A Conspiracy and a Reunion
Satou here. I once heard at a seminar or something, “Never be complacent about your current situation—always strive for better!” But I think it’s important to take it easy without worrying about anything once in a while, too.
“Looks like a ghost town.”
“Yeah.”
On the afternoon of our seventh day since leaving Seiryuu City, we arrived at an uninhabited village.
I had noticed a broken barrier post from the road, so I’d stopped by to check if something had happened. Now that we were here, we could see that whatever had happened had likely been years in the past.
I took the younger group with me to search the town and left the older group near the horse-drawn carriage to keep watch and start preparing lunch.
Judging by the broken barrier posts and craters in the ground, my guess was that a large monster had flown in and destroyed the village. Could have even been the work of that hydra.
Four of the usual six barrier posts were damaged, and there were only holes where the remaining two would normally have been, as if people had pulled them out of the ground.
All the posts were hollow on the inside.
While I examined the scene with Pochi and Tama, Mia and Arisa called out behind me.
“Satou.”
“There’s a well over there, but it smells unpleasant, so I don’t think we should use it.”
“Hmm. This place is pretty close to Sedum City… I wonder why they left it like this.”
Why wouldn’t they just rebuild the barrier and the town?
“Hmm. In places like my hometown, they import barrier posts from the Saga Empire, so maybe they’re too far away from any territory that makes them?”
Oh, I see. I’d been thinking of them like telephone poles, but barrier posts were also a kind of magic tool.
I took Arisa and the others with me to survey the village some more.
Apparently, pottery had been the main livelihood of the village, with kilns and areas for collecting clay in the hillsides nearby.
Two of the three kilns were broken, but one seemed to be intact.
Pochi and Tama clearly wanted to play with the clay, but I told them not to for now.
Following the path of broken bowls and plates, I walked toward the village square where our carriage was parked.
Along the way, Tama spotted some russet wort, an herb used for MP recovery potions, and we collected it as we returned to the others.
We had an early lunch in the village square. Just as I’d promised the day before, I cooked up some of the brown wolf meat.
It was a pain to keep grilling it in batches, so I made steaks too big for the plates for everyone who wanted one.
Because it was more sinewy than the rocket wolf, steak wasn’t necessarily the best way to prepare it, but Liza praised it for “feeling wonderful under her teeth.” Pochi’s and Tama’s enthusiasm as they tore into their steaks was adorable, too.
For the others who couldn’t chew it as well, I cut their steaks into small cubes.
I stir-fried vegetables for Mia again, but I mixed it up with different ingredients. I chopped some of the pickled vegetables that Arisa had bought and tossed them in along with some herbs to add to the flavor and aroma.
I’d limited the portions so nobody would overeat, but once we’d finished, everyone was still too full to budge for a while afterward.
During our break after lunch, I formulated some elixir to use for transmutation.
For practice, I started out with one of the crimson needle bee cores from the Cradle.
First, I crushed it into a powder. I used a tool from the alchemy set that resembled a screw-style nutcracker to smash it, then ground it into a fine powder with the mortar and pestle.
Since the process was a bit of a pain, I decided to try crushing the core with my fingers the next time.
After that, I mixed the stabilizer. All I had to do was throw in a pinch of the powder I’d gotten in the alchemy shop, which contained bat wings, charred newt, and a bit of salt.
With a core that was only the size of the tip of my little finger, I could make twenty potions’ worth of elixir.
I stored the completed elixir in the Alchemy folder under the subfolder Elixir/HP Recovery Potions/Russet.
I was curious how effective of a potion I could make, so I practiced with a low-grade HP recovery potion.
Perhaps because I’d gotten the “Magic Manipulation” skill, operating the Transmutation Tablet seemed easier than before.
My completed magic potion came out as Highest Quality.
Since the salesperson at the alchemy shop had wanted red grade-3 cores or better, I had assumed rank was critical for potion making, but it could be done even with grade-1 cores.
This time, I tried a recipe from Trazayuya’s documents for brewing five potions at the same time. Unfortunately, these ones came out a rank lower, at High Quality.
Next, I tried it out with rank-2 and rank-3 cores. The results came out as Highest Quality, even when I used the five-at-once recipe.
Basically, the grade of the potions was based on the grade of the cores used, it seemed.
Most likely, the reason I could make high-quality potions even with low-grade cores was that I had a maxed-out “Transmutation” skill.
I had plenty of red cores from grades 1 to 3, so I made twenty of each kind into elixir. It would be a huge pain to put them all into little packages; I just stored the powder on its own.
While I was at it, I used some of the russet wort we’d picked earlier to make a few low-quality magic recovery potions.
Since Mia and Arisa had mentioned the terrible taste, I tried to reduce the bitterness by adding small amounts of honey and thorn licorice sap.
