Let’s Make Some Potions!
Satou here. There are plenty of PC games where you can make potions, but usually when you gather the materials and mix them together, the finished potion comes complete in a bottle. I always used to wonder where the bottle came from whenever I looked at the recipes.
“Aaah… The potions… But that means the Forest of Illusions will be…”
The little witch, Ine, began wailing like a child, huge tears dripping from her eyes. Two living armors stood protectively at her left and right.
Meanwhile, the men who’d arranged the wreck were using this chance to make a break for it.
“Arisa, take care of her, please.”
“Okeydokey!”
Arisa responded cheerfully, so I left her to look after Ine and took the beastfolk girls with me to chase down and capture the men.
“Liza, Pochi, Tama, catch the guys who went that way.”
“Understood!”
“I’ll do my best, sir!”
“Me toooo!”
Pochi and Tama weaved through the crowd hot on the heels of the men shoving onlookers out of the way.
“Gotcha, sir!”
“Justiiice!”
Tama and Pochi pulled the men to the ground, and Liza pinned them with her foot.
After I confirmed this with a sideways glance, I slipped in front of the remaining men and struck them with the side of my hand without even turning around, knocking them out.
We brought our captives to the vice captain of the gatekeepers.
“Thank you for your assistance.”
“I was just helping out my friend’s daughter here.”
The guards helped me pull the logs from the wrecked carts away from the carriage.
“Ahhh… Ab, Seb… I’m sorry. It must have hurt. I’m sorryyy…”
Clinging to the two unmoving living armors with crushed torsos, Ine started sobbing again.
First, we had to assess the situation.
“Inenimaana, stop cryi—”
“You really think saying it like that will help a child stop crying?!” Arisa interrupted me harshly.
“I-I’m not—hic—a ch-child… Wehh…”
What with all the sobs and hiccups, Ine’s denial wasn’t very convincing.
“Inenimaana, try to settle down first. At the very least, we have to determine how many potions are intact and if the carriage can still move.”
“O-okay… I’ll have Gab and Rob take down the box so I can check.”
Her voice was still choked with tears, but Ine stopped crying and instructed the remaining living armors to gently lower to the ground the box that had contained the potion vials.
Working together to count, we learned that of the 300 vials, about 180 of them had broken and spilled their contents.
Pretending to check the broken vials, I snuck some of the intact vial bases and remaining potion in the box into Storage under the Witch folder. I recovered about forty of them.
Under the carriage, a nest of weeds had sprung up—probably the result of the 140 or so potions soaking into the ground there.
Despite its broken sides, the carriage could still move without a problem, so we decided to bring it to the city hall, where someone was waiting for the delivery. We could at least give them the intact potions and arrange for the rest to arrive at a later date.
I accompanied Ine to the city hall. I wasn’t heartless enough to make a kid I knew fend for herself.
Honestly, even if I’d never met her before, I doubted I could’ve left well enough alone in the face of such a desperate expression.
“Arisa, you come, too. I have some tasks for everyone else…”
I took Arisa to the city hall for her negotiating skills and asked the others to take care of a few errands to prepare to deal with the worst-case scenario.
“…I see. However, a pact is a pact. I’m afraid you’ll still have to deliver three hundred magic potions by sunset tonight.”
“But…”
In a room in the city hall, the viceroy’s silver-haired aide responded coldly to Ine’s explanation.
Incidentally, though the aide was sitting in a chair at his office desk, we had to stand while we explained the situation.
Knowing Arisa would have some choice words for the man’s cruel remarks, I clamped a hand over her mouth from behind.
While we’d been permitted to stand in the room as Ine’s attendants, we were forbidden to speak.
I had some thoughts on the aide’s response myself, but there was a strong sense of déjà vu about him.
Besides, I was concerned about another individual in the room with us.
Standing at an angle behind the aide with a derisive smirk was none other than our petty crook.
Why is this guy here?
Though he’d been wearing a threadbare civil official’s uniform last time I saw him, now he was sporting fancy aristocratic clothes. It didn’t suit him at all—more like a costume or something.
“Now, I’m very busy. If that is all, I’ll ask you to take your leave.”
Ine’s small shoulders trembled at the aide’s chilly voice. Arisa elbowed me in the side, prompting me to give the witch’s apprentice a hand.
Right. As an adult, I should probably step in here.
“If I could speak with you for a moment, please…”
“Silence, commoner! Attendants are to keep their mouths shut!”
I spoke up to request permission from the aide, but it was the crook who butted in to try to shut me down.
Ine flinched at the man’s shout. Arisa narrowed her eyes as if she wanted to say something, but I stopped her with a hand.
With guys like these, we’d already lost when we stepped into their court.
Back in my own world, the violent atmosphere might have frightened me. But here, where a bloodthirsty lizardman had threatened my life and I’d fought to the death with a greater hell demon, these guys were about as threatening to me as a yapping dog on a leash.
I ignored the crook and stared levelly at the aide, waiting for his answer.
> Title Acquired: Proud Dog-Tamer
> Title Acquired: Coolheaded Negotiator
A few new lines in my log promptly reflected my thoughts.
The aide raised a hand to silence the small-time crook, then jerked his chin my way to allow me to finish.
“One hundred and eighty of the potions were damaged in the incident—that’s more than half the batch. If we can acquire the other hundred and forty potions by some other means, would you accept the delivery as completed?”
In other words, I was gunning for permission to buy the rest of the potions somewhere in the city.
“That is unacceptable.”
After a moment of thought, the viceroy denied my proposal in an icy voice.
“This pact is between the count of Kuhanou and the witch of the Forest of Illusions. We can only accept the potions if they’ve been made by the witch herself.”
When I’d asked the old witch about the pact, she’d explained she had to send specially made potions, but I didn’t think that meant she needed to make them all herself. In fact, the potions listed Ine as their maker.
It was almost as if these guys wanted this delivery to fail so the pact would be broken…
…Wait, maybe it’s more than “almost” like that.
The aide brushed his long silvery hair behind his ear. It seemed to be a habit of his. Light from the window reflected off the silver strands.
That was lovely and all, but he was still a guy, so it did nothing for me. His long hair made him look like a character out of a classic manga for girls.
However, something about the movement rang a bell somewhere in my mind.
…Huh?
Between that and the smirk on the criminal’s face, I sensed I was on the verge of remembering something.
There was something familiar about the aide’s icy voice, too. Where in the world had I heard it before?
…Now I remember! These two are the former nobles I saw in the tavern!
In which case, that conversation was a lot more than just idle bragging. Were these guys planning to steal the old witch’s mana source and build a new city there?
I didn’t know if that was even possible, but for now it was probably best to assume that was their plan.
Similar things had happened back in my world, but I didn’t want to see it occur here.
And so I decided to use some of my skills, like “Fabrication” and “Negotiation,” to cross-examine the aide about the clause he’d seemingly added to the pact. “Judgment” skill, I’m counting on you, too!
“I do not believe there was any such provision in the pact. Would you happen to know who added that clause, sir?”
“Why should a commoner like you know anything about the contents of the pact?”
“Madam Witch and I have worked together on occasion.”
