Chapter 59: A Secret Talk in the Kitchen

After a very loud and very satisfying bath that probably echoed through half the neighborhood, Eren sat on the bed while Emily got dressed. He was teaching her about money.

“So on Earth, people use these small metal circles called coins. Or paper with numbers on it. And the number tells you how much that paper is worth.”

Emily stared at him. “Is the paper magical or worth something due to it’s special usages?”

“No actually. Its normal.” Eren didn’t want to go too deep.

Emily had a weird look on her face. Like she didn’t understand the logic behind paper. “But paper burns!”

“Yeah well, it’s complicated. There are banks and governments and-”

“What’s a government?”

This was going to take a while. He kept it at a child-friendly level. Basic stuff about citizenship and trade. Emily listened carefully but her face said she thought Earth people were insane for trusting paper.

She was a smart woman and understood the need of money. But for some reason, she specifically against using paper-money.

Eren sometimes couldn’t get what was happening in her pretty head.

They headed out to dinner after that.

Tonight was special according to Emily. The village was celebrating the end of autumn. Every season-end the elves threw a small festival.

It was actually nothing huge, just food and drinks in the central area with some decoration. But the village square looked completely different from two days ago. Someone had brought out exotic flowers Eren had never seen before, arranged sitting areas with carved wooden stools and hung strings of those glowing river stones between the trees.

This whole setup appeared in two days almost at the same insane speed of plank defense wall on the north side.

Elves moved slowly most of the time. Lazy and easygoing like people from Mediterranean countries back on Earth. But when they wanted something done fast they could move.

Eren thought about that while they walked through the flower-lined paths. He remembered hearing that people who lived in warm coastal places tended to be more relaxed. Maybe the environment shaped how you lived or maybe it was just an elf thing.

But he noticed something about himself too. He wasn’t the same Eren from almost four weeks ago. He was physically different for several reasons but he was testing his own temper and he was definitely calmer. Less rushed, maybe…

He couldn’t speak definitively because he didn’t know how significant the psychological differences between the races were.

He caught himself staring at flowers for minutes at a time or watching the sky change colors during sunset and actually enjoying it.

It was surprising but affecting his stats was a lot easier than the half elf senses. The new senses were affecting him and he didn’t have any clue how to close them.

Something had shifted after his race changed.

I’m becoming one of them. An Elf, huh.

..

Selena’s place was open. It was always open late because half the village ate dinner at random hours and Selena didn’t seem to need much sleep. Or villagers abused her cooking related class a bit too much. Eren didn’t open that topic of fearing of the answer.

The restaurant was packed with festival energy. People were eating, laughing and mostly drinking that honey wine Eren was starting to develop a taste for. There was a different but heavy wine named Vin-JA but he didn’t like it. Some elves also shared his opinion about that so Eren knew it wasn’t about him being a half-elf.

Just it’s smell made him nauseous.

They walked a bit and Selena spotted them from across the inner room. She had a table ready before they even come. Not the usual one though. A more private spot around the inner corner, away from the crowd.

Eren dropped into the chair. His legs were fine but his brain was cooked from a long day. Emily sat across from him and looked just as tired.

Physical exhaustion from solo patrols would be half as taxing with Eren helping her now. But kobold and troll attacks from last week changed their dynamics. Being on edge all the time was exhausting.

Selena brought the food without being asked.

Three full plates for Eren. Meat stew, bread with hard cheese and a fruit plate with those mango-honey things from the northeast farms.

“I didn’t order three times.” He said.

“You need a lot of energy sweety. Eat.” Her amused voice was relaxing as always but “sweety” part made Emily tense for a moment.

Emily raised an eyebrow but said nothing for now. Selena smiled that specific smile she had when Emily demanded an explanation and she wasn’t sharing. She disappeared into the kitchen.

The food was incredible. Selena’s food was always incredible but his plates and the care of his portions changed in the last week. Eren ate like someone who’d been hunting, hauling timber and testing dinosaurs for eight hours because that’s exactly what he’d done.

Emily picked at her plate and started eating with a noticeable slow pace. Her eyes kept drifting toward the kitchen.

Selena came back after a few minutes. She leaned down and whispered something to Emily. Too quiet for Eren to hear even with half-elf senses, which meant Selena was deliberately keeping it from him.

Emily’s chopsticks stopped moving, stood up and followed her to the back room without a single glance at Eren. The door closed behind them.

