I don't quite understand. How is this flat thing money?"
Despite my dramatic announcement, Hilde, Alicia's mother, asked with a confused look on her face. It looked like everyone else thought the same.
"Ah, umm, I guess it's not so obvious."
If I was talking to a proper merchant or someone from high society, even an official from the Adventurers' Guild or someone from a management position would understand, but to a group of ordinary villagers it probably looked like nothing more than a waste of time and effort.
But that wasn't an issue for me. It meant that it would be much easier to get an exclusivity contract, one of which I desperately needed until the Hourai Commonwealth's needs were filled. But considering the population difference, it was possible with only this technology that I wouldn't be able to fill the nation's needs once it got popularized.
Whether it would or not, that wasn't even a question. I'd force it to become popular if I had to. All I had to do was show the council how useful having documentation was, and I had plenty of evidence of that thanks to the Hunter's Guild.
"Well, how about this? I'll talk to Mint about the details, but the settlement I'm from has a real need for paper. I'm willing to buy it in bulk. I should be able to buy all of it even if the entire village is producing paper. On top of that, I'll guarantee that it'll be for a higher price than whatever you guys are selling the milkweed fibres for right now. Considering the technology and materials, I can probably buy it for double how much you're getting for the bags. Maybe a copper coin for every few sheets?"
The labour required for the paper was quite a bit less than making a bag, but in turn the limiting factor became the stock material. To maintain the incentive, the price needed to be higher than before, and at a point that the attractive force was greater than the resistance towards a new idea.
That said, wealth wasn't exactly something which our country lacked. The issue was finished products, not raw materials.
"You'll pay that much for this thing?!"
"I will, as long as the quality stays above a certain point at least. Or rather, the settlement I'm from will pay, so it won't be just me."
Maybe in the beginning it'll be just me. But more likely I'll just be using the power of the Hunters' Guild to pay for it, so in a sense it wouldn't really be me even from the beginning.
"I'll make sure even in the worst case you'll be paid enough that you won't go hungry ever again. But then again, if that's the case, then maybe paying for it in goods like food would be better than though other means?"
Getting our hands on a good amount of cash on a regular basis would be quite annoying. Trading the paper directly for goods we can collect from the dungeon would make things better for both of our sides. But then again, that also depended on how much they needed. It was doubtful that the value of the paper would equal the value of the goods we could deliver.
Hell, if this village's production was even half decent when it came to paper, we'd be looking at having to export other materials as well. Hopefully we could find alternatives if it came to that.
But before any of that, it was important to actually have some talks.
"Anyways, I'll have a talk with Mint first and we can get things set up, alright?"
And after that, once a round of thanks as well as some invitations for dinner and drink, I headed out.
I actually had more business at Alicia's old home, but for now this was enough. Especially since letting them know what my other business was would just creep them out.
Getting back on the packed dirt road, I made my way towards the store where I had bought some things in this village originally. Supposedly the only store in this entire village was owned by Mint, and it was usually operated by his son since Mint himself spent most of his time going around trading the things his son buys from the villagers so he can buy food in places where it was cheaper.
[Thanks Scarlet.]
[Huh? What for?]
[For that. The paper thing. When you make this work, nobody else would have to go through what I did.]
[So...you think it's better we never met?]
[No! No never! But...]
[I know, I'm just joking. But frankly, things just worked out this way. I need paper, and a lot of it. And once I get a lot, I'm betting Hourai is going to need even more paper. It just so happened that the people of your old village was growing a plant which could be used to make some decent paper.]
[Even still, thanks.]
[...No problem.]
While it was true that things just happened to work out like this, it was also true that I'd have gone for some sort of deal one way or another here. Things were really bad here, and I didn't like it at all. Before, I was only one person, so supporting this village wasn't possible aside from the occasional donation. But now, I had the power of an organization behind me, and an entire nation behind that. Even if for a while I'd have to do a lot of work on my own to make this work out, I had the power to make a real difference here.
To make things even better, this was an authentic transaction as well. This was no longer simple charity, but an investment towards a business which will allow this village to thrive even if I was forced to cut off all connections with in the future.