In a heavy voice, like a crack forming in a glacier, the aide countered my question with one of his own.
Frankly, if you were going to ask that, you probably should’ve done it when I first came into the room as an attendant.
The aide stared at me in an attempt to read my true intentions, so I relied on the help of my “Poker Face” skill to fend him off.
Maintaining a bland smile, I activated “Coercion” for just a fraction of a second, causing the aide to recoil. A line of cold sweat trickled down his handsome face.
“…Very well. As long as the potions are of the same level as the witch’s, we will accept them.”
At this, Ine raised her drooping head a little.
But there was a small problem with the phrasing he’d used.
“Good sir, if I may, does this mean you will accept only goods of the same quality, or higher as well?”
“…Higher? Do you intend to empty your savings to purchase potions of higher than intermediate quality?”
I responded with only a sweet smile.
Unlike low-grade potions, intermediate potions were very limited in distribution. Even if we bought up every one available in Sedum City, we’d be lucky to get 20 percent of what we needed.
And the aide was sure to know this as well.
“Hmph. If you think you can gather enough, be my guest. I’ll accept any potions of equal or greater efficacy.”
Scowling, the aide tried to dismiss us.
But I wasn’t done yet.
I placed two sheets of paper on his desk and smoothly wrote out the conditions we’d agreed upon. This was an easy task, since I’d planned what to write in my networking tab’s memo field as we previously spoke.
Before long, I’d drawn up two copies of the document. Thanks to my “Penmanship” skill, the writing was so neat that I could barely believe I’d written it.
“I’ve recorded our agreement in writing. If you have no complaints, I would like you to stamp them with your seal of approval, if you please.”
Just as with an agreement between companies, I wasn’t about to accept a verbal contract. If it wasn’t recorded in writing, whoever had the most powerful position could easily win out after endless debate over what was or wasn’t said.
In this case, when the other party clearly didn’t want the agreement to be fulfilled, a contract was especially important.
“…In writing, you say?”
“Are you saying you can’t trust the words of a noble, commoner?!”
The small-time crook piped up again, but I ignored him.
Ultimately, my business here was with the aide.
“Sir, I understand you are quite busy. I am concerned that you may be otherwise engaged at the time of delivery, and if there is some miscommunication, an official may not be able to receive it. Now, I’m sure it’s far from your purpose for the appointed time to pass, thus breaking the pact. Correct?”
The aide was obviously intent on getting the pact broken, but in his position, there was no way he could confirm that.
With a pained look on his handsome features, the aide signed and sealed both documents, then placed them side by side to add tally seals.
I didn’t have a seal of my own, so I used Ine’s instead. Apparently, the old witch had given it to her. Once this mess is done with, I should probably make one for myself.
“I assume this will do. You may leave now.”
Stone-faced, the aide made sure to drive us away for good this time.
On our way out, I heard the crook exclaim, “Even if you can make the potions, good luck finding any vials to put them in!” Shortly after, the aide harshly told him off for saying too much.
…So that was the reason he’d been going on ahead of me and stocking up on vials. Doesn’t he have anything better to do?
With a livid Arisa and teary-eyed Ine, the three of us exited the city hall.
“All right, one hundred and eighty potions it is. The vials might pose a problem, but there’s plenty of time before sunset, so I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
“Weh? W-we’re going to make them?”
Ine chewed her lip. Behind her, Arisa had drawn a portrait of the aide in the dirt and was stomping on it vigorously.
The apprentice witch looked troubled at the prospect, but unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a choice.
After all, on top of the shortage of potions in the city, the available ones weren’t good enough to substitute for the witch’s high-quality brew.
“That’s right. I do have a hundred vials, although I’m not sure what to do about the other eighty.”
“But I’m sure there’s something we can do, right?”
“Yeah. Everyone else is running around the city searching for them even as we speak.”
Arisa looked to me with trust. It was a stark contrast with Ine’s palpable anxiety.
“Argh! So what if you have vials?! There’re only three chimes or so until sunset, you know! Those potions took a whole night to make in the cauldron. And the prep work before that took my mistress and me a whole month… There’s just no way!”
Ine gazed up at me in teary-eyed frustration, ready to start crying again at any second.
“It’s all right. Our master is a great cheater, so I’m sure he can take care of things.”
…I appreciate the show of faith, but could you find a better way to phrase that, please?
At that moment, Lulu returned with Tama and Pochi in tow.
“Master, we’ve finished checking.”
“Thanks. Any luck?”
“Well…”
The results Lulu reported were anything but favorable.
I’d sent them to find out if we could speed up the process of firing the vials—maybe bake another hundred while we were at it—but they couldn’t even take the first set out of the kiln until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
Next, Mia and Liza arrived from the market.
“Satou.”
“We have returned, Master.”
The baskets they carried were loaded with herbs and a vegetable that looked like spinach.
These were ingredients for magic potions. They’d been able to get only ten bundles of the main ingredient, blue mugwort, but they had nearly three times the amount of the other ingredients we’d need. I could just use the leftovers to make potions for our own use at a later date.
Lastly, Nana returned from the company.
“Delivering twenty-five vials for stamina recovery potions and twelve lesser-grade stamina recovery potions purchased from the company, I report.”
I checked the vials Nana had brought me. I’d had her buy the lesser-grade potions so that we could use the vials.
Since the witch’s magic potion was basically an improved version of the lesser-grade stamina recovery potions, the same vials would work. My “Analyze” skill told me the vials had a shorter shelf life than the ones from the old witch, but in this case, that shouldn’t be a problem.
If only we could use the vials from the pottery studio, we’d just need forty more, but there’s no use dwelling on that.
“I guess we really need to figure something out for the vials, huh?” I mumbled.
“Aaargh! Why don’t you get it?! It’s not the stupid bottles that’re the problem! Even if you had all the ingredients and vials in the world, it’d still be impossible!” Ine shrieked, on the verge of hysteria.
No, maybe not the verge. She was already distraught.
“Why is it impossible?”
“’Cos… ’Cos…”
In an attempt to calm her, I met Ine’s gaze and addressed her. Unable to properly form the words, Ine just kept stammering, “’Cos.”
To be honest, we should have started immediately, but I still had no clue what to do about the vials.
I tried using the map to search the city for vials and stamina recovery potions, but even if we gathered every single one, we’d still be short over half of what we needed.
Most likely, the viceroy had requisitioned all of them before leaving to fight the kobolds in the silver mines.
There was a large number of vials in what appeared to be a noble’s mansion, but that was almost definitely the collection of the aide and his crooked sidekick. Borrowing from there would be a last resort.
“’Cos we… We don’t have enough magic. If we were near the mana source, we’d be able to recover it easily, but it won’t work here.”
“We’ll just have to drink potions for that as we go, then.”
I had plenty of completed MP recovery potions, not to mention materials to make even more.
“Blech… B-but they’re so bitter…”
Unable to stand her whining any longer, the puffbird, which had been sitting motionlessly on her head like a hat, screeched its strange “pou-kwee!” and pecked at her forehead.
“Ow, ow, owww!”
Ine shrieked in pain, but my kids were thrilled.
“Whoa! It’s not just a hat?”
