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By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 25




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Chapter 4 Episode 25: Mystery of the Jewel

The next day, I visited the Merchant’s Guild a bit late in the morning.

“Welcome. What business do you have here today?”

“I heard from Guildmaster Glissela the other day, and...”

I’d made some of the medicines on the list the night before. As long as I was here to sell them, I figured I would ask to meet with Glissela.

“If it isn’t Master Takebayashi! Welcome to the Merchant’s Guild.”

An employee who I had met a few times before led me to the reception room. They remembered me well, apparently.

■ ■ ■

“Hello there. Here to sell medicine?” Glissela asked as I entered. Her guess about my reason for coming was definitely half-right.

“Good guess.”

“I asked you for some, after all. I was fairly confident that you’d be able to deliver. Also, I heard that you went to a training course at the Adventurer’s Guild. Once I heard that was over, I estimated the amount of time it’d take you to make the medicine. I suspected it would be either today or tomorrow.”

Her foresight was as eerie as ever. But that wasn’t the only reason I came to the Merchant’s Guild.

“I wanted to ask you for some advice as well, actually.”

“Oh? Then let’s get the medicine out of the way first.”

“Thank you,” I said, then opened my Item Box and took out fifty bottles of medicine. “I made what I could with the materials I had. I still have some grell frog materials left over.”

“If I provided some additional materials, would you make more?”

“Sure, if I know how to make it.”

Glissela appraised a random bottle and snorted. “Was there anything on that list you couldn’t make?”

“There were some for which I knew the recipe, but I’d never actually made them before. I wanted to hear your opinion on those.”

“I see. I looked over some of what you did make, and they should all be effective enough. I don’t see anything to complain about. I’ll give you the materials you need if you’ll bring me the rest of what’s on the list next time.”

“Understood.”

Glissela called an employee over and ordered them to assess and store the medicine, then prepare my reward and the materials I needed. The employee accepted the orders and left the room.

“So, what else did you want to talk about?” Glissela asked.

“Bloom diamonds,” I said. Her eyes seemed to narrow a bit at that. “Do you know what those are?”

“When you’ve done my job for as long as I have, you’re bound to know. Do you have one?”

“It’s an heirloom from my grandmother. She told me to sell it if I ever needed money.” I also told her about the formal wear I was preparing. “I was thinking I could use that jewel as an accessory, but I’m unsure how valuable it is and whether it’s a good choice.”

“Smart boy. Better that you talk to me first about this before anyone else. Do you have it on you now?”

I took a cloth bundle out of my Item Box and handed it over. It contained one fragment of the bloom diamond, about the size of my thumbnail. Breaking up and carving pieces of the diamond did not change what the Appraisal spell told me, so presumably it was accurate. The guildmaster unraveled the cloth and gazed at the jewel, then cast Appraisal on it. She sighed immediately afterward.

“Is it fake?” I asked.

“No, it’s real. This is quite the large bloom jewel you have here. It has the right transparency and everything. Not only that, but it’s a diamond, and a beautifully colorless one at that. Could be more refined, but it’s still a fine piece of work.”

When I asked for more information, she explained that ‘Bloom’ was a term for a certain class of jewel, and that it meant ‘Special’ in some old language.

“So this is a top-class item?” I asked.

“Not top-class, just special. Most jewels you’d see have little grains of sand, minor scratches, and some cavities inside.”

Now that she mentioned it, I remembered how jewels that are naturally created would have some bits of dirt or empty cavities inside. But I made mine with alchemy, so there was none of that.

“You don’t know what bloom means, but you know all that?” Glissela asked after I explained this.

“I just remembered it.”


“It’s strange how much common knowledge eludes someone as well-read as you. Well, at least I don’t have to explain that part. Yes, this jewel doesn’t have any of those imperfections. That’s what makes it a bloom jewel. But they don’t produce jewels like this nowadays.”

“Didn’t they use to, though?”

“Nobody knows if the old jewels were always like that or if they were clean pieces cut from ordinary jewels, but they were apparently being made long before I was born. They’ve been found in ruins, or among the national treasures of some old countries. I’ve heard that when one finds its way to the market, every noble tries to get their hands on it. Most of the ones that still exist are probably treated as family heirlooms.”

If they existed in the past, that meant that someone had used alchemy to create jewels in the past as well. Maybe it was another person from Earth, like the Alchemy King the gods told me about. This was something I wanted to look into when I had time.

