Great Demon Law Forest:-

A few months passed since Harry had made the smokeless powder.

It was again the time of the year that most people hated.

Winters were here again!

And no, no zombie invasions happen in Etheldor during winters.

People hate winters for more natural and normal reasons.

Winters made everything very difficult to do.

A lot of the places tend to get heavy snowfall.

The regions where humans were settled were located near the bottom of the planet and hence used to get very heavy snowing.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too much near the poles and still used to get a lot of daylight.

But the temperatures still dropped enough that most regular mortals could not survive unless they had some energy user’s help.

Even some of the low-levelled energy users had a tough time surviving with the amount of qi or mana that they had.

But, in the one place where humans were said to not even survive regardless of the season, were three people who were chatting and laughing like it was spring.

Harry had been well prepared for winter even this year around.

Last year, when he had seen Qing and Shin fearing winters, he had almost laughed.

From his memories of this world (from the original prince before Harry came around), people’s main source of worry about winters was the rapidly decreasing temperatures.

Harry, on the other hand, had been preparing for the winters since he had arrived in the forest. (That was also the only time he could get things before the siblings came around and the system limited his shopping.)

Qing and Shin were, as usual, very shocked by the fact that there was a way to stay warm without lighting fires or using qi.

Normally, people in this world lit fires to stay warm. But if they had enough qi or mana, they were expected to circulate that in their bodies to stay warm.

Only those who didn’t have qi or mana or didn’t have too much of it were allowed to use fires.

By this year, everyone was used to heaters, the kotatsu and all the other things Harry had.

These days even the demon beasts outside had mostly gone into hibernation, leaving Harry with a lot of free time.

They still used to hunt.

Only this time, they used to go around finding the places where the beasts used to be hiding for hibernation.

The siblings found it a pain to go out in the cold, so Harry had turned it into a game of sorts.

They had to find the beasts and kill them without waking them up.

The ones that succeed would be allowed a day of rest equal to the number of consecutive beasts they killed in that manner.

The person who woke them up would have to work extra on the days the winner took rest to make up for the person taking the time off.

Also, the demon beasts that woke up or didn’t hibernate in the first place didn’t count.

Harry used to be the one who succeeds the most and therefore hunted the least even when he did go hunting.

Otherwise, who would protect these two from the wrath of the awakened beasts?

This game was literally like poking a hibernating bear, just a billion times more deadly.

That’s why Harry used to give up the days of rest a lot of the times.

Shin and Qing had about the same number of wins and losses.

So, they did have to work a lot. But this also resulted in them becoming a whole lot stronger.

Whether they liked this game or not was a different matter. But even they had to admit that their growth had been pretty good.

Most cultivators usually stayed indoors to meditate during the winters to waste minimal qi for warmth.

But these two had heaters waiting for them at home.

If they were fast enough, they didn’t have to face the cold too much.

And when they came back home, they would be fine even if their qi was pretty low.

That’s why Harry had done all this preparation, along with the reason that he didn’t want to spend the winters without heaters and warm water.

Everyone barely had any change in their daily routine.

The only difference was that everyone used to rush back inside at twice the speed if they had to do anything outside.

Harry behaved pretty normally. He did sometimes run back, but those days were rare.

That’s why he laughed whenever he saw Qing and Shin rushing back, which was quite a common sight for him.

Every day, Harry also had the job of clearing out the snow on the outside every day.

And man did it snow like anything!

A lot of the times, Harry used to assign it to QIng and Shin.

And then he used to sit in the Kotatsu while happily watching them struggle as they sometimes did the snow clearing alone and sometimes did it together.

‘These guys would be so happy when I get around to making one of those snow clearing machines…

But, in the meantime, I’ll just watch them struggle away to glory! Hehehehe…’

The task wasn’t exactly difficult for them.

But the constant sight of Harry sipping tea while sitting in the nice warm room, made it very difficult.

Why is he sitting inside while we’re slaving out here in the cold!?

And more importantly, why does it seem like he’s enjoying watching us struggle!?

Harry used to receive a lot of complaints from the two, but as usual, he tended to ignore anything that they said.

That being said, it was usually Harry only who used to do this job. But this bit of information always used to disappear from their minds when they saw Harry sitting in the heated room.

Most of the time, while inside, they used to be very lazy.

This was especially the case with Qing.

She took it to the extent that Harry didn’t know whether he should laugh or punish her.

She used to behave in a way that was opposite to her usual bold, smart and daring self during warmer months of the year.

But she did look very cute when she did all her antics. And that was when Harry felt that she was somewhat acting her age when compared to her normal mature self.

Most of the time, Qing used to be found sleeping in or inside the kotatsu. (Either her legs used to be inside or she used to be completely inside the kotatsu.)

The remaining time was spent trying to hug one of the heaters, sitting in the bathtub filled with warm water or wrapped up in her blanket like a cocoon.

Harry usually laughed a lot. And while laughing, used to punish her.