“Master, permission to care for this spherical creature, I request.”
Arisa’s and Nana’s reactions caught my attention in particular. Of course, I dismissed Nana’s request.
This hair ball is the witch’s familiar, right? … I wonder…
“Inenimaana, is it possible to speak to your teacher through this little thing?”
“Um… y-yeah, you can… Why, are you gonna tell on me ’cos I failed?”
It was a childlike reaction, but since the Forest of Illusions’s fate was on the line, I figured it was important to contact the old witch to report the situation and obtain her guidance.
“That’s not it at all. I’d just like to ask her a few things.”
“… Yeah, okay. C’mere, Pou.”
So the puffbird was named after the weird sound it made, huh?
“ ? Call Yobidashi!”
Ine used a short spell, and the puffbird’s demeanor changed. It still made the same weird “pou-kwee” sound, but somehow with a deeply intellectual air.
“The mistress can hear you now. She can’t talk back, though.”
In that case, you really ought to make your familiar a parrot or some other talking bird. Instead, I wrote yes and no in the dirt so we could communicate that way.
I gave the witch a status report and explained a few possible action plans.
Then I asked whether it was possible that Count Kuhanou himself might be involved in the conspiracy.
The answer was—no.
So this was the aide’s own plan, then.
The viceroy of Sedum City was currently leading a party of knights to reinforce the troops fighting in the silver mines, and Count Kuhanou was in faraway Kuhanou City.
It’d be nice if we could get the count to come put the viceroy’s aide in line, but…
Just to be sure, I asked if he could actually carry out his scheme in the Forest of Illusions if the pact was broken.
Unfortunately, the answer was yes.
I couldn’t really suss out the details with yes-or-no questions, but one thing was clear: We had no choice but to deliver the rest of the magic potions and fulfill the contract.
After asking a few more questions of the old witch, I ended the call.
Once I’d wrapped up my consultation, I turned to Ine and the others to discuss preparations for making the potions.
“Now, about the vials…”
“Here, heeere! I know this one!”
Arisa shot her hand into the air like an elementary school kid. As she hopped up and down eagerly and stretched her hand as high as it would go, her cute behavior matched her childish appearance for once.
“What, you have an idea?”
“Ee-hee-hee, do you wanna know? You really wanna know?”
“Just spit it out already.”
Arisa folded her hands behind her back and looked up at me mischievously. I pinched her cheek, hoping she’d wipe the smirk off her face and explain. Her cheek was really stretchy.
“Owww! Leggo, leggo!”
“Oh, sorry. I got carried away.”
“Sheesh. I’m talking about the village! You know, the abandoned one we found before?”
Oh yeah… There was an unbroken kiln in the foothills behind that village, wasn’t there?
“But will we even be able to finish them before sundown if we start now?”
If we made it, we could collect the hundred vials in the pottery studio, too.
“Well, I’m counting on your superhuman tricks for that part, Master.”
No plan, huh? I’ll have to talk to someone who might know how to shorten the time.
With that thought in mind, I started to make my way toward the pottery studio, but Mia stopped me with a single word: “Hoze.”
… Hoze? Not haze, like the fish? … Oh, right, one of the ratmen we helped out before. Come to think of it, he did give me a piece of paper with notes about pottery in Japanese.
I took out the note and gave it another read.
The tiny writing described the process and time required for various kinds of pottery. It even included extremely detailed notes about what the processes were for and why each amount of time was necessary.
As a bonus, there were diagrams illustrating tools or passages that were hard to understand. The level of thoroughness was almost scary.
It was as if the author had known they were going to a parallel world and had prepared by collecting detailed knowledge about the world they came from.
… Well, I’ll have to worry about that later.
Mentally, I sorted through the information I’d obtained from the note.
The reason the baking took so long was because of the time it took to raise and lower the temperature inside the kiln.
Back in our world, we’d dealt with that by using microwaves to rapidly increase the temperature.
If I had some way of generating that much heat besides firewood—besides combustion altogether…
I searched the depths of my memories. Events floated across my mind and faded like a rotating lantern.
… I’ve got it. A heating method that even melted through the bottom of a copper pot before long.
I nodded at Arisa, who was beside me peering at the paper.
“See? You’ve got an idea already.”
“Yeah. You think we can just use an abandoned village’s facilities like that, though?”
“Why not? It looked to me like nobody’s been there for a long time.”
True enough. Going out of my way to request permission at the government office would just be asking for trouble.
I checked the location on the map. There was a small mountain on the way, so it was unlikely anyone would see the smoke and get us in trouble.
“All right, let’s go with that.”
I announced the plan to everyone, handed out assignments and the requisite tools, and we set off for the abandoned village.
I wasn’t sure if we’d have time to lower the temperature of the kiln after, but as long as nothing unusual came up, we should make it just in time.
We took Ine’s carriage to the village and arrived in no time.
It was nearly twice the speed of our own horse-drawn carriage, but with hardly any shaking.
“This is remarkable. What are you using for the suspension?”
“What’s ‘suspension’?”
“How does the carriage absorb impact?” Arisa asked Ine as they hopped down from the carriage.
“I dunno.” Ine only shook her head in response. The old witch had probably made it.
We parked in the square and unloaded the tools.
“Lulu, Nana, Arisa, you three ready the kiln. That means cleaning the inside and removing any nearby weeds to prevent fire from spreading. I want to do a little experiment, so if you have time, clear out whichever of the other kilns is the least damaged, too. The rest of you, come with me to collect clay.”
As soon as I finished my instructions, everyone sprang into action. Ine seemed a bit nervous.
We gathered earth from the clay source from before the village was abandoned. Thanks to the beastfolk girls’ hard work, we filled at least half of a large bucket in no time. This should be plenty.
Mia, unused to heavy lifting, looked discouraged, and I patted her on the head before speaking to Ine.
“Inenimaana, can you use Earth to Mud on this soil?”
“Okay, got it.”
Ine’s magic dampened the clay into mud, and we strained it through a coarse sieve into another bucket in order to remove any stones or roots.
This left a lot of rocks and debris in the original bucket and the sieve. Some of them even looked like gemstone ore.
I carefully mixed the formula for the vials into the mud. It was based on the old witch’s recipe, of course.
“Now use To Clay, please.”
“O-okay. Um, j-just a second.”
Ine seemed to be having trouble remembering the spell, so I opened an Earth Magic spell book and showed her.
“Nnngh, I just forgot for a second, okay? I know it…”
Muttering excuses, Ine cast the spell. Her magic returned the wet mixture into its original clay state.
I touched the clay experimentally. Maybe it was because it had been made using magic, but the clay had a uniform stickiness to it. Turning it into liquid must have pushed out the air from inside it as well.
According to the pottery notes, you’d normally have to knead it roughly to firm it up, then wedge it to get rid of the air inside, but the two spells had skipped these steps entirely. What a lucky miscalculation.
The notes also stated the clay would become flaky if it was not set to rest, but it didn’t feel any different from the clay we’d used at the pottery studio. Maybe this was another effect of the magic?
Well, I guess that doesn’t matter right now. We’re pressed for time, so I’d better move on to the next task.