The efficacy fell slightly, but in exchange they came out surprisingly tasty. I’m sure my “Cooking” skill had something to do with that.
For the potions I didn’t have any empty vials for, I made folders to keep them in liquid form in Storage.
I really want to stock up on vials for potions soon…
I’m sure I’ll be able to get some if we go to Sedum City.
“Master, suspicious individual detected inside the forest. The target has already fled, but it is possible that they have already signaled reinforcements at this time, I report. Recommending an increase in alertness level.”
“Fishy.”
On the main road a little ways away from Sedum City, Nana gave a report while she drove the carriage, supplemented by Mia.
There was indeed a person in the forest. It was a man belonging to a guild I’d never heard of called “Duckweed.”
The guild was probably local to Sedum City. Since some of its members had bounties like Murder on them, I guessed it was a criminal guild like the Street Rats back in Seiryuu City.
Furthermore, more men from the same guild were lurking up ahead: a few at an intersection and twenty or so in a little clearing by the bank of a river on a side road.
Just to be safe, I took the reins from Nana.
The men waiting at the crossroads up ahead definitely looked like crooks to me. They were blocking the road with a crudely made bar.
“Hey, the coachman ain’t a lady!”
“There’re some brats riding in back, so it’s gotta be this one.”
“No, didn’t he say it’d be an old hag and a little girl?”
My “Keen Hearing” skill let me detect what the villains were muttering among themselves.
So these guys are only targeting carriages with either elderly people or young girls as their coachmen? This sounds awfully suspicious to me.
Well, not like it’s any of my business.
Determining that we weren’t their target, the ruffians moved the roadblock out of the way.
“Did something happen?”
“No, nothin’. Just keep movin’.”
I had addressed them politely, yet the group of scoundrels chased us off with a deliberate display of the machetes hanging at their waists.
I certainly wondered about it, but you wouldn’t catch me complaining about avoiding trouble.
Putting the suspicious matter behind us, we passed the roadblock and arrived at Sedum City.
This place was a castle city about the same size as Seiryuu City, but with at least 20 percent more people. There were even fewer demi-humans here than in the last city, though the proportion of catfolk was a bit higher.
Along the outer wall a little ways away from the city gate were clusters of emaciated people in dirty, tattered clothing living in little shacks.
According to the AR display, they weren’t citizens of Sedum City. Their titles read Refugee, so they’d probably come here from other territories or kingdoms.
While I was paying the city entrance tax at the gate, I inquired about it and learned that they had fled from the Muno Barony some twenty years ago. The fight between Zen and the Marquis must have been to blame.
Over the course of two decades, most of the people had moved into the city or nearby villages, but about two hundred people who hadn’t been able to relocate still remained.
After this conversation, I reported the suspicious bunch we’d passed by to the Sedum City gatekeepers, and a knight assured me that he would take some men on patrol to investigate.
Despite his haughty mien, he accepted the job without even asking the details. I guess you can’t always judge a book by its cover… I shouldn’t have assumed that he was a no-good layabout guard based on his appearance.
“Yes, they are demi-humans, but they are my master’s beloved slaves. As you can see, they’re wearing expensive clothing, so it would cause some trouble if they slept in the barn and were robbed. And if their clothes were stolen, would the inn be able to compensate, I wonder?”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
“In that case—”
“Which is why we must decline. They cannot stay in our inn.”
Not even Arisa’s nigh-invincible negotiating skills were enough to overcome the thinly veiled rudeness of the clerk at the inn near the gate.
After our arrival, we’d visited the nearest inn in the hopes of establishing a home base, but we were curtly rejected.
Oh, I wonder if I can use that introduction letter here.
Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pulled out the letter I’d received from the constable’s aide at the public office in Noukee and showed it to the ill-mannered clerk.
I wasn’t sure whether an authority from another town had much clout here, but since it was technically a letter from a noble of the same territory, maybe it would have some influence.
“Th-this is from the baronet…? P-pardon my rudeness. We will prepare a room for you right away.”
His face stiffening as if in a silent scream, the clerk quickly changed his tune. I guess the letter of introduction works in this city, too.
Arisa shot the clerk a withering look of contempt as his attitude changed.
“You’re going to ruin your cute face,” I hissed quietly to Arisa before discussing our room arrangements with the innkeeper.
The biggest room they had was for six people, so we decided to rent it for five days. I tried to rent another single-bed room for myself, but a chorus of protests from my group shut down that option. It was too late for that now, since they’d grown accustomed to sleeping in a huddle.
Since we’d racked up a long list of things to buy, I asked the inn’s clerk where I could find a company that sold a wide variety of products.
It would be a pain to go around and negotiate with each individual workshop. I figured it’d be easier to order a bunch of things in one place.
Since we were limited to items they could get their hands on during our stay, we wouldn’t be able to find everything we wanted. Still, since I told the merchant from the outset that I’d be willing to pay up to three times the market price if he could get things in time, chances were good we’d get close to 90 percent of the goods we wanted.
