By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 7 - Chapter 16

Chapter 5 Episode 16: Preparing the Experiment

“Here we are.”

After breakfast, Lulunese brought me to the courtyard intended for people to practice their magic in. The first thing that caught my eye was the wall erected around the courtyard the size of a modest park, painted in aggressively eye-catching purple. There was nothing above the courtyard to obscure the sky, nor any pavement on the ground.

From one end of the courtyard, a woman with an elegant glide in her step approached with two maids in tow.

“Thank you for coming, Ryoma.”

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting, Ma’am.”

When it came to work, all I had on my agenda was the wedding venue construction in the afternoon. I had decided to use my downtime in the morning to improve my sugar scrubs...when Elise decided to join me. Apparently, she’d kept her day open from the start, in order to get some R&R. I didn’t deny the importance of a day off, but her eagerness to observe seemed rather premature.

“I haven’t even gotten the experiment ready yet,” I clarified to her. “I have to start with the farm work, anyway.”

“I want to see how you prepare,” she countered. “That said, what do you think? I’m quite proud of our courtyard.”

“Very spacious. I won’t be worried about using magic out here.” Well, except for one thing...

“The walls?” Lulunese astutely prompted.

“Was it that obvious?”

“You’ve glanced over at them a few times now.”

“In that case... May I ask why they’re painted such a vibrant color?”

With a smile, she gave me an answer. “They’re treated with a special coating that resists fire and ice spells, as well as drastic changes in humidity. The young mistress used to practice magic here before attending the academy. The coating was done to improve her safety while practicing.”

“One time, Elia put such excessive energy into her fire magic that she melted a brick wall. I’ve kept the coating on ever since, just to be safe.”

Elia’s best elements were fire and ice... That made sense. I made a mental note to myself that, given enough magical energy, a spell could produce that much heat.

“I see.”

“This is a private area reserved for our family, so you can make use of it whenever you want, Ryoma. You can use space magic in here too... It’s such a shame that we’ve hardly used this place after Elia went off to school,” Elise added wistfully.

“Thanks, I’ll definitely take you up on that.” With a quick warning, I began working. “Dimension Home.” From the white hole that materialized in the air, I summoned a hundred each of sticky slimes and scavenger slimes.

“You sure have a lot of those things,” Elise remarked.

“I’ve never seen this many before...” Lulunese chimed in.

I thought she had seen this many during a feeding before, though... Maybe I had them bundled into bigs and kings that time. The maids who had accompanied Elise seemed just as shocked as she was. At any rate, I had to get to work.

“First off...Break Rock.” I used magic on a fifty-by-fifty meter square of the ground to make it a decent depth. “Alright, scavengers!” I lined up the scavenger slimes in the outline of the square, each one fifty centimeters apart. “Same as always — take it away.” At my command, the scavengers all jumped into action. Each of them began taking in sand from in front of them, regurgitating it out of the other end, slithering forward, and repeating the process.

“Are they tilling the land?” Elise asked.

“That’s right. At first, I was having the scavengers spit out the fertilizer, and then tilled the ground myself. But this process was so useful that I’d find myself doing the same thing throughout the day. I eventually grew tired of it, so now I soften the soil with earth, then have them mix in the fertilizer internally.” The scavengers, who crept forward in perfect union, started to leave behind ridges of moist, well-fertilized soil in their wake. “Some time after I began asking them to do this task, the scavengers even learned a skill called Tillage.”

“I haven’t heard of that one before.”

“It looks like it’s focused on plowing and tilling the soil like this. They probably learned it because I only had them mixing soil and fertilizer, without any sowing or watering.”

“They would have learned the Farming skill if they had done everything.”

“Right,” I answered Elise. “In the same way, the sticky slimes learned a skill called Seeding.” I handed out the Dante’s Seeds I produced from the Item Box to the sticky slimes. They adeptly received them, molding the upper half of their bodies like bowls, and carried them to the ridges that the scavengers had tilled. In a single file of one sticky per ridge, they each used their tentacles to plant the seeds one by one in fluid motions that showed mastery in their craft. While the slimes, as was their nature, moved rather slowly, the sowing process was far more efficient than doing it all myself.

“I never thought slimes could farm...” One of Elise’s handmaidens blurted out. “Oh, pardon me.”

“It may come as a surprise, but slimes can learn tasks quite well. They just can’t do much in the way of heavy lifting.” Another annoying task on the farm was weeding. While most slimes ate weeds, the weed slimes that preferred to eat them were best suited for the task, since they ingested the weeds down to the roots without me having to command them. If I left them alone, they’d start secreting fluids with weed seeds or roots to start growing them all over the soil (as their next meal or protection), but that was the only thing I had to look out for.

“Acid slimes can do simple carpentry on command, for example. And the drunk slimes began taking after me, internally fermenting wine.”