“Everyone, make balls of clay about this big and line them up.”
I showed everyone a sample clay ball so that they could get started.
I took a pottery wheel and a working stool out of the Garage Bag and set them up. Then I had Liza spread out a mat to put the finished bottles on.
“Rouuund?”
“This one is Master’s, this one is mine, and next is Tama and Liza, sir!”
“Mrrrr…”
“I’ll use yours too, of course, Mia.”
Tama and Pochi happily set about making clay balls. Ine and Mia quietly worked away, too.
Once there were about 150, I moved on to molding the vials.
“Liza, you pass the clay balls to me, please.”
“Certainly, sir.”
This process was the same as it had been in the pottery studio, so I had no issues. Remembering my old part-time job on a factory assembly line, I fell into a working rhythm.
“Master, that was the last of the clay.”
When Liza’s somewhat tired voice brought me back to my senses, I found that I’d made a whole host of containers.
Tama had started arranging the vials for me while I was working. Doing a quick estimate, I determined that there were at least four hundred. When I carefully counted later, I came up with a total of 453. I’d made too many.
All right, next is drying them.
“Go ahead, Mia.”
“Mm.”
Mia cast Clay Dry Third on the completed vials.
To make the spell easier, she did only around fifty at a time.
After three times or so, Mia was down to about 10 percent of her magic, so I gave her a honey-flavored magic recovery potion.
Mia wrinkled her nose reluctantly as she popped the cork-like stopper out of the vial. The gentle scent of honey wafted out of the opening.
“Honey?”
“Yeah, I tried to make it a little less bitter.”
Mia brought the vial up to her mouth gingerly and drank it down. My improvement seemed to be a success, because she looked like she wanted more when she was done.
“Yum.”
I was relieved that she liked it. Supposedly, it was less effective, but Mia’s MP was fully restored. I didn’t see a problem with that.
Before long, we’d finished drying all the vials. Magic was so handy.
While Mia worked her magic, I divided some premixed glaze into a few buckets.
“All right, everyone, now it’s time to glaze them. Be careful not to apply too much glaze or drop the vial into the bucket.”
Passing out brushes to everyone, I asked them to help coat the clay. We had just done it that morning at the pottery studio, so we were already well practiced. I had Pochi and Tama teach Ine how to do it.
“Huh? That was fast.”
“Yeah, Inenimaana’s magic helped even more than I expected, so we shaved off some time.”
In front of the kiln, Arisa wiped the soot from her face with a damp towel.
Just then, Nana and Lulu returned from the other side of the kiln.
“Master, all work is completed, I report.”
“I’ve finished my assignment as well.”
After the kiln was clean, the two of them had even cleared the grass and weeds in the area.
“Good work, everyone. It’s spotless.”
After thanking them for their hard work, I asked Lulu to wash the herbs they’d bought in the market and sent the other two to help with the glazing.
I poked my head into the kiln to check that the interior was intact. Perhaps because of my “Pottery” skill, all I had to do was rap on the inner wall to get a good idea of the kiln’s condition.
It was sturdier than I’d expected. Now I felt confident that it wouldn’t break before we were done.
I popped back out and started working on a magic tool to heat the kiln faster.
Using as a template the failed water heater circuit I’d made before, I improved it by adding a mechanism I’d found in Trazayuya’s documents.
I drew the heating circuit on a palm-size bronze plate that I’d bought at a blacksmith’s workshop, then repeated the process until I’d made twelve.
It would be difficult to start them all at the same time, so I made a horseshoe-shaped stand out of a few planks of wood and carved a transmission circuit into it. Finally, I set the bronze plates on the stand, and it was done.
Since I didn’t want to jump straight to the real thing, I decided to experiment with one of the broken kilns first.
I set up the heating circuit inside the kiln and put firewood next to it for fuel. I didn’t feel like going to too much trouble; I just dropped a whole bundle of wood in there and dusted it with some sawdust I’d gotten at a woodworking shop for kindling.
For the pottery itself, I pulled out a clay bowl from Storage.
I sent a bit of magic into the circuit, careful to regulate it so it wouldn’t blow up.
The heating circuit lit up bright red, and in seconds the firewood around it had burst into flame. The tremendous amount of heat got me sweating in an instant.
… This isn’t going to explode, is it?
I watched the kiln a bit nervously.
It didn’t explode per se, but the ferociously rising temperature created an unexpected airflow inside. It was a good thing that I’d left the firewood tied in a bundle. If I’d spread it out, there would be pieces of burning wood flying around in there.
Checking the temperature of the kiln with the AR display, I determined that it should reach the temperature required for firing soon and suspended the experiment.
I put the magic circuit away in Storage and doused the fire.
Because I didn’t want to throw water over it and get an explosion of steam, I threw soil over it instead.
Once I checked the magic circuit, I found that not only had the circuits melted, but the bronze plates were melting, too. Surprisingly, the wood foundation was only a bit scorched.
It wouldn’t work in the long run, but luckily I needed it to last only long enough to finish raising the temperature in the kiln. Iron would hold up to heat better, but it diffused magic.
I think the change in air currents was probably due to the sudden difference in temperature.
As a countermeasure, I added extra heating circuits on the walls and near the ceiling of the kiln. The adhesive would probably melt partway through, but as long as I reinforced them with timber it should be fine. All that mattered was that they didn’t fall on top of the vials.
I set up the new magic circuit system and lined up some firewood.
I had Mia finish the glazed vials using the Glaze Dry spell, then placed them in the kiln. In case some of them broke, I decided to bake some extras for a total of about two hundred.
“Whoa, you really did make a magic tool. I assume from the burn marks on that other kiln that it went well?”
“Yeah. I wanted to make a microwave oven kind of thing, but it was too difficult to do with the mechanisms I have, so I gave up for now.”
Arisa looked impressed as I finished preparing for ignition.
I had everyone back away before I started up the magic tool with a jolt of magic. Once the firewood was burning, I closed the kiln door, leaving it cracked a little for ventilation.
Trying to avoid causing another sudden current like last time, I gradually increased the amount of magic flowing into it over the course of ten minutes or so.
After that, it would be fine as long as we periodically added fuel.
“All right, the vials will be ready in three hours. Next we have to gather some herbs.”
“U-um, Master, there are still quite a few vials that haven’t been glazed yet…,” Liza said anxiously, but I told her we could take care of those after we’d collected the herbs.
In order to keep the glaze from drying out, I put a damp cloth over the top of each bucket.
With everyone accompanying me, I trekked over to the herb-rich areas in the hills behind the village that I’d located on the map.
Since we’d have to wade into a thicket, I made sure everyone was equipped with long sleeves and pants.
“Not exactly the height of fashion, is it?”
“It’s mowing gear, sir!”
“Swish, swish!”
“Mm.”
Arisa grumbled, but the other younger kids delightedly posed with their baskets and little sickles.
I chose Arisa, Lulu, and Ine to tackle the nearest patch of herbs, since they had the lowest stamina, with Nana as their escort. There weren’t any dangerous animals around or anything, but I just wanted to ensure they’d be safe.
The second patch was near the peak of the hill and infested with slime and spider-type monsters. Together, we took care of the ones that might have attacked us while we were harvesting.