It wasn’t as if I were buying a large quantity, so paying triple the going rate wasn’t a big deal.
For more specialized parts, like materials for magic tools, I went directly to the workshop contracted with the company to order them in detail.
I ordered all kinds of potentially useful metal fittings, too, like tubes, wires, nuts, and bolts. With that, I should be able to concoct anything I came up with on the spot.
Most of the blacksmiths were busy producing or repairing armor and weapons for fighting off the kobolds in the silver mines, but luckily I got a chance to work out a deal with the company’s exclusive artisan.
After ordering parts, I chatted with the head of the workshop and got him to tell me more about the menace. He explained that the viceroy of Sedum City was stubborn and unyielding, so he had strong-armed the administration into aiding him with a knight-led force to help exterminate them.
I also learned that kobolds and dogfolk were different species. Specifically, kobolds were a race of evil fairyfolk characterized by their pointed ears, a doglike mouth, and blue skin.
According to a rumor going around, they had a stronghold deep in the mountain range just northwest of the Muno Marquisate.
Strangely, not even the magic and alchemy shops in Sedum City sold magic potion vials.
The company I’d been ordering from dealt in potions but not vials. I’d had them introduce me to a local pottery studio, but they brusquely informed me that I would have to wait a trimoon and drove me off. A trimoon… So at least ten days.
It was like someone was beating me to the punch for the sole purpose of harassing me.
Just in case, I asked the person in charge of fulfilling my order back at the company to ask around for anyone selling vials and to buy them if he found them.
Since most of my shopping was finished, I decided I’d spend the next day checking out the marketplace and the rest of the city.
My frustration had started to build again, so I slipped past the watchful eyes of Arisa and the others and headed out into the city at night.
Unlike the town of Noukee, the red-light district of Sedum City was about the same size as the one in Seiryuu City.
It seemed uncouth to make a beeline for one of the shops I was there for, though. First, I decided to stop in at the tavern responsible for the smell of some delicious grilled chicken.
“Welcome! Today’s specials are grilled grass pigeon skewers and whole-roasted sparrow. We do have ale, but we’ve just gotten in an excellent order of Noukee cider—you might like to try it.”
A charming young waitress greeted me with a bright smile and guided me to a table.
The dishes and leftovers of the previous customer were still there. The waitress briskly collected the dishes on a tray and swept the food scraps off the table with a cloth.
It seemed unsanitary to me, but I supposed it was normal in this world, so I didn’t say anything.
Scanning the tavern, I saw that a lot of the other customers were drinking hot ale and snacking on plump grilled sparrows.
I ordered a cold ale and grilled skewers. One of the customers had something that looked like daikon radish boiled in soy sauce, and I ordered that, too. My total came to the very reasonable price of one copper coin.
I preferred not to drink alone, so like I’d done in the tavern in Kainona, I joined the ranks of the locals by treating them to a whole cask of ale. Even in a parallel world, nobody could say no to free booze.
“You seem like a well-to-do fellow. Now, normally I’d only offer this to regulars, but…”
Now that the cask of ale was ready, the waitress started talking me up for a sale.
“The shop manager has a special aged brew from Muno called ‘Giant’s Tears.’ It’s pricey, but it’s a hidden gem that you can only drink right here in our tavern. People have even come from all over just to drink it.”
Judging by the name, it must be made by giants. I decided to go ahead and order it, and it tasted like sweet brandy. It certainly was delicious, but it seemed to have a high alcohol content, enough to knock out a lightweight.
While I drank the sweet liquor, I convinced a chatty older fellow to tell me about some of the famous attractions of Sedum City.
As I noted the places that sounded like they’d be good to check out with everyone, I heard a suspicious conversation from a table across the room.
“…So how’d it go?”
“Nothin’ yet.”
“Seriously? The cutoff is the day after tomorrow at sunset! Most other years, it’d already be here by now.”
“Don’t ask me. Isn’t it better if it’s slow anyway? Even if we can’t steal it, once they’re all broken, the pact’ll still be—”
I found the source of the voices—a few hooded men drinking at a table in the corner.
One of them had long silver hair spilling from under the shadows of his hood, and he tucked it back in irritably. If it weren’t for his distinctly masculine, sagacious voice, I would’ve mistaken him for a woman.
Just as the suspicious conversation was getting interesting, the old man grabbed my shoulder to get my attention.
“You listenin’, sonny?”
“Yes, of course. The statue of the ancestral king in front of the government office sounds magnificent.”
I poured some of the cider I’d ordered into the old guy’s cup. A bit of ale was left in the bottom, but he didn’t seem like the type to care.
“…and if we can get our hands on that, we could even build a new town.”
