Under the watchful eyes of Liti and Anastasia, Fia raised her hand once again.
“Food Creation.”
If the light produced when chanting magic to create food was only as bright as a lightbulb before, now it was more like a blinding searchlight.
There was nothing in Fia’s hand.
Instead, a massive pile suddenly appeared in front of the carriage, at least ten meters high, like a small mountain… a mountain of salted fish.
Each salted fish was about twenty to thirty centimeters long, with a golden yellow color that showed it was well-cured.
This time, Fia saw the process of the food being created: at the top of the mountain, a shrinking black hole kept spitting out salted fish one after another.
“Yikes!” The two eight-legged horses pulling the carriage were startled by the sudden appearance of the mountain.
They stopped abruptly and neighed in terror.
At the same time, Liti let out a panicked cry.
She had been standing at the carriage door, and when the carriage stopped suddenly, she lost her grip on the doorframe and fell forward.
Almost instinctively, Liti’s right hand grabbed Fia’s left shoulder, trying to steady herself, but it didn’t stop her from falling forward.
With Liti pushing down and Fia trying to catch her, Liti slid right into Fia’s lap.
It felt like a ball of cotton landing on her.
Liti ended up sitting sideways on Fia’s legs.
Even though this wasn’t the first time Fia and Liti had been this close, it was the first time Liti had actually sat on Fia’s lap.
Liti’s petite and soft body made Fia instinctively loosen her grip a little, afraid of accidentally hurting her.
“You okay?” Fia lowered her head and asked.
“Eh?” The sudden change left Liti stunned.
When she realized what had happened, her delicate face flushed red from her neck to her ears, and her heart started pounding.
Especially when she looked up and met Fia’s eyes, she felt like she was sitting on a hot iron plate and reflexively jumped off Fia.
“S-sorry!” Liti bowed her head deeply and apologized sincerely.
“It’s fine.”
Fia felt a little embarrassed too, but seeing Liti even more flustered than herself, the awkwardness quickly faded, replaced by a strange sense of amusement.
She was so forward last night, but now she’s blushing just from accidentally sitting on my lap.
The contrast made Fia find her kind of cute—very much like a little sister.
Liti must be the type who panics whenever something unexpected happens.
If she were the innocent, lively type, I’d probably want to give her all the good things in the world.
It’s a bit of a shame, Fia thought to herself.
Normally, things would end here, but Liti’s expression made Fia think otherwise.
When Liti saw that she had wrinkled the magic book in Fia’s hand, her face, which had just been red with embarrassment, instantly turned pale.
The blush faded quickly, replaced by a ghostly white.
Fia even saw Liti’s shoulders tremble with fear.
“Sis, the book…” Crap.
Fia cursed inwardly.
Liti must have remembered the time she got the elf princess’s book wet and got slapped for it.
That incident left a deep psychological scar on her.
Realizing this, Fia set the book aside, stood up with a wry smile, and gently patted Liti’s head.
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t affect reading—no, even if it did, it’s just a book.
It’s nothing compared to you, Liti.”
At first, Liti looked like she was bracing for a hit, her neck shrinking in fear, but as Fia gently stroked her purple hair, Liti’s trembling quickly calmed down.
Fia wasn’t the same as before, and Liti’s rational mind recognized that—the cold, distant sister was gone.
“Thank you, sis…” Liti murmured.
“Let’s go see what I actually created.
Anastasia, drive the carriage around to the other side of this ‘mountain.'”
“Okay.”
Fia jumped off the carriage, then, like a gentleman helping a lady, reached out to help the shy, head-down Liti down from the driver’s seat.
Maybe it was just Fia’s imagination, but Anastasia, watching Liti from the driver’s seat, had a rather complicated look in her eyes, with a hint of longing and envy mixed in.
Hmm, I’ll help Anastasia down like this next time too.
Thinking that, Fia walked toward the mountain of salted fish she had created.
With the boost from “Super Calculation,” the food created by “Food Creation” wasn’t just more plentiful, it also looked more appetizing.
But when she used the magic, Fia hadn’t intended for the food to look like salted fish; it just changed from black rocks to cured fish on its own.
That must be an effect of “Food Creation” itself—maybe something like “the more mana you put in, the better the food turns out.”
Fia picked up a salted fish.
Compared to the black rocks from before, this food was actually edible.
There were so many piled up that the smell of cured fish filled the air.
Fia broke off a small piece and put it in her mouth.
It wasn’t exactly delicious, but it tasted like real salted fish.
If she’d learned “Food Creation” earlier, she could have made the refugees from last night cheer—these salted fish would be enough to make them never want to see fish again in their lives.
“So ‘Food Creation’ can make food like this…” Mimicking Fia, Liti picked up a golden salted fish from the pile, her purple-red eyes full of wonder.
She sniffed it with her little nose.
“The smell is normal too.
But to make this much food, just how much mana do you have, sis?” Liti looked at Fia with stars in her eyes.
Fia shrugged with a wry smile.
“I don’t know either.
Let’s try it out.”
Fia set her target on the grass by the side of the road.
Using up a tenth of her mana created a ten-meter-high mountain of food.
For a normal person, that would be amazing, but for Fia, it was nowhere near enough.
She didn’t even feel drained after casting tenth-tier magic, so a tenth of her mana should be able to make way more food than this.
Magic in the real world didn’t have a “cooldown,” so Fia kept making food mountains, one after another, until there were nine in total.
Soon, nearly a hundred meters of golden salted fish stood like a wall in the open field.
What puzzled Fia was that she still didn’t feel any sign of mana depletion.
Normally, when a mage runs out of mana, they’d feel dizzy, unsteady, or even faint on the spot.
But after using “Food Creation” ten times, Fia, who should have been out of mana, felt perfectly fine.
She couldn’t help but use “Food Creation” again, and another ten-meter-high mountain appeared in front of her.
“…Huh?” Fia tilted her head.
The food mountains were taking up so much space that she had to walk as she used “Food Creation,” and by now, she was some distance from the carriage.
There were eleven mountains in Fia’s view.
Could it be that her mana recovery was just that fast? Maybe, but as Fia started running and casting “Food Creation” even faster, she managed to create twenty more mountains in just five seconds, and finally came to a conclusion.
—It wasn’t that her mana recovered too quickly, but that “Food Creation” had a limit.
