Noren’s Innovation and Iron Hand

“Sister, I want to eat ‘mantou’ (TL Note: A type of fluffy, white steamed bun, a staple in Chinese cuisine),” Frey said, swallowing hard as he watched Noren perform inverted sit-ups, hanging upside down from a tree branch.

“If you want one, go sift the flour yourself,” she replied casually, her core, legs, and back muscles straining, sweat flicking into the air from stray strands of hair.

At her words, Frey trotted off eagerly.

‘What did he just say? Never mind. One, two, three, four…’ Noren wiped the sweat from her forehead, gazing at Frey running through the inverted world before resuming her exercise.

Only when her muscles began to ache and swell slightly did she stop, flipping to sit on the branch before leaping down.

She untied her hair, shaking out her golden locks, then loosened the belt cinched around her waist, holding the edge of her top and shaking it with low amplitude and high frequency.

A gentle breeze whisked away the heat from her skin as her index finger traced over her defined abs. Noren let out a long, deep sigh.

‘These things are too big; I still think a style that can be held with one hand is best, without any ties. If only medieval times had bras or sports tops.’

‘Hmm? A bra?’

“Ah! How could I forget the bloodstone? The bloodstone’s air membrane is infinitely mutable; conjuring one or two bras would be effortless!” she exclaimed, slapping her forehead.

Noren possessed an exceptionally strong drive for action. Immediately, she reached into her clothes, fumbling around before pulling out the long binding cloth.

With the oppressive sensation gone, her two ‘friends’ finally saw the light of day. However, they both suffered from a congenital condition: their ‘heads’ were sunken deep within their bodies, and only by prying apart the collarbones near their necks could their ‘heads’ barely be revealed.

Consequently, under normal circumstances, there was no need to fear the bloodstone air membrane touching sensitive areas. With a thought, the bloodstone swelled a transparent air membrane, which then split into two tendrils from the middle, shifting forms several times before finally molding to Noren’s body contours.

“Ooh~ chilly,” Noren inhaled lightly. The coolness of the bloodstone air membrane caused her shoulder muscles to tense, and her shoulder blades unconsciously squeezed against her spine.

After an initial adjustment, she gently bounced. The air membrane was suitably taut, its surface slick, showing no signs of sagging.

Kicking, horse stance punches, somersaults, sweeping leg kicks… her balance remained excellent.

Excited, she picked up the bloodstone on her silver necklace and kissed it. “*Pop*! Excellent. Though they’re naturally quite firm, they’re still annoying when I’m moving around. Now I don’t have to worry. It’s just that the air membrane connecting to the bloodstone makes it look a bit like a bikini.”

Humming a tune and stepping with Maguire dance steps, much like humanity liberated their hands overnight, Noren, too, had lifted the heavy burden of the Alps.

****

The sun, having subdued Fenrir’s fierce head, settled down for its afternoon slumber.

The warm fire, breathing with the star’s gentle rhythm, slowly roasted the earth, driving away the damp chill that lingered in the soil from winter.

Perhaps the cold had been baked into droplets of water, clinging to Tolke’s face.

He panted heavily, a wooden stick and shield clutched tightly in his hands. Though they had only fought for a few minutes, his stamina was rapidly depleting.

“Are you up to it, Mr. Coward? If not, I’m leaving! Cow-ard-Tol-ke!” Noren teased, gripping her wooden staff, her other hand idly twisting a strand of hair.

At her mockery, Tolke roared and charged, swinging his club.

Noren sighed softly; it seemed Tolke’s talent did not lie in close combat. In her vision, his wooden club seemed to plunge into a swamp of air, everything falling into a state of sluggishness—a capability granted to her by exceptional dynamic vision and neural reflexes.

From Tolke’s perspective, she had subdued him with a single disarming combo, all in a fleeting instant.

Noren moved the stick away from where it hovered near his head; striking him would break the stick, and the boy would be bedridden for at least a month.

The boy slumped to the ground, deflated, his chest heaving irregularly. “You’re too strong, Noren. I can’t find any opening at all. Even with a shield, you can kick me away. Training with you is just taking a beating.”

‘What else? Am I not allowed to have some fun while being an unpaid sparring partner?’ Noren thought, rolling her eyes.

“Get up. Time for archery practice.” She gave the lazy boy a kick, then precisely tossed her wooden staff into a barrel thirty feet away.

Tolke, truly a son of the Northmen, was full of vigor (TL Note: A Chinese slang term, ‘damanle jixue,’ referring to being highly energized or pumped up) again after merely lying down for a moment.

****

The young mistress of night, somewhat irate, tugged at the sun’s ear across the heavens, painting half the sky in fiery crimson and the other in a deepening blue shroud.

Tolke was counting arrows, while Noren sat on a tree stump, tossing pebbles at a target carved into a tree.

“Tolke is truly strange. No matter how much he trains in close combat, he makes no progress. Yet, he’s a natural at archery, especially his accuracy, tsk!” Noren envied such innate talent and decided to tease Tolke.

She tossed a pebble with her left hand, then immediately threw another with her right. The two collided in mid-air, and the first pebble ricocheted off Tolke’s forehead.

“Hiss~” The boy yelped, scattering arrows everywhere, and rubbed his aching forehead. “Ow, what was that for?”

The girl felt her grin stretch almost to her scalp. The boy, seeing the cheerfully smiling golden-haired girl, felt his anger instantly dissipate and could only force a reluctant smile, rubbing his nose.

