By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 24

Chapter 4 Episode 24: Spending It All In One Place

Ordering my clothes took a while, but it was still bright out. Next, I went to Tigger’s equipment shop.

“Hello!”

“Ryoma? I’ve got what you asked for,” Darson said and went to the back of the store. A while later, he came back with a big wooden box. “This is the finished product.”

The box contained two sets of green shirts, pants, and mantles. They looked like ordinary clothes at first glance.

“I had these clothes made from that strong thread you gave me, just like you ordered. I got an armor manufacturer I know to make the stuff, but I checked to make sure he did a good job. These are prototypes, but I’m confident that they’re usable.” Darson took a strip of cloth and a knife out of the box. “Check this out.” He then tried to pierce the strip of cloth, but no matter how many times he cut or stabbed it, he could only damage the surface; he could never slice the cloth or leave a big hole.

“This is made of two layers of cloth weaved from the thread you brought me. Those clothes are all made of the same material, so they should be pretty defensive against bladed weapons. They just look like some regular comfy clothes, but they’re actually closer to chain mail. If you wore this under some armor, you’d have some insane defensive power.”

“How much does it cost to produce a set?”

“Well, it took some time since the material’s so tough, especially when it came to cutting it. But you brought the material yourself, so it costs less than armor made from similar material. Not bad.”

“What similar material?”

“Thread from a monster called a metal spider. It’s vulnerable to heat and goes soft after warming it a bit, so it’s easy to cut. As far as ease of manufacturing goes, that’s much better than this stuff. But that ease of use is its weakness. To make up for that, you’d usually use enchantments and compatible materials to supplement the thread and make some magic armor that’s resistant to heat and fire. Metal spider thread on its own is fairly expensive, and these additions only add to the price. This armor is fairly costly.”

While this armor took time to make, it sounded like good value for the money. I picked up one of the shirts and noticed that the fabric felt different on the inside compared to the outside. It felt nice and smooth on my fingers.

“Is this silk on the inside?”

“Yeah. That thread wasn’t absorbent in the slightest, and neither was the cloth made from it. So with that in mind, they used silk for the inside of the armor.”

“I see, thank you. I should even be able to wear this in thickets.”

“Not just thickets. These could handle a wolf’s fangs or bladed weapons no problem. Won’t do much for bludgeoning attacks, though.”

“How much for them?”

“Five small gold coins.” For something made-to-order, that was really cheap.

“Are you sure?”

“You gave me the materials for free, and it didn’t take anything special to produce. It just took a while to cut the cloth. The armor manufacturer was happy to work with this rare material, too. Even if I’m charging you for the extra time it took, five small gold coins is more than adequate.”

“I see. Thank you.”

If it was that cheap, I figured it might be nice to give some to all my employees, or the security guards, at the very least. Maybe the duke’s family, too. They probably had security people with their own perfectly good armor already, but if they were stocking up on things like antidotes near the end of the year, maybe they could use this as well. I decided to ask Darson.

“I’d think any noble would already have equipment that’s just as good, but if you gave that as a gift, I doubt they’d be offended,” he said. “And personally, I’d be happy to make more for you as long as you bring the materials and the money. If you want to send a gift, I suggest having an adult-sized set of clothes made so we can use it as an example later. We can use the measurements from that to make properly sized clothes, and I can send you those at a later date. Or you could have your employees come pick them up, whatever works for you. Either way, if you order a whole bunch of sets at once, I’ll give you a discount.”

Thus, I ordered a new set of clothes to use as an example. “I’ll bring the thread for it by tomorrow,” I said.

“Got it. I’ll tell the manufacturer.”

Now I had one candidate for my gift for the Jamil family. But if I wanted to make a lot of sets, I would need an appropriate amount of thread. This would be a good time to get some thread spinning machines or something to use with my sticky slimes. I decided to stop by Serge’s store, and then headed home.

