It was impossible to return to the miner’s town at the moment, but with Portal, I could go anywhere. Chalm seemed to be the best place to go to. I opened a portal, and the group of us stepped out of the dungeon and back into relative safety.

Once we arrived, I started hearing a great deal of noise. There appeared to be music playing which piqued Celeste’s interest, and it sounded like a party was going on.

A person wearing only a pair of shorts walked by, whom I didn’t recognize, but I decided to stop him anyway. “Hey, what’s going on here?”

“Eh? Haven’t you already been?” He looked at the group of us as we dripped wetly.

“No… can you explain?”

“Ah… well, we finished the lord’s new manor, so the mayor decided to throw a celebration.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the kind of thing you throw while the lord is present?”

He chuckled. “Well, you know how haughty lords can be. He wouldn’t let the riffraff commoners play around in his hot spring. He’ll likely get one of those fancy celebrations all of them lords enjoy when he returns.”

“What? Hot spring?” My eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, where have you been? They accidentally uncovered a hot spring while digging for the mansion. The mayor had it turned into the lord’s private hot spring. I’m so jealous! How could we not try to use it once before losing it to that damned lord!”

“Th-thank you…” I responded wryly.

This guy really didn’t know me. He must have come later. He didn’t even seem to know that I wasn’t born a noble. To him, all nobles appeared to be of the exploitative variety. A noble who had just spent the last day nearly sacrificing his life for water and nature gems to help the town thrive and insect shells to make armor is something he didn’t even think about.

“See you there!” He waved and left.

Well, he had some mean thoughts about me, but he didn’t seem like a bad guy. The group of us followed in his direction, and lo and behold there was a hot spring about the size of a pool in our backyard.

“The fairy spring?” I asked nervously.

Celeste shook her head. “Mother would have made sure that didn’t happen. It’s possible she helped them find this though in order to thank Master.”

So, it was something like that. Since she had control of the local water veins as she built her fairy spring, she may have noticed some geothermal water and helped it reach the surface for me.

There was a celebration with a large table that seemed to have a variety of foods on it. Mostly, it was a monster that was roasted up and some various fruits and vegetables. There were hundreds of people around the pool and only about thirty in the hot spring. It looked like there was still room to spare. Perhaps everyone wasn’t as gutsy as to enter the lord’s pool. Or, maybe the heat was enough to cause people to not stay in it very long.

When we arrived at the pool, enough people recognized either me or the girls that the sound quickly broke up and the hundreds of people roaming around my backyard all froze and turned to me. The first person to approach me was the Mayor. He had a crooked grin and looked like a kid caught with his hand in the candy jar.

“Ah… Lord Deekson, you’ve arrived… this is just… well… de-stressing after a long project… and…” It was clear he felt a bit of shame for what he had done.

I looked back at the ladies. They were still shivering in the evening air, and steam was rising up from the hot spring.

“Well, what’s everyone waiting for? Let’s party!”

The crowd all burst into a roar. As for the girls, they immediately stripped and raced for the hot spring.

“W-wait… put on clothing first!”

I thought I was going to have to burn the eyes out of every man here, but the women nearby were on it. It was mostly Lydia and Celeste who got excited. Shao, Terra, and Miki still had enough common sense to not do that kind of thing.

Any guy who dared open his eyes was dealt with by the nearby women until Celeste and Lydia were properly covered. The girls ended up getting a hot bath and warmed up happily.

I took over the cooking and the meals substantially improved. I found the roaring fire of the grill was more calming for me. Of course, I pulled from my own supplies in my storage ring as well, and I ended up creating a feast.

{Cook has increased to level 15.}

After cooking for several hundred people plus 10X experience, I ended up gaining some levels as well.