A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World

Chapter 14

After that, Alice briefly debated her options, trying to figure out if it was better to head towards a tailor first or find somewhere to take a bath. Eventually, she settled on heading towards a tailor first – she hadn’t been able to take a proper ‘bath’ during the entire winter due to fear of freezing to death, but she had at least been able to take a wet rag with some boiled water and wipe herself down. By contrast, the weird toga was both filthy and stood out like a sore thumb. It needed to go as fast as possible.

Alice strolled around town for a while after that, looking for a tailor, and realized something she hadn’t initially noticed about the town: the population ratio was seriously skewed towards males. She wasn’t sure whether that was because women were expected to stay inside the house in this era, or because there just weren’t that many females in the town, but even if women were expected to stay inside the house she would have expected to at least find more females around places like the market. However, the amount of females remained pretty low. The number of children was even lower – the farms outside had maintained a fairly reasonable ratio of children to adults, but the moment she had entered town the population seemed to consist almost entirely of men carrying around logs and beams. Odd. Perhaps it was because the place was a frontier town? She would have to look more into this topic later.

Finally, she backtracked towards the tailor that had specialized in dresses that she had seen earlier. She wasn’t a huge fan of dresses, but if she could get something like a sensible skirt and a shirt or blouse, Alice thought that would probably be for the best. Most of the women she had seen around town were wearing dresses or skirts, and while the occasional girl was wearing pants, they were also carrying around wooden beams along with the men. Alice didn’t have enough physical stats to pull off blending in with the [Laborers], so it was probably best to look like a normal girl as much as possible.

She stepped into the store, and a pleasant jingling sound echoed from thin air in front of her. Alice looked around, startled, and found – nothing. On Earth, she might have attributed that to some sort of electronic device, but there were no electronics here, and there certainly didn’t seem to be any sort of bell attached to the door either. Another perk?

“Just a moment!” A woman in the back called out, so Alice sat down on one of the chairs near the entrance. She looked around, noticing that while there were a few ‘display clothes,’ there were no immediately available clothes hanging around, the way she would expected there to be on Earth. However, she did notice a few other things with price tags attached to them – primarily, a variety of backpacks. Most of them cost a few small silvers, although there were two with notably increased prices that seemed no different from the other backpacks, save the fact that they were red and purple.

A few minutes later, a woman came out from the back of the store. She wore a longer green dress and some sort of cloth shoe that Alice couldn’t identify, and Alice placed the woman’s age at somewhere between thirty and forty, probably leaning more towards the latter.

“I’m Evalyn, owner of this shop. How can I … Oh dear.” The woman turned towards Alice, and seemed almost… offended as she stared at her. “That’s… yes, you quite need my help, dearie.”

“Yes, I’m looking for new clothes.” Alice spun around once, before gesturing back towards her toga-thing. “As you can see, my current attire is rather… rough.”

The woman gave Alice an appraising glance, before nodding. “I can do new clothes. Are you looking for a dress or a work-skirt? Or something fancier?”

“No, something a bit easier to move in. Just in case I need to run from monsters.” Or people. Just in case.

“Something a bit sturdier, then? I can make something that works for that … let’s see… stand over here, would you? I just need to check…” Alice moved to the spot the woman had instructed, and the woman expertly pulled out some ropes with little numbers written on them. Alice had just enough time to recognize 80cm as one of the numbers before the woman seemed to suddenly speed up. Before, she had been moving at almost the same pace as Alice, but now she was whirling around Alice as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button on a tailoring video. She felt several measuring ropes briefly close around various parts of her body before quickly being released, as the woman muttered a jumble of numbers and words she couldn’t make out. Then, the woman stepped back, suddenly reverting back to a normal movement speed again.

“I can do a sturdier skirt and blouse combination with a {Modesty} Perk to keep you from flashing the town if you need to move around a bit more, unless you would prefer an adventurer’s dress? I have some other perks that could keep it from getting your way, but they’re a fair bit less effective since I haven’t gotten my first post-fifty perk yet. If you’re doing heavy labor or monster hunting, frankly I recommend a knee-length skirt and blouse. All of my work comes with a free {Sturdiness} perk enhancement as well.”

{Modesty} Perk? Wait, what? Alice had to test it out.

“I’ll take the skirt and blouse, please. What would the pricing be?”

“What color are you looking for? If you want green, blue, white, or grey, it’ll be three silver crowns and two silver suns, plus an extra silver sun if you want the {Modesty} perk. If you want a second set of clothes, I can give you a discount and make it six silver crowns, and I’ll throw in the {Modesty} perk for free. If you want any of the dyes imported from the Corellion Empire, the price will at least double.”