I was sure that Mint would understand that when he saw the product itself, so I brought the finished sample with me.
As for everything else, there was no point in denying what Alicia had to say, so I obediently received her thanks.
"Excuse me?"
"Welcome to...oh man! My beauty! You've come back!"
"Erk!"
I had forgotten about this guy. The man sitting bored looking behind the counter at Mint's store. Mint had mentioned that the only people who worked there was him and his son, which meant that this annoying guy was his son.
"To think you had decided to polish yourself before returning! It makes my heart pound with a fury that...!"
"Okay, enough! Is Mint here?"
"The old man? No, he left three weeks ago. He won't be back for a while."
Surprisingly, the mere mention of his father had made the young man slump down into his seat.
But the news that he wasn't around wasn't very helpful for me. If it was him, I'd be able to settle a deal pretty quickly and get production running quickly. I could only hope that his son would still be helpful enough that I could get things started and we can finish the deal when Mint has come back.
"How long do you think it'll take him to get back?"
"Ah, about two more months I guess? That's how long he usually takes."
"In that case, when he does return, can you ask him to stay for a little bit? There's some things I want to discuss with him."
"Yea, that's fine. He doesn't go out during the winter anyways, so he'll be here until next spring once he gets back."
"Ah, alright."
This complete lack of energy when talking about his father was quite an amazing thing. From all the attention I suffered the last time I came, it made me wish that I had mentioned his father at some point rather than suffer through it, but it wasn't like I knew anything about Mint at the time in the first place.
"Well, for now, I need to get a preliminary deal set up. I was thinking of getting a manufacturing facility set up in this village and have most of the villagers help out working in it. In turn, the settlement I come from will buy all the products from it."
"What kind of facility? What are you planning of having everyone make there?"
Now that the topic had moved from Mint, the young man perked up a bit.
While I thought of him as a young man, compared to my current body, he was more than a decade older than me, while over two decades younger than my mental self, so it did create a bit of a dysphoric situation in my mind.
"It's nothing dangerous. The work itself will be easier than what they're currently doing as well. I want them to make this."
I showed him the sheet of paper I had made as a trial.
"This?! It...it isn't parchment...what is it?"
"It's called paper, and it can be made here in this village for a fraction the price of parchment."
"This?! Really?!"
"Yup."
His surprise really wasn't very unreasonable. Parchment was expensive precisely because it was made from animal hides. While in this world it seemed like hides were incomparably easier to come by than on Earth's middle ages, it was still an expensive material, making parchment only suitable for the most important things.
But literacy was 100% in this world, so nobody had any issues with having things written down. It was easy and convenient, so it was prevalent. But the tools hadn't caught up with the usage, so people were limited to writing most things on wooden boards or bark. At best maybe some people did it on leaves where it was applicable, but I hadn't seen that for myself.
The greatest problem as things stood, was that both bark and wooden planks weren't suitable for mass storage of information. If you wanted a book, you had to use parchment as bark curled and wood was too thick. Even if bark could be fixed to always be flat or you shaved wooden planks to be reasonably thin, both would be too fragile to be made into effective books. It was a lot of work to create something which would be out lasted by something which probably resulted in only being a little bit more expensive but was significantly nicer to use.
There just wasn't any point.
But what I had brought changed things on a foundational level.
It was cheap, and had all the most important properties of parchment. At least, it was cheap compared to parchment. Compared to Earth's paper, it was going to be as expensive as artisan paper, if not more expensive.
But I was fine with that. I'd find a way to make the most of it.
"What I want is for everyone in the village currently making products to sell from milkweed to start making this once I finish building the facility. I'll buy all the sheets. I can even put in a down payment for the first batch."
"This, this...seriously? You'll do all that?"
"I will, but in exchange, I want exclusivity. At least until my settlement's demands are met, I want to be the sole purchaser of the paper."
The man looked like he was going to agree on the spot, but caught himself at the last moment.
"We'll need to discuss the details first."
I grinned. The face he was making was familiar to me. It was the same one Mint had made on occasion.
