Nati

I woke up determined.

I spent here an entire week but my adventure hasn't started. I didn't receive overpowered abilities or get a quest to slay dragons, but I wanted to do something that elevated this tribe above the rest. I just haven't found out how. If I watched more DIY instead of v-tubers and smithing or was better at cooking and gardening... But no easy method came to mind.

I played RPGs in my past life, but reality seemed different when I had no stats to look at, and no dice to roll. If I wanted to do something, I had to make it happen. Nobody gave hints, no limited options to pick from, I had to use my brain, and the body lent by the Goddess.

Sure, I knew about fertilizers, or how wireless radios worked, but even if I had all the tools, I couldn't magically recreate them in this world. My knowledge was too shallow for that.

This world lacked the technologies most of my skills built upon since I went to the Technical University to learn programming. Well, I fell to my death halfway through my first day so I didn't earn a master's degree anyway. I took inventory of what this world had, and what I could do with it but found nothing.

I had theoretical knowledge to propel this world into the Industrial Revolution era, I knew how steam engines worked, but couldn't build one. What tools and materials did I need to make a watertight piston? Could the blacksmith make one? Were the materials even invented yet? Every time a bright idea came up I realized, it was impossible.

But I wasn't ready to give up. Mabel supported me emotionally, she started her day by braiding my hair and then dragged me along to do some handiwork. I got a hairbrush made of wood, and she ended the day by undoing all that hair to brush it out carefully.

It felt nice, even if I was some kind of a doll for her, but since I spent the last two days with the chieftain to learn about the tribe and the world's history, she couldn't get her fill. She was at my door, grinning with her tusks visible.

"Hey Mabel, is there something you wish you had?" I asked her, as she started the braiding ritual. She took a long time to think.

"I don't know..." She always eagerly answered my questions, but this time I surprised her. "I'm free, have a tribe and lots to eat. A place to sleep, friends... I have everything."

Her sweet answer made me smile, but it didn't help.

"What do you usually play?" I interviewed her further.

"We have carved figurines or play pretend, hide and seek, or tag." She listed. "Sometimes we gather herbs or swim in the lake, but only with escorts because it's dangerous."

"How about ball games?" I asked her when she finished one side.

"Ball games?" She sounded confused. "What are those?"

"Anything. Football, volleyball, dodgeball..." I listed a few.

"Wh-what is a ball?" She asked, dropping my hair completely.

"Oh... I found my quest." Finally, something I could do and this world lacked. Once she finished my braids, I set out to find materials. Sewing fabrics together to stuff them with scraps could work, but I figured they'd be too soft and heavy. Leather came to mind, the orcs always carried around waterskins, which was relatively close to what I imagined.

A watertight shape filled with compressed air. I needed a pump, but the tribe didn't have one.

"A bellow? No, but I could use one for my bloomery." The blacksmith crushed my dreams. "Let me know if you made one."

I watched blacksmithing videos where they had something to blast air into the furnaces. Watching was an understatement, I got addicted to them at some point, but I was out of luck. Making a bellow was within my capabilities and needed the same materials as my ball.

"How do you prevent your waterskins from leaking?" I surprised the orcs in the mess hall with my questions. They should have gotten used to me asking the weirdest things already.

"We just sew the pieces together tight, and seal the gaps with wax." One of the women said, offering their help. I got two boards of wood and cut the bellow's parts, then used deer hide and my volunteers to sew it together like an accordion.

"I'll have these two pieces of wood hinge up and down and pump the air trapped in between them through this stalk of reed." I had to provide simple explanations. They never heard about things that were obvious to me, but the same was true the other way around. "I need them covered with this leather so the air only goes one direction. It has to be airtight, flexible, but strong enough to withstand pressure."

They were fast with the needles, even though those big, forged things seemed unwieldy. They sealed the seams, and I had a classic bellow-shaped object in no time flat. It sucked the air in through the reed nozzle though, as I forgot to build a valve into it.