“We’re still talking about...slimes, right?”

“Of course.” After I took the extra step of increasing the proof of the alcohol produced by the drunk slimes’ refinement and feeding them wine I had fermented for fun, they had started wanting fresh fruit as well as alcohol... Meanwhile, the variety of fruit was declining at the stores and prices were increasing as winter approached.

Despite my explanation...

“Ryoma is very compatible with slimes,” Elise paraphrased.

“I don’t think that explains anything...”

“They don’t seem like slimes at all...”

The maids seemed as befuddled as before...or perhaps more so.

“Master Takebayashi, the others have arrived.”

“Oh, thank you.” I only realized after Lulunese told me about a large number of maids, but... “That’s quite the crowd, isn’t it?” The group was closer to two dozen than five, in addition to five or six men dressed in butler’s uniforms... What was going on?

“Only five of them have created sugar scrubs, but those who had leaked the information to the girls must be joining us too. The housekeeper had mentioned that this was a good opportunity to whip the slacker servants back into shape.”

Right... Araune seemed seriously annoyed, unlike me... “Well, I can’t complain about having more testers.”

Meanwhile, I spotted some kind of leader among the servants, who seemed to be commanding the group. He was exceptionally tall, his head sticking clean above the crowd. He had a face like a gorill—I mean, a warrior. He looked exceptionally buff, with wide shoulders, thick biceps, and enormous upper-body muscles nearly bursting through his...maid’s outfit? I made eye contact... This individual started approaching me. “Who is that, Miss Lulunese...?”

“Libiola. She is highly trusted by the other servants, as well as by the master and mistress. She is an ape beastkin, and while she is female, her stature and profile may seem rather masculine.”

“An ape beastkin, I see. A pleasure to meet you, Miss Libiola.”

“Likewise. I was tasked by our housekeeper Araune with their re-training. I will be keeping an eye on them during the experiment. My apologies for dropping in like this.” Libiola had arrived, with her long stride, just as Lulunese had finished answering my question. She had introduced herself with a delicate bow... Even so, I had a feeling that I should be particularly careful not to cross her.

“It’s nothing,” I replied with careful etiquette. “Well, if you don’t mind, could I have you assist me in the experiment?”

“I am at your command.”

First, I decided to have her set up a workspace to create the sugar scrubs. Since the servants seemed to have brought the ingredients, I went over the steps of the experiment while they set up a space for work & storage some distance away from the patch of farm soil, where they began organizing the materials. “As for the ingredients...”

“Here’s the list.”

“Thank you.” Incredibly, they had brought seven varieties of vegetable oil alone, and a whopping repertoire of twenty varieties of scented oils! I could hardly believe I had only asked for them that same morning...

“We already had a decent amount of scented oils, since servants who deal with guests wear them as perfume.”

“All the same, I appreciate it.”

“So, Ryoma. What sort of experiments are you going to conduct with them?”

I considered Elise’s question before answering, “Let’s see... I have the luxury of choice when it comes to ingredients, but I think I’ll use the seven vegetable oils, plus the Dante that’ll be ready later, with just two or three of the most common scented oils.”

“You only want two or three?”

“Yes. The scented oils can be complicated when I start combining too many fragrances and adjusting their ratios. For today, I want to see the texture after mixing mumiteau with the vegetable and scented oils. And since I have so many volunteers, I would like to have them pose as customers, and find out their responses and market demands.”

I had asked them to help me with the experiment that morning, but I was practically a complete greenhorn when it came to beauty products. Even though I had no experience with this specific market, I knew that products wouldn’t sell without accompanying demand; it was basic economic theory.

“I’d love to compare the ingredients with their reaction and why they...” I noticed that a few of the younger maids were muttering to themselves about how difficult it sounded. “Let me put it this way, then. Just something like ‘I have dry skin, so I want more moisture.’ No need to make it complicated. Be honest and selfish about what you want from each product, and write them down after each use. That’s all.” I wanted to use the most common requests as guideposts for future products.

“Thank you, Master Takebayashi... You three! If there’s something you don’t understand, come and ask! Don’t stand about trying to eavesdrop! Even if you can’t tell when you may speak to Master Takebayashi or not, we can answer your questions!”

“S-Sorry!” The girls all jumped in startled unison.

“I apologize. Evidently, the girls haven’t learned their manners yet.”

“Their training is none of my business, of course, but please give them enough slack so they don’t get overly tired too soon.” Eight vegetable oils and three scented oils alone would make twenty-four combinations; just testing those would take quite a bit of time. On top of that, I had heard that the coarseness of the sugar changed the feel of the scrub, so I wanted to try versions with a finer texture.

At any rate, now I’d taken my first big step toward creating a line of sugar scrub products! Not that I ever expected it to become such a grand ordeal, though...