"Alright. But I don't want to waste any time. How about we talk about it as I make the facility and tools?"
"I can do that."
After that, we went out to a large open space in a corner of the village and I quickly got to work.
As we discussed the details, Mint's son, Alan, showed me an open space within the village confines near one of the walls. All the large spaces were already taken up near the middle of the village, and I preferred to use a large space so that we could have a lot of people work here if they wanted.
At the very worst, it would allow a lot of potential for expansion in the future.
I gathered dirt from around and raised the floor a bit, then erected solid walls from stone packed earth. The roof was formed from a row of stone arcs, with little details like the channelling of rainwater being taken into consideration. The walls themselves had large windows with the fittings for proper shutters made from wood that Alan had gathered.
Right next to the building, I dug a well and built a stone channel next to it to feed into the facility's water system.
As much as I wanted to build a pump for this well, the lack of security in this village meant that it could cause trouble if anyone outside found out about it. The paper industry was also subject to the same worry, but I hoped that as long as nobody outside discovered the end product, it wouldn't cause any real stir. A plain pulley would have to do.
The inside of the building was quite wide. Along one wall were the furnishes, the tools where the fibres were suspended in water to be lain on a mesh. The furnishes were much bigger than the one I had made as a trial in Alicia's home. A single frame would be roughly the size of a sheet of A2 paper, or about four times the area of the typical letter size. This way the sheets could be used more efficiently and had the versatility to be used beyond a single standard size.
The frames themselves were suspended via a pulley system and a counterweight. All together, it would require very little strength to use, so that it would be easy to work for a long time using this setup.
There was also a drain channel running along below the furnishes that collected the drained water into a bucket inside a recess which further drained out into a hole in the wall.
It would be neat to draw art on it, but I didn't have any talent in that area. I could only hope that someone else in the country had such hidden talents.
Beside each furnish was a large table to place the wet sheets of paper. While I didn't have any ready yet, sheets of cloth would be needed to sandwich the wet paper in between. For now, pressing the water out would have to be done one at a time.
Behind the furnishes along the opposite wall was several presses. I made them from mithril. It was way overkill, but I had a lot of it from the day before when I was farming adamantium. Ironically, I was low on iron in exchange. I could only hope that people wouldn't recognize the material before I could replace it with something more common.
The presses were a simple screw design so that even people without much strength should be able to operate them without issue.
Below the presses, the ejected water would be drawn to the same drain as the furnishes to be recycled or dumped.
After the presses, the rest of the space in the new paper mill was shelving to dry the paper. Each shelves was made simply of a large mesh to allow maximum air flow to quickly facilitate drying. All of them combined were made from a fusing pair of copper and tin ingots to make bronze. Unlike steel, bronze wouldn't rust and fall apart quickly.
Through a door on the far end was a small room without any windows filled with mithril shelves to store the finished product. There were tiny holes near the ceiling to allow a little bit of air flow, but this room needed to be the most secure. There was even a hidden latch on the entrance, and the door was made to be difficult to notice at a glance.
And that was the entirety of the facility.
While this building didn't have the capacity to manage all the steps of the paper making process, all steps before the ones it handled were the same as the steps the villagers already went through to make their threads in the first place. Whatever equipment they were already using was going to be enough.
As I was finishing up the last details, Alan had gone off to gather a few volunteers to try out the new equipment. Fortunately there was a crowd who had come to observe the strange new building I was making, so it was quick and easy to get the volunteers.
One of them was Alicia's mother. Her family was all there with the other villagers.
He also brought over a box of fresh milkweed fibres for me to demonstrate with.
Taking six people with me, I filled the facility's reservoir using the well and lead them inside. From there, I showed them how to fill the furnishes with water and fibres, how to operate the mesh filters, then dump the wet paper, transfer it to the press, remove the water, then slide it into one of the thin slots to dry. Finally, I explained that once the sheets were dry, they were to be placed inside the far room, which was to be locked up when nobody was working.
Alan then explained the deal we were getting set up, and the initial estimates as to how much I would be paying for the paper.
