The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 6 - Chapter 308

Chapter 308:

Getting Ready for Spring

“OKAY, LET’S HEAD BACK!” Druid said.

I stretched my frozen back muscles. Boooy, did that feel good.

“I sure feel better now that we’ve picked up more than enough green and purple potions,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m really happy about that. We got quite a bit of food for the slimes.”

We still didn’t have enough for our trip, but we had some time left before we were planning to leave this village, so we would probably be fine.

“But are you really okay with it?” I asked.

“With what?”

“With the green and purple potions. You always used to buy them, remember? Now that we have money to spare, we could have just gotten them from a store.”

I felt like Druid was accommodating me. After all, most people would just buy genuine versions of the potions.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve actually come to enjoy trash-collecting; it’s like a treasure hunt. Besides, I already have regular kinds of each potion on hand.”

He was right. We did have some genuine potions just in case the degraded ones we gathered at the dump didn’t work. But it really didn’t sit right with me that someone of Druid’s stature was using old potions from the dump.

“Hm? Ha ha! Ivy, look. Sora and Flame are packing for the trip, too.”

We looked at Sora and Flame. Each of them had made three blue and red potions, respectively.

“Aww, is that what you guys were doing?” I giggled.

Sora and Flame were bouncing up and down next to the potions they’d made. When we approached them, they smiled smugly beside their work. They’re so cute.

“Hee hee! Well, thank you. Now we’re all ready for our trip.”

“Pu! Pu, puuu.”

“Te! Ryu, ryuuu.”

I sure have gotten comfortable letting my slimes take care of potions for me. I used to shudder every winter over the prices of potions, but now it wasn’t a problem. I had come to think of my creatures as essential: I could depend on them whenever I had a problem. Of course, I knew I had to keep them out of sight, which was unfortunate, but living through this winter had imprinted a lesson into my very bones: Preparation is vital. Whenever I felt even slightly under the weather, I would take a spoonful of red potion. Whenever I tripped in the snow and hurt myself, I would take a spoonful of blue potion. I owed my slimes a lot of gratitude. I’d never known just how difficult it was to walk on snowy roads.

“Okay, let’s head over to see Captain Tableau now,” Druid said.

“Good idea.”

I put Sora’s and Flame’s potions in my magic bag, and we all headed back toward the village. Flame and Sol, tired from the excursion, were napping inside the bag. Sora and Ciel were playing their who-can-jump-the-highest game again, after a long hiatus.

“When they’re on the snow, Ciel has Sora beat,” Druid remarked.

Ciel seemed a bit more stable in this environment than Sora, who looked quite bitter about it.

“It sure does.”

CRACK!

I heard the splintering of wood. Sora must have slammed eagerly into a branch.

“Oh, no!” we gasped.

“Pu!”

Crunch, crunch, crunch…

Before our very eyes, Sora fell from the branch and got buried under a huge pile of snow.

“Sora!”

Ciel was strong enough to jump out of the pile, but Sora wasn’t. As I sped over to rescue the slime from the snow, Ciel, already in adandara form, dove into the pile after it. After a few seconds, Ciel’s head popped out of the snow with Sora in its mouth.

“Oh, thank goodness!”

I knew monsters were good at tolerating the cold, but it was still a relief to see Sora was okay.

“All right, you two: No jumping contests when the snow is this high.”

“Puuu…”

Mewww…

The creatures whined in reply.

“Please. I worry about you both.”

“…Pu! Pu, puuu.”

Mrrrow.

Oh, good. They understand how I feel. Boy, Sora sure gets buried in the snow way too much. Whenever it happens, my heart pounds out of my chest.

As we walked back to the village, I sensed human auras. “Sora, Ciel, somebody’s coming. Get in the bag.”

Sora jumped toward my chest. I caught it and put it in its bag. Ciel had already returned to slime form and approached my feet, so I picked it up and added it to the bag as well.

“It looks like a fairly big group of people.”

“Seems like it, yeah.”