■ ■ ■

I released my slimes from my Dimension Home, then checked on the mine with my limour birds. I’d only been away for five days, but there were already cave mantises starting to live there. I exterminated them right away and thought about whether to seal the entrance more firmly. But I figured I could use them for food, so I had something to gain in hunting them anyway.

Next, I picked a slightly humid part of the mine and used earth magic to create a simple pedestal. I took the mushroom bed I made the other day out of my Dimension Home and set it there. Strangely, there were already thin mushrooms that looked like enoki growing from the tray. I didn’t use magic to accelerate their growth or anything, so they shouldn’t have grown so fast. Maybe they were some other type of mushroom than I expected. Still, if they grew, I guess I could consider my mushroom cultivation a success. At any rate, I decided to watch and see what happened for the time being.

I went back out to the mine shaft and installed a door, so no intruders could tamper with the mushrooms. Next, I went to the room I typically used for making waterproof cloth, but this was also a good place for another job. I got my sticky slimes together and lined up the thread spinning machines I’d purchased. I only had space for five of them, but that was probably enough. These were very simplistic devices that looked similar to sewing machines. Spinning the handle on the side of the machine caused the spindle on top of the stand to rotate. By attaching the tip of a thread to an empty spindle, it would naturally wrap itself in thread.

First, I had one slime spit up some string, and spun the handle while I taught the slime what to do. I warned the slime not to let the thread on the spindle get too unbalanced. Next, I let another sticky slime take my place spinning the handle. It didn’t take much strength to do, so it seemed to work out fine. A team of two slimes could properly spin thread on their own. I had some slimes take over the other four machines as well, trained them for a while, then left them to their work.

In the meantime, I had another job to do. I listened to the clattering of the spinning wheels as I got some charcoal ready and drew an alchemy circle on the ground. I was about to make a diamond. An ordinary blue suit with no accessories would have been fine as formal attire, but it would have looked too plain on its own, so nobles wouldn’t take well to it. It would make me look shabby, and could even possibly cause trouble for the person who’d invited me. That was what the tailor told me, at least. I feel like it was 80% truth and 20% hype. But to supplement the plain clothes, I decided to put everything into an extremely expensive accessory.

Still, even this suit, which he kept calling plain, cost me five hundred thousand sute, or fifty small gold coins. That was a lot of money, but other clothes there could cost two or three times as much. Clothes worn by the wealthiest nobles would even be paid for in platinum coins, with accessories included. The inflated prices these nobles paid were absurd, but at least they were spending that money on something instead of hoarding it. At any rate, if I was going to meet with nobles, I wanted to do what I could as a commoner to match their status as closely as I could.

But the question was how to go about doing that. I didn’t normally wear jewels and didn’t care for the idea of wearing a whole bunch of them to flaunt my wealth. I came to the conclusion that I should go with one large, expensive jewel. Finding an expensive jewel would be harder, though, so I could make one instead. That way I could say it was an heirloom from my grandmother.

First, I separated the carbon from the impure substances in the charcoal, then bonded it. Like graphite, diamonds are allotropes of carbon; they’re essentially clumps of pure carbon. The difference between graphite and diamonds comes down to how the carbon atoms are bonded. That makes diamonds harder, more transparent, and better for transferring heat and insulating against electricity.

I put my knowledge into action as I focused on the shining magic circle, transforming the carbon powder into one transparent lump. I waited for the light to subside, leaving only the distorted lump. Then I cast Appraisal on it.

Bloom diamond: A special diamond containing no impure material.

Color: None.

Weight: 218.34 grams = 1091.7 carats.

It seemed to have turned into a diamond, but I didn’t know what the bloom part meant. The description said this diamond was special, so I was curious. It would be best to ask someone trustworthy about it.

Also, the weight of the diamond was clearly unusual. 0.2 grams was equal to one carat on Earth, and the biggest diamond in the world was around five or six-hundred carats. But this diamond was 1091.7 carats. I figured I must have used too much carbon. In any case, I decided to divide it into pieces and adjust their shape and size.