The Rebirth of Evelyn Knox

As the old lady and Cecilia continued to argue back and forth, Evelyn couldn't help but chuckle at their interaction. If she hadn't actually been here in person, Cecilia's words wouldn't help her case at all. And if this is how she usually talked… no wonder the old lady didn't believe her.

The old lady finally seemed to have had enough, and raised her hands in surrender. "Alright, fine, I get it. You definitely have lots of friends. Now stop wasting my time and tell me what you're here for, will you?"

The ash blonde decided to ignore the old lady's teasing and patted Bree's head. "Granny, this is the girl who needs some new clothes. Do you have the time to do it now, or should we come back later?"

The old lady hummed in thought for a while before nodding. "Well, I planned to take the day off to rest, but since you're already here, I might as well move these rusty joints of mine a little, ahaha. And… Evelyn, was it? I have to thank you for being friends with this lonely little soul. How about this… not only the little girl, I'll make some clothes for you as well."

Evelyn smiled, somewhat embarrassed. "Um, thank you."

She had only intended to purchase some clothes, but somehow Cecilia had dragged her to a place where selling items to the customers was also a form of favor. Still, Evelyn wouldn't complain, as long as the quality of the products met her expectations it might actually be better this way.

Cecilia looked shocked. "Wow, granny, I didn't know you could also be generous! I thought I would have to pester you just to get one set, but you actually agreed to make two? How about making one for me as well, while you're at it?"

The old lady rolled her eyes. "Dream on, little girl… Write down your name on the waitlist, and wait until next Thursday."

Cecilia pouted. "Eh? Didn't you say you were going to make these because of me? How come I myself don't get anything?"

The hunched back old lady sighed. "I was thanking her for being your friend because it means you'll pester me less, you brat! Now let me get back to work, or I'm gonna hang you upside down from the ceiling again."

Cecilia immediately snapped her mouth shut.

Evelyn already knew that the old lady had to be quite strong. Although she didn't know exactly what the level of this supposed seamstress was, she had to be considerably stronger than Evelyn for her probe skill to not work. 

How well that translated into her skill in making clothes remained to be seen, however.

The old lady led her to a row of shelves containing bolts of cloth that varied in both material and color. "You can pick whichever one you like, but don't take too long."

Evelyn's eyes sifted through the bolts of clothing for a while before she decided on a reddish orange fabric that would probably look really cute on Bree. The material was neither too silky nor coarse, and should be quite comfortable on the skin too.

She did use her probe skill on the fabric itself, and verified that the special property didn't come from the material itself. 'So that means she has them go through some process to imbue them with those stats, right? Although I'll probably learn this stuff in the academy later, it'll be great if I can watch…'

"Oh, Riverdale cotton, huh, good choice…" The old lady nodded and took out the roll of fabric that the pink haired girl had picked and left for what Evelyn assumed was her workshop deeper inside the shop.

Evelyn couldn't help but be a little confused. "Um, Cecilia, she won't take too long, right? Are we supposed to wait here?"

Cecilia smirked. "Of course not. Why don't we go watch her work? I bet you'll find it interesting too."

The pink haired girl blinked, surprised. "Won't it bother her while working? I don't wanna get scolded."

The ash blonde giggled. "Nah, I do it all the time whenever I'm here. She doesn't care. And you can even learn a trick or two, if you look close enough."

Evelyn couldn't really help her curiosity in the end, and decided that since she had nothing better to do, she might as well go and see how these special clothes were made.

After going past the shop's inner door to enter the 'workshop', they saw that the old lady had already cut out the fabric into smaller pieces, and only the sewing process was left.

She didn't use normal thread though, instead, there was a pot of silvery liquid beside her workbench into which she poured her spirit power. Long and thin silvery threads extended from within the pot, and the old lady motioned with her hands to weave them through the clothing seamlessly.

Evelyn was quite curious about what the material was, but going by how intricate and fragile the spirit threads looked, the pink haired girl was sure that trying to use her probe to find out would be a bad idea. What if she used tried to do it and inadvertently interrupted the process, thus alarming the old lady? It just wasn't worth it.

But there was no harm in asking her friend. "Do you know what that thing is called?"

Although the pink haired girl hadn't actually been expecting an answer, surprisingly enough, her friend actually nodded. "Un, it's silver lion blood. Very good for imbuing."

Evelyn couldn't help but be slightly surprised, because it looked more like molten metal than blood. "Is that so? I thought it was silver in liquid form…"

Cecilia giggled. "No, silly, the non-living things that can hold spirit power long enough for the imbuement process are all super expensive. Even though Granny Genie can probably make them, it's not something to casually make on a whim. For regular clothes, it's much cheaper to use beast blood of a suitable grade."

The pink haired girl nodded. She thought it must be similar to how although the precious metals had the highest conductivity, it wasn't always the best idea to use them everywhere. Sometimes sturdier and cheaper alternatives were the better choice. "Oh… makes sense, I guess."

Cecilia smirked as she leaned in closer to Evelyn to whisper in her ear. "Oh yeah, these silver lions are actually considered 'livestock' by the academy, you know? Our academy even rears them in a specialized area. I was shocked when I first saw it during the beast taming class, you know? They look so ferocious, but they're just like cows!"

Evelyn couldn't help but be slightly curious. "Isn't there a spirit beast called 'Golden Lion', though? Are those two somehow related?"

The ash blonde shrugged. "Who knows? But you shouldn't be too careless around them when you go to the beast taming class, because they CAN bite your head off, if you let them."

Evelyn tilted her head. "Do you mean that literally, or is it like 'it will hurt a lot if they bite you'?"

Cecilia smiled grimly. "Let me just say this… they're six feet tall, and they stand on four legs. They look ferocious, but act gentle to lull you into a false sense of security after the initial disbelief passes. And when you least expect it, CHOMP, your head is gone! Although no student has ever died from their bites during class because of the professors, someone always ends up getting humiliated every year!"

Evelyn chuckled. "Got it. I'll be careful."

They continued to focus on observing the 'seamstress' weave the thin threads of silver lion's blood through the pieces of fabric for the next few minutes. 

Evelyn thought it must require very precise control over spirit power. It was quite similar to the spirit rope creation trick she had learned on her own, but fine tuned a hundred times over.

It wasn't like she could learn anything from just observing it once, though. Except maybe the fact that spirit power can indeed be manipulated without direct contact with the body.

But even that wasn't a guarantee, because the old lady could also be forming a spirit power thread so thin that she couldn't even see it to connect the visible and thicker threads to her hands.

Although the process took a while, compared to more than an hour of wait she had been expecting, the old lady was still remarkably fast, finishing it in barely fifteen minutes. 

At the end of it, a beautiful reddish orange sundress lay on the table. Bree was already staring at it starry eyed, knowing that it was for her from their conversation.

Evelyn hadn't noticed before, but upon a closer look she realized that whatever technique the old lady used directly weaved the cloth threads together to join them. Not only did it give the clothing a cleaner look, it also improved its overall resilience against pulling and stretching.

And as Cecilia had already told her, this also confirmed that the silver lion's blood wasn't actually there to connect the cloth despite being used like a thread, but for putting the 'special properties' that she had seen before.

The old lady handed over the freshly made sundress to an excited Bree, who immediately hugged it close to her chest, making the elderly seamstress chuckle. "Well… I made the one for the little girl as you wanted. Now—"

A series of loud knocks ended up interrupting the old lady mid sentence, and as she got up and stormed to the gate in annoyance, Evelyn couldn't help but pity the unlucky soul on the other side.