Chapter 87 – Give me 4 hours to sharpen an axe, I’ll spend 3 flattening the whetstone.

With our first loss actualised it was necessary for me to pick contests with a high probability of success. It was a bad idea to pick anything that required teams larger than three, since an unlucky allocation of teammates could result in our loss. In the baseball match, we were unlucky to have Wembley on the enemy team. If he was on our team, we would have won.

Leaving things to chance was a poor strategy. I perused the leaflet of all the events and wondered which would be best. While I did so, Newmill bought food from the various stalls and Penrin was squeezing two of those grip-strengthener thingies in her hands.

“Want some candy floss?” Newmill offered with his cheeks already full of some.

“No thanks,” I replied. A childish treat like that did not suit my fancy. “But I’ll have the outer coating of a toffee apple if you can find that.”

The prince did not follow. “What do you mean by just the outer coating?”

I didn’t know how to explain my request more than that. “I just want the toffee part of a toffee apple.”

Newmill thought long and hard but still could not fathom my request. “So you want toffee, right?”

I waved him off. “Forget it.”

The prince was unhappy with his dismissal. He wanted to find what I wanted, but it just didn’t exist. Penrin came into the conversation and said, “Just buy a normal toffee apple. Yarm can eat the outer coating, and I’ll eat the inner apple.” It peeved me that such a suggestion had me feeling like a boy whose mother offered to eat the vegetables he didn’t like.

Newmill became shy and stuttered, “W—wouldn’t that be an indirect kiss?”

Penrin and I looked at him disapprovingly and realised that despite it all, he was still the most childish among our trio. I said, “You should be more worried about it being unhygienic. Diseases can be spread that way.”

Penrin shrugged and said, “I’m not too worried about that. I’m sure you’re uninfected because my mother taught me that idiots can’t get sick.”

I wanted to protest such an accusation but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the last time I was ill. And if it were true, would that mean I was upping my chances of infection by levelling Mind? No, that was surely superstition.

With our treats bought and consumed, we passed by a rather peculiar contest. Several students were lined up on a track. Among their number I saw Eppy, the club president of the study mages.

Each of the students were holding a comically large spoon with a large egg upon it. The eggs all had different colours and patterns, and were hefty enough that the students needed both arms to hold up their spoons.

“Ooh, it’s the dragon-egg-and-spoon race,” said Newmill.

It interested me how this world was so similar yet so different to Earth. Egg-and-spoon races reminded me of my childhood, but something concerned me. “Are dragon eggs not valuable?” I asked. It seemed that they should have been. I presumed dragons to be rare creatures. “Why are they being wasted on a race like this?”

“They’re fake,” explained Penrin. “The school nursery has kids draw the patterns on metal casings that are shaped to look like eggs. Because they’re made of metal, they have the same weight as regular dragon eggs”

That was certainly interesting. It seemed that the rules were just as a normal egg-and-spoon race on Earth. Participants had to run to the finish line without dropping their eggs. Of course, they were not allowed to touch the eggs and needed to balance them on their spoons. The extra weight added an extra difficulty.

Many members of the audience were cheering on their favourites, so I decided to join in. “Do your best, big sister,” I shouted to Eppy.

“You have a sister?” Newmill and Penrin said in surprise.

Eppy noticed my encouragement and so gave me a wink and a smile.

The coordinator for the event shouted for everyone to get in position. She raised an air pistol into the air and said, “Ready, set, go!” The pistol fired and the students began to slowly run at a pace that was below walking speed.

Though the spoons were large, the eggs were larger. With each step, the eggs would wobble as the students moved. There wasn’t enough surface area on the spoon to allow safe passage at a good speed.

Slowly, all the students inched forwards. All except one. Eppy stayed at the starting line and did not move.

“What’s this?” an announcer said. “It seems the club president of the Mages Society is not moving. Perhaps she is giving the other students a head start. What boldness!”

The student who was first place dropped their dragon egg. It landed on the ground with a thud, and they removed themselves from the field. This caused the other students to worry and slow their paces even further.

Eppy intook a huge breath of air and breathed fire onto the egg. While she stood still, flames came from her mouth and heated the dragon egg.

“What’s going on here?” asked the announcer. “The club president has decided to heat up her own egg. What in the world is she thinking?”

Penrin tapped my shoulder and posed the question to me. “Why is she doing that?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

Newmill suggested, “Maybe she’s trying to heat up the egg so the dragon inside hatches?”

His absurd guess made me laugh a little and put a small smile on Penrin’s face.

The other students had already reached the halfway point on the racetrack, but Eppy was still directing flames from her mouth to the egg.

The announcer was focused on the three students at the front who were neck and neck and so did not focus too much on Eppy.

“She kind of resembles a dragon herself with how she’s breathing fire like that,” an audience member commented.

When the forerunners were 75% of the way through the race, Eppy started moving. However, her movement wasn’t cautious at all. She broke into a full sprint. Her legs moved like lightning.

“How is she doing that without dropping the egg?” asked Penrin.

Eppy was running without a single thought for the egg’s safety. It was as if she knew it wouldn’t fall.

I clapped my hands together. “Oh!” I said. “Since the egg is made out of metal, she welded it to the spoon so she doesn’t have to worry about it falling.”

“Look at this, everyone!” said the announcer. “The club president is quickly gaining on the competition! How can she run so fast while balancing the egg?”

The crowd cheered as she approached the forerunners. When the person in 1st place was 90% of the way through the track, Eppy overtook them and became the victor.

Audience members discussed what just happened with excitement. The announcer went wild and called Eppy the dark horse who caused an upset. The event coordinator stamped a green circle on her forearm. With that, she had three wins. Supposedly, two of the people in the race were her teammates who also earned a win off of Eppy’s efforts.

“Your big sister is amazing, Yarm,” said Newmill. “What an inventive method to win.”

Penrin nodded. “I understand why she’s a study mage. She has the smarts to do things her own way.”

I was as impressed as everyone else. Not only could she make fire hot enough to weld metal, but she also had the brains to formulate the plan, and the level-headedness to not panic while the other participants got ahead. “In my world a famous man named Lincoln once said that if he had 6 hours to cut down a tree, he would spend the first 4 sharpening the axe.” Eppy was the shining example of that notion.

Scratching her head, Penrin said, “That seems like far too long of a time to sharpen an axe. Even the most chipped axe would need 1 hour at max. This Lincoln man seems to be poor at time management.”

Newmill tapped his fingers together and said, “Maybe he’s just really bad at sharpening things?”

I groaned. “Come on, you lot, it’s the sentiment that counts.”