3 Master’s Memento

Charlie can no longer remember the last time since his master visited. How many hundreds of weeks ago it was, Charlie can no longer keep count.

Cheering himself up, he went on his daily life as usual - just like when his master was still around. He'd water the plants and harvest fruits when they are ripe. Some of his harvests will be processed for food while others become alchemy materials.

The river remained crystal clear and the marine life abundant. Perhaps it was due to this space's magic but the water has never become polluted. Where it flows from or flows to is unknown even to his master and Charlie no longer cared.

The magical beasts and farm animals remained healthy. Some of them were butchered to become food, though. Of course, Charlie made sure to breed them well to ensure a steady supply of meat. He knows that he can't live on vegetables alone, so he had studied up on breeding animals.

As for potions, he continued making them, even though his master would never come back to take them out and sell them. However, he did slow down in making them. He already had a large pile of potions in the storage room. If he made even more, he won't have anymore place to put them as he can't dispose them outside of the space.

Of course, not making potions means not using his mana, so Charlie found more advanced potions to make. Advanced potions require high amounts of mana to create so they're the perfect product to make if he wants to deplete his mana reservoir enough to not endanger his life.

Charlie kept himself busy day in and day out. Despite his busyness though, he can't help himself from feeling lonely. Being the only one in the space, he had no one to talk to. Nowadays, he finds that he's talking to himself more often. In some cases, he'd talk to the animals in the stable, just that he doesn't really get a response from them.

However, things took a sudden pleasant turn for Charlie one day.

During his daily cleaning routine, he accidentally stumbled into one of the drawers where he kept the jade pendant his master left him. Although he knows that he'll just be sad when he sees the pendant as it reminds him of his master, he can't help but pick it up and gaze at with a faraway look in his eyes. When he came to himself, he decided that he'd just wear the pendant as it served as his master's memento. He then carried on to cleaning the entire room.

Once he was done with the room, he proceeded to go upstairs. The house has two floors, with the entire second floor dedicated to the books that his master brought him.

Looking at the several rows of books in front of him, Charlie decided to dust off all the books one by one. He took a ladder and started at the topmost shelf of the first row. He sat at the top and was surprised to see a thick layer of dust there.

"How long has it been since I last cleaned this place up?" Charlie was baffled.

He picked up a rag and started dusting off the books. However, it seems that Charlie underestimated the dustiness of the shelf. He felt like his nose has slowly started to become irritated, he can't hold back a sneeze.

"Haaa.. haaa… haacho!"

Charlie let out a powerful sneeze. It was then that he felt himself lose balance from where he was sitting. He tried to grasp the shelf in front of him but his grip slipped because of sweat. In that split second, he knew that he'll definitely fall and get hurt, so he closed his eyes and felt his head hit the floor first.

Gritting his teeth, Charlie endured the pain on both his head and body. He can't help but wince in pain. Despite that, perhaps his body is just too resilient so he can still retain his consciousness despite hitting his head. Enduring the dizziness that was slowly taking over him, he slowly picked himself up from the floor.

"What's this?" Charlie unconsciously asked when he felt something wet on his forehead as he tried to feel it for bumps. When he looked at his hand, he saw that it was blood.

"I'm bleeding," Without a trace of panic, Charlie touched the wound again as if trying to gauge how severe the bleeding is, "I need to stop the bleeding first then go downstairs for some healing potion."

Realizing that he was more injured than expected, the reality that he might have died started to sink in. Charlie felt wronged, making his eyes start to water. He was scared, and it didn't help that there was no one around to comfort him.

Charlie sniffed and wiped the tears that pooled in his eyes. He looked around to find something to stop the bleeding, but he can only see a dirty rag. Thus, he opted to take his shirt off since it looks cleaner than the rag he just used to dust the shelf earlier.

By some stroke of luck, a small amount of blood from Charlie's knuckles got smeared on the pendant as he was taking his clothes off. Just as he was applying pressure on the wound, he was shocked when the pendant broke into pieces.

"W-wha-?!"