After the events in the Adventurers' Guild, I was first ordered to bed. Since I could barely walk without help and my stomach was so bruised that my tattoos were unrecognisable, Sara sent for a doctor to examine me. Much to everyone's relief, he quickly gave the all-clear and said I'd only got away with a black eye. He was just stating the obvious. I also felt that Sara had only called the doctor to clear her conscience, as I could have made the final diagnosis myself: I would need help walking for a few days, but after that I would be as good as new, as long as I drank the horrible tasting healing potions. The wounds on my stomach would also heal in time. To put it mildly - thanks for nothing. But at least this Jeffrey kept his promise and his guild paid for everything.
In my old world, I would have had no problem taking a few days off sick. I could just turn on the TV, watch a few pointless series or play a few idle games on my smartphone. But those things didn't exist here. While I spent the first two days sleeping as much as possible or reading children's books that explained the correct use of ether in really simple terms, I was already quite bored by the third day. I also noticed that I was starting to smell a bit and my hair was looking really greasy. Abby put hot water and soap in my room every day so I could at least wash a little, but I really missed the comfort of a warm shower. The others got around this problem by simply - hesitantly - going to the nearest public bathhouse. I didn't have that option at the moment, as I was already struggling to get up and down the stairs without help. And somehow I didn't feel the need to bathe in public with dozens of other people. But after almost a week in this world, the moment had come when a civilised person like me had to act - before she had to follow the dark path of the woman in the lingerie shop and pour a litre of cologne over her body.
"Abby, Hannah. Are either of you there?" I called loudly as I reached the stairs leading down to the ground floor. I knew that Cáit had accepted some kind of quest, so she wasn't there to help me this time. It only took a few moments for Abby to reply, "Do you need anything?"
"Right now - your help getting down the stairs," I said surprisingly motivated, "and then you drop everything and show me where that bloody broken bathhouse is that people keep talking about."
Meanwhile Abby had climbed the few steps and grinned cheekily in my face, "Do you really think you can do this? We've still got a few steps to go. You only know the renovated part of the villa."
"A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do," I said, paraphrasing a quote from an old film, "and right now I'd like to take a bath. If that means I have to fix this thing, then I guess there's no way around it.
After helping me down the stairs, Abby took me to an area of the house that I had previously thought was just another hallway with bedrooms. But I was wrong. In fact, this area was a rather long passageway that had been converted into a working library. "I would have shown you around a long time ago," Abby apologised, "but somehow you've been either injured or asleep since you got here. So I haven't had a chance." Although the library looked as if it had been visited regularly, it was nowhere near as clean and tidy as the staff quarters I'd been staying in. There was a thick layer of dust in many places and many books looked as if they were just waiting to be pushed back onto the shelves by someone. "It was all a bit over our heads. Jacky and Hayden regularly bring back large quantities of books from the dungeons, but we just don't get around to categorising them properly. Hannah seems to have taken matters into her own hands. But I'm afraid she's concentrating on books written in ancient languages.”
"I know. I have been severely beaten up because of her addiction to these books," I muttered in annoyance.
In the middle of the library was a door leading outside. While it was easy to find an excuse for the chaos there, it was hard to find a reason for the mess in front of me. What had once been a beautiful garden, with some stone fountains, decorative copper and wooden benches and a large copper pergola in the middle, was now completely neglected and overgrown. "I was about to ask how I had missed this area until now. But I suppose you deliberately gave me a room with a street view so I wouldn't see it right away."
"Guilty," Abby nodded, "I'm afraid I can only take care of the part of the building where we are all staying at the moment. The area with the big entrance hall, the other wing and especially the garden is definitely too much for me alone."
"Why don't you get some help?" I asked in surprise, to which Abby replied vaguely, "Because we just don't have the money to hire enough staff. Have you forgotten that you had to pay the fee for your place in the guild? Besides, Sara and I own the place, we're not rich. Quite the opposite. And to be honest, I'd rather buy something nice to wear right now than spend money renovating something that no one would use anyway."
That made sense in a way, and I was about to stop asking questions at that point, but Abby suddenly added, "And before you ask, why don't you sell the mansion? The price would be too high for most people in the country, and those who could afford it are mostly members of the nobility. And before Sara sells to one of the noble families, hell will freeze over. Besides, none of those families would want to buy the mansion." I had a few questions, but I felt it would be wrong to ask them at this point.
In general, I had the impression that this group had one thing in common - secrets. And at that moment I realised that apart from Cáit, who had made a rather half-hearted attempt, no one was trying to find out what I had been doing alone and asleep in this dungeon. So I quickly changed the subject, "Don't worry about the garden. I have some ideas on how to clear up the mess. But I will definitely need Hannah's help. And I will probably need someone to get me a lot of spare parts from the dungeons. Our biggest problem is the huge green area. The rest is just a lot of tinkering.