There were still some slimes left in the nearby water hole, but I was confident Liza could handle them.
I left this area to the beastfolk girls and Mia before heading toward the last area.
I couldn’t reach the summit of the hill by normal means. Once I’d navigated the fissures and overhangs, there was a paradise of herbs clearly untouched by people or animals alike.
On top of all the blue mugwort for stamina recovery potions, there was even a colony of the russet wort used in magic recovery potions.
I grinned to myself as I gathered the herbs and stowed them away.
In a book somewhere, I’d read that you should never completely exhaust a source of herbs—though I couldn’t remember why that was—so I made sure to leave some behind.
I finished the harvest in about thirty minutes. Afterward, I straightened up and enjoyed the scenery.
From here, I could see all of Sedum City. There should have been a village nearby, too, but I couldn’t catch a glimpse of it through the trees.
I checked in with everyone, but nobody else was done, so I just took Ine back with me to the square of the abandoned village.
“Rinse the herbs in this bucket. After that, put them in this sieve here.”
“Y-yeah, uh, okay.”
Leaving Ine to take care of washing the herbs, I started on the steps for the formula.
I chopped the herbs and spinach that Lulu had washed earlier into roughly one-inch chunks, then ground them down with a big mortar and pestle.
Ine was too engrossed in her task to look in my direction, so when I finished processing each formula, I put them away as is in Storage.
Once I’d finished the last batch, I set up the Transmutation Tablet and other equipment, then called Ine over.
“Sit here, please. Can you use a normal Transmutation Tablet?”
“Yeah, I can.”
“All right then, I’ll prepare the ingredients and charge it with magic, so you try operating the Transmutation Tablet.”
“Okay.”
The potion we made with red grade-1 elixir didn’t reach High Quality.
But, when we used grade-3 elixir instead, we made High Quality potions even when we made five at a time.
The reason I used this roundabout method was so that Ine’s name would be listed as the creator of the potions. When I used “Analyze” to check, it had worked just as I’d hoped.
Since I’d set my name to blank, even if the process resulted in a joint signature, only Ine’s name should be left.
This took a little extra time, but I wanted to minimize the possibility of anyone finding fault with the results.
After a bit of trial and error, I worked out exactly how to record Ine’s name as the creator with as little work as possible to reduce the amount of time it took.
I’d been able to speed up the process pretty well, but after about twenty rounds of transmutation, Ine’s magic was running low.
I had provided most of the magic, but the final process had to be done with Ine’s magic.
“M-my magic… is, um…”
“Drink this, then.”
“Oh, but, um, that’s gonna be bi—Ow!”
As Ine stammered reluctantly, trying to dodge the potion, the puffbird on her head started pecking her forehead again.
She begrudgingly brought the liquid to her lips, but she gulped it down once she noticed the sweet taste. I could tell she must have really liked it—she turned the vial upside down and whacked it a few times to get every last drop.
“Is your magic fully restored?”
“Y-yeah. That was, um, really yummy.”
“All right, let’s keep going.”
I took the vial out of Ine’s reluctant hands, and we went back to work.
I had been depositing the completed potions in Storage, but Ine didn’t seem to trust the process, so I filled an empty beaker with water out of Storage to reassure her and poured it into a nearby cask.
“E-e-excuse me, Masterrr?”
As Ine finished forty rounds of transmutation, Arisa, Lulu, and Nana returned with baskets full of herbs.
For some reason, Arisa was upset.
“Welcome back, Arisa.”
“Thanks— Wait, no!” she bellowed as she pointed at Ine, who was sitting on my lap.
Alarmed by the other girl’s threatening behavior, Ine leaned into me—which just made Arisa angrier, creating a vicious cycle.
“Please stop, Arisa. You shouldn’t scare a small child like that.”
“Master, we have returned, I report.”
Lulu embraced Arisa gently, trying to calm her. From behind them, Nana gave her report.
“Calm down. This is the only way we can both use the Transmutation Tablet.”
“Why are you doing it together?!”
I tried to explain the situation to an unconvinced Arisa.
There’s no reason to get mad at me for letting a little kid sit on my lap. Tama and Mia do it all the time.
Arisa reluctantly calmed down after my explanation, so we resumed our alchemy.
Once I had the three girls store their bounty in the Garage Bag, I let them rest for a bit.
I couldn’t discern much from Nana’s expression, but Arisa and Lulu were clearly exhausted.
Ine looked tired, too, but she had to keep working a little longer. Just ten more times.
After their break, I had Lulu and Nana continue the glazing and put Arisa in charge of the fuel for the kiln.
Up until now, I’d been taking care of the fire myself in between alchemy sessions. I was pretty worn out, too.
By the time the beastfolk girls and Mia came back, we’d completed all fifty rounds of transmutation.
We’d met with failure four times and insufficient quality six times, but I had factored into my plan the possibility of a few failures.
“Let’s take a little break. I’ll call Arisa over, so Lulu and Nana, please make some snacks. You can use whatever you’d like from the Garage Bag for ingredients.”
After giving instructions to Nana and Lulu, I went to check the status of the kiln with Arisa and summon her over to the group.
Along the way, I stowed the glazed vials and tools in my pocket dimension.
“How’s it look in there?”
“Just a bit longer, I think.”
Checking inside the kiln, I responded to Arisa’s question.
I didn’t know if it was because of the success of the initial heating, the special glaze, or Mia’s drying magic, but whatever the reason, the vials were coming along even faster than I’d expected.
Checking the clock in my menu, I saw that only two and a half hours had passed.
“We still have two hours until sunset, so it looks like we’re gonna make—”
“Don’t say it!”
Arisa forcibly interrupted me by clamping a small hand over my mouth.
“Honestly! Why would you try to go and jinx us like that?!”
Fair enough. Whenever a character says “We’re going to make it!” trouble is pretty much guaranteed.
Just to be sure, I marked the aide and the small-time crook on my map so I could keep an eye out for any attempts to sabotage us.
“You read too many books,” I told Arisa with what I hoped was a confident grin.
She still looked apprehensive, so I held her hand while we walked back to the village square.
Once we finished off the snacks, everyone except for Ine, Arisa, and me headed into the hills to gather mushrooms and wild plants. Mia had spotted a lot of them on their way back earlier.
Arisa’s muscles were in too much pain for her to move, and Ine was exhausted from the transmutation work.
Mostly out of curiosity, I had Arisa drink a potion to cure her muscle pain, but she declared that she was tired of hiking and rested on the blanket with Ine.
I had run out of magic recovery items and was in the middle of making more.
I tried brewing numbing and laughing gas agents with the “numbing mushrooms” and “laughing mushrooms” growing near the kiln. The method for creating the former was recorded in the textbook, while the latter was a recipe from Trazayuya’s documents.
In Trazayuya’s journal, he noted that these had been very handy in fighting off bandits who’d broken into his home while he was staying in Labyrinth City.
I finished the whole process in about ten minutes, then cleaned up the tools.
An uninvited guest had appeared on our radar—the small-time crook. Nearly fifty men were accompanying him, too.
