Marcus was happy as he petted the soft fluffy husky type animal in front of him all over. "Where did you come from? Eh? This happy ball of fluff is a good boy, right?" He squished and fluffed the dog's face as he sat on the ground of his villa.

  "Ash! Where are you?!" Nix called from the street. He almost walked back if it wasn't for Madeline coming out of the building with two glasses and a water dish.

  "Is that your name? Ash is just a big puppy." Marcus said in a not quite baby voice as Nix ran through the yard toward them.

  "There...*hah*...you are...! *hah* You can't...*hah*...keep running away..." Nix wheezed as he fell on the ground and rolled over to face the sky. Ash, after finishing his drink, trotted over to his familiar and plopped on top of Nix. The good boy's nose was under Nix's chin, which he was happy to lick.

  "Where'd he come from? He wasn't around a few days ago." Marcus asked as Madeline gave Nix a drink of his own.

  "This little troublemaker here is Ash. My Hellhound Spirit familiar." He responded as he scratched the dog's head.

  "Huh...an albino Hellhound. Who would have thought..." And it was something to behold. Standard Hellhounds usually come in two varieties. Pitch black Hellhounds that hunt within the shadows they've melted with or ashy charcoal Hellhounds that ignite themselves and burn their prey alive. But Ash was completely white.

  "How are you so good with dogs anyway?"

  "I just simply acknowledge that dogs are the second best thing in this reality. Followed by Madeline here." He gave his partner a quick kiss on her cheek.

  "There's a story to this." Madeline said as she returned the kiss. "Last I checked, the third best thing was cheese and magic was number four."

  "Dogs are the reason Jin and Terra are married." She promptly did a spit take.

  "Elaborate." She scowled. Her Holy alignment made her have adverse reactions to those who talked about the divine. Un wasn't just about armaments and armor, she was also a judge. So Madeline didn't like people who spoke without knowing what they were talking about.

  "Cerberus, the great three headed dog that guards the gate of the underworld, wasn't always a guardian Spirit. Each head once had their own life and body in the service of Terra. The three brothers, Sentry, Dingo, and Spot, all guarded the goddess's sacred garden until their natural and unnatural lives ended. Terra would visit the underworld every day to see how her babies were doing and would fall deeper in love with Jin who took care of not just them but everyone."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Centuries later, they wed and have a child they would later name Alto. And Alto grew up to be the Divine Reaper, helping his mother with the farm during the day and his father with souls in the night."

  Madeline was wide eyed as he finished his story. Un judged that he was telling the truth. Terra and Jin are dog parents. She needed to process this.

  Ash's tail was turbocharged as he listened to the story. He may have been an abandoned runt that almost cost his master her life and divinity, but those three dogs got two gods to mate. Maybe he could be great too.

  \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

  The process to make yarn out of wool is easy. You clean it, then declump it, and finally spin it. But they were dealing with magic wool from quad-horn rams. They are staticky and clingy and rough. Two of the rams were mutants with steel like wool, combined with their already electric affinity just made then much more of a hassle.

  The upside was the near infinite supply of two kinds of wool to experiment on. Dyes for a variety of casual clothing and steel wool that could be great magic armor if the Mage Hall could get the ratios right.

  Natalie Orville was 92% sure that the reason there wasn't many incidents with the wool was because the two spinning machines and three looms were made out of Iron Cedar and powered by the waterwheel.

  She and her husband were runaways from the Valen Empire. They thought that they could be caught and either hung or imprisoned for coming into an enemy country. But the lord himself put them to work. They were both assassins at the Knight Lord level. They were both agile and dexterous and 'perfect for dealing with our newest problem' as he says.

  His job was to shear them and collect the wool for her and 20 other women who would be in control of the city's cloth products. He struck quickly and quietly so that the rams couldn't retaliate like they did with the last five shearers. She had some of the quickest hands in the business and didn't even need to stop her machines to add more wool.

  "Natalie, is there any more of the steel wool for today?" Solus walked in the building with a backpack bursting with blueprints of various sizes.

  "Jason!" Natalie yelled down the hall.

  Her husband came in with two large sacks of shiny wool on his back. Natalie has been teaching him how to clean and spin it as of late. He really wanted to show off.

  "You even marked the differing ratios this time, impressive." And she wasn't lying. Steel like wool as monster materials could decrease iron and armor costs as well as decrease potential Knight and Adventurer casualties. But she saw the same problem as last time. When Mana passed through the cloths, they would get rigid and hard to move. Perfect for things like tents and shields but not for armor.

  "Wait, really? 45% steel ram wool, 55% ram wool? But why is it sparkly silver?" It was working perfectly. Knives floated and tried to pierce the cloth but couldn't.

  "When those ones went through the washing I mixed in some Iron Cedar dust. It seemed to bind it." Jason was getting more and more proud as the knives still couldn't pierce the cloth.

  "Ooooooooh! If you weren't married I'd kiss you!" She settled for a hug and turned to his wife. "The Mage Hall will place an order of 150 tunics 16 pairs of gloves using this ratio by... next month should be good." With that she happily ran off into the sunset. No doubt to tell the lord.