I had some ideas on how to renovate the furniture without too much effort, but the green area definitely needed some heavy equipment. I was about to start shouting "more power" and grunting, but probably no one but me would have understood that reference. My problem in solving the garden problem quickly was that my knowledge was pretty much limited to petrol and diesel engines, and that was definitely too technologically advanced for this world.
Abby then led me to a building a little off the beaten track. At first glance it looked like a small warehouse. The brick walls were about 1.5 storeys high and there were small windows between the walls and the roof, probably to allow some kind of air circulation. There were also separate entrances for men and women. "Assuming you're all big enough to coordinate bathing times with Angus, I guess it's either one big communal bath or both areas are broken," I said frankly and Abby nodded, "Both areas are broken. For several weeks now. It's not even a question of money, we could just raise the rent a bit…"
Maybe I should have let Abby finish first, but my personal salvation was more important to me at the time.
"Seriously. Fuck the money. I want to be able to wash myself properly again," I grinned, "And with a bit of luck I should be able to do that soon.”
Abby unlocked the door to the bathhouse for me and the stench that hit me was unbelievable. "OK...I've changed my mind," I muttered, "This is the final boss. Please don't tell me you didn't even drain the water."
"We did everything we could. But yes, you're right. One of the problems is that the water is no longer draining properly. The other problem is that we don't have any hot water. And the third... the mechanism for opening all the windows at once is broken."
"You could've at least left the doors open," I grumbled, annoyed. The smell was unbearable. Like the disgusting smell of water from flower vases. I pulled my shirt over my nose and took a few steps into the bathhouse. I concentrated and then said, "Analyse".
Several red points appeared. One of them, as expected, was a blocked drain. "Sorry, but... nobody can tell me that it's so difficult to unblock the fuckin’ drain," I grumbled as I analysed the other problems. The second red spot was a broken steam pipe leading directly to the heating system.
"As long as I can turn off the steam, that shouldn't be too much of a problem now. I just need someone to get me some suitable pipes." The third issue was a little harder to spot, but the steel cables used to open and close the windows had been bitten through. "Are there any wild animals around?" I asked Abby and she shook her head, "Not that I'm aware of."
"Interesting, because someone has chewed through the cable. I will fix the cable and think of a way to get rid of this misconstruction," I said, lost in thought.
"This whole mansion has been in our family for decades," Abby laughed, "You'll probably find a lot more misconstructions if you look hard enough."
Not a bad idea. I might even be able to improve my skills by searching for some of them. But for my current job, all the problems I found were rather boring and could probably be fixed by anyone if they wanted to. However, the last problem was really interesting - the steam driven water pump was broken.
"Wait! Was that some sort of hot tub?" I asked Abby, but she just smiled and asked, "What's a hot tub?"
I kept forgetting that I was being reborn into a world that was a few decades or centuries behind in many areas of technology. "How can I describe it. Do you know if there was a way to make the water move? And I don't mean... through the drain."
"If you mean some bubbling water jets. Yes, when I was a small child there were bubbles in several places. But that must have been about fifteen years ago." My annoyance was hard to ignore at the moment, "So that part of the system has probably been broken for 15 years."
"Could be. I don't really know anymore. I was maybe five at the time," Abby pondered.
I had no idea what was going on in Abby's head, but she suddenly reminded me of Cáit and gave me a mischievous look, "How's it looking? Can you fix it? I'd even learn to cook you your favourite meal if the bath could be used again."
"To be honest, I'm a bit pissed off that I have to seriously deal with the blockage. But everything else depends on you getting me the right parts and me being able to get to the right places easily. I may not even have to use ether to fix these things, except for the steam-driven water pump. I'll write it all down for you, and I suggest you send someone right away.” I had the feeling that Abby had a smile on her face as she disappeared into the house and returned a few moments later with a piece of paper and a pen. "Hannah will run the errands for you," Abby explained as I wrote her a long list of spare parts needed not only for the bathhouse but also for my little robot friend. "Items marked B are for the bathhouse and necessary, all other items are for me. I need them to fix my little robot. It doesn't matter if she doesn't get them all." Even though my skills weren't that impressive, I could think of a few situations where they would be useful. In particular, the permanent scavenging skill and the analysis part of my repair skill, which required very little ether, really played into my hands. Who wouldn't want to be able to see at a glance what's wrong with an item, how to fix it, and if there are any useful spare parts around? It almost felt like cheating.
