When I get the crack close to the surface, I stop and head above ground to check with Lin. I drop shapeshift to talk to her and check the exact placement of the hot spring. For this to work properly, I need the water to come out above the hot spring.

  More importantly, I need to make sure the cracks I am making don’t get too close to the pools. Accidentally breaking through would take a lot of work to fix and might just ruin the whole plan. Before I head back down, I explain my concerns to Lin and ask for her opinion.

  Lin says “I would just heat it from below. If the water is cold when it gets up here we can fix that with an enchantment. In fact, do we even need to heat it if it is already under enough pressure to come up?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s not like I studied hot springs and how they work. I only know what I know about them because tons of anime included a hot spring episode.”

  Lin says “Well, what difference could heat make?”

  “The heat could cause chemical reactions between some of the minerals. That is all I can think of really, but it might be even more true when magical minerals are involved.”

  Lin says “Have you even checked the mineral content of the water?”

  “No. That is extremely hard to do when I am in my earth elemental form.”

  Lin says “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”

  “I will do that once the water is flowing into the pools. Or you can.”

  Lin says “Let’s get the water flowing first. Then we can check the water and decide what to do from there.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I return to the earth elemental form, sink into the ground, and carefully add cracks. I only use cracks to bring the water close, after that I shape the rock to create a channel. I don’t want to take the chance of the crack being bigger than I want it to be.

  It is also much easier to make sure that the water goes exactly where I want it to. Lin has set up multiple pools descending down the hillside, the water will flow down from one to another. This is so that the pools will each be different temperatures, each one being a little cooler.

  I bring the channel up so that it comes out just above the topmost pool, then exit the earth. I quickly return to my normal form and then watch as the water fills the first pool. It doesn’t happen quickly, the water isn’t flowing very strongly, but it is filling.

  Lin says “Is this amount of flow going to be enough?”

  “It will take a while to fill the pools, but I don’t really want to widen the cracks any more than I have to. The flow will speed up if we heat the water and increase the pressure.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Lin says “I’ve tested the water, but I don’t detect anything all that special about it.”

  “Alright, I will head back down and move some lava near enough to heat the water and see what difference that makes.”

  Lin says “Just be careful, don’t turn this island paradise into a volcano!”

  “Don’t worry. I will be moving things around far underground. It won’t affect the island at all.”

  Lin says “What’s that saying from your world? Famous last words?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. At least I didn’t ask you to hold my beer.”

  Lin looks confused and says “I don’t understand?”

  I spend a couple of minutes explaining the saying and then return to my earth elemental form. This time I head even deeper, to below where the underground lake is. Then I form a large empty space and start looking around for the nearest lava to direct to it.

  I have put the chamber what I hope is a far enough distance from the water to heat it but not melt through. If the lava does melt through, it could easily use the chain of cracks to reach the surface. I didn’t want to tell Lin, but if I mess up here I could easily create a volcano instead of a hot spring.

  This deep underground, it doesn’t take me long to find some lava to redirect to the chamber. The trick is to get it to fill the chamber but not cause enough pressure for it to expand. I just want heat to radiate from the lava to heat up the water, nothing else.

  There is a lot of water, so it is going to take time for it to heat up naturally, but I plan to cheat a little. My plan is to modify the stone between the lava and the water to allow heat to pass through it easier. At the same time, this should also make it harder for the lava to melt through to the water.

  It will probably still happen, but it should take several hundred years or so to do so. That is far enough in the future that I am not worried about it, since I won’t be around that long. Whoever is in charge of the empire, if it’s still around, at that time can worry about it.

  Redirecting a small flow of lava to fill the chamber and modifying the stone takes me about an hour. I stick around long enough to make sure that the water is heating up properly and then return to the surface. By then, Lin has finished setting up the pools for the hot spring, so we join the others for lunch.

  The pools should fill by the end of the day, but hot water won’t be coming that quickly. I would say sometime tomorrow or maybe the day after will be when we finally have a proper hot spring. The girls are a little disappointed when I tell them that, but trying to speed it up could backfire.

  Lin says “I agree. We shouldn’t push our luck. It is already a miracle that nothing has gone wrong to ruin our honeymoon or summon Ash away to deal with something.”

  Myria says “That’s true. I was totally expecting something to have come up by now. It’s almost like we have someone watching over us making sure nothing goes wrong.”

  Sero says “Our creators have definitely been watching when they can, but they don’t have that kind of power.”

  Lin says “I think it is a combination of luck and the fact that Ash did everything he could to make sure everything was taken care of.”

  Mercy says “Whatever the case may be, I am glad I have gotten so much time to spend with all of you.”

  Kreno says “We haven’t been with you as long, but I know what you mean. I am really enjoying getting to know everyone.”

  Sero says “As have I and I hope we get to continue doing so!”

  “Well, since we have finished lunch, why don’t we do that? Ask any questions you may have and we will all try to answer them.”

  Sero says “Well, to start I would love to hear the stories about how everyone met each other.”

  For the next little while, the girls take turns telling the stories of how they met me. After that, it turns to other topics, but it stays a relaxed and casual conversation. That changes later when we get onto the topic of jealousy and everyone starts talking about what they are jealous of.