Maid Will Go On Through Thick And Thin! Chapter 7

It’s morning. I’m sleepy because of making acetate yesterday. But a maid’s morning starts early.
After [Cleaning] myself, I immediately started on making breakfast.
Today will be a salad made from young salad leaves and tomato (salt seasoning), and the leftover pot-au-feu from yesterday. It had felt like we were lacking vegetables but now the menu is just full of it.
And then after pofu pofing everyone as they woke up, breakfast.
And suddenly, Suzumoto dropped a bomb.
yhw
“Ah, we don’t need lunch today.”
“Whaaat?”

nande

When I asked, apparently they had been returning at noon, but since they became able to recover MP, they decided to try going a little further.
Tha, that’s true. They need to find the other club members as quickly as possible, there is a large chance they might be in the same situation as Kadomi-kun was in a while ago.
But, you guys……what are you going to do about lunch?
“We’ll cook some bird on the spot and eat it.”
“Birds aren’t so easy gut, don’t look down on them.”
“Then we can eat fruits or something.”
“The herbs for MP recovery? You’re gonna eat them as they are?”
“Eh, isn’t that fine?”
“Hagasaki-kun, you’re fine with that?”
“Not really, but can’t be helped.”
……they were like that.
“You guys……do you know of, bentos?”
“……those things, existed……”

yes they did

I quickly boiled some water while steaming potatoes and carrots that I had cut into bite-sized pieces, and wrapped smoked meat that didn’t have much salt in paper while waiting.
I stuffed the cooked potatoes and carrots into plastic jars and handed them out with the meat.
I soaked the mint, rosemary and bay laurels in the boiled water, extracting the components and making them into tea, poured them into plastic bottles and handed those out.
For fruits, please find what you can and eat those, have a nice trip.
I reminded them ve—ry well to be careful to tell me in advance before sleeping if they wanted bentos for lunch again.

yes mom

I made that as a bento, but no matter how you think about it, today’s menu is bad for carrying around.
If we had wheat flour I could make bread, or onigiri if we had rice, but with tubers as the staple food right now, making portable rations is difficult.
……nothing can be done about those, so let’s try experimenting with tubers.
fries?
There is quite a large stock of potatoes. I’ve also planted some in the brand new garden, so there’s no need to worry about running out.
I grated the potatoes……there was no tools, so with no other choice, I carefully washed a file from the toolbox and used that.
Grating a soccer ball-sized potato took 1 hour. d.a.m.n i—t.
I wrapped the grated tubers in a towel and wringed it to squeeze out the starch.
Wring and wring. Wring it to death.
I got water with starch, so I added a bit of water and left it.
Once it settled, I will pour away the top later, add water again, let it settle again and repeated that a few times, then the last thing to do is just to dry the starch left behind in the sun.
I can make starch like this, which I can mix it with potato to make potato cakes.
It should be easier to carry around than normal potatoes. If I mix in starch, it should increase the carbohydrates too.

…..innovative…?

While waiting for the starch to settle, I pulled out the deerskin from the alum salt solution, wrapped it in plastic and left it in a cool,dark area. I will leave this for 1 day. I’ll dry it tomorrow.
Then it’s time to water the garden.
For water, I got Hagasaki-kun to fill 8 plastic tanks with water before sleeping everyday, so I’m using that. 2 plastic tanks is enough for cooking anyway.
I poured the water from the plastic tank into a tub and used that to sprinkle the water around. Repeating that a few dozen times.
……gardening is a maids job too right? Then can’t I make this a skill?
No, it hasn’t become a skill yet, so is this the wrong tool?
Come to think of it, I didn’t use it because it’s small, but there’s a watering can.
When I tried watering with it to see if it became a skill when I used it, as usual, an amount of water that ignores the law of conservation of ma.s.s flowed out and I easily finished the watering. Since it’s a small watering can, it’s not heavy and with water coming out of nowhere, there’s no need to go back and forth to refill.
When I confirmed my skills, [Textile Alchemy] and [Watering] skills were added on. Mhm. Mhm……that thing yesterday night, was alchemy……

…..what else would it be

For now I decided to spin the fibers to make thread.
I had thought it wouldn’t work because I don’t have a spinning wheel, but that wasn’t true.
A skill did it for me.
I somehow understood how to move my hands and when I moved them that way, the thread formed smoothly. Wo—w, fast.
And the amazing thing about this skill is not just its speed.
It’s key feature is the stable quality of the thread.
The unbelievably consistent thickness of hand-spun thread! And it’s thin! A skill that would put machine-spun thread to shame.

cheat

Okay, next I need to weave this into cloth, but I don’t feel like I can make a loom.
After thinking for a while, I feel like a skill would somehow make it work if I had a board to hang the warp and shuttles to pa.s.s the weft through, so I’m making those 2 first.
(T/N: warp=vertical threads, weft=horizontal, shuttles=thing used to pa.s.s weft through warp)
For the warp……eeeh, it should be fine if I had a long wooden board with rows of a lot of small holes on either end, for the shuttle, it’s fine if I can wind the weft around it.
I made a wooden board with [Cleaning] and was going to open up holes in it with [Cleaning] too, but, well, it failed as expected, so I moved on to opening holes with a needle one by one. ……hmmm, like this, the cloth will definitely become something that has large gaps like gauze…… Will it be okay if I make the weft tighter?
For now I somehow made it, so I pa.s.sed the warp through. This is the most troublesome part, but thanks to the power of skills, it was unexpectedly easy.
And then after winding the weft around the shuttle, on to weaving.

fast!

