Rino did not need to go too far for materials to craft those shoes for his sweet feet. Everything was in that storage pit, so he decided to relax a little in his bath.

Carrying the water from the reservoir took a bit of work, but Rino managed. However, washing the dirtied clothes and letting them dry was a pain. Rino had to risk getting burned by the sun a little to toss them onto a drying line he tied between two earth pillars.

If there was something Rino understood from that quick laundry run, it was how soul fire wasn’t a real fire. Unlike fire magic, soul fire did not burn physical objects. In fact, other life forms were not affected. It was a curse for undead like him, and that became annoying. He needed to learn a little more about liches and their dark arts to work around this stupid restriction. It was getting very annoying, especially when Rino was low on mana. For a moment, he thought the soul fire might kill him for real if his regeneration ability was reliant on mana. Thankfully, the purple fire stopped the moment he got out of the sun.

As Rino soaked in his tub, he thought about the design he wanted for these shoes. It would be durable enough to last him for a while, so Rino wanted something practical but befitting of the dark lord. What would his shadow subordinates say if they saw their lord wearing stupid flip flops? It was unbecoming even if flip flops were comfortable and very durable. The sound that came with wearing flip flops did not feel intimidating enough.

“I actually have nice feet,” Rino mused.

The ivory white bones floated a little above the water’s surface, and Rino wriggled each toe individually, marvelling at how graceful they were. He briefly wondered if they could move independently like fingers and became impressed when his toes moved in a familiar motion like what his fingers would have done for a piano piece he played in his previous life.

The Gods above became speechless as Rino wondered what else he could make his feet do. If Rino’s underlings knew about his odd character, they might lose all fear and respect they had for this man. Phil turned to Ace and asked why he was back so quickly without even telling Rino goodbye.

“I had to restore his mana, using prayers to change the odds, didn’t I?” the God of Prayers quickly defended himself.

Stephanie merely smirked knowingly. Nobody pointed out how Ace was blushing, but it was obvious the God turned very worried about the chosen one when Rino went past his limits. It wasn’t really the goblin cave that helped Rino recover his mana to a safe level. It was ‘Noir’ who did that and left after Ace exhausted his incarnate’s body. The resentment energy left in the cave did not all come from the goblins. Most of that was remnants of Noir’s dark magic transfer.

To redirect everyone’s focus, Ace looked at Stephanie and asked if she should start preparing for a fated meeting event.

“What?” the Goddess wasn’t expecting to be the centre of the discussion and blinked. What did she miss?

“We did not just pull his soul over to this world,” Ace reminded. “Apart from building a kingdom, he has to repopulate it and grow our prayers for divinity promotion. Where’s your candidate?”

Ark told his sister to quickly prepare a few candidates to propose to them during the next meeting and thanked Ace for the reminder. Seeing how she was finally able to perform her task, Stephanie became visibly excited as she excused herself to prepare the best candidates for Rino. In fact, she didn’t think she should stop at one. Polygamy was all in the rage now.

Down in his bath, Rino sneezed. That was funny. He didn’t think that skeletons and undead would be susceptible to catching colds. However, he wasn’t going to take the risk of finding out. It was better to get out and check on how the clothes were doing now that he was clean. He might just test to see if he could sew with his sweet feet. These toes were very flexible, and Rino could not wait to gain an extra pair of hands the unusual way.

His clothes were still damp, but the strong sun worked in his favour, so Rino decided there was no harm in walking nude for a few more hours while making his shoes. Noir left like a whimsical cat, and the lich finally figured out how it did that. The cat knew teleportation magic. He felt slightly silly for thinking that barricaded kitty doors would prevent it from leaving when it wanted. Still, Rino had faith that Noir would come back again. The cat did not look like it hated his place. It must have been hungry because RIno had nothing to feed it.

The lich went to retrieve some smaller pieces of wood that he treated previously when making the farmhouse. Everything was coming in handy now. He did not have to go resource collecting. Rino would hate to burn in the sun while walking an unknown distance without being able to use his teleportation pads just to get some hemp plants.

Rino carved the wood pieces at an impressive speed, and soon, two thick heeled soles were ready. The next process of manually weaving his linen in a double weave to make the fabric hold stronger was boring to watch. Hence, only Phil remained by the reflecting pond on duty while the other Gods left to attend to their outstanding matters.

Life without magic was difficult, and even at his fastest pace, Rino only managed to complete weaving the piece of cloth he needed for that durable footwear after the sun went down. By then, his clothes were dry, and Rino put them on before deciding if he should use a little magic to cut the cloth with precision. He did not want to ruin this by using his rather blunt bone and clay tools.

Thankfully, Rino thought of enough depressing things over the day while he was weaving. His feet were also getting better at coordinating coiling the empty spools with dyed linen.

With a few quick spells, the cloth was neatly cut and ready for glueing onto the wooden soles. As Rino did not have enough tree sap for the job, he decided to use cement. Surely, that was sturdy enough.

After he slapped some cement between the upper sole where the fabric would be attached, he fitted it nicely to the carved thick heeled sole and removed the excess cement away.

Phil watched how much effort and detail Rino put into making a durable shoe when the lich painted and varnished it. The heeled boot was then fitted with laces, and even Stephanie had to admit that was something she would wear too if it came in a different colour.

“We should reward him properly for outdoing himself with this creation,” Ark said. “Steph, can you somehow spread the idea to some of the more influential humans? With a shoe like that, civilisation will start to see a hierarchy. It’s progress towards something greater.”

Stephanie grinned. Dream whispering was right up her alley and the Goddess feeling important to the team’s plan. Ace only shook his head. There was more to just a shoe design. Boots will help villagers venture into different professions, and soon, war will begin.