The punishments included picking her up and chucking her out in the snow or locking her in whatever room she was in and cutting off the power to that room.

There was one good thing he found about the winter times.

Harry didn’t need to worry too much about the food spoiling.

Harry had made the food storage area in such a way that winters used to turn it into one of those walk-in refrigerators.

He had used some insulation material he bought from the system store inside the walls.

This was to ensure that the insides don’t boil during the summers.

He had also made the inside of the room with stainless steel (also bought from the system store. He had used his ability to get things from the system to the maximum...) and also made a little gap between the layers.

The walls had this sort of an arrangement of layers:

Rock, insulation material, rock, gap, steel.

There was also a drainage system installed.

During the winters, Harry used to open the trapdoor-like setup that he had created over the gap he had made.

This allowed the snow to fall in and cool the food storage room a lot.

He of course cleaned the snow once in a while to do any maintenance on the steel walls of the room.

And when the snow melted, the water used to flow out through the drain.

Naturally, he was the only one who ever came this way.

Qing hated the cold to an extreme degree and this could be seen in her daily behaviour.

Shin, though he was better than her sister, still preferred to stay out of the frozen room.

‘Let them enjoy it while they can.

Once we’re out of this forest, they will have to wait till I can invent this stuff myself.’

Harry thought as he walked into the food storage to get things for lunch.

They had their meals in the kotatsu only.

Harry would have preferred to eat at their dinner table, but the two siblings had kept nagging him till he agreed.

They did love their warmth…

After this came their usual routine of meditating for cultivation, while Harry exercised in the gym and then their hunting time out in the cold.

After Qing finished her nap on the heater, while Shin just slept with his legs in the kotatsu, it was time for the last item on the schedule of their day.

Classes by Harry!

Harry had started teaching them some of the subjects he remembered from his childhood.

His memory wasn’t as great as Roland Wimbledon, nor did he take a lot of help from the system.

He just taught them stuff he remembered from his fifth grade.

The system did jog his memories from time to time if he forgot something or was about to give them the wrong information, but that was it. No extensive knowledge was given to Harry about the stuff he taught.

The system did offer it, but Harry refused it and settled on getting help for any minor mistakes he made.

He felt it was better this way.

He remembered a lot of the stuff and didn’t feel like taking so much help for such a small thing.

Plus, from their reactions on the first day, Harry knew that it’ll take more than a year just to get Qing and Shin to learn the fifth-grade syllabus.

He had to go around doing a lot of explanations along with his original content.

There were also some differences in the things he knew and the stuff that was present on Etheldor.

For instance, he couldn’t teach them anything related to biology.

Though both Earth and Etheldor contained humans, their body structures were completely different.

Also, Etheldor contained many other races besides humans and also a wide variety of flora and fauna that couldn’t possibly have existed without the presence of qi and mana.

And there was no way for him to have detailed knowledge about any of that stuff without some extensive help from the system.

So, he mainly stuck to things he knew should be the same as back on Earth.

His classes mainly consisted of mathematics and physics-related topics of science along with a bit of very basic chemistry. (Qi and mana influenced chemistry in ways that broke most laws of chemistry and there was no way for Harry to have learnt this stuff in either of his lives.)

Nevertheless, Qing and Shin used to listen to him with every bit of their attention.

That was because all this information was completely new and mysterious for them.

Initially, they thought that it was absurd that Etheldor wasn’t flat and didn’t pay much attention to his other subjects as well (Harry had to confirm from the system about the validity of this bit of information), but when he had done various experiments to show how his claims were correct, they had started to pay a whole lot more attention to the classes

As for the time when he was asked about the source of his information, he just said that it was part of some very old books he found along with his own experiments, which was one of his usual excuses for these types of questions.

Maths was a bit more difficult to explain since it was a bit more theoretical than physics or chemistry. And at the level of the topics that he was teaching them, it was pretty difficult to find some practical use that they would find interesting.

That being said, Qing was pretty good at doing maths while Shin was more interested in physics.

At this rate, Harry figured, they would have some basic scientific knowledge by the time they vacated their current residence.

And considering that their second winter was already here, it didn’t seem like they had much time left before their departure.

Just a few months more and Harry would have been in this forest and on Etheldor for two whole years. (The time he spent training in that other dimension with the time distortions equated to only one month on Etheldor.)

Harry didn’t want to leave this place so soon.

He knew that this was the last time he’d get to enjoy so much luxury and convenience for a long time.

The next time, he’ll need to invent the stuff himself.

And he knew from his research on the smokeless powder that it won’t be a fun process, especially with the lack of everything else that he enjoyed while doing that research.

But then, he also knew that the system would surely not allow him to enjoy this life for one second longer than the specified time.

‘Well, let’s just consider this to be my little buffer time for me to get used to life on Etheldor and leave my life Back on Earth behind…

But I’ll be sure to get that level of living back! Mark my words, system!’

[Sure, no need to state the obvious. That is the entire point of bringing the host to Etheldor]

Harry heard the system reply this as he fell asleep on his bed.