The simplest method was to punch a hole into the top piece and cover it with a small leather scrap. It moved out of the way when I wanted to fill it with air and clogged up the hole when I compressed my pump, like a reed valve. Of course, I assembled it backward on my first try, so it was unable to suck in any air at all.

The kids around us laughed, but a few minutes later I fixed the thing and blew air at them to test it out. They were already entertained, and the best was yet to come.

"All right. Now I need a perfectly round waterskin, and we will fill it up with air." I gave the instructions, and the women sewed at lightning speed. The participants were all excited. "I want to hide the seams on the inside if possible."

It complicated things, but my helpers handled them easily. They cut out the ball from a single piece, sewed normally then turned it inside out through, finishing through the small hole left for the bellow to blow the air in. They left enough excess material to tie it shut like a balloon and wax sealed the gaps. It wasn't perfect but it was a ball regardless.

Once they addressed the leaks, it became a bit heavy and a little soft, but after some tweaks, I had an almost round, football-sized plaything at my disposal, and the only thing left was something I was good at. Theory.

"All right. These will be our gates, and these lines will be the field's edges." I started. I set up the game in the courtyard between the houses. "Form two teams with equal numbers and get this ball into the opponent's gate. Each team will have a player that tries to deflect it, but nobody else can touch it by hand."

"What? Then how are we supposed to take it there?" Mabel asked, barely able to contain her excitement.

"You kick it." I demonstrated. The ball I made couldn't pass a FIFA inspection, but it behaved as expected. I missed the gate, but the kids cheered regardless. "Okay, no kicking or punching each other though."

What ensured was the first official soccer championship in the tribe's history. I assumed the role of the referee and tried to enforce the rules I was aware of. I wasn't a big football enthusiast in my previous life, but it was something I could teach easily enough. Early on I had to stop them often since they instantly understood the part where the ball had to be taken into the opposing gates, but the less important rules got ignored.

"No, stop switching places, only one can touch the ball with hands." And things like. "The ball is out, the opposing team can throw it in. No, with your hand this time, even if you're not the gatekeeper."

Trivialities, like no biting or wrestling, let alone the ban on weapons were hard to enforce. They were disappointed I wouldn't let them use brute force, orcs being orcs, but quickly got the hang of it. It wasn't a question if they enjoyed themselves.

By the time the hunters returned, we had at least four teams competing in pairs in front of spectators. They even forgot about lunch, but that played to my advantage.

"Okay, whoever wins this match gets to eat their favorite food, and the loser team has to prepare it," I claimed, already starving. I let them play for a little longer, but once my stomach became louder than the crowd's cheers I announced a winner.

They were also hungry, but while waiting for the losers to finish preparations, hunters and other adults demanded a demonstration of the new game. It quickly became popular, the first game I could think of and already wrecked my brain to remember all the others too.

"You can play volleyball or dodgeball too," I explained during lunch. "I don't think basketball would work... We'd need harder ground and some other props too. But tennis or baseball could, with smaller balls."

This almost led to a civil war when everyone wanted to play different games with our single ball. The tribe ran out of hides in the blink of an eye, and the women helping me worked overtime to meet the demand. They made balls in three different sizes, as long as they had a single usable leather scrap.

"We have to set up a tannery." The hunters who couldn't secure a ball demanded. "We'll hunt game with quality hide, so make us the best ones."

"Tanning the skin takes about a year," Charlotte noted, arriving at the scene to calm things down. "And it smells terrible, would ruin the stream and the lake further down."

"Then we must trade with the beastman tribe on the other side of the old capital." The hunters wouldn't give up. Their leader, who knocked me out when I arrived was the loudest. "We exchange meat and raw hides, and take home all the leather."

"I need that bellow too, make me a bigger one." The blacksmith begged. "I will make you better needles if I can heat my bloomery faster."

"Oh, iron could be one more thing to trade with." The orcs cheered. "I found plenty of that black sand in the marshes."

The village sure got noisier than usual. I felt rather proud about it too. While I wasn't doing the heavy lifting, I brought my ideas to the table and finally made something for them. I did not expect it to be this successful, but it looked like the tribe's GDP doubled in a single day...