The reaction was instant. Everyone wanted to know all sorts of details, like how many I would be buying, or how often I would come to buy the paper. As these details were things that we had already discussed, I simply passed the baton to Alan and quickly escaped after casually mentioning that I'd leave the down payment at Mint's store.
With their attention shifted to the scapegoat, I quickly did as I promised and left as much food as I reasonably could. All the grains, fruits, vegetables, and meat from all but the strongest monsters I've faced. I even left some herbs and spices as the total amount of food didn't really amount to much when considered from the scale of the entire village.
I also left him a note explaining that I had gone back home to collect more food to be brought back soon.
Once I was done all that, I deactivated [Materialize] so I could do the most important thing I had come here to do.
I had gone back to Alicia's home, this time invisible to all the villagers.
Frankly, I hadn't really had much use for this invisibility that [Spirit Form] afforded lately, but it still was something which came of use in the oddest places.
And taking advantage of some of the more unusual properties of this skill, I passed through the house's walls and made a beeline towards Alicia's former room.
The room itself was a bit small, large enough for two beds. But looking at the possessions scattered around in the room, I doubted that only two people slept here despite the lack of bunk beds.
But that didn't matter to me.
I quickly grabbed a handful of hairs out from a tight corner.
Some might call me a pervert for doing this, but I liked to consider my actions closer to the actions of a CSI officer. My actions were backed by proper logic and purpose, with nothing to be ashamed of. It wasn't something that could be openly spoken of though.
There was a lot of hairs all around, and chances were, almost all of them weren't from Alicia. It had been years since she had lived in this house, so most of her hairs should have been disposed of. So the ones I found would have been from her family members.
There was still a good chance that a few of her hairs would still be here. But even if I didn't find it, in theory that shouldn't be an issue.
One of the skills I had worked on to reincarnate Alicia was to compare the data between two biological samples. Since the check was percentile based, I just needed to find a hair which would get me a match greater than 99%. Anything less would be worrisome, but I had a lot of samples to work with.
Taking the first of the newly found hairs, I retrieved the small box I had made to store the hairs I had found back home. It was separated into three sections, one for each source I had found.
I took one of them into my hand and activated my new skill [Compare Biology]. A heat ran through my head as my forehead throbbed, but after a few seconds a screen appeared in my vision: [91.7%].
Returning the hair back into the box, I picked up a hair from the next compartment and ran the skill again. [82.4%].
I put the hair back and picked up a hair from the last compartment.
My heart was pounding and I grew too nervous to even breath. But that didn't matter. What mattered was the result I would get.
Ignoring the flame which burned in my chest as a small part of my brain told me to take a breath, I activated the skill once more. [99.6%].
I let go of my breath and took care in returning the hair into the third compartment.
"Phase one, complete."
The tension ran out form my body. While the hair I had found wasn't Alicia's, it was almost guaranteed to be from her family, the people who had the closest genetic match with her. That meant that such a high match with the hair I had found back at home was almost sure to be Alicia's.
It wasn't 100%, and that tiny margin of error made me nervous, but I was reasonably confident that there wasn't any mistake.
Just in case, I collected a whole bunch more hairs, especially concentrating on ones in awkward places like the corners of the room or under the feet of the bed. With a few thousand hairs safely packaged up in my bag, I passed through the house's walls and made my way towards the western gates.
It was time to go home and prepare for phase two.
Ninetailed_Furball
Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (/◕ヮ◕)/
How was today's chapter? Hope everyone enjoyed it! And one step closer to Alicia's resurrection! Hooray! ＼(◎o◎)／
Also, quite a bit more on paper making as well. A few things feel a little inconsistent even within this chapter, but I hope you'll forgive me for that. It's a bit hard to make everything perfect when Scarlet enacts a plan without any proper preparations after all, no matter how much I try to set it up beforehand. ヽ(´ー｀)┌
Hope everyone's doing well, I'm getting some nice progress on the next chapter already. Can't stop writing now that I'm getting so close to such an important milestone!
But at the same time the more I write, the further away that milestone keeps moving. I hope someday I'll be able to estimate the length of my scenes with at least a bit of accuracy.
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