“If you’re going to be viceroy of a new town, sir, I hope you’d at least promote my family to be your assistants.”
“Sure. I always reward loyalty. But don’t get the wrong idea… I’m aiming to be the lord of my own territory, not just a viceroy.”
“Hey now, that’s awfully greedy…”
The silver-haired man’s frosty voice had fooled me. I’d thought they were discussing some kind of conspiracy, but now it sounded more like the drunken ramblings of a ruined noble.
Based on what Arisa had told me, building a new town or getting a City Core would be no easy feat. It’d probably be impossible unless you found a core underneath a fallen city or something.
“Hey, listen when your elders are talkin’ to you!”
My wandering attention had put the old man in a bad mood.
“I was listening. You were saying that there’s a monument to people who passed away in the epidemic five years ago in front of the viceroy’s castle, right?”
“Oho, so you weren’t ignorin’ me after all. My old lady almost died of that disease, too, but she survived thanks to medicine from the witch of the forest. We really owe her one.”
Whoa, so aside from the regular delivery of the stamina recovery potions, she does stuff like that, too? If we were a little closer in age, I could end up falling for her.
“Hey! I brought the guy we was talkin’ about!”
Now another drunken customer brought me a sober-looking middle-aged man.
…Who were we talking about again?
“So it’s you? You’re the rich guy who wants to order pottery?”
Oh, right. When I was discussing the shortage of potion vials earlier, somebody said they’d go get a friend of theirs who works at a pottery studio.
“Oh, wow, thanks for going out of your way for me…”
The middle-aged man was the owner of a little studio with its own kiln. Since the pottery guild had a monopoly on magic potion vials, he couldn’t just make them without permission.
“…But there is a way around that.”
I listened to the studio owner’s explanation. In brief, we could make them ourselves in his studio under the pretext of a “pottery class.”
“But there’s just one problem…”
“What is it?”
The man hesitated, furrowing his brow.
I thought he was going to hit me with a high price, but that wasn’t it.
“My studio’s a poor one. I’ve only got one humanfolk apprentice, and the rest of ’em are just demi-human slaves for manual labor. The slaves are the ones who knead the clay we use in our pottery. So if you ain’t comfortable handlin’ clay made by demi-humans, we got nothin’ to talk about here.”
The workshop owner was grimacing, but I told him it wouldn’t be a problem and asked whether he’d be able to accommodate a large group of people, explaining how many of us there were.
“Yeah, that’s fine. The shop used to turn a big profit in generations gone by, so the place itself is pretty big. We have enough pottery wheels for lotsa people, too. So about the price…”
I accepted his offer without even trying to negotiate. He must’ve been poor for a while, because the price he offered was so low that I felt bad about it.
I invited him to stay and have a drink, but he said that he had to prepare for the next day and left with an extra spring in his step.
After I’d enjoyed chatting with the regulars for a while, one of them offered to take me to the best brothel in Sedum City.
However, shortly after we left the tavern…
“Master, we’ve come to pick you up.”
“Let’s go.”
“Master, it is well past the recommended sleeping time, I report.”
Somehow, Arisa, Mia, and Nana had managed to find me and come to bring me back to the inn.
“Heyo, if you’ve got three pretty wives like this, you oughta go home to them! See ya later, and thanks for the great drinks! Let’s do it again sometime!”
“Thank you for taking care of my husband. I hope you’ll stay friends in the future.”
Arisa, in a good mood after being referred to as my wife, bade a polite farewell to my drinking companions. Though really, her comment sounded more like something a mother would say than a wife.
While Arisa spoke to the men, Mia and Nana were quick to grab hold of my arms. My left arm was envious of the right one in Nana’s grip.
When she turned back to us and saw that the other two had already claimed my sides, Arisa threw a tiny fit. I only have two arms—what do you want me to do?
I gave in to the three and let them lead me back to the inn.
I asked on the way how they’d found me, but Mia replied only that it was “secret.”
She’d probably used some kind of Elvish technique. But I’d like to think they went around town asking about me or some other answer from a fantasy.
“Ahh, it’s no use, sir! This is no good at all, sir!”
“N-nooo… Ahh, I can’t do it!”
At Pochi’s and Lulu’s wails, I turned around.
“The clay man just won’t calm down at all, sir!”
“I’m afraid I’ve failed.”
After lecturing the misshapen lump of clay on the pottery wheel, Pochi began rolling it into a new ball.
Lulu, also balling up her failure and starting from scratch, met my eyes and smiled bashfully.
On the eighth morning since our departure from Seiryuu City, we had stopped in at the pottery studio.
The master had taught us only the basic steps and how to operate the pottery wheel, then left the rest to the catfolk slaves and resumed his own work.
It would have been too difficult for us novices to suddenly start making vials, so we started out by attempting teacups.
Pochi’s and Lulu’s adorable little incident was a fair representation of our progress so far.
