Chapter 42
I started looking forward to meals in the dining room.
The rock figures' growth seemed to be heading in a good direction, so I decided not to worry about it.
I realized that there were simply too many things here I couldn't understand, so I decided to treat them as minor details.
I won't worry, I won't worry... I absolutely won't worry about it.
I didn't care whether the one-eyed rock figures made cups or plates.
I was moved to see they'd made chopsticks!
The bed had somehow evolved. A headboard was convenient to have.
There was a handrail on the stairs... Maybe because they saw me slip and fall?
One day, they asked me for more wooden boards, so I processed a large tree and supplied them.
That day, the bath had been made of wood... What is this?
...Aren't you guys going a little overboard?
...
For a long time, leather processing had been one failure after another.
I realized that the important thing was to cleanly scrape off excess material, such as fat, from the hide.
I added four goblin rock figures.
Each had a single horn on its forehead.
I handed them stone knives and asked them to process the hides.
They scraped it away much more cleanly than I ever could.
I was bad at fine-tuning magic and spoiled quite a few hides.
The clean removal of fat and other excess material from the hides was entirely thanks to the goblins.
Next, I washed the dirt off with water.
The hides had quite a bit of dirt on them.
I watched with a warm feeling as the goblins used their whole bodies to clean them.
Until then, I'd dried the hides afterward, but they became hard and unusable.
Once a hide became hard, it stayed hard no matter what I did.
Soaking them in water for several days made no difference.
In other words, something else was needed at this stage, but I had no idea what.
Then I discovered it by accident!
It turned out to be a wooden stick I'd happened to use while stirring the hide in water.
I usually stirred the hide with magic; that day, I used one I'd picked up for no particular reason.
Some more prey arrived, so I left the stick in the water.
I then forgot about it for several days.
When I remembered, I washed the hide with water and dried it—and it was softer than before!
It was still a little hard, but a comparison with the failed hides confirmed that it was definitely softer.
I considered what had been different and searched for the wooden stick I'd used.
The only difference was that I had used a wooden stick.
Looking at the wooden stick, I guessed the tree's sap was responsible.
When I checked the trees, I found them clustered a short distance from the house.
I gathered the sap, prepared the hide of a small animal as a test, and asked the goblins to work on it.
I wasn't simply leaving the whole job to them; the goblins had a higher success rate...
The goblins soaked the hide in water mixed with sap.
From then on, I planned to keep it soaking while watching what happened.
It had taken a long time. I never expected processing a single hide to be this much trouble.
It would be truly sad if this failed.
I really hoped it would work.
A leather mat was laid on the bed a few days later.
It's warm and comfortable to sleep on.