By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 27

Chapter 3 Episode 27: Urgent Business

I did the same thing each day for much of the next month. In addition to my basic training each morning, I also studied medicine, which went nicely thanks to my prior knowledge. I trained and collected food while I was out picking herbs as of late, and I proactively accepted jobs to exterminate harmful creatures. My metal and iron slimes also learned to transform into weapons, and got good enough at it to be fairly usable.

When I came to the store one morning, I received an urgent message from the branch store in Lenaf. It said that their slimes had multiplied too much and that Caulkin’s team couldn’t form contracts with all of them. I had no choice but to go take them for myself. After confirming that I had nothing else scheduled, I departed from Gimul. Just as the sun was about to set, I arrived at the branch store. The last time I traveled from Gimul to this town, it took me until afternoon the following day, but now I managed to race here in less than a day. Even in a world as fantastical as this one, the distance between cities didn’t randomly change. This could only mean that I had gotten faster. I used space magic all the time when traveling between home, Gimul, and the wilderness around the city, so I must have improved without noticing. It didn’t seem like my running speed changed much, so the distance I traversed with each teleportation had presumably changed. It would be something to test and confirm later, but I was glad that my daily training was paying off.

I felt some sense of accomplishment as I passed through the door to the store. They were still open, and there were a fair number of customers.

“Boss!” Carla shouted to me from the counter when I got in line.

“Hello,” I said.

“Thank goodness. Did you come to town just for us?”

“Of course.” I turned to Tony. “Where are the slimes?”

“This way. Lobelia, Carla, can you handle the customers?” Tony asked.

“No problem, leave it to us,” Lobelia said.

“You two take care of the slimes, please,” Carla requested.

I followed Tony to the employees’ living quarters. They seemed to be temporarily using one of the rooms to hold the slimes. They were being watched closely, and an adventurer I hired as a guard was standing outside the room.

“It’s nice to see you again,” I said. “Thanks for standing watch.”

“The boss? Thanks for hiring me.”

“How’s it going?”

“Nothing much going on. Just a room full of slimes back there. There haven’t been any intruders, and they’re not trying to get away or anything. Caulkin’s in there, so you can ask him about it.”

We entered the room.

“Caulkin, it’s been a while.”

“Oh! Boss, you’re here sooner than expected.”

“I came running as soon as I got the message. So are these all the slimes that need to make a contract?”

The room contained a bunk bed, a desk, and a chair. Caulkin was sitting at the desk and writing something, surrounded by cleaner slimes.

“Yes, there’s seventy-five in all.”

I decided to get started right away.

■ ■ ■

“Is that all of them?” I asked after I made the last contract.

“Exactly seventy-five, yes,” Caulkin said.

“Are you running low on magical energy?” Tony asked. “If so, we have some potions.”

“I’m fine. I have plenty of magical energy to spare,” I said. I had to make more contracts back when I got a big rush of scavenger slimes. “What caused this sudden increase in slimes, though?”

“I jotted down what I know in these documents,” Caulkin said and handed me the papers on the desk. I gave them a read.

Cause 1: A rapid increase in customers.

This town contains the dragoon guild, the base of operations for delivery people who use flying monsters. Many of them come and go from this city, along with customers who wish to send packages or ride their mounts as passengers. People from outside town have thus heard about our business from our regular customers and started to use our services as of late. Of course, the increased business has provided more food for the slimes.

Cause 2: Adjusting the production of deodorizing fluid.

By taking in plentiful nutrients, the cleaner slimes began to produce a far greater supply of deodorizing fluid than we require to meet demands, and we always have unsold stock. While this doesn’t harm our business in any way, we still tried to have them produce less.

“And the excess nutrients caused the cleaner slimes to multiply?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Tony confirmed.

“Rather than put a limit on fluid production, we’ve instead decided to throw out any surplus material,” Caulkin said.

“It was only for a few days that we tried limiting the amount, but it caused a lot of unnecessary stress.”

“You can’t form any more contracts anyway. I think that’s fine,” I said.

If they ended up with too many more slimes, I would have to reveal the secret of big slimes. Well, not that it would be so bad to share that with Caulkin’s group, but they were still learning how to run the store. I didn’t want to distract them too much. Sharing information on new types of slimes would be one thing, but anything about big slimes would be like a bombshell to them. Thankfully there could be over a hundred slimes and they still wouldn’t combine unless they all had a contract with the same tamer, apparently. Maybe that was because they had different chains of command or something. It would be easiest to research that if I had helpers, so I intended to teach them about this at some point. Just not right away.

In any case, I was glad that they took care of this situation appropriately. All the employees seemed worried about how they would manage the slimes, but now that problem was settled.

“Are there any other issues here?” I asked.

“Nothing that hasn’t been mentioned in our regular reports to Gimul,” Caulkin said.

“We haven’t been attacked like the main store has. The worst we’ve had to deal with is drunks standing around here after closing hours,” Tony added.