“This is somewhat more difficult than I expected.”
“It is difficult to calculate the centrifugal force, I report.”
Liza and Nana were also struggling to shape the clay properly. They did well at first, but their pieces broke near the end of the process.
Mia, on the other hand, had some experience with making pottery in her home village and was showing some of the others how to do it.
“Watch.”
“Mia, please supplement your demonstration with language, I entreat.”
“Watch this.”
Mia’s wordless instruction confounded Nana and her theoretical understanding of things, but the more practical Liza had no such problem, it seemed, and completed her first vessel.
Examining her handiwork, Liza’s face crinkled into a smile. The wide opening made her project look more like a small bowl than a teacup, but since she was so pleased, I didn’t want to discourage her.
Smiling fondly, I turned back to my own work with a comment to Arisa as she fashioned a suspicious-looking object next to me.
“So, Arisa, what are you making?”
“What do you mean? A figure, obviously!”
“I don’t think so.”
I reached over and crushed the bizarre object under my fist.
“Aaah! Not ‘Statue of My Beloved Master’! I was almost finished, too!”
“I’m banning you from making anything that would be offensive to public morals.”
I cut Arisa’s protests short. Normally I would let her make whatever she wanted, but I wasn’t going to allow a nude statue of me or any similarly dubious figures to exist on my watch.
“Aww… All that was left was to design and sculpt the lower half…”
I ignored Arisa’s mourning and continued to work. The others were all making teacups for their own personal use, but I’d decided to try to sculpt potion bottles.
For the clay I was using, the catfolk slaves had prepared a combination of regular clay with a special formula for vials that I’d made back in the inn. I’d decided to try out the old witch’s secret recipe.
By the time I’d made my tenth vial, I had successfully optimized the process.
Roughly, it went something like this—press a small lump of clay down with my thumb to make the base, squeeze the clay in my other hand into a smooth string, then swirl it around on top of the base to form the shape of a vial.
Then I just had to lightly rest my fingers on it, spin the potter’s wheel, and it was finished.
This impressive finesse was all thanks to my skills, of course. Since I got the “Pottery” and “Clay-Working” skills as soon as I made my first clay base, I immediately put the max amount of skill points into both of them.
At my fastest, I could make one in about six seconds, but I didn’t want to attract any trouble by leaving everything to my skills and surpassing the confines of humanity, so I limited myself to a speed of one or two vials per minute.
Despite that, I made no effort to disguise the quality of my work, and my vials were all as homogenous as if they’d been made in a factory.
Checking the log, I saw that I’d received the title Potter.
“Have you gotten the hang of the clay yet, mister? I’ve finished my work, so I have a little time to show you the— Wait, what?!”
Pulling his apprentice along, the owner of the studio came booming affably into the room, only to give a shout of surprise when he saw the number of bottles I’d lined up on the floor.
His reaction suggested I hadn’t held back enough.
“Damn, you’d never guess you made all these in such little time! We won’t even need to shave these down before we fire ’em. You’re not secretly some famous potter or somethin’, are you?”
“No, it was just a hobby of mine when I was young.”
In reality, before I learned the skill earlier, I had never touched a pottery wheel in my life, but the truth could hurt people sometimes, so I let my “Fabrication” skill help me out.
“Since they’re so thin, you’d only have to let them dry out for five days or so before we put them in the kiln, even in this weather.”
Amid his admiration, the studio owner muttered something that surprised me.
What was that?
“It’ll take five days before you can fire them?”
“Yeah, and thicker ones would have to dry for at least a trimoon. Otherwise they’ll crack while they’re baking.”
I thought they’d be finished later today…
Oh, right! If the issue is the moisture inside the clay, all we have to do is find another way to deal with that.
I based a new spell on the Water Magic spell Hard Dry. Instead of instantly evaporating water, it would gradually expel moisture from a vessel.
To help control the duration, I used bits of code from the Insect Repellent spell I’d made for Arisa.
Mia was free now that the workshop owner and his apprentice had taken over educating the other girls, so once I finished the spell, I got her to test it out. Since I was just concerned with getting results for now, the chant for the spell was rather choppy and uncool, but Mia used it without comment.
“… ? Clay Dry Nendo Kansou!”
Water droplets began oozing out of the surface of the vial and dripping to the floor. However, I must not have adjusted the speed enough, because the vessel cracked before the spell was done taking effect.
I improved it by adding in the humidity control code from the Water Magic spell Moisture Control so that it would stop at a certain degree of dryness.
This time, the drying process was successful, but the MP it required was way too high. At this rate, we’d be able to dry only twenty or so of the bottles before Mia’s magic ran out.
I decided to change my approach, and instead of leaving everything to the spell, I let the caster choose when the effect would end. Luckily, my “Pottery” skill would tell me when it was dry enough, so this wasn’t a problem.