So ‘crowns’ are the name for the big coins and ‘suns’ are the small coins? Perhaps this nation worships the sun or something?

“A green skirt with a white blouse is fine. I’ll take two sets of clothing with the {Perk}, please.”

“All right. In that case, I can be done in a few hours if you’re willing to stay here, or a few days if you aren’t. It’s up to you?” The woman gave Alice’s toga a dubious glance. “That being said, I recommend you don’t go outside while wearing that abomination.”

“I’ll stay here then.” Besides, Alice was curious about the woman mentioning a Perk that would stop the skirt from moving around too much. After all, some of the other shops she had seen had advertised ‘light System enchantments’, but this one did not. However, a Perk that dampened a skirt’s momentum in relation to the user’s body sounded like an enchantment to her – granted, she had no idea what a real enchantment looked like, but it was definitely something that seemed magical compared to back on Earth.

The woman left for a moment, before returning with a few different bolts of green fabric. “Which of these?”

Alice spent a few minutes working through the more specific details of what she wanted. After that, she stood still while the woman worked, watching with fascination as the skirt and blouse literally formed around her. Strings and threads would occasionally adjust themselves after the [Tailor] stopped touching them, strings and stitches took on a finer form than they had any right to, and both the woman and the threads moved faster than Alice could easily track. It was fascinating to watch, even if Alice was just standing there.

After a few minutes, Alice finally broke the silence. “What’s the difference between a System enchantment and a Perk that stops clothing from moving around?”

“Welllthedifferenceisthat-“ the woman’s words were obviously also sped up, shooting out of her mouth and blending together into a jumble that was hard for Alice to hear. A moment later, the woman stopped talking, before noticeably making an effort to slow down her speech.

“The difference is that System enchantments grant minor bonuses to status-screen related things. Post-fifty, most production related classes start giving options to do light enchantments if you have the right materials – monster cores plus whatever materials you need to grant some minor boons. If it’s done right, the result might grant some minor bonuses – a few points to an attribute, a level or two to a skill, something like that. I’ve heard that at much higher levels you can even create clothing that grants the wearer a low-level perk, although even before I moved to Cyra I wasn’t qualified to interact with people much above level fifty, so it’s a little hard to know for sure. And here, of course, given how small the population is and how new the town is, even post-fifties are pretty rare. Even with the heavier mana concentration, it’ll be a while before the effects start showing themselves in the population as a whole.” The woman shrugged.

“Really, the difference a System enchantment makes is usually pretty minor, but plenty of people want to squeeze out whatever advantages they can. A noblewoman with a dress granting +20 Charisma is showing not only that her house is incredibly wealthy and powerful, but after all of the bonuses five classes focused on Charisma can grant to focused stats, she might end up doubling or tripling the bonus, at which point a moderate boost can make a huge difference. Oh sure, +20 Charisma isn’t amazing, but a girl with 250 Charisma is still certainly less pretty than one with 300 Charisma after effect multipliers. And an adventurer with +8 Strength or Dexterity might not have a huge advantage over their competition, but it’s still a small advantage that might make the difference between life and death someday even before their multipliers kick in. Every bit helps, after all. Of course, Traditional enchanting can grant much stronger bonuses even with far fewer levels in {Enchanter}, but only mages can do traditional enchanting. And if you’re going as far as getting something traditionally enchanted, most people prefer to overlap the two.”

Alice nodded, mulling over the woman’s words. If even a level 45 tailor was able to produce something that seemed ‘enchanted’ to Alice’s eyes, it probably wasn’t too hard to find objects that were at least slightly better than their Earth counterparts. Come to think of it, the book Alice had found had seemed totally waterproof, despite the fact that it was made entirely of paper and had no business floating in a river without suffering a single hint of water damage. However, if a {Scribe} or whatever class was in charge of book manufacturing had a perk that boosted the sturdiness of books or something, it made a lot more sense.

Alice spent the rest of the time the woman constructed her dress mulling over what society looked like when Perks could ignore so many limitations on creativity and materials. Finally, the woman was done, and at long last, Alice took off her crappy toga and replaced it with a proper set of clothing in the shop’s changing room. She would save her pajamas for their sentimental value, even if they desperately needed a cleaning, but finally wearing clean new clothing made her feel reborn.

Her new clothing’s Perk enhancement was… interesting. No matter how she moved, the skirt would shift around in an obviously unnatural way, ensuring that it remained ‘tethered’ to her body somehow and keeping everything above her knees covered while still somehow ensuring that it was completely out of the way if she needed to move her knees or run or something. Curious, Alice decided to experiment a bit, trying to shift the skirt around and see how the Perk reacted. If she tried to tug the clothing around too much, it would jerk itself back in place, unless she wanted to take it off. If she put her other skirt on in a way it was obviously not meant to be worn, such as trying to use it as an armband or something, the Perk wouldn’t do anything at all. However, if she did something that was only slightly off, such as putting on the skirt inside - out, the skirt would work as if there was no difference at all.

