I couldn’t find anything to write in my diary, so I decided to loiter in front of the store.

At that time…

“Oh? Dolce-kun, what are you doing here?” [Carm]

“Assistant-Manager… I couldn’t find any material to write in my diary.” [Dolce]

“I see. In that case, why don’t you try reading what you’ve written until now? Just
revising what you’ve already written will do you good practice.” [Carm]

“…That’s true. Alright. I’ll do just that then. Thank you.” [Dolce]

I got some advice from assistant-Manager Carm.

I immediately went back to my room and opened my diary.

My name is Dolce. A few months ago, I was employed in the laundromat, Bamboo
Forest, as a guard. Until then I’ve been working in the slums, where I grew up, as a
daily laborer while also being active in the vigilante corps.

The reason I was hired here was because of an introduction from my senior. An
adventurer I know has opened a store, but some thugs are interfering with his store’s
operations. He’ll pay you properly, so I want to ask you to help protect the store in my
place.

That’s what my senior said. My senior who helped me a lot when I was a wee brat who
couldn’t do any job properly.

To me jobs are something one needs to do in order to live. I don’t have any particular
preferences for work. There’s no job that I like and there’s no job that I don’t like either.
I don’t have any education too. Ever since I was a wee brat, I was willing to do any job.
Like that and with the help of my seniors I was able to make a living. That’s why since
it’s my senior asking and I’m even getting paid, there’s no reason to refuse.

I waited for a few days as my senior informed the owner, then I was called to the store.
When I saw the owner I was shocked. As it turns out the owner is just an 11-year-old
brat.

I’d heard that it was an adventurer acknowledged by my senior, so I thought for sure
some strong looking guy would appear. Apparently, I couldn’t be more mistaken. But
with this it finally makes sense why others are looking down on the owner and are
even poking into his business. After all, the owner was a frail and docile brat. At least,
that was my first impression of him.

But this was only the beginning of my shock.

When the topic turned to my employment, it turns out that I wouldn’t be just given a
huge salary because of the risk, but I would also be given a room to stay and food. All
for free. Not only was the boss going to be paying me properly, he was giving me some
ridiculously good conditions. The conditions given were so good that I couldn’t help
but suspect there was a catch to all this, but I was later informed that this level of
treatment was normal for this store. After being employed for a few months, I now
know that that’s true, but at the time, I was really shocked.

Still, I couldn’t let my senior lose face, and I couldn’t feel any malice or wariness from
the owner. People from the slums aren’t criminals, but their image is bad. That’s why
people are usually on guard when they hire people from the slums. The assistant-
manager beside the owner was somewhat on guard, but even his reaction was much
better than what I’ve experienced until then.

In the end, I was hired just like that, then I was introduced to my senpai guards from
another country.

“…” [Dolce]

When I remembered about what happened after that, my hands stopped.

…My employment was decided, but they needed to know my strength, so I had to fight
the owner.

I lost.
My senior had acknowledged him, so I believe I fought the owner seriously despite his
age. I say ‘believe’ because I don’t actually remember anything about the fight. I know
I struck out with my spear seriously, and the owner made a face of admiration.

But then in the next moment, I was lying face up in an empty room within the dorms.
I asked the referee, Fei-san, what happened and found out that after the boss dodged
my spear, I was hit.

That’s impossible! I said. When Fei-san saw that I couldn’t believe that I was done in
by a child’s punch, he approached me and pointed to a corner of the room, where my
spear was. It was bent heavily from the center.

It was just a test, so apparently, I’d pulled back my spear and received the owner’s fist,
but I couldn’t stop the force.

My iron spear is just cheap stuff casted from the handle to the spearhead, but I’ve been
using it to receive blows and strike enemies with until my meeting with the owner. It
should be sturdy enough. But there was no denying that the spear had in fact been
bent and was already useless.

Later, the owner came to me and sincerely apologized for breaking my spear. He really
looked no different from a child his age, so it took me an entire night before I was
finally able to accept reality.

My skills have also declined, so I decided to use my free time to polish my skills.

The owner gifted me a spear as an apology for breaking my own. I didn’t ask how much
it cost, but the spear he gave me was more robust and lighter than the one I had before.
It was surely a first-class spear. I was also made to spar with my two senpais when I
had the free time for it.

