CHAPTER 379: An Enjoyable Day

The next day I was rather excited, since I had a new corpse to work with. Two actually, since we had a dead horse as well. It would be a great gift for Rose, since she had wanted her own mount.

When I left the bed Helena woke up as well and we decided to have breakfast. Skadi and Cassie were already in the dining room and we joined them.

"So, what are our plans today?" Helena asked.

"We are going to discuss the trading house with our parents." Skadi said.

"Mother wants to sign a deal and help the Helgurds with her connections." Cassie added.

"I want to work on my new undead. I was thinking of studying a few spells and checking if your library has anything on crawlers that would help. Then I will have to prepare the corpse and plan the compartments. I want to clean it properly at least and ensure that everything is preserved as best as I can until I raise it." I said.

"Hm, I was hoping we could go ice skating." Helena mused.

"I don't have to work the whole day on my undead. I can do some preparations and we can go in the afternoon?" I suggested.

"That could work for us." Skadi said.

After breakfast I immediately hurried towards my borrowed room to start working on my undead. It was large enough for my corpses and close to the alchemy lab. I wanted to get some work done before we went skating, something I was looking forward to. Rose and Hatsumi helped me carry the corpses since the dead horse was rather heavy.

"Rose, you wanted your own mount, right? We could raise that horse together for you." I suggested.

"Really?" Rose said, then she hugged me. "This is great! Can I choose what undead it will be?"

"Uh, sure, as long as it is doable." I replied.

"Hm, maybe something vampiric? Or a draugr?" Rose wondered as she stared at the corpse.

"I have some cleaning solutions from Cassie. She won't have time to mix anything special for us today so we just have the basics. On the bright side, that gives us some time to decide what we want." I said.

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Rose did most of the work on the horse but I helped her a bit, as did Hatsumi. My main focus was the crawler, where I had a lot of different parts to clean. While I worked I pondered the different ways I could assemble the crawler. For now I was thinking about creating twin tanks to make use of the bug's two connections to its mouth.

But what would I fill them with? One should be water which I could put a spell on to turn it into a necrotic water attack. Instead of simply infusing the water I wanted to put a full spell on it that would trigger on impact. Two tanks would mean two different spells, or it could mean two different liquids. Could I put blood in one of the tanks? Crawlers did not have blood so would it even be possible to turn them into a vampiric undead? What if I used blood potions from Cassie? Could I load the bug with them? I could not really do much with blood myself so either Rose, Hatsumi or Ivy would need to enchant it before firing.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I did not notice the time until Helena entered the room.

"Time for lunch and then we can go skating!" She said, then she blinked while staring at me.

"Uh, do I have something on my face?" I asked.

Helena walked up to me, reached out with her hand…

My ears twitched as she touched them and retrieved a piece of dead bug.

"You are going to shower before we eat something." She stated.

I scratched my head. "I wonder how that happened. I guess I was trying to freeze the abdomen together and peeked inside."

"You have a habit of scratching your head, even if your hands aren't clean." Helena pointed out.

"I guess that is true." I agreed.

"Also, even with Cassie's cleaning solution it still smells in here. Maybe you should change clothes too." Helena suggested.

"I will prepare something for her." Hatsumi assured Helena.

After I was clean again we had a quick lunch and then we travelled to a nearby lake, or more like a pond. It was about a 30 minute ride from Rovik and was at the base of the mountains. During summer there would be a small waterfall feeding the pond but right now it was frozen solid. The grass at the shore was covered in snow and it looked rather idyllic.

"So, how does this work?" I asked as we dismounted.

"I have got special shoes for all of us with blades at the soles. You put them on and then you glide over the ice." Helena explained.

"Water mages could use their power to create ice blades, it would give them more control." Kaito suggested.

Helena nodded. "While that is true it would be less fun."

"Fun for me or for you, when I fall?" I asked.

"Maybe I just want to catch you when you fall?" Helena teased.

"Oh, I am ok with that." I replied.

While Helena instructed me, Skadi was teaching Cassie. Before they entered the ice Skadi said: "Cassie, please leave your bombs on the shore."

"You brought bombs?" I asked.

"Obviously, there might be an ambush on the way." Cassie replied. "Also, we could use them to fish. Are there any fish here?"

"We are not exploding this pond." Helena replied.

Cassie responded by sticking out her tongue, then she left her potions with our horses. Afterwards she took Skadi's hand and entered the ice.

Helena offered me her hand and I stepped on the frozen lake, only to slip immediately and fall right into her arms. And so my lessons began.

After a while I could skate without falling, although my movements were rather clumsy compared to Helena. My undead cheated by using their ice magic and the cats simply had four legs. So did Garm, who seemed to enjoy sliding around with one of his tongues hanging out.

Overall it was a fun experience.