I told the two girls about it and instructed them to hide…
“Inenimaana, Arisa, get on the panther and go hide in the mountains. You should be safe as long as you bring the living armors with you.”
“W-wait, I want to fight with you!”
“Y-yeah, me too! My guys are really strong, too. They’ll beat ’em up just like before!”
But they were champing at the bit to help me fight them off.
Since brute force had failed earlier, I figured our opponents probably had some other plan in mind.
I wanted to put out the fire so they wouldn’t find the kiln, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you could just switch off, so there wasn’t much I could do.
I tasked Arisa and Ine with hiding the carriage in the foothills.
In the meantime, I searched for a way to conceal or disguise the kiln somehow, but they’d probably found us out because of the smoke coming out of the chimney anyway.
Instead of crudely attempting to hide the vials, I elected to draw our petty villain’s attention toward something else.
I thought a corrupt guy like him would probably be more interested in an easy source of cash, like some of the completed magic potions.
I made a few preparations and left to meet the small-time crook and his crew.
“I came ’cos I heard there were some suspicious folk in Uke Village… The commoner brats and the witch’s apprentice, huh?”
He rudely greeted me exactly the way you’d expect for a crook like him.
Thirty-some armed men waited on standby behind him. Two of them were hanging back by the road out of the village, and the rest had surrounded the village in the woods.
The reason they hadn’t just attacked was probably the two living armors and the panther-type constructor.
Arisa looked calm, but Ine, no more mature than any other child her age, was clearly panicked.
“I can’t imagine why you’d consider us ‘suspicious.’ We simply came to do our alchemy in an uninhabited area so the smell wouldn’t bother others in the city.”
As I spoke, I pointed at the small cask nearby.
The cask contained our failed alchemic results and water to dilute them.
“Is that so? Well, that’s a lovely attitude and no mistake, but I’m afraid you can’t just go around using the village’s equipment without permission. In fact, there’ve been complaints from the villagers about some suspicious characters wrecking the place.”
A shabbily dressed, timid-looking man emerged from behind the crook. The man’s affiliation was listed as the name of the ruined village, so they really had found a former inhabitant and dragged him along.
“If you are the acting representative of this village, could I pay you directly? How much would you like for compensation?”
Ignoring the crook, I addressed the villager directly.
“Actually, I’m afraid this village is under the management of Sedum City now. That means I’m the one in charge. Let’s see here—perhaps I should confiscate this freshly made batch of medicine as a fine for the disturbance?”
With that, the crook smugly reached for the cask.
“Aah! B-but that’s…”
Thinking the cask contained the real potions, Ine cried out desperately.
Great, he took the bait.
My face remained impassive as far as I could tell, but the crook’s own intuition must have alerted him, as he stopped reaching for the decoy.
“Hey, check in that nearby shed! There should be more than just one cask.”
I reacted with the best display of chagrin I could muster.
“F-found ’em! They were hidden under a dirty old mat!”
The man’s minions emerged from the nearby shed triumphantly, carrying a few more casks on their shoulders.
“Hmph, three casks, eh? Should be about right,” the crook muttered quietly.
Looks like he fell for it.
Just as I started to relax… Ine jumped forward.
“Waaaah! Mr. Satou, they’re going to take ’em all… Gab, Rob, go get ’em!”
As the two living armors sprang into action on Ine’s command, the underlings immediately scattered like a bunch of baby spiders.
Damn. My “fool your allies to fool your enemies” strategy backfired.
“H-hey! If these things lay a hand on me, it’s off to prison with you!”
The spineless crook backed away, still keeping a firm hold on the barrel.
I grabbed the two living armors and held them back. We’d have some problems, in more ways than one, if we injured this guy.
“Calm down, Inenimaana. We’ll be in trouble if we harm him.”
“Th-that’s right! I’m a close friend of the viceroy’s aide, remember!”
Flaunting someone else’s power, huh? This guy really is a stereotypical villain.
The moment a sigh left my mouth, I heard an explosion and some men screaming from somewhere in the foothills. It sounded just like the backfiring engines I’d seen on TV.
Then I saw dark smoke rising from the other side of the trees.
… It was coming from the direction of the kiln.
“I knew it. You’ve been using the kilns without permission, too, eh?”
“O-oh no… If the kiln’s broken, we’ll never finish the vials in time! Wh-what are we going to do…?”
Arisa dropped to one knee in despair.
Ine, on the other hand, collapsed in instantaneous exhaustion without saying a word.
“Well, you’d better get outta here soon. I’ll let you off for the day in exchange for these three casks.”
With a nasty, sadistic smirk, the small-time villain cackled triumphantly as he strode away toward Sedum City with the casks.
There was only one chime—ninety minutes—left until the sunset deadline.
Once I’d confirmed on the radar that the men were gone, we visited the destroyed kiln we’d been using. There was a large hole in it, and it was completely ruined.
Based on the state of the kiln itself, I doubted the men who’d broken it had escaped unscathed, but since there were no bodies, their comrades must have carried them away.
The fire hadn’t spread, either. Mercifully, there were no highly flammable trees close by. I suppose they cut down the nearby trees in the area when they first built the kiln.
“They’re all broken… It’s no use. There’s no way we can try again, right…?”
“Yeah, I doubt we can use this kiln again,” Arisa muttered as she looked at the flaming furnace, and I nodded.
But Arisa wasn’t ready to give up and stared into the kiln.
“… Huh? These shards here…”
Arisa turned to me, and I grinned.
I could move things into Storage from up to ten feet away, even if I wasn’t touching them.
That’s right. I had removed the vials from the kiln without touching them or being scorched by the flames.
Then, since I figured they could suspect something if I left it at that, I replaced them with other vessels. There were plenty of faulty clay containers lying around nearby, so it was easy to gather enough.
Keeping the part about Storage to myself, I explained the rest to Arisa.
When I told her the vials were safe, she exclaimed indignantly that I hadn’t needed to keep it from her, too, but I just listened complacently.
After all, Arisa’s genuine despair had probably helped deceive the crook.
… But there was still a problem.
The temperature of the vials—I checked Storage and found that the firing itself was done, but when I took one out, it immediately cracked because of the rapid temperature change. I guess a flimsy vial like this wasn’t built to handle such a rapid change in temperature.
Since objects placed in Storage retained their state from the moment they were stored, the vials were still piping hot.
There had to be some way I could gradually cool them…
Should I fix the kiln and make another fire to get the temperature back up and then gradually lower it?
No, that would be cutting it too close time-wise.
Plus, if the temporary repairs on the kiln suddenly failed and the kiln collapsed on the vials, there’d be no coming back from that.
Come on, there has to be something…
Some convenient method where I can gradually lower the temperature without taking them out of Storage…
Repairing the kiln might be the only way.
Well, this is useless.
This phrase suddenly popped back into my head.
Why would I be rubbing salt in my own wounds right now? What good does that thought— Wait. When was that memory from?
It’s clearly just an inferior version of Storage. If I take things out, it exposes the contents to outside air, too, so it won’t be any good for heat insulation.
… Now I remembered.
That was back when I was comparing the Item Box and Storage.
