By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 26

Chapter 3 Episode 26: A Letter

Under the light of the morning sun, a limour bird flew to me from afar. My birds were all together, so this one could only have come from Elia. Around its neck was a cloth bearing her family’s crest. It brought a letter, so I took it and gave it food and water together with my own limour birds so it could have an opportunity to rest.

The first subject the letter mentioned was the Sea of Trees. Elia had only heard rumors about it, so she just told me to be cautious. She also said that the adults don’t object to my plans, but they say that I should prepare meticulously and contact them before I depart. I decided to write back and say that I’d remember to get in touch with them.

Next, she wrote about how she was about to enroll at the academy. The letter said that the enrollment period was approaching, and she wanted to get familiar with the new environment, so she planned on going to the capital next month, which could pose a problem. At the moment, we were communicating with our limour birds. She sent a bird to me, and I sent one of my birds back with that bird to learn her address, so we had a direct means of contact. When it came to memorizing routes, limour birds were supposed to be among the best bird monsters. But if she was moving to the capital, I might have to relay messages through her family from now on. She would have to live in the dorms at the academy, and they might forbid pets or something.

The rest was mostly questions about what I’d been up to lately, but one part stuck out. She said that she heard about a festival in Gimul and that it would probably be hard to get ready for it when I also had work to do, but she wished me good luck. I hadn’t heard about any festival, though. I decided to go ask someone about it.

■ ■ ■

So I came into work and asked a few employees, none of whom were aware of any festival. When I really thought about it, though, just about all of my employees came from outside town. Fay and Lilyn weren’t even from this country, so I couldn’t expect them to know about local celebrations. That left one person who might know something. I tried asking Dolce.

“You talking about the Founding Festival? That’s when we celebrate this city’s birthday. Can’t think of any other festivals that’d be held around this time,” he said.

“Do you know how you’re supposed to prepare for the festival?”

“Depends on the store or the person.”

I asked for further details. According to Dolce, there were five main points to remember about the Founding Festival:

It was being held in two months.

It took place primarily on the main street that extended throughout the city.

If it was anything like most years, preparations would begin next month.

Preparations generally involved decorating the storefront and volunteering for local cleaning activities.

You could apply to open your own stall at the festival.

Many of the stalls came from businesses that had operated in Gimul for ages, but some were run by performers that traveled from city to city. There were even some rather sketchy ones, so they weren’t strict about who participated. But it was customary for houses and stores to be decorated with colorful cloth, and the festival left a lot of pollution, so the city held cleaning activities that the public could participate in.

“That’s about all I know. That good enough for you?” Dolce asked.

“Yes, thanks for all the help.”

The cleaning activities would give me a chance to meet my neighbors, so I planned to join in on those if at all possible, but it didn’t seem like this would make me much busier as long as I didn’t open a stall. Maybe Elia thought I was going to do something more, but I didn’t know what. This festival was a while off, in any case, so it was just something to keep in mind for the time being. I also wanted to make sure this was common knowledge around the store. If anyone had any ideas for what we would do with a stall, maybe it would be nice to get together and do something as a group.

For now, I decided to write back to Elia saying that I would be fine. I thought about sending a gift to commemorate her moving to the capital as well, even if it was just to temporarily stay in the dorms, but I wasn’t sure what to give her. It couldn’t be anything that could start a fire, anything that took up much space, or anything that could damage her room to set up. Shoes would have been a bad gift in Japan, but here they apparently symbolized taking a new step toward something, which would be fine. But I didn’t know her shoe size or what style she was into, so I passed on that. Moving could be expensive, so cash or some sort of gift card or something could be good, except that she was from a rich family and likely didn’t have any issues in that department. It seemed like the safest choice would be something disposable that it couldn’t hurt to have. I decided that after this business with the festival was taken care of, I would wrack my brains over how best to celebrate her move.

■ ■ ■

I went to the guild early the next day.

“Hello, Paena. Here are fifty bunches of lactone grass, as the job demanded.”

“Let’s see here,” Paena said and started to count. “Four, five... Yes, exactly fifty.”

Lactone grass’s effects were weak, but applicable to a wide range of symptoms. It was mainly used to treat colds. It grew just about everywhere but the harshest environments, so it was easy to come by, but also worth only one sute per ten bunches. Paena gave me five sute for the grass, which I figured I would spend on some candy or something.

“Oh, may I ask something?” Paena said.

“What?”

“Do you know a lot about medicinal herbs?”

“My grandmother taught me a lot of general information about them. Why do you ask?”

“It looks like you picked this grass very carefully, so I had a feeling you did. Would you be able to identify some tera grass for us?”

