Swiss Arms 100 (Patreon)

We’re here! Chapter 100! And also 2.5 years old. Thank you for everyone who’s been supporting me on Patreon and Ko-Fi and the readers who’s been following me on QQ, SB, and elsewhere. 

So. Let’s get it on.

-VB-

Swiss Arms

Chapter 100

-VB-

Ping!

It’s been over a few months since I last heard that. 

[Quest: The Way of the Blade (COMPLETED)

Your wife wants to learn how to fight herself! This is a good thing, and you will support her all the way. 

Pre-requisite:

*Isabella von Fluelaberg (IVF) must take up a blade as her weapon. (COMPLETED)
*IVF must learn how to use her weapon with at least intermediate (LvL.10) skill. (COMPLETED)
*IVF must reach this level before the birth of your child. (COMPLETED)
*IVF must live to the end of the quest. (COMPLETED)
*IVF must not leave you before the end of the quest. (COMPLETED)

Reward:
*Skill: Teaching + 10 Teaching Skill LvL
*Increased relationship with Isabella (obviously)]

Ping! 

[Teaching] LvL.11
Hmm. Maybe. That is a novel way to think about things. Have you also tried to think of it like this?

Helps facilitate better learning in students.

*1% reduction in student stress gain from studying per level

*0.2% increased EXP gain for students in an area of study the TEACHER excels at per level]

… It was useful skill, but like anything else that my Gamer provided, I needed to level it up a lot before it could be truly gamebreaking. 

Ah, I made a pun.

‘Aw man, that’s a pun people aren’t going to get for several hundred years…’ I thought to myself. 

[Character Status]

Name: Isabella von Fluelaberg nee Gorizia

Age: 19

Title: Baroness

LvL: 10 

HP: 480

MP: --

ST: 8 (-1 pregnancy)

STR: 9

END: 11

AGI: 10 (-1 pregnancy)

DEX: 9 (-1 pregnancy)

INT: 13

CHA: 13

I couldn’t see anyone’s skills with my Observe, which was unfortunate, but at least I checked today and knew that Isabella was having a bit of a trouble from just being pregnant. And I supposed that it made sense because, well, big tits already hurt women’s backs, so why wouldn’t something that weighed more than their tits not make their lives harder? 

“Are you alright?” I asked her as she walked out of the bathroom, which had an indoor plumbing. Sewage was not yet becoming a problem for Davos-Fluelaberg, but that was because I got ahead of it and started a very rudimentary sewage system. Even if for most of the village, it was literally just outhouses at intervals and people paid to collect the mixture of urine and feces for the farms. My castle, however, had sewage system that pumped the wastes out of the castle and into a collection duct using a bit of the stream water that runs through the center of Fluelaberg. All of this happened before we left for the tour, but it was nice to see that my people finished it by the time we came back. 

“Just … tired,” she grumbled as she came back to sit on the bed. Unfortunately for us, the morning sunlight cleared over the mountaintops, which meant that it was way over 8 a.m. in the morning and thus late when it came to morning activities. “I didn’t think that pregnancy would be this much trouble. I hate being constantly needing to piss.”

I yawned as I got up. Yeah, we needed to get up. 

“It could be worse?”

“How could it be worse…?” she asked. 

“A lot of women have morning sickness, remember? Having to use the bowl more isn’t that bad compared to that. That’s something almost all pregnanty woman experience but not every woman experience morning sickness. 

“Ugh. I know that!” she hissed at me. 

I could have mentioned that hormonal imbalance also made many a pregnant women sensitive but pointing out how sensitive a person was to a sensitive person generally didn’t go well for anyone. Also, happy wife, happy life, you know? Making her unhappy by being a smartass when she’s carrying our baby was a mean move. 

Worse, I might make her cry out of nowhere. It’s already happened before, and I wasn’t keen on making it happen.

“Wnat breakfast in bed?”

“... I want to,” she whined even as she stood back up. “Can you call Alleria in? We should get dressed.”

“Alleria,” I called out, and she walked in. “Can you help my wife with her dress?”

The lady-in-waiting who came with Isabella from Gorizia gave me a shallow bow before moving to help my wife. As for me, I chose to wear something more in line with the local attire instead of the clothes I made myself. I reached into the drawer and pulled out a bright yellow pleated cotehardie, a plain cotton shirt to be worn underneath that, and a periwinkle blue hose pants. 