As it turns out, it’s not just the boss who’s strong. I couldn’t win even once. That old
man, Gordon, who has been employed as a guard until now, says that they’re strong
even on adventurer standards. Especially, Fei-san, whom he says he’d really rather not
fight.

I know they come from a dangerous country, but I still find it difficult to wrap my head
around how strong they are.

Ever since coming to this store, I’ve stopped having problems finding food, money, or
sparring partners. The three employees who went to the branch store invited me, and
since then I’ve been studying how to write. Writing this diary is also a part of my
studies.

The owner and the assistant-manager have been working together to teach me, and if
you compare the more recent pages with the older ones, you’ll see that there’s a clear
difference. With this if I one day retire from this store, then I could find a different job
without having to go back to my work as a day laborer. If I get good enough at fighting,
I might even be able to become an adventurer.

My current life is fun, though, so I don’t plan on retiring just yet.

“Pi-pirororo.” [Rimel Bird]

“Oh?” [Ryouma]

In the morning, a rimel bird could be seen flying from far away. All my rimel birds are
with me, and there’s just one of it flying, so… That’s probably Elia’s. A cloth on which
a family crest was could also be seen by its neck, so it’s definitely not a stray.

“PIRORORO” [Rimel Bird]

“Good job.” [Ryouma]

As I opened the letter, I allowed Elia’s rimel bird to drink and eat with my rimel birds.

“Let’s see…” [Ryouma]

The first thing Elia spoke about was the Great Forest.

Elia had caught wind of the rumor and wanted me to take care. The adults weren’t
against me going either, but they reminded me not to push myself and to prepare
properly. Also, they want me to inform them before going.

I’ll tell them that I’ll make sure to contact them. Next is… Ah, enrollment is here
already?

The letter says that enrollment is approaching, so they’ll be going to the capital
sometime next month in order to let Elia get used to the new environment. If that’s
the case, then…

Presently, Elia and I are communicating through the rimel bird.

When Elia was still here, I would pair up my rimel bird with her rimel bird and send
them together to the duke’s family. Like this we were able to make them remember
our addresses. The rimel birds ability to remember the way to their destination is
something they are highly praised for even among other bird-type monsters.

But if she’s going to be moving to the capital, does that mean that from here on we will
have to communicate through the duke’s family? She’ll be staying at a dorm, after all.
It wouldn’t be strange if pets are banned. I’ll have to ask her.

I’ll also ask about if there are other stuff that’s occurred… Hmm?

“I hear the festival at Gimuru is starting soon. I’m sure you must be very busy what with
having to prepare on top of all your work, but please do your best.” [Elia]

“Festival? What is she talking about?” [Ryouma]

No one told me anything about some festival. I better ask someone.

As such, I went to the store.

“Do you know of any festival here that’s starting soon?” [Ryouma]

“Sorry. Nothing rings a bell. Should I investigate?” [Carm]

“A festival?” [Jane]

“We’re a bit…” [Fina]

“It hasn’t been long since we’ve been here.” [Maria]

“Sorry.” [Shelma]

“You might want to ask someone who’s been living here for longer.” [Leelin]

“Alright. Thanks.” [Ryouma]

I asked Carm-san and the others, but no one knew anything about it.

Now that I think about it, almost everyone at my store aren’t from around here. Fei-
san and Leelin-san are from another country, so it’s only normal that they don’t know
much about the events in this town. In that case, the one that I can probably rely on
the most for this is…
“Dolce-san. Are you free right now?” [Ryouma]

I tried asking my guard, Dolce-san.

“It’s probably the Founding Festival. A festival to celebrate the day this town was
founded. That’s the only one that comes to mind.” [Dolce]

“What do you do to prepare for that festival?” [Ryouma]

“…It would depend on the store or person.” [Dolce]

When I asked him for the specifics, he gave me 5 key points.

1. The opening is the month after next.

2. It will be held in the main street that extends to every part of the town.

3. Usually preparations begin starting next month.

4. The preparations usually involve putting up decorations in front of the store and
cleaning up the place.

5. If you request it, you can also put up a food stall.

As for the stalls, other than the regulars, there are also traveling entertainers and
troubadours, and people who are used to putting up stalls.