Tera grass was good for nerve pain, and much like lactone grass, it could be found anywhere. But tera grass had a poisonous variant called tura grass that grew in all the same places. They looked almost exactly alike, so they were often mistaken for each other. I could tell them apart, though. In fact, I had some on hand.

“I’ve actually got tera grass that I picked for personal use in the southern plains.”

“Really? If you give us five bunches, then that’s another job completed,” Paena said. I set five bunches of tera grass on the counter for her to appraise with magic. “Yes, that’s all tera grass. Are you sure we can take this? If you need it for yourself, you don’t have to hand it over.”

“It’s fine, I don’t need it for anything urgent.”

“I see. Then here’s seventy sute for your reward.”

I received fourteen sute per bunch, a fairly high reward. I left the guild feeling like I really earned something, and returned home while it was still bright out.

■ ■ ■

In part of the mine that I didn’t normally use, I prepared to create a gift to celebrate Elia’s move. The plan was to make soap. Consumable goods were a safe choice for a gift, and this would have some practical use. Soap was in common use in this country, so I didn’t think there would be anything conspicuous about it. But simply buying some soap to send her would have been boring, and considering her wealth, she was probably used to receiving gifts that were simply expensive. So rather than that, I decided to send something that I made myself.

Making soap was pretty standard for light novel protagonists who reincarnated in another world. They would do things like collecting animal fat and ash, then boiling that to make the soap. But I wasn’t going to go through all that effort. I had all the ingredients I needed: oil, salt, and water that I purified with alchemy, among assorted other items. Soap made of ash and animal fat had been around for ages on Earth, but in recent times, an easier method using caustic soda became more commonplace. To use that method, though, I first had to create caustic soda.

Caustic soda was also known as sodium hydroxide. One component I needed was sodium, which I could obtain by dividing the salt into its base elements. Dividing the salt generated poisonous and corrosive chlorine gas, so some caution was required. Sodium was also extremely susceptible to oxidation when exposed to air, and mixing it with water could cause it to generate heat or even an explosion, so after carefully using alchemy to create a lump of sodium, I removed any oxygen. I couldn’t prevent the surface from being a little oxidized, but I halted the process by soaking it in a container full of oil.

Next, I prepared the water. When I added a tiny piece of sodium to a container full of water, there was a sound like the burning of a lit fuse as the surface of the water began to ripple. It was a hydrolysis reaction producing sodium hydroxide and hydrogen. I appraised the container’s contents and found that the water had also become an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide. Dividing this solution into its component parts would give me water and caustic soda, my final goal.

In addition to the danger of a potential explosion caused by adding sodium to water, sodium hydroxide also has high alkali content that makes it corrosive, so getting any of this solution on my skin would be extremely dangerous. I wanted to use a generally unused part of the mine for this in case anything happened, but I also picked a place with plenty of ventilation, and wore overalls in addition to cleaner slime goggles and a helmet. I even wore recently purchased gloves to make sure no skin was exposed as I worked.

I successfully refined the sodium hydroxide. If I had used a combination circle to create it directly from sodium and water, maybe it would have been a bit safer and more efficient. Alchemy lets you skip the chemical reaction step and get straight to the final product, after all. In any case, now I was finally ready to make soap from caustic soda.

I had to keep all this equipment on to handle it safely, but the rest of the process wasn’t that difficult. I measured the caustic soda and water, then added the caustic soda to the water container and mixed it together. The caustic soda reacted with the water and generated heat, so I had to watch out for the steam and rapid boiling. Putting the water in the container first and gradually adding the caustic soda afterward was the safe way to do it. Next, I heated the oil and slowly added the cooled caustic soda solution. I thoroughly mixed it all together, and when it got heavy, I threw in some materials to add a nice scent. Then I poured the mixture into molds, finishing the job for now. All that remained was to keep it warm for a few days until it solidified.

But if there was any caustic soda left after the soap hardened, it could burn skin when used, so I had to be wary of that too. I had made soap from waste oil a few times before, but this was meant for Elia, not for me. I didn’t want to take any chances, so I stuck to the basics and didn’t try putting too much of my own spin on the process for this first batch. I wanted to experiment with this a few more times using different amounts of caustic soda and leaving it to harden for different amounts of time. Other types of oil or additional ingredients could also change the color, foaminess, texture, and effects of the soap. Creating soap was relatively easy by itself, so I wanted to mess around with it at the same time I was studying medicine. But it was going to take some time for this to solidify, and I had work in the afternoon. I decided that I would experiment with soap a little bit each night.