I also changed the target range to an area of effect. Once I had Mia use the spell Clay Dry Second, we were able to finish drying all the vials.
“Oho, I didn’t know there was a spell like that. You’re awful powerful for such a small girl, aren’t you, missy?”
“Mm.”
Mia puffed out her chest with pride at the studio owner’s praise.
Now that we could dry the vials quickly with magic, the owner agreed to bake them along with his own work.
Since firing the clay and glazing it would take until the evening, the rest would be done by the next day. Apparently the baking itself took a full day.
I was surprised the process was so time-consuming, but we still set all our finished vessels into the kiln and watched them light the fire.
“Wow, it takes more time than I expected. Wouldn’t it be easier to put the glaze on before baking it?”
“You’re an impatient young lass, eh? Plenty of studios don’t bake before glazing, but then the moisture left in the clay seeps out and changes the color of the glaze or dissolves it in places. If it’s going to be used for magic potions, the special glaze has to be uniform, or the quality of the potion will go way down. The pre-baking is essential,” the workshop owner politely explained, despite Arisa’s grumbling.
…Huh? In that case, since we already dried them out with magic, wouldn’t my vials be fine without being fired before glazing?
I didn’t want to have them stop their work in the middle, though, so I didn’t say anything, and we left the workshop.
In the afternoon, we visited the tourist destinations I’d learned about in the tavern.
“Biiig!”
“It’s as tall as two Lizas, sir!”
Tama and Pochi gazed up excitedly at the bronze statue in front of the public office.
“Girls, this is a statue of the ancestral king, so try not to be too noisy, okay?”
“’kay.”
“Yes, sir.”
When I chided them gently, Tama and Pochi clamped their hands over their mouths.
“Still, no matter how great a man he might have been, this is an exaggeration.”
“Mm.”
Arisa had a point. The ancestral king’s statue was more than ten feet tall. Relative to the rest of the statue, the huge greatsword in its hand just looked like a normal one-handed sword.
Before the bronze statue, a poet was reciting an epic about the ancestral king.
Most of the anecdotes were pretty hard to believe. In one, monsters surrounded him, and his Holy Sword Claidheamh Soluis split into thirteen smaller swords that flew into the sky to protect him. In another, an assassin who broke into his bedroom had to fight the ancestral king’s armor moving on its own. There were even multiple stories where he rode around on sky dragons or cursed hell demons.
Since this was all in the praise of the hero who’d founded the kingdom, no doubt there was a lot of embellishing.
Before I knew it, the beautiful voice of the poet had drawn a crowd of listeners.
When the song finally ended, I threw some money into the hat at the poet’s feet and joined in on the generous round of applause.
This peaceful scene was promptly ruined by one man’s jeers.
“Hey! You damn idiots! Outta the way!”
Clearing a path through the crowd of people, an aristocratic-looking man stomped to the front.
“It’s unusual to see a noble going around without a horse-drawn carriage.”
“I think that guy’s a former noble who’s fallen on hard times. I saw him in the tavern before.”
“He’s a former noble? In that case, it would be best to avoid him if at all possible, Master.”
I gave Liza a puzzled look in response.
“Perhaps you have forgotten? That is the same man who tried to take the ant cores in…”
Her words finally jogged my memory. It was that small-time crook again. I thought perhaps he’d found new employment at the government office in Sedum City, but his affiliation still read None. Maybe he failed an interview?
Now, I’d always been the type who didn’t remember the faces of people I wasn’t interested in, but forgetting him this often was strange even for me. I didn’t have a “Forgetfulness” skill or anything, and my INT skill was really high, so you’d think I’d be better at remembering things…
Maybe my INT stat was actually too high, and it was filtering out seemingly useless information so that it wouldn’t get in the way of normal processing.
Maybe it’s like a compressed file on a computer?
This was just a baseless hypothesis, but since I didn’t want to consider the possibility that I’d developed juvenile amnesia, I just went with that.
This was the only event that put a damper on our sightseeing, though, and we spent the rest of the day enjoying the sights of this world while the younger kids took turns riding around on my shoulders.
The next day was the ninth afternoon since we’d set out from Seiryuu City. Returning to the pottery studio, we all worked on glazing the fired vessels.
Mia’s magic must have worked well, since there were no cracks in the dried vials.
I’d expected the news that we had to let the glaze dry for several days before we could bake them, so we used a spell I’d prepared the night before called Glaze Dry so they were ready for baking in a short period of time.
From there, we decided to wander around the market near the city gate for fun.
“Say, do you have any bargains on pictures books, by chance?”
“We’ve no picture books, I’m afraid. How about these philosophy books and memoirs?”
The small, dodgy-looking man Arisa had addressed directed his reply toward me instead.
There were a few bound books at his booth and around ten that were held together with thread. Next to the stall was a stack of five or so bundles of paper wrapped with string.