Eren looked at the closed door, then at his food, then back at the door.

Okay.

He kept eating because there wasn’t much else to do. The stew was amazing. The cheese was salty in the exact way he liked. The fruit was too sweet but he ate it anyway.

Five minutes passed, then ten. He was on the third plate when Emily came back.

Her face was weird. Not usual angry or pissed face but more like a little bit off. Her eyes focused somewhere far away as she sat down and picked up her chopsticks without eating.

“Everything okay?” Eren asked.

“Fine.” Her voice was flat.

That word meant the opposite of fine in every language across every universe. Eren knew it on Earth and he knew it here.

“Emily-”

“Not now.” She took a bite and chewed slowly. “I’ll tell you when it’s the right time.”

Selena watched them from behind the counter. Her face had a obvious expectant look and a small sneaky smile.

They finished dinner mostly in silence. Eren wanted to push but he’d learned that when Emily said “not now”, she mostly meant it. Pushing only made her shut down harder.

After Emily settled back into a normal mood – or at least faked it well enough, they worked on their usual evening experiment.

Eren activated “Lovely Eyes” and focused on Emily.

They’d been practicing this for two days. The goal was to test his Charisma-related skills in a controlled environment where nobody else would get affected. Emily was the only safe test subject because she actually wanted to be looked at by him. Or charmed by him.

When they were checking the flower field and the dungeon entrance, they tested it. And Eren had some suspicions about she faked one of them yesterday and used it an excuse to have s*x with him. That time her eyes didn’t get the usual pink charm color but Emily still insisted she was charmed.

She wouldn’t do something like that, right?

“Anything this time?” Eren asked.

“A little warm but no. Keep going.” Emily said.

He pushed harder. Lovely Eyes was an active skill.

Allows the user to charm someone within ten meters. The probability and duration of the charm increases with skill level and stat levels of charisma and luck.

It didn’t say anything about enchanting his eyes but reality was slightly different than the skill description.

It enhanced his natural gaze with a layer of magical charm for him to see better. When active, people who met his eyes felt a pull. Nothing aggressive or too sudden but mostly warmth, trust and a desire to keep looking. Around that time, he had a very high chance of charming someone and kill them.

At least that was he wanted but using this one was a bit tricky. It demanded some experience and finecce. Probably there were other secret conditions they didn’t know yet.

The problem was control. In a crowd, when he used the skill, it hit someone random within range with weaker power. Which was how sometimes Rabbu-i ended up staring at his chest or biceps when he walked within few meters.

It both made the skill mostly useless and affected his allies in important moments. He had to learn how to focus all of it’s power on someone specific or more than one person with the same power level.

Emily closed her eyes and opened them again.

“There. I felt it shift. Stronger than last time. It is working. Hihi…” She blushed with her eyes on Eren’s.

[Congratulations! Your skill “Lovely Eyes” levelled up]

[Lovely Eyes: Level 3 > Level 4]

Eren checked the details. Mana efficiency improved. Effective range increased. But the number of simultaneous targets stayed at one.

“Still single target,” he muttered with sadness.

“Good.” Emily said and it came out way too fast for her to stop half way. “I meant for combat purposes.”

“Sure.”

She didn’t want the skill to have that option.

Emily kind of hated this skill above others. Lovely Eyes had a possible future usage of charming more than one person or creature at the same time, like a area crowd control. If he evolved the skill to higher tiers, who would be able to stop him charming other women then?

At least she imagined in this basic logic.

But whether Emily liked it or not, he wanted the skill to become an area effect ability. Not for romance obviously. An AOE charm skill would be insanely useful against groups of enemies. Make them hesitate for two or probably longer seconds and they could wipe the whole armies before they recovered.

But the Evolution League would need to go up first. One target at a time was basically useless in a real fight unless he was dueling a boss monster.

Still broken if I ever figure it out though. An area control charm skill… the possibilities are wild.

They tried the skill a few more times and stopped when an elf walked closer to their table to go toilet.

Emily seemed to enjoy the testing more than she admitted or her hate of it.

She liked having his full attention aimed directly at her with magical intensity while they ate dessert in the festival atmosphere. Couples around them were drinking wine and laughing. Emily’s hand found his under the table.

“My parents never had a moment like this.” she said quietly. “Not one that I remember.”

Eren squeezed her hand but didn’t say anything. Sometimes the best response was silence and some sneaky touches under the table.

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