitha might have felt was replaced with renewed determination to do her best to continue looking good in Runa’s eyes. She wanted to continue being somebody worth dreaming about. That was something she never would have thought herself worthy of back on Earth, but here was somebody dreaming about her.

Inventing stuff could be figured out later.

For now, all that mattered was getting a good night of sleep so that she could make the best darn present imaginable for Runa.