Yep, the Item Box was terrible for heat insulation—meaning that the state of objects inside it changed over time. And air didn’t flow in or out unless you actively removed something.
In which case…!
I moved one of the hot vials from Storage into the Item Box.
Then I opened the Item Box, starting to take out the vial, and immediately canceled it. A warm wind blew from where the black hole of the Item Box had been.
When I moved the vial back to Storage, I saw that its temperature had dropped ever so slightly.
Great! This will work perfectly.
By using the Blow spell to circulate hot air in the Item Box for about twenty minutes, I cooled down the vials.
When Liza and the others returned to investigate the commotion, we got ready to depart.
“By Jove, let’s go back to that rascal and the silver-haired jerk and make them cry uncle!”
At Arisa’s somewhat anachronistic turn of phrase, the rest of the younger kids cheered enthusiastically.
…“By Jove”? What time period is she from, anyway?
As Ine drove the jostling carriage, I checked the time and the map.
Perfect. Looks like we’ll make it just in time.
The bag over my shoulder rattled with each step.
We’d made it all the way to the city hall without anyone challenging us.
“You’ve got some nerve showing your faces here! Thanks a lot for giving me some watered-down potions, huh?! I made a real good fool of myself thanks to you!”
Obstructing the entrance, the crook derided us at a slightly higher pitch than usual.
I took a step forward to keep Arisa and Ine safe behind my back.
“What do you mean? Those potions should still work to treat minor injuries.”
I nonchalantly warded off the crook’s accusations. Besides, I never said those casks contained potions in the first place.
Noticing the big sack I was carrying, the triumph returned to the crook’s face.
“You think you’re gonna fool us with some more watered-down potions, huh?”
What a persistent moron. Clearly this guy gets his kicks bullying people.
“Or did you just mix some grass into the water to make it actually look like a potion this time?”
The man tossed back his head and laughed in a manner befitting a common buffoon.
He probably didn’t have a whole lot of friends. Most of the city hall officials nearby were staring at him with confusion or annoyance.
Just as I figured, he wasn’t very popular.
“Well, it seems that you have nothing to discuss with us. We have some business with the viceroy’s aide now, so if you’ll excuse us.”
With Arisa and Ine in tow, I navigated around the crook as he howled with laughter.
Ine’s living armors couldn’t enter the city hall, so they waited on standby in the parking area with the carriage.
“Hey, wait just a minute! What’s your so-called business with the viceroy’s aide?”
The crook jumped back in front of us like a cartoon villain, face twisted with impatience and spit spraying from his lips.
The officials he’d shoved out of the way frowned and cleared their throats pointedly as they left the room.
“I’m afraid it has nothing to do with you, so you’ll have to excuse me.”
“Wh-what was that?!”
I was under no obligation to answer this guy, and I dismissed him with a thin veil of politeness and headed toward the counter. My business was with the aide only.
I told the receptionist that I had a delivery for the aide and asked him to relay the message.
Placing the sack on the table, I took out one of the bottles and handed it over.
“But how?! We destroyed the kiln and everything…!”
The crook was shouting about something, but I had no reason to answer. I just smiled and ignored him.
“Humph! I’m sure they just bought some low-quality potions in town anyway! Well, we aren’t gonna accept some shoddy diluted medicine!”
Fed up with the silent treatment from me, the scoundrel turned his wrath on the receptionist and the staff member who’d taken the potion.
He moved in closer to the staff taking shelter behind the counter. They looked annoyed, but they probably couldn’t ignore a friend of the aide’s, so they dealt with him as best they could.
“Actually, these are even higher quality than the one hundred and twenty potions they delivered earlier.”
“Y-yeah right…”
Encouraged by the shock on the crook’s face, the staff member continued. “The manufacturer name is the same, too.”
“N-no way… My perfect plan… ruined by a commoner…?”
Honestly, I’m more surprised he expected such a half-baked plot to work in the first place.
“Our path to greatness, gone…”
The crook muttered to himself madly as he backed away, crashing right into the counter.
Our eyes met over the sack of potions.
“Th-that’s right. Without these… W-without these, they’re through! We can still win!”
The man kept murmuring as if he’d lost his mind. Then, suddenly, he snatched the sack off the counter and roared as he threw it violently to the floor.
“My hand slipped!”
All the staff members froze at his loud, bald-faced lie.
The potion began seeping out of the bag.
“Nooo! Mr. Satou, the vials broke! The potions are leakiiiing!”
Ine shrieked and tried to rush over in a panic, but I stopped her.
“Oh, woe is me! My foot slipped this time!”
The man jumped on top of the bag, smashing the few remaining intact vials.
“What kind of idiot pulls a stunt like that in front of all these witnesses?” Arisa muttered next to me with a dry smile.
I felt exactly the same way.
“What’s all this noise?! You’re in the viceroy’s service, you know!”
The viceroy’s aide emerged from his office in the back.
“… What’s this?”
The aide gestured toward the sack and the puddle at the small-time crook’s feet.
“Those are the magic potions that the witch’s messenger delivered. Although this gentleman has smashed them…”
“Was this after accepting the delivery?” the aide asked the staff member icily.
“N-no. We were still in the middle of assessing the quality.”
“Then I see no problem here. There is still half a chime until sunset. Bring another set.”
The aide’s cold-blooded reply shocked the staff more than us. A few of them tried to intervene on our behalf, but they quickly withdrew under the aide’s deathly cold stare.
“Wait just a moment.”
“What now? This man is the one who broke them, right? The county government takes no responsibility.”
Well, I didn’t expect them to.
“No, but I would like to be compensated for the damage to my property from this man. Those were worth ninety gold coins in all.”
“Fair enough. You are free to bill this fellow, then.”
“Wh-what?!”
The aide silenced the small-time crook’s protest with another icy glare.
Once the aide had returned to his office, one of the staff members whispered to me in private that I could enlist the aid of the government in collecting the debt, as well. If he couldn’t pay, the man would be sentenced to slavery.
Nobody likes this guy, huh?
“Ah! He’s running away!”
The culprit tried to sneak away, but Arisa spotted him and shouted.
The man bolted like a rabbit, and Ine’s puffbird took off after him.
As the man screeched to a halt with a shriek, trying to fend off the bird, Nana and the beastfolk girls captured him.
Once I’d praised the girls and the puffbird for their good work, I went to the counter to fill out the paperwork to request help in receiving my reimbursement. As thanks to the staff member who’d whispered to me earlier, I slipped him a few silver coins.
After watching the guards take away the criminal, we moved on to our next course of action.
Only half a chime left until the deadline—forty-five minutes.
“Come in… Ah, it’s you. What do you want? If you’ve given up, I advise you to leave this city.”
After a staff member guided us to the office, the aide met us with a frigid response.
Ignoring his question, I handed some papers to the staff member.
“Aide. I would appreciate your signature and seal on this.”
Scanning the documents he had received from the staff, the aide narrowed his eyes.
“… A delivery completion certificate?”
“Y-yes. They delivered the remaining one hundred and eighty potions. We also checked over your memorandum, which they submitted along with the delivery to ensure that there were no problems.”
The aide placed the documents on his office desk with a trembling hand, then glared up at me.