“Sales have been pretty good too. The city’s smaller than Gimul, so we have fewer regular customers, but we’re still earning a net profit of ten thousand sute per day.”

If that was true, I would need to prepare another branch store for them to run themselves at some point. It wouldn’t be long before we accrued enough funds to open another store. It was nice to know that everything was going smoothly.

I wanted to share my information about the deodorant slime, but first, I decided that I should give the Saionji Company a visit. If I started a conversation about slimes now, I might forget to do that.

“Excuse me,” I said as I entered the spice store.

“Hello! Oh? Aren’t you the boy from Bamboo Forest?” the employee at the counter asked. It was someone I met here last time.

“It’s nice to see you again. I’m surprised you remember me.”

“Well, the president never stops talking about how great you are. Not to mention you own a store right nearby, so you’re kind of hard to forget.”

“I guess you have a point.”

“What brings you here today?”

“I had to come to town on some urgent business, so I figured I should say hi to Pioro as long as I’m here.”

“I’m sorry, but the president went to the capital on a business trip three days ago. His daughter is about to enroll in school there too, so she went along with him.”

“I see; that’s too bad.”

“Oh, but his wife is here. She’s in the middle of a meeting, but if you don’t mind waiting a bit, you can talk to her.”

I decided to wait. I brought a gift for them, so if there was any opportunity to see them, I wanted to take it. “Can you show me what’s on sale here while I’m waiting?” I asked. “If anything smells particularly good, I might want it.”

“Of course. We just got some cinnamon in stock that—?!”

The clerk was about to step out from behind the counter when I heard a woman shriek from the back of the store.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Who knows? Actually, that sounded like Clana. I’m sorry, can you give me a moment? I’ll go check on her,” the clerk said and ran to the back of the store.

When I was starting to wonder whether she’d come back, a meek man came in from the next store over. He apologized and bowed repeatedly, then walked away like a gentle breeze. When he exited the spice store, a gust of wind from outside carried a horrid stench to my nose, something that I could only guess came from him. The man absolutely reeked. He even seemed to be wincing himself, and all the other pedestrians steered clear of him.

Then the clerk returned. “I’m sorry about the wait. Come with me, please.”

■ ■ ■

“Ryoma, good to see you,” Clana greeted me.

“Hello, Clana.”

Rather than the reception room, I was taken to a dining table. Maybe I would have wondered more about that if I wasn’t so distracted by Clana’s nose. I didn’t know if she had rhinitis or what. She looked as beautiful as ever and tried to hide it in a refined way, but I could see her sniffling.

“Clana, are you sick?” I asked.

“No, don’t worry. Just ate something kind of crazy.”

“What was it?”

“Shappaya, I think it’s called? It’s fish soaked in some fluid full of salt and a bunch of herbs, then fermented, apparently.”

“Oh, and it smells horrible, right?”

“You’ve heard of this stuff?”

“I don’t know if this is what I’m thinking of, but I know of some processed food that’s similar.”

What Clana most likely ate was some type of kusaya, a Japanese variety of fermented fish. Somebody came to try and sell it, and Clana tasted a sample. But as with all beastkin, she was highly sensitive to odors, so it seemed it was a bit much for her.

“Here’s something you’ll hopefully enjoy more,” I said. “The women at my store all love these cakes.”

“Oh my, thank you!”

I handed the cake to Clana, then we enjoyed a pleasant conversation.

■ ■ ■

I spent the entire night talking to the research team and got no sleep. I had breakfast and left to return to Gimul, but the road to the gate was busy. Wondering if something happened, I asked around for answers.

“A couple adventurers got in a fight,” one pedestrian said. “They’ve already been arrested, but they started throwing these weird barrels at each other in the middle of it, and just—Ugh!”

The wind started to blow our way and brought a rotten stench with it. As I approached the source of the smell, it made my eyes water. After the odor drove some of the crowd away, I noticed the smelly man from yesterday being hounded by everyone else.

“Hey! Do something about this stench! My equipment smells awful!” a shopkeeper demanded.

“I’m sorry; there’s nothing I can do.”

“Keep this crap away from my store, it’s driving customers away! Why do you have barrels full of garbage anyway?”

“It’s not garbage! This is shappaya! It’s a preserved food!”

“Calm down, everyone. He’s a victim too,” a guard pointed out.

“I know, but this smelly filth got all over my store and my goods. The store and my equipment should be fine after some cleaning, but I can’t sell those goods now.”

“I’ll have the actual perpetrator pay you back. First, please describe the situation and the damages.”

The fish and the murky fluid that seemed to be the source of the smell had splattered all over the place. The fluid was evidently contained in some barrels small enough to hold in one hand. This was all caused when adventurers threw those at each other, I guess. The guards were trying to get this mess under control, but they couldn’t deal with all these people demanding compensation. Some of the rage seemed to be directed at the timid man with the barrels, but he was as much a victim as they were. I had to feel bad for him. This was also a good opportunity to advertise my laundromat, so I decided to help him out. I entered an empty alley and prepared my deodorant slime.