If anyone from 21st century saw me, then they would have been shocked by combination of bright yellow cote, deep blue hose pants, and a bright red cap I would have worn if it was any colder. But it wasn’t cold enough to warrant wearing a cap yet, though I wasn’t sure if it would be the case in a few weeks. 

Yes, I realized that despite the fact that modernity had more colors, just like the British with their lack of spices, most people stuck to calmer and dimmer colors. 

The people of this era? They would make any piece of their attire bright if they could help it. Not always and not for every occasion but definitely so for every day clothes. 

It was a very interesting part of the culture that I grew up in, and it wasn’t something I thought about a lot. It was also because of such desire for bright colors that dyes from across the world were so sought after. 

And which was why Fluelaberg became rich by producing the periwinkle blue dyes. 

However.

Because of how small periwinkles were and how much of the flowers we needed to make the dyes, the weed was quickly becoming extinct in the area. It didn’t matter if it grew quickly; it didn’t grow quickly enough for the dye industry. 

As such, I needed to find a new dye to make from the natural ingredients native to the Swiss Alps. 

“What brand new money maker are you thinking about?” 

I looked over my shoulder from where I’d drifted off to look out of the bedroom window and saw Isabella completely dressed in the periwinkle’s deep blue one piece dress. It was a more conservative dress that covered up to the lower neck and the cloth itself hung enough that it didn’t hug her figure well. In fact, I would cal her dress breezy. “Are you sure you won’t be cold in that?”

“I can take it. I want to look good, husband,” she replied with a shrug. “Now. Let’s break fast, yes?”

-VB-

Later that day, I found myself in my personal chemistry lab. It’s been a while since I’ve been in here, so I went through the entire inventory of chemicals to ensure that they were all stable and nothing had broken.

And, well, some had. 

The only pint of diluted hydrochloric acid that I had ate through the container’s lid, and half of it evaporated. The evaporated hydrochloric acid hadn’t done much, but it did contaminate and weaken the wooden shelves they sat at. The thin wooden shelves had to be replaced, which ate up most of my hours up to lunch, and now, I was back in here after a lunch with Isabella. 

And right in front of me was a table that had nine rough watch glasses, each with its own unique material. They were all ground up and dried clay, minerals, or a combination of the two, and all of it had come from the the local mines and valleys. Why clay? Well, the essence of a clay was fine grain minerals. Clay, as such, could be used to make dye because mineral-based dyes were a thing. 

Cinnabar, a mineral mined out of the earth, was often used to make dyes, though due to its mercury-content, people used it more for decoration than clothing. 

So I was trying that here, except since most of the experimental dyes in front of me didn’t have mercury, I was sure that there wouldn’t be any issue. In fact, a good third of the dyes were iron-based. 

I paused just before I started my experiment. This felt familiar.

Good.

… Relaxing.

I snorted. 

Yes, I supposed that this was something I enjoyed. 

And so I went and -.

-4 hours later-

I stared at the results in front of me. 

My attempt at cobalt dye was … it turned out well, but my mines rarely pulled up cobalts. On top of that, even if the cobalt blue dye worked, I realized after dyeing and drying the sample cloth that it was almost the same shade of blue as periwinkle blue, just a bit darker. If I was going to do that, then I would just get more periwinkle or buy woad indigo from Piedmont, which was the closest center of blue dye production. But woad blue was lighter than my periwinkle without being bright. So my experiment to get a new source of blue dye close to periwinkle failed. 

The second set of dyes was made from the red clay found in the valleys. Sienna, I think this type of dye was called, according to the merchants and peddlers. However, the sample of sienna-dyed cloth I had was far deeper than my attempts from multiple levels of roasted, unroasted, and mixed red clay dyes. It could still used to mix with other colors, though. 

What was very successful was yellow ochre, or sometimes called “gold” ochre because of how close it was, even if it lacked the shine. It was a lighter yellow on the shallow end and deeper orange-yellow on the deeper end after a roast. 

… Personally, I wasn’t sure if I knew the value of these dyes. So I should go and ask Isabella. Coming from Italy, she should know more about their values, right? 

… Maybe. The County of Gorizia was next to the Patriarchate of Aquileia and Margraviate of Carniola. Its position made it barely a part of Lombardy, the wider region that stretched from the edges of the County of Provence (southeast France) to Venice. Because it sat right at the edge of that territory alongside Aquileia, it was hard to say, especially since, according to Isabella herself, the people in Gorizia were more like the people in Carniola than they were to Aquileia. 

Maybe we can even discuss how beneficial it would be to export it to Gorizia or even Venice.