“Would it be gauche to use this as an accessory?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t worry about that. You sure don’t want to go around telling everyone about it, but you’re just going to visit the Jamil family, aren’t you? I doubt it’ll cause any problems. Even if you happened to draw the eyes of some sketchy noble, it’s unlikely to lead to any sudden violence. They’ll just ask to buy it off you, in which case you might as well sell it. You say it’s an heirloom, but you’re not really that attached to it, are you?”

“You could tell?”

“It’s not hard to tell,” Glissela said with a grin. She didn’t elaborate on that, but I guess my claims were suspicious. I decided not to try and explain myself, in case I made things worse. “Well, if it worries you, selling the diamond as soon as possible would be better than hiding it. Less trouble that way.”

In other words, the fact that I owned it meant it was already too late either way. If so, there was no reason not to use it as an accessory. As for the rest of the diamond, I considered crushing it up and feeding it to a slime. That, or giving it to the Jamil family.

“Excuse me, the reward and the materials are ready,” the employee said as they returned. Glissela shoved the diamond back to me, probably to say that I should pocket it quickly. “Come in,” she said after I hid the diamond from sight.

Three employees entered. One had a heavy leather sack, while the other two had bags of varying sizes. They emptied the bags onto the table, handed a piece of paper to Glissela, and left the room. Glissela looked down at the paper for a while, nodded, and held it out to me.

“Check the reward and the materials to see if they’re correct,” she said. I was being paid three thousand sute per bottle of medicine.

“Isn’t this a little too much?”

“Quality antidotes are going to be in high demand for a while, and most of those customers are all nobles and rich people. But we don’t want them to buy up everything and keep medicine out of the hands of people who really need them, so we need our manufacturers to work extra hard. You provided high-quality medicine at the perfect time of year, so I think this is an appropriate reward. But the value of medicine will drop back to normal in other seasons, so you’ll want to make those materials into medicine quickly.”

“Understood.” I didn’t plan on leaving town for a while, so I intended to do that soon.

“By the way, Ryoma, I hear that Worgan gave you permission to fight bandits.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From the man himself. He brought it up while we were discussing something else. So you’re interested in taking those sorts of jobs?”

“Combat is my specialty, after all. Fighting humans is no problem for me, either.”

“I know. That’s probably why he gave you permission in the first place. In that case, you should visit the Merchant’s Guild more often. Bandits have an effect on our work too, you know. My information network should be helpful for you.”

“I suppose so. Thank you.”

“Use everything at your disposal; that’s what merchants do. If you can use that information to hunt down bandits, we stand something to gain from it too.”

I took Glissela’s advice into account.

■ ■ ■

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I thanked the clerk from yesterday, gave him the diamond, and left the store. Unlike me, he seemed to know the value of a bloom diamond. Considering his job, he probably knew a lot about jewels. The instant I showed it to him and said I wanted to use it, he seemed to know it was something special. And after he picked it up and gave it a look, his attitude changed. His already polite behavior seemed to become even more polite. He did charge me an extra fee to keep the bloom diamond a secret, but I was also saving money from providing my own jewel, so it all worked out. Plus, I now knew what to watch out for when making jewels, so it was a small price to pay for that knowledge.

Next on my schedule, I had the familiar aptitude exam that Roche told me about. I wanted to enjoy a leisurely walk there, but arrived in very little time. The Tamer’s Guild was closer to that store than I thought.

“Hello, I heard that I can take a familiar aptitude exam here. Would I be able to take one today?” I asked at the reception desk.

“Welcome to the Tamer’s Guild. The familiar aptitude exam? Yes, you can take it today. Show me your guild card, please.” I presented my guild card. “Oh? You’ve never taken it before?”

“No. I had familiars before I ever registered.”

“I see. Your first exam is free, so just take this to Gimul’s east gate,” the receptionist said and handed me a document together with my guild card.

“The east gate?”

“Yes. The aptitude exam involves attempting to make contracts with a variety of monsters provided by the guild. We look for trends in your results to determine what monsters you have the greatest aptitude for. For that, we need enough space to accommodate a lot of monsters. The east gate is connected to our lodging facility for large monsters, and we store our aptitude test monsters there as well.”

“Thank you, I understand. I’ll head there right away.”

“I’m glad I could be of service. Good luck.”

Thus, I headed to the east gate. Come to think of it, I’d never gone that way before.



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