Watching the teased boy, an electric current seemed to flash through her mind. She suddenly remembered her younger brother, Frey, had come looking for her, apparently needing her to do something.

‘Alright. I’ll go back and see. It’s almost time for dinner anyway.’

****

After walking along the hard-packed dirt road for a short while, Noren spotted the only two-story building in the village: the blacksmith’s cottage, perched atop a small hill.

The blacksmith’s cottage measured approximately one hundred seventy feet in circumference, thirty feet wide, and fifty-four feet long, standing twenty feet tall with its roof. It was a two-story structure, supported internally by wooden beams and built externally with bricks. Its four exterior walls were whitewashed with lime plaster, and it featured a wooden plank roof.

The blacksmith’s cottage comprised a great hall, a kitchen, three bedrooms, a bathroom, and an underground storage cellar.

The great hall contained a hearth. Its floor was tamped earth covered with stone slabs, and a long wooden table stood in the center. A temporary bed had also been laid out nearby—set up for Noren when she was ill, as the hearth offered more warmth than the iron brazier in the bedrooms. Of the three bedrooms, two were on the second floor, and one was on the ground floor, situated behind the great hall. Noren and Frey resided on the second floor, while Svein slept in the large bedroom on the ground floor. The bathroom was on the left, and the kitchen and cellar were on the right, facing the outer door. The cellar held several barrels of red wine, two to three years aged, and only a single barrel of freshly brewed ale, delivered by villagers a few days prior. For some reason, modern ale had a very short shelf life. Besides alcohol, the cellar was almost entirely filled with wheat, barley, rye, salt blocks, smoked and pickled fish, smoked and cured meats, various vegetables and fruits, and a good deal of stinky cheese. Honey and sugar pots, however, were locked away in the kitchen cupboard.

The construction of this cottage had consumed half of the blacksmith’s life savings. It was said that all the gold coins spent on building the house were collected by the Mayor of Kroměříž, simply because they were Roman gold coins. (In this book, emperors of Central Europe and Constantinople are both referred to as Roman emperors, viewed as two co-ruling emperors of the Christian world.) These coins were even imprinted with a devout Christian, who, according to the blacksmith, had once slaughtered and conquered a certain people, earning him the moniker “The Butcher.”

Upon her return to the blacksmith’s cottage, Frey was still sifting flour in the yard. What passed through the mill was coarse, bran-filled flour. Bakers could use this bran-flour, mixed with some sawdust, to make indigestible black bread; more unscrupulous bakeries might even mix in small pebbles.

Unlike the mechanical processing of Terra after the future Industrial Revolution, medieval stone mills produced wheat, rye, and barley flours that were not very fine. Obtaining fine flour required passing it through many sieves, a labor-intensive process. Industrial Revolution flour mills, in contrast, could process large quantities of fine flour in a short time by placing pulverized wheat and bran onto high-speed vibrating fine-mesh screens.

This was precisely why Noren had Frey sift the flour. Even if she craved steamed buns and wanted her to make them, she wanted to eat large, pristine white steamed buns, soft and fermented, not dense, unleavened lumps filled with bran.

Watching Frey sift the flour with tireless enthusiasm, she sighed. “Why is making *mantou* so troublesome in the Middle Ages? Sifting flour, a hundred rounds of kneading, a day of fermenting, then steaming the buns. Thankfully, the steamer baskets are already woven. If only preservation methods were better, keeping some old starter dough would prevent us from having to make new starter every time.”

Two bags lay before Frey: one coarse, one fine. Noren walked over and lifted a bag, weighing it. ‘Good efficiency. Half a bag sifted. Given the appetites of three big eaters, it should all be consumed.’

‘But…’ The thought of kneading made Noren’s arms ache. Last time, on a whim to show them some great Chinese cuisine, she was forced to knead dough day and night for five days. Even with her iron-tough body this lifetime, she had almost given out, though the blacksmith, delighted, had rewarded her with over a dozen gold coins.

At this memory, Noren stopped Frey from continuing to sift flour. She picked up the coarse bag of flour, tossed it into the warehouse, and told Frey, “Go fetch water and fill that barrel. I’ll start kneading tomorrow.”

“Huh? Then we won’t eat until the day after tomorrow. Why do I have to pour water into *that* barrel? It’s full of charcoal, stones, and sand,” Frey grumbled unwillingly.

“Go now!” She felt her blood pressure rise. Of course, kneading required clean water, even if the upstream water wouldn’t kill them.

For the not-so-particular Northmen, she was too lazy to explain; a firm command was all that was needed.

‘You want to eat my food, yet you have so many complaints. Perhaps I don’t need this brother after all.’ Noren rubbed her temples, her surging anger feeling like a prelude to something more.

After Frey departed with the bucket, the slaves, like rats lurking in the shadows, began to emerge. They gathered before Noren, staring at her with wide eyes.

Noren’s recently extinguished anger flared up again.

“Haven’t been fed again, have you? Fine. What trick shall we practice today?”

“A suplex? We practiced that last time.”

“A shoot takedown? Mediocre.”

“Let’s go with an over-the-shoulder throw.”

****

As dusk began to settle, the last vestiges of sunlight lingered in the sky, and the world seemed draped in a dark blue curtain. Frey slowly made his way back with the water.

The moment he set down the bucket, a dark shadow lunged forward. The world spun, and he instantly lost consciousness.

“Oops~ I think I used too much force,” the girl said, sticking out her tongue and tapping her head. She then turned to look at the slaves huddled together, heartily eating.

The slaves looked up at the sky, then, with a tacit understanding, turned their backs.