There were so many people approaching that I felt a bit wary. I knew they were probably safe, but still… When the group got closer, I saw that Vice-Captain Pith was in the lead.

“Vice-Captain Pith?” Druid called out to him.

He smiled and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Druid! Miss Ivy!”

“Good afternoon, sir.” I stood straight and gave a shallow bow. I looked at the people behind him and didn’t recognize a single face. They were all quite young, too.

“Is everything okay?” Druid asked.

Pith laughed and nodded his head. “Yes, everything’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about. They’re training to be watchmen.”

Oh, so that’s why so many of them are young. They’re trainees.

“We were about to go on patrol. They need to see treacherous terrain and the dwellings of dangerous monsters in person, so I’m taking them there.”

Vice-Captains sure had tough jobs. “Good luck out there, sir.”

“Thank you very much. All I have to do is show them around, so it’s not hard work…but it’s a real hassle.”

“You shouldn’t say that in front of them,” Druid laughed nervously.

He was right. Calling his job a “hassle” was a bad move. I could see that Pith’s men were also chuckling awkwardly behind him.

“Ha ha! So are you folks headed back to the village?”

“Yes, we’re done with our work out here for the day.”

“I see. Well, we’d best be on our way, then.”

“Goodbye! Be careful out there.”

We parted ways with Pith and headed back to the village, where the gatekeepers greeted us with smiles. We said hi and headed for the village watch headquarters. As we walked, we noticed that the outdoor stalls were open again.

“Mr. Druid, look! It’s a soup stall.”

“So it is. I guess people have decided to open shop now that the snow’s calmed down a bit.”

Shopkeepers couldn’t do business when it was snowing heavily, so we hadn’t seen any stalls during the wintertime. But now, the ones on Main Street were open for business. It made me feel giddy inside, knowing spring was almost here. This would be a good time to try that crazy soup… No, actually, I’d rather not. Yeah, not trying that again.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was just remembering that soup we had.”

“Ooh, yeah…” Druid’s forehead filled with deep creases as he also thought about it. Well, no wonder. We’d had to struggle together just to finish one bowl of the stuff. “I think I’ll pass.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t want any soup.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Druid looked so visibly relieved that I had to laugh. That soup had been so terrible that even I couldn’t eat it. We looked at the open stalls as we made our way to the village watch headquarters. When we went inside, we told a nearby watchman we were there to see Captain Tableau. Shortly after, the captain came out to see us, which attracted a lot of attention.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Sorry to call you all the way out here like this,” he said.

“Oh, it’s quite all right.”

I eyed the staff as we followed Captain Tableau to his office. The air had been tense the last time we were here, but things felt a bit different now.

Noticing my curiosity, Captain Tableau explained, “Everyone is relieved that spring is almost here. We had a really tough winter this year.”

“So that’s why everyone looks so light and floaty. I was wondering why that was.” It was hard to express in words, but everyone was acting like they were floating on air.

“Between the heavy snow and the extreme cold, we had a lot of winter weather advisories to send out this year. Now that everything’s settled down, I’m sure everyone’s tight balls of nerves have unraveled a little.”

Yeah, I guess they can finally take things easy for a while now. Winter really was quite an ordeal this year.

Once we were in Tableau’s office, he had us sit on the sofa and handed us a sheet of paper.

“I had you come here today to confirm the quantity and price of the magic stones you provided. Please look over this statement and let me know if there are any errors.”

Druid and I checked the statement together. It listed the levels, quantities, and price totals of the magic stones we’d supplied.

“So, we provided nine hundred fifty-three magic stones in all,” I said.

Wow, Flame regenerated that many magic stones? That’s quite a feat.

“What?! You mean you didn’t know?”

“We lost track along the way,” I said. Druid supported me with a nod.

“Oh dear. Well, I’m a little surprised to hear that.”

“Why’s that, sir?”

“Well, because you’re both so conscientious.”

Druid and I exchanged glances. Us? Conscientious?

“We’re actually quite careless,” Druid said.

I nodded in agreement. We did tend to forget important things, even without a summoning circle to influence us.