Finally, Alice tried putting the skirt on her neck, before thinking about how immodest it was to leave one’s neck exposed. The skirt, which had originally done nothing, started shifting around, covering her and making her look absolutely ridiculous. However, Alice was satisfied, finally figuring out how the perk worked.

So it works off of my perception - if I perceive something as ‘immodest’ the skirt will adjust itself. If I don’t notice or don’t care, it does nothing.

Alice took the skirt off of her neck and finally stepped out of the changing room.

“Took you long enough, girl. How low is your [Dexterity]?” Alice winced, realizing her experimenting might have taken a bit too long, before trying to change the topic.

“Ah, do you have any use for the fabric?” Alice didn’t want to keep carrying around her crappy toga around, now that she finally had real clothes.

The woman gave the fabric an appraising glance, before giving it a dubious sniff and then wrinkling her nose. “I don’t want it. Just throw it in the trash.”

Alice shrugged, before grabbing a backpack off of one of the shelves. After parting with Six Silver Crowns and Five Silver Suns, she winced, staring at the three and a half remaining large silvers in her purse.

She found a Cobbler within a few more minutes of walking, eventually settling on a level 48 [Cobbler]. She exited another one and a half Silver Crowns poorer, but she finally had a nice, sturdy pair of boots to travel with her. She also only owned two Silver suns, but she finally had a good set of clothes to walk around in.

“All right, bath time.” Now that Alice was finally wearing clean clothing, it was time for a real, hot bath.

She remembered seeing a bathhouse in the dock district, so she headed back there, keeping a close eye on the people around her to make sure nobody stole from her or stabbed her or something. However, the people around her ignored her – if anything, now that she was finally wearing regular clothing, most of them seemed like they couldn’t be bothered to even notice her as she walked by.

Entering the bathhouse cost one big copper, and some soap and a washing sponge cost another few small coppers, but when Alice stepped into a hot bath for the first time in over three months, she felt an unprecedented sense of happiness and relaxation. Ah, yes, so this is what being clean feels like. Alice spent a few minutes contentedly cleaning herself as she tried to figure if the bath was heated with a perk or with some other means. I have seen magic in this world, but based on the number of mages available in this town, it seems unlikely that a mage has enough spare time to heat up some water. So magic is out. So, perk or boiling? Alice spent a while thinking about this, and out of curiosity, searched around to see if she could find a heating mechanism in the pool. However, there didn’t seem to be any mechanism behind the hot water at all. Moreover, the water was mysteriously cleaning itself. Even as she watched, a speck of dirt from her hair seemed to dissolve into the water, disappearing into nothing at all. Definitely some kind of perk, then.

Finally, after far too much time, Alice got out of the bath, put her clothes back on, and dumped the sponge into one of the trash cans sitting around in the street. After that, she continued wandering around the town, trying to find anything resembling a library. Unfortunately, she had no such luck, and when she tried asking one of the pedestrians wandering the street, the man simply gave her a mirthful chuckle.

“There’s no such thing as a library in this town, little lass. If you want to find one, you’ll have to go north. Even then, you’d need to be part of one of their fancy mage academies to get access to the books in most places. Down here, we’ve got neither.”

Then, Alice stopped searching the town, because she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. Something that was so patently ridiculous to her Earth sensibilities that she simply had to stop and figure out what was going on.

There was a building on the street, painted with a riot of colors and images. In one of the images, a {Farmer} looked over massive fields of wheat, taller than a human by almost a full meter. In another of the images, a {Swordsman} stood at the head of an army, swinging a sword that glowed bright orange and cast a hazy glow over both the army he led and the opposing side. Beyond that, there were other images as well - of a mage lifting a mansion by herself, a painter creating a giant painting that beggared the imagination when it came to both scale and detail, and many more. The paintings were a variety of different things, but they all had one thing in common – they showed a seemingly ordinary person doing something completely unimaginable by Alice’s standards. The building also used several differently colored dyes, including ones Alice now suspected were highly expensive in the kingdom she currently resided in. The building had four stories to it, unlike the other buildings in the surroundings which only had two or three, and at the top she could see a bell made out of copper. Compared to the relatively drab and humble surroundings in the rest of the town, the building practically reeked of wealth.

However, what was most ridiculous of all was the sign just outside of the door. It was simple, as the signs for many of the buildings were, but the simplicity was the most damning and confusing part.

The Holy Church of the Almighty System

“What the fuck?”