“What manner of trickery is this?”
“There were no tricks involved. We simply used wisdom, hard work, and friendship.”
“Utter nonsense…”
In reality, I never would have been able to carry out this mission alone.
I had dodged the aide’s question, but the real trick behind the delivery was this:
I’d noticed on my radar the small-time crook’s marker lying in wait for us, so I’d devised a new plan.
As I’d made a grand entrance in the front with a delivery of sixty dummy potions, Liza and the others brought in the real delivery through the back door. To make it look like all 180 were present, I’d included about a hundred unfired vials, and the crook was easily fooled.
The fake potions were the same quality as the real ones, too.
Basically, between the 198 vials I’d made myself, the thirty-seven that Nana had gathered, and the five that I already had on hand, about sixty spare vials remained.
Ine had pulled off forty rounds of transmutation for a total of two hundred potions, and I had recovered forty bottles’ worth from the original batch after the crash, so we had a total of 240 potions.
In other words, I had sixty extras prepared from the very beginning.
And since the current market rate for potions was almost three times the usual amount, he had probably misunderstood my named price as covering all 180 potions, not just the sixty he’d broken.
I hadn’t honestly expected the small-time crook to take such an idiotic course of action, but…
I wasn’t planning to explain all that to the aide. Time is money, after all.
“Is something wrong? All that’s left is for you to sign and seal it.”
“Urrrgh…”
I pressed him politely, but the aide only groaned as if on the verge of death.
“Excuse me, Mr. Aide?”
Concerned about his strange behavior, the staff member attempted to speak to him, but the aide simply stood with his mouth set in a thin line and his eyes closed.
Apparently, he was just going to refuse to sign.
Oh dear.
I hadn’t expected the seemingly prideful aide to resort to such a shamelessly childish plan.
Time slowly ticked by as a heavy silence dominated the room.
…Nearly thirty minutes passed with the aide’s mouth clamped shut. He was probably planning to keep this up until time ran out.
Maybe I should try the laughing gas to make him laugh?
I comforted myself with this ridiculous idea as I continued to put silent pressure on the aide.
Moment by moment, time slipped away. I checked the map and the clock on my menu. There wasn’t much left until the deadline.
The door to the office opened quietly, without so much as a knock.
Since this was as good a time as any, I tried speaking to the aide.
“Mr. Aide, couldn’t you please sign the certificate of delivery completion?”
Just as I expected, there was no response from the aide.
“I suppose I shall have to sign it, then.”
At this unexpected voice, the aide opened his eyes.
The man who had spoken smoothly signed the delivery note on the office desk, then stamped it crisply with the seal on his ring.
“C-Count Kuhanou!”
The aide’s startled cry echoed in the office.
I gave a nod to the person behind Count Kuhanou.
“M-Mistress!”
“It seems you’ve had quite a difficult time of things, Inenimaana.”
Following my gaze, Ine yelped in surprise as well.
Yes, the old witch had ridden on the elder sparrow to pick up Count Kuhanou from Kuhanou City.
I’d worried it would be a close call when I checked their position on the map earlier in the abandoned village.
This had been a worst-case scenario backup plan, but I was glad they’d made it in time.
The old witch patted Ine’s head gently, then bowed in gratitude toward me.
“Mr. Satou, I cannot thank you enough for your help in this matter.”
Nestled in Ine’s hair, the puffbird gave a little “pou-kwee,” as if to say that it deserved some thanks, too.
Now, this peaceful atmosphere applied only to my party. The aide, on the other hand, was in serious distress.
“Wh-why are you already…?”
“Can you not tell? Mistress Witch here has informed me of your evil deeds.”
The aide sank deeper into his chair, and Count Kuhanou stepped closer.
A few knights, clearly the count’s guards, had slipped into the room unnoticed, and they pulled the aide up out of the chair.
“Your father was a vassal of Marquis Muno and a friend of mine at the royal academy. Thus, I thought I would help his family, who had left their territory to depend on ours… But it seems I was blind.”
“Please, wait. This is a conspiracy between the witch and this man here—!”
“Hmph, a conspiracy, indeed! Do you take me for a fool?”
The aide tried to pin things on us, but Count Kuhanou cut him off in a booming voice.
“Have you forgotten the debt of gratitude my county owes to Mistress Witch? Why, your own younger siblings were among the beneficiaries of her medicine in the plague of five years ago, were they not? And in this current conflict with the kobolds, how many knights and soldiers do you think have lived thanks to her potions?!”
The aide withered under the count’s powerful rage.
“A man who does not help the viceroy is not fit for the title of his aide. And you shall no longer have the privilege of perpetual aristocracy in my territory. I shall leave you only with the title of hereditary knight, that you, your elderly mother, and your younger siblings shall live as commoners with only the smallest of pensions,” Count Kuhanou spat at the aide.
At this, the aide gazed up at him in a silent plea, but the count refused to change his decision.
The aide muttered with his hand to his chest, and something like static electricity forced the knights to let go of him.
“As the acting servant of the viceroy, I invoke thee—”
The aide mustered his strength for a desperate cry.
It was clear that he was trying something, but Count Kuhanou stopped the knights from grabbing him with a wave of his hand.
The count clearly knew what he was doing, so I refrained from interfering, too.
“…How foolish,” Count Kuhanou murmured pityingly, standing defenseless in front of the aide.
“Spirit of Sedum City, attack the enemy of our home! ? Punish Chuubatsu!”
When the aide recited the final command word, lightning flew from the amulet in his hand toward Count Kuhanou.
I jumped in front of him immediately, but the lightning dispersed before it even reached me.
“How truly foolish. As the count of Kuhanou, I could never be harmed by such a spell in my own territory. Or have you forgotten who lent you your borrowed power in the first place?”
I see… That must have been an attempt to use magic from the City Core, then. So a count can grant a viceroy the right to use the City Core, and the aide is serving as a stand-in for the viceroy, but of course it can’t be used to harm someone higher-ranking than himself. Got it.
“I shall have mercy out of respect for your deceased friend. Instead of charging you with treason, I shall reduce your sentence to a simple capital—”
Wait a second.
Trusting my intuition, I jumped over the aide’s desk and in one smooth motion delivered a kick that broke his jaw and knocked him unconscious.
I hadn’t made an error in holding back my strength.
I had needed to very noticeably injure him.
“…And why did you feel the need to make such a show of interrupting?”
Count Kuhanou turned a cold stare on me as if I were an insect.
…So he really was planning to execute the man right here and now.
“Because there are children present. Forgive my insolence, but if you’re going to put the man to death, surely the execution grounds would be a better place for it. This is hardly something that a little child should have to see.”
To be honest, I didn’t want to see it, either.
If they’re going to throw him in jail or whip him, I could accept it, since it’s his own fault, but I seriously don’t want to watch an execution happen right in front of me.
I met the count’s gaze for a moment and smiled, which seemed to drain some of the fury from his countenance. After glancing toward Ine, he finally calmed down completely.
“It seems you have made yourself a most worthy acquaintance, Mistress Witch.”
With that short comment to the old witch, Count Kuhanou collected the amulet from the aide, and on his order, the knights carried the man away to jail.
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