“Is it all right if I have a look inside?”
“Certainly. These are research papers that some rich person’s heir sold to me on the cheap. I’ve brought them to scholars and magic users, but nobody would buy them, so I’ve been waiting for someone with a sharp eye to take a liking to them.”
I don’t think this little man is very well suited to business. Who would buy something after that kind of pitch…?
“What is it? Did you find something interesting?” Arisa asked me curiously.
What had caught my interest wasn’t the book in my hands but the pile of papers casually stacked next to the stall.
“I’d sell you that book for just one gold piece.”
Because my “Estimation” skill told me the book was worth only one copper, I flatly replied that I was just surprised by the terrible penmanship and asked about the pile of papers instead.
“One copper per bundle is enough for that. If you buy all of them, I’ll even part with the lot for one large copper.”
“I was just going to use them to pack some pottery, but at that price, I’d be better off using sawdust…”
“Two pennies for the lot, then! Take them, you thief!”
I agreed to the man’s desperately shouted bargain and got him to throw in the saddle-stitched research notes from the rich heir for dirt cheap while I was at it. Apparently, he hadn’t sold a single one yet.
“What’d you go and buy junk like that for?”
“Beats me.”
I shrugged off Arisa’s question, indicating that I wasn’t sure myself.
In truth, it was my “Estimation” skill that motivated me to buy the paper bundles.
For some reason, their market price displayed as just —. The only other objects I’d ever seen like that were unique items like the Garage Bag and the Holy Swords I had in Storage.
I’d never seen my “Estimation” skill give a price higher than 250 gold coins, which must mean those items were worth even more than that.
I’d bought them on a treasure-hunting whim, so I looked forward to finding out what was written inside.
For all I knew, there could be a treasure map in there.
I added, “We’ll just have to see,” to befuddle the still-curious Arisa, slipped into an alley to stow the papers in the Garage Bag, then moved on to the next stall.
“Master, mysterious rotating object detected. Be vigilant, I request.”
Nana grabbed on to my arm and pointed at one of the stalls.
Her face was very close. Seeing this, Mia started sulking.
“Mrrrr…”
“Excuuuse me a moment. All right, break it up, break it up.”
Sounding like a schoolteacher, Arisa pushed herself between us from behind, moving Nana away from me.
What Nana had detected was a spinning top. The upper portion had an eye-catching red glow that left a faint afterimage as it spun.
“You there, the well-to-do-looking young man. Care for a peek at a magic tool from the royal capital?”
I made eye contact with the shopkeeper, and he called me over. There was a crowd of children clamoring around the stall, and the salesman shooed them away to make room for me.
It was natural to treat customers differently from curious onlookers, but I felt sorry for the kids who were chased away, so I apologized to them as I approached.
“Is this a top?”
“That’s right, but not just an ordinary top…”
Grinning, the salesman picked up the top in both hands. The grooves in its surface glowed red, and the top began spinning on its own.
“This is no fake! Try passing some magic through it for yourself.”
I could already tell that it was real thanks to my AR screen, but I gave it a shot anyway. According to the display, the top’s official name was a Rolling Disc.
Being careful not to break it, I let a little magic flow through. With a single point of magic, the center of the top began to rotate, though it was still in my hand. When I released it, the exterior spun in the opposite direction from the inside.
It must use a motor-like mechanism that runs on magic.
With a mechanism like this, I could probably make a mixer or something.
Since there weren’t any motor-like circuits in my magic tool textbook, maybe this was an original design by the creator.
“Pretty interesting. I’d like to buy two, please. How much?”
“Normally I’d ask two and a half gold coins for one, but if you’re buying two, I can knock it down to four.”
The price matched my estimated market value. It was a high price for a toy, so maybe I could get a better discount.
I managed to talk him down to three gold pieces for two. The reason I bought a spare was so that I could dismantle one to inspect it.
As I pulled out the gold coins, I asked on a whim about who the creator was, and he answered me easily. The inventor was an old professor from the royal capital named Jahado.
The man was famous for making useless magic tools, he said.
I’d gotten a bit hungry while we were browsing the stalls, so I followed my nose to a tasty-smelling product called roasted dumplings, a Sedum City specialty.
These turned out to consist of pickled vegetables wrapped in a thin layer of kneaded wheat flour and baked, sort of like manju steamed buns. Despite being a vegetable-only dish, it proved popular even with the beastfolk girls.
Glancing over, I saw Liza’s eyes were fixed on a nearby chicken skewer stall, so I gave her some change to buy some for the group.
While we were enjoying this little snack break, a blue light appeared on the radar in the corner of my vision.
The location indicated the person was near the main road. Since a blue spot denoted an acquaintance, I thought perhaps it was Zena chasing after me, but I was wrong.
The point actually belonged to the witch’s apprentice.
