Chapter 50: Ch50. Merlin's usefulness
Returning to Shiba's Garden was a bit underwhelming as not even an hour passed since Solution and Rei left. These time shenanigans were frankly making Rei's head hurt.
Merlin stepped through the portal, her senses were engulfed by the rich presence of nature mana in the air, causing her eyes to widen in wonder as she lost herself in the magnificent feeling, causing her magic pressure to fully leak.
Rei and Solution felt it and abruptly turned towards Merlin... alas, it was too late and their makeshift house exploded as Merlin's magic erupted outward, pushing everything away in swirling fiery torrents. Rei and Solution were fine, their bodies strong enough to stand in the strong current of magic streaming from Merlin, but the house... it popped like a balloon.
Merlin woke up from her euphoric state only when Rei patted her shoulder. She looked at him with furrowed brows, seeing his awkward smile, and looked around, finding the burning remains of the house she shredded and burned with her magic aura...
"Oh..." Merlin blushed beet red and averted her gaze, wanting nothing more than to dig herself a hole and hide there. "Sorry?"
Rei and Solution looked at each other... before they burst out in laughter.
"Mooh! You are mean!" Merlin pouted, "You have no idea how hard it is to control my perfected magical copy of Sunshine Grace since I blended it with my own magic." She muttered.
"Sunshine Grace?" Solution eyes flickered with interest. She heard about it from Rei and since its effect was akin to buffing magic, she was very curious about it.
"You recreated Sunshine Grace powered by magic?" Even Rei was totally floored to hear that Merlin basically copied something created by the Supreme Goddess of her world.
"Of course! I am the best magician in my world! Something like that is nothing." Merlin cockily smirked before her lips twitched, her smirk turning to a wry grin, "That said... I could only manage to do it thanks to the innate infinity my magic contains. That's why I had to integrate it directly into my magic which gave it a bit more fiery properties. It's basically just an infinite loop that lets my magic grant me similar physical effects as Sunshine Grace grants its user. I don't have the weaknesses nor the sudden increase in muscle mass though. The effects are not dependent on the Sun but my own magic."
"You Infinity is such a cheat..." Rei's eyes twitched. No wonder her level suddenly spiked from eighty-six to ninety when her magical aura subconsciously leaked. Her physical stats were enhanced all over the board. 'And that's when she doesn't really focus it.'
"The house... are you really not mad?" Merlin asked, somewhat timid. After all, blowing up Rei's house wasn't the best way to make herself more important to him.
"Not really... nobody was hurt so it's fine. I am just glad we made this house so far away from the village." Rei stated.
"Village?" Merlin tilted her head and Rei smiled.
"Yeah, let's go. I am sure the dark elves will be curious about what happened since your magical aura was quite visible and... hot. We will introduce you."
...
The dark elves were at first quite wary of Merlin because of her status as a human. Despite not voicing it out, it was clear as a day they only tolerated her because Rei was the one who brought her to their village.
Merlin wasn't bothered by the subtle stares and wariness of the elves. She didn't care about them much. Nevertheless, she decided to share some knowledge with them. At first, the elves were reluctant to listen... nothing a brief flashing of her magical aura didn't fix. After all, they only needed to respect Rei. Merlin didn't care if they obeyed her out of fear.
Merlin obviously wasn't only knowledgeable about magic. In her three thousand years of life, she learned a lot of stuff and read many books. Thankfully, she had somewhat of an eidetic memory so forgetting simply didn't happen for her.
Under her supervision, the houses were improved as she taught the builders how to make them better, use stone and create better building materials. Since they were elves, Merlin taught them some nature-based spells to harden wood, make the wood more malleable, and make it waterproof. That helped with the lack of building materials and while the houses were not the best they could be, Merlin did the best she could with her current resources.
After the houses, she worked together with the elves that took care of the fields and built a magical irrigation system. A casual application of geyser-creating spell supported by her Infinity in the middle of the fields and Merlin watched in satisfaction as the magic started to be sucked into the spell, sending a pillar of water high into the air before said water sprayed all over the fields as if it rained. She only added a small rune-based activator so even the magically uneducated dark elves could turn the geyser on and off.
Anybody interested was taught Merlin's own improved household spells. The elves were used to live in the forest and hygiene was not the highest concern for them. Sure, the very small amount of innate nature magic in their bodies made hygiene somewhat obsolete since they could stay in a pristine condition thanks to it. It was the source of the famed elven beauty. But Merlin decided that teaching the elves Cleaning, Cooking, Housekeeping Spells wouldn't go amiss. They were not complicated and she only needed to teach ten women who were then tasked to teach the others. In almost no time, all of the housewives in the village were quite proficient in them.
There was only one dark elf who did smithing and Merlin could only wryly smile and keep her mouth shut when he showed her his technique. She wanted to groan at how bad it was but didn't want the guy to lose all his confidence. Without commenting about his work, she improved his makeshift smithy into a real deal, introduced him to new tools and taught him how to use them at a decent level, taught him a few smithing techniques, among which was a way to use magic during smithing to strengthen his creations. She then taught him some weak enchantment spells he could apply to his finished products while being glad she was dealing with elves rather than humans. It would take infinitely longer to teach humans since they were not as attuned to magic as elves. In the end, Merlin noticed the elven smith probably realized how bad he was before all her lessons. Alas, as long as he didn't give up smithing, his mental state didn't matter to her.
She taught the elves how to create better bows and arrows and taught the hunters how to make better and more efficient traps. For some reason, Merlin got along well with Ylven and her chosen group of dark elves that focused on hunting. Rei really had no idea where that sudden friendship came from but he was too preoccupied with his own work to bother.
Merlin helped him with it, of course. Together, they spent many hours creating a spell that would allow Solution and Merlin to enter Shiba's Garden without Rei's needing to make a portal for them. Rei had to use the Negotiation Room to bind Solution into a contract with him similarly as he did with Merlin since the spell worked through this contractual connection but in the end, both Merlin and Solution could use a lesser version of [Gateway to the Lost World: Shiba's Garden].
This also gave Merlin her very first research project. Right now, it was not yet important but as the population in Shiba's Garden increased, they would need some way of getting out and in for the residents. As such, Merlin slowly started to ponder over the solution in her free time.
Frankly, it didn't take even a week for the elves to revere Merlin. The living conditions improved tremendously after her arrival and Rei thanked his previous self for choosing her from all the possible magicians he could have gone for. It blew his mind how much she improved the lives of the dark elves in such a short period of time.
Obviously, Rei quickly decided she will be responsible for Shiba's Garden and its occupants' development, sharing his concerns and problems regarding his pocket dimension with her.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
-- Power
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