Conclusion. The gaps are large, but it’s cloth.
But the gaps are too big, it can’t be used. Should I just keep using [Cleaning] until I can produce a loom from 1 piece of wood?

don’t think you can go that far

And as I was doing that, the starch settled, so I poured away the top layer of liquid and added water and stirred. Then leave it again.
Since they didn’t come back, my sense of time has became slightly off, it’s already 2 in the afternoon. Aah, time pa.s.ses fast.
And so, lunch that also serves as an experiment.
I soaked smoked meat that had extra salt with bay leaves in water and tried the salty soup.
Mhm, well, this should be fine.
I thought it would be too salty if I didn’t remove the salt, but if we ate it like this, then its fine even if I don’t remove the salt.
I had been wondering about it for a while, so it was a good chance to experiment.
I can’t experiment with meals when others are eating it too.

you could, use them as subjects

In the afternoon, I just kept smoking the deer meat and endeavoured on raising the precision of [Cleaning].
Of course I also took care of the starch!
The result was that I somehow became able to make simple three dimensional shapes, so I tried making plates and bowls. As I made more, it improved visibly so that’s something to be happy about
good job
Just that, this method of using [Cleaning] drains away a scary amount of concentration.
When I was done, I felt drained so I tried chewing on mint and my energy recovered. I see—, this is MP.
Since I have the chance, I also brewed herb teas made from rosemary and mint and tested which one recovered more MP.
The results was that there wasn’t much difference. Just something like mint might have a slightly more instantaneous effect.

eeeh….disappointing

Evening approached, so I began preparing dinner.
Today let’s have deer meat and onions on skewers.
Since it’s deer meat, it becomes something like light beef skewers.
For sauce, we will have salted onion sauce and soy sauce.
For the soy sauce, in place of sugar, I tried adding the juice of that green orange. I taste-tested it and it was quite good.
And then using stock made from herbs including onion, deer meat and carrots, I made potage with potatoes. It was quite tiring without a mixer. Yes.
And with a salad made from young salad leaves, it’s done for now.
After this, I just need to wait for their return.

always waiting

“We’re ba—ck.”
“Welcome back masters. You increased.”
Yes. They increased.
Standing in front of the door……were 6 people!
“Wa—, Maito-san, you really are a maid-san.”
“Hi—. Excuse me—. Uwah, it’s been a while since I’ve seen the lab, I’ve missed it.”
The one with the atmosphere which makes you feel like flowers are blooming around him is Katori-kun and the one being moved by the lab is Hariu-kun.
“We found them so we picked them up.”
Kadomi-kun seems slightly proud so he might be the one that found the 2 of them.
For now I praised him, good boy. No response!
……but since Kadomi has a bow and Hariu has 2 short swords……they are also normal combat professions, sad.
d.a.m.n i—t, I want maid comrades.

you mean butler?

I ran about a little to supply food for the suddenly increased number of people, and then we started on dinner.
Kind of as expected, both Katori and Hariu haven’t eaten properly for a while and their appet.i.te was amazing.
“It’s been so long since we’ve eaten something warm.”
“It’s been just fruits and raw meat for us all this time. Ahahahahaha.”
Seems like the two of them had been planning an experiment in the chemistry lecture hall. Incidentally, the chemistry lecture hall is the cla.s.sroom opposite the chemistry lab. It seems like there wasn’t any other students, is this good or bad luck?
And as expected, they found weapons in the cleaning cabinet, equipped them accordingly and went out. They didn’t know that they could carry the cla.s.sroom itself so they were late because they went back to get it.
Katori is a [Sniper] and Hariu is a [Thief]. Since Hariu got a skill called [Discerning Eye], they didn’t have trouble with choosing food, but they couldn’t use fire so were not able to heat it up.
……that’s fatal!
Furthermore it’s not like they could do [Cleaning], so they were very filthy. This could not be overlooked, so I quickly did [Cleaning] on them at the entrance.
……thinking about it like that, we really are blessed……

with a maid

And the two of them had truly wonderful skills.
Katori had [Mechanical Construction] and Hariu had obtained [Carpentry], Katori’s bow had become a compound bow.
And so I mobilised them to make me a loom at once. Make it myself? Na—h, leave it to the specialists.
A book in the chemistry lab had the structure of a loom, after I showed it to them, apparently they could make it if they had the materials.
I’m sorry for doing this just after a meal, but I mobilised Suzumoto and Kadomi-kun to secure lumber and the loom was done within that night.
……hyahoooooooo! With this, I can start weaving tomorrow!

calm down

Also they will need bento for tomorrow as well, so I’m sleeping earlier today to wake up early. Good night~.

Hecate just remembered in the middle of this chapter that deer meat=venison………too lazy to change it by this point, just gonna keep it as deer meat for consistency.
gomennasai