She was riding in a carriage flanked by an escort of four living armors, heading toward Sedum City.
I thought for sure she would go to the nearest town, Noukee, or up north to Kuhanou to deliver the magic potions. But since the carriage’s cargo was indeed potions, she had to be coming for a delivery.
I didn’t know why they’d go so far out of their way to transport goods in Sedum City, but I was sure there was some reason for it.
Since the reason the delivery had been rushed in the first place was the kobolds attacking the silver mines, maybe they’d chosen Sedum City for the shipment because it was closest to the mines.
…Which means those guys at the crossroads before were planning to ambush the witch’s apprentice?!
I rechecked the map.
The carriage had already passed the crossroads, where the group of thieves was amassed off to the side of the road with the condition Bone Fracture.
The living-armor guards had probably beaten them up.
It had taken me a while to notice, but now that I knew that the witch’s disciple had traveled all the way out here, I headed toward the gate to meet her.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, I just thought I’d say hello to an acquaintance of mine.”
“An acquaintance?”
“Yeah. I told you I visited a witch’s tower deep in the forest before, right?”
“What? So ‘witch’s tower’ wasn’t the name of some business full of pretty women?!”
As I chatted with Arisa on my way toward the city gate, I noticed some strange movement on the radar. A few of the villains from the crossroads were chasing after the apprentice’s carriage, and they were gaining fast.
“We need to hurry, actually. It looks like there’re bad guys chasing after her.”
With that, I rushed toward the gate. Liza picked up Arisa and Nana scooped up Mia so that they could follow close behind.
“Aaah! Pochi, Tama, please put me down!”
“We’ll carry you, miss!”
“Gotcha, Luluuu!”
When I turned around in surprise at the chorus of voices behind me, I saw that Pochi and Tama were trying to carry Lulu together, with her legs over their shoulders.
Whoops. I guess I should have told them that the slower members of the group could take their time following us.
There was a commotion outside the city gate.
The robbers had caught up to the panther-drawn carriage, and the battle had already begun.
The four living armors lined up to meet the ambush with pitchfork-like weapons.
The witch used her Earth Magic Sling spell to knock back all the approaching villains in one fell swoop.
Despite how close this whole situation was to the city gate, none of the gatekeepers were coming out to intervene.
In fact…
“Hey! You there, witch! Use of magic is prohibited near Sedum City. What if you hurt innocent passersby?!”
…all they were doing was shouting idiotic things to hinder her.
A few soldiers attempted to leave the gate to stop the ruckus, but the haughty-looking knight shouting at the carriage, who was apparently the captain, stopped them.
This guy seemed to be working with the villains, too, or at least being paid off.
I told Nana to guard Lulu and Mia, and then I brought the beastfolk girls with me toward the carriage. Just in case, I asked Arisa to deal with the knight and use her Psychic Magic to keep the area under control.
“Liza, Pochi, Tama! Don’t let the bad guys near the carriage!”
Without waiting for a reply, I broke into a run.
“You lot! If you’re going to join in on this ruckus, you’ll answer to the law, too! We’ll—”
Partway through his statement, the knight suddenly collapsed in a fit of apparent anemia. The soldiers around him all dutifully cried out, “Captain!” but none actually went to his aid. Guess he isn’t very popular.
“Oh dear, perhaps he has anemia?” Arisa remarked to Lulu in a loud, unnatural voice, throwing a quick wink in my direction when our eyes met for a moment.
She must have used her Psychic Magic spell Mind Blow to knock him out with a single strike.
Seeing us rushing in to help, the magical puffbird familiar on the apprentice’s head alerted her with a loud, “Pou-kwee!”
“We’ll back you up.”
“I-it’s you! The person with the Elvish bell!”
“…The name’s Satou.”
I reminded Ine—uh, what was it? Right, Ine-what’s-her-face—of my name, then helped her fend off the robbers.
Since the knight holding them back was now out of the way, the gatekeepers came to offer assistance.
“Leave this to us and get inside the city, please.”
The man who appeared to be the vice captain called Ine back and headed over to arrest the villains, who seemed less eager to join the fray now that public servants were involved.
Ine’s carriage and her living armor escorts rushed by us to enter the city.
Realizing they’d failed, most of the villains fled in groups of twos and threes into the forest, but a few of them stubbornly insisted on pursuing the carriage, so the beastfolk girls knocked them out on my order.
Then, leaving the gatekeepers in charge of the captured villains, we went back into the city.
As we passed through the city gate, a boom signaled a heavy collision, followed by the crash of breaking objects, and lastly a scream from Ine.
Hurrying to the scene, we saw carts loaded with logs that had sandwiched Ine’s carriage, and that the living armors had destroyed the logs, and, finally, the tragic remains of the crate of magic potions, crushed between the living armors.
Plip, plip… Liquid dripped slowly from what was left of the crate.
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