Because of the custom to put bright colored clothes in front of the store or one’s house,
the town tends to get dirty after the festival, so it seems the stall owners also help out
with the cleaning.

“That’s about it. Is that enough?” [Dolce]

“Yes. You were a huge help.” [Ryouma]

Cleaning the region is also part of keeping relations with one’s neighbors, but I should
make plans to participate in the event. I don’t think it’ll be that busy unless I put up a
stall.

I wonder what Elia thinks I’ll be doing. Well, for the meantime, it’s still a month and
some away, so for now, I just need to make a mental note of it.

I should also inform the others about this. It might also be a good idea to do something
with my employees if they come up with a good idea.

For now I’ll just tell Elia that I’ll manage.

“…Maybe I should give her something to celebrate her moving out.” [Ryouma]

After all, she will be staying at a dormitory once she arrives at the capital.

But what should I give her?

I can’t give her things related to fire, things that take up space, and things that will
damage the room because of installation requirements. Giving shoes and footwear are
a no no in Japan, but it seems the people here take it to mean as ‘a first step to a new
beginning’, so I can choose to give one as a present. Unfortunately, I don’t know Elia’s
size and I don’t know what’s in vogue too, so I can’t gift her a pair either.

She’ll need to fill her room up with something after she moves, so some gift cards or
money might make her happy, but then again, she’s the daughter of the duke, she
probably doesn’t need any help with money. Maybe I can gift her some consumables
instead. Just gotta make sure not to give her anything too private.

After solving the issue with the festival, the next thing I was racking my head with was
what to gift her for her moving out.

The next day.

“Good morning, Paena-san. For the Rakuton Herb Collection Job. There should be 50
roots all in all.” [Ryouma]

When the sun was directly above in the sky, I gathered some herbs and went to the
guild.

“4, 5. Yes, that’s 50 roots all in all.” [Paena]

Rakuton Herbs aren’t very effective, but they can help with a lot of symptoms, so
they’re often used to deal with colds. Save for extreme environment, these herbs can
be found growing basically anywhere, so they don’t sell for much. 10 roots will get you
a suit.

“Here’s your 5 suits. Please confirm that the amount is right.” [Paena]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I’ll buy some candy or something with this when I go back.

“U-Umm…” [Paena]

“Yes.” [Ryouma]

“Ryouma-kun, do you know a lot about medicinal plants?” [Paena]

“Just the basics. I learned from my grandmother. Why?” [Ryouma]

“Oh, it’s just that all of these herbs were collected really well… If you can tell apart the
Tyler Herb from…” [Paena]

Tyler Herb, a herb that works well against nerve pain. Just like the Rakuton Herb, it
can be found almost anywhere. Unfortunately, the poisonous Tula Herbs tend to grow
where Tyler Herbs are. To make things worse, they look alike.

Of course, I can tell them apart… Or rather.

“If you need some Tyler Herbs, I have some with me. I collected them for my private
use from the southern grasslands.” [Ryouma]

“Really? If you have 5 roots, you can already complete a job.” [Paena]

Then I’ll do just that.

I presented 5 Tyler Herb roots to the counter, and Paena-san started checking the
goods with Identify.

“These are all Tyler Herb indeed. Are you sure you’re okay giving this? You don’t need
to give it if you need them for some personal reason…” [Paena]

“It’s alright. It’s nothing urgent.” [Ryouma]

“I see. In that case, here’s your 70 suits. Please confirm that the amount is right.” [Paena]

14 per root? That’s a lot. I left the guild feeling like I’d made a profit. Today, I’ll go home
while the sun is still high.

“Now then, shall we?” [Ryouma]

I used a tunnel that I normally didn’t to prepare a present for Elia.

What I’ll be making today is the ‘soap’. I wanted to gift her a consumable that wouldn’t
be too private, so I decided to go with something practical. Soaps are a thing in this
country too, so it won’t stand out too much.

I couldn’t just go out and buy one to gift, though, as that wouldn’t make for a very good
gift. And after considering Elia’s position as the daughter of the duke, I figured she’s
probably already used to seeing luxury.

So, I decided to gift her a bar of soap made by yours truly.

Making soap can be said to be a standard when it comes to otherworld novels.

“Gather tallow, gather ash, boil them down…” [Ryouma]

The protagonists of various books made soap like that, but!

I’m going to do things differently!!

“Ingredients… OK. Everything is good to go.” [Ryouma]

What I’ve prepared was water purified with alchemy, and oil and salt. And various
other stuff. Making soap using tallow and ash is a really old way of making soap in
Earth, but in present times, using caustic soda makes for a much easier time making
soap. But to that end…

“First, I need to procure caustic soda…” [Ryouma]

Caustic soda is also known as sodium hydroxide. Its chemical formula is NaOH. I can
get the sodium from table salt. I need to be careful of the metal sodium and the toxic
and caustic chlorine gas.
Metal sodium oxidates very easily in air, and it also produces heat and explosion when
water content is added to it, so to be safe, I need to turn it into an ingot with alchemy
and remove the oxygen from it. The surface will oxidate a little no matter what I do, so
to minimize the oxidation as much as possible, I dipped the metal sodium in the
container filled with oil.

And then I filled another bowl with water…

And I added a fragment of the metal sodium inside the water-filled container, and then
as a sound akin to that of a fuse catching fire resounded, I slid my finger atop the
surface of the water. That’s the sign that sodium hydroxide and hydrogen have been
produced by means of hydrolysis.

When I used Identify on the contents of the container, the water had changed into an
sodium hydroxide (aq). If I use Separation on this aqueous solution again, I’ll be able
to separate it into water and the sodium hydroxide that I need. Like that I was able to
acquire caustic soda.

Metal Sodium can cause explosion when added to water, and sodium hydroxide itself
has strong alkalinity and is highly caustic, so it’s really not something that you can
touch with your bare skin; hence, I’m performing this entire process inside a tunnel I
rarely use. I couldn’t just choose any tunnel, though, as I had to make sure that there
was sufficient ventilation. At the same time, I’m also wearing the boiler suit I used
when cleaning the sewers. On top of that, I’m also wearing a pair of cleaner slime
goggles and helmet. My hands are also covered in a pair of brand new gloves, ensuring
that not even a little bit of skin is exposed.

It seems I’ve succeeded in refining sodium hydroxide, but it would certainly be safer
and faster if I could directly make it through the fusion formation. After all, the
response midway would be completely skipped over by alchemy.

After procuring the caustic soda from salt and water, I am now ready to start making
my soap.

I’ll be handling caustic soda, so I need to be in full gear, but the process from here on
out isn’t that difficult.

Measure the water and caustic soda, then pour the water into a vessel and mix the
caustic soda with it. At this point, the hydration reaction of the caustic soda will cause
heat, so it’s important to take care of the steam and any sudden boiling. Pouring water
into the vessel first, and then gradually pouring the caustic soda is the safest way to
do things.

Afterwards, warm the oil in a vessel, and then slowly pour the caustic soda (aq) into
it. From here, mix the liquid well, and once it starts to get heavy, add a scent to the mix
with something like perfumed oil, and then pour the mix into a mold.

At this point, all that’s left is to keep the temperature of the product and avoid
overcooling it. After a few days, the soap will harden.

Once the soap hardens, there’s a chance it can cause burns if there’s still some caustic
soda left, so it’s important to take care. I’ve had experience making soap using waste
oils countless times, but this is a gift to Elia, not my personal use. So to be safe, I’ve
been keeping careful attention to the basics since the start. I still need to observe and
experiment more to have a better understanding of the amount of soda, the resting
period, as well as to perfect the process as much as possible.

Depending on the type of oil used and the mixture, the color, bubbles, texture, and
efficacy of the soap will change. In order to make soap making relatively easier, I
should closely examine this process along with my study of medicines.

It will take time for the soap to complete, and I have work in the afternoon, so I decided
to conduct a little of my soap making experiments every night.
The days passed by cyclically and before I knew it a month had already passed.

My daily training and my study on medicine are going well because of my existing
knowledge on the subject matter. Recently, I’ve been proactively taking Monster
Extermination Jobs when I go out to collect herbs, partly to procure food and partly to
train myself. The metal and iron slimes have also learned to transform their bodies
into weapons and have gotten better them.

It was on the morning of such a day that when I showed my face at the store, an urgent
message came from the branch store at Renauph.

The slimes had grown too numerous. They had already surpassed the maximum number
of slimes Caulkin-san and the others could tame.

As such, I had no other choice but to go.

After making sure that my schedule was clear, I went to Gimuru.

By the time I got to Renauph, the sun was already setting.

The last time I came here, I arrived on the afternoon of the next day, but this time
around, I was able to make it just before the sun had fully set. Even if this might be a
fantasy world, the distance between towns won’t just suddenly change. If so, then the
reason I was able to get to Renauph so quickly must be because I got faster.

From my house to Gimuru. From Gimuru to the outskirts of the town. Before I knew
it, I’ve gotten really good at the dimension magic that I’ve been using to commute and
do jobs. My running hasn’t gotten that much faster, so it’s probably because my
teleportation probably covers more distance now that I was able to reach Renauph so
quickly.

Seeing results like this is another happiness of training daily.

Feeling satisfied, I passed through the door of the store.

It was still during work hours, so there were a lot of customers inside.

When I tried to line up normally, a voice called out to me from the counter.

“Boss!” [Tony]

“Good job.” [Ryouma]

“I’m glad you could make it.” [Tony]

“Of course. So, the slimes?” [Ryouma]

“Over here. Oh, Robelia-san, Branch Store Manager Carla.” [Tony]

“It’s alright. Just leave this to us.” [Robelia]

“We’ll leave the slime to you two.” [Carla]

After leaving the customers to the two of them, Tony brought me to the living quarters
of the employees. Apparently, they’ve temporarily assigned one of the rooms here for
the slimes to use. They’re managing them fairly securely, as an adventurer security
guard was keeping watch in front of the room.

“It’s been a while. Thank you for always watching the store.” [Ryouma]

“You’re the boss? Thanks for hiring me.” [Guard]

“How is it?” [Ryouma]

“Nothing special. The room is just packed with slimes is all. There are no intruders
and none of the slimes have tried to run away either. Boss Caulkin is inside, so if you
need more info, you can ask him.” [Guard]

I went inside.

“Caulkin-san. It’s been a while.” [Ryouma]

“Ohh! Boss, you got here a lot quicker than we were expecting.” [Caulkin]
“I came as soon as I got your message. Are these all the slimes that need to be tamed?”
[Ryouma]

Within the room was a two-story bed, a table and some chairs. Caulkin-san seemed to
be writing something on the desk, but cleaner slimes could already be seen by his feet.

“Exactly. There’s 75 of them all in all.” [Caulkin]

Let’s deal with them quickly then.

“‘Form Monster Contract’…This should be the last.” [Ryouma]

“Yep, that’s all 75 of them.” [Caulkin]

“Is your mana alright? If you’re tired, we have some potions here…” [Tony]

“It’s alright. I have plenty of mana.” [Ryouma]

And this isn’t even comparable to that time when I had to tame a bunch of scavenger
slimes.

I wonder why they suddenly multiplied, though.

“We have that explained in writing here.” [Caulkin]

Caulkin-san handed me the document on the table.

…I see.

Reason 1. The sudden increase of customers.

Renauph is home to transporters that ferry goods by means of flying monsters.

Moreover, because of the presence of the dragoon guild, there are a lot of people that
go in and out of town, from the people affiliated with the dragoon guild to the people
that have taken up a job to transport something to the people that are simply using
the flying monsters as a form of transport. There has also been an influx of customers
after word spread from our regulars.

Naturally, the more work there was, the more food the slimes had.
Reason 2. The regulation of the production output of the deodorizing liquid.

Because of all the nutrients the slimes were taking in, the amount of deodorizing liquid
produced by the cleaner slimes were more than expected, overstocking inventory.
Although the store didn’t make any losses, the employees tried to throttle the production
rate.

“And because the slimes had more nutrients than they knew what to do with, they
multiplied.” [Ryouma]

“Exactly.” [Caulkin]

“From now on, don’t try to regulate the production of the deodorizing liquid. Just throw
the excess deodorizing liquid, so this doesn’t happen again.” [Ryouma]

“It was just a few days ago, but it seems we made everyone worry needlessly.” [Caulkin]

“We can’t tame more slimes than this anyway, so it’s probably fine even if we don’t
throttle the production rate.” [Tony]

If the slimes increase too much, the secret of the big slime will be revealed… I don’t
really mind if Caulkin-san and the others find out, but they’re still learning about the
store. I don’t want their attention to be divided too much.

The information of new variants is one thing, but the Big Slime is too big of a bomb for
them. Fortunately, even if they have more than 100 slimes, as long as the slimes are
contracted to different tamers, they can’t fuse.

Maybe it’s because the chain of command is different. I’ll probably be able to make
some more progress in that area if I they can help me with my research, so I do intend
to tell them one day, but… Just not now.

Anyway, I’m glad that I was able to deal with the slime issue. All the employees seem
to be worrying about the slimes, but with this, the cleaner slime problem has been
dealt with.

“Are there any other problems?” [Ryouma]

“Nothing other than those mentioned in the regular reports.”[Tony]

“No one’s attacked us like in the main store, but there have been petty issues like when
a drunk customer refuses to leave…” [Caulkin]

“The store is also doing well financially. Although the scale of the town can’t be
compared to Gimuru and there are less regulars here, but we still make about 10,000
suits in profit a day.” [Tony]

“So, there are no problems in management then…” [Ryouma]

In that case, I’ll soon have to prepare a store for Caulkin-san and the others… I should
be able to prepare the capital for that in the not so distant future. It’s good that
everything is progressing smoothly.

In that case, I can share with them the information on the deodorant slime.

…Or at least that’s what I was thinking, but before that.

I went all the way out here to Renauph, so I might as well take this opportunity to drop
by the Saionji Company. If I leave it for later, I’ll probably forget.

“Excuse me.” [Ryouma]

“Welcome! Oh? Aren’t you the Bamboo Forest’s?” [Clerk]

“It’s been a while. Thanks for remembering me.” [Ryouma]

When I entered the spice store, a clerk that I’ve been acquainted with before was
tending to the counter.

“Our president praised you lot, after all, and you even carried such a huge game back
with you. On top of that, we’re just diagonally opposite your store. Can’t possibly forget,
now can we?” [Clerk]

“Well, that’s true…” [Ryouma]

“How may I help you today?” [Clerk]

“I came to Renauph because something suddenly came up, so I thought I’d drop by and
say hi to Pioro-san.” [Ryouma]
“I see… Unfortunately, the president left three days ago for the capital on merchant
business. The ojousama will also be attending the academy very soon, so she went
with him…” [Clerk]

“I see… That’s unfortunate.” [Ryouma]

“Ahh, but the madam is in. She’s currently in the middle of business talks, but if you
wait for a bit, you should be able to meet her.” [Clerk]

In that case, I might as well wait. I’ve prepared some souvenirs, so if possible, I’d like
to give it face-to-face.

“Can I take a look at your products for the time being then? I’m looking for something
fragrant.” [Ryouma]

“Please go ahead. If you’re looking for something fragrant, then might I recommend
the newly arrived cinnam—!?” [Clerk]

“!?”

Just as the clerk was about to leave the counter, a woman’s voice that resembled that
of a shriek suddenly resounded from within the store.

“What was that?” [Ryouma]

“I’m not sure… I think that was the madam, though? Sorry, please wait for a moment.
I will go and check.” [Clerk]

The clerk excused himself and ran inside.

And just when I was thinking he wouldn’t be coming back.

“Sorry for the trouble.” [???]

A man who had his hips at a frightfully low position left the store nearby in low spirits.
The man bowed his head many times and walked away with the gentle wind.

…KUSA…

As the man walked away from the spice store, a foul smell rode the gentle wind. The
man that walked away was frowning himself, so it came as no surprise that the
passersby avoided the smell.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Please come.” [Clerk]

Oh, I’m being called.

“Ryouma-han. Thank you for dropping by.” [Kurana]

“Good afternoon, Kurana-san.” [Ryouma]

The place I was brought to wasn’t the reception office, but the dining table.

But what I’m really concerned about is… her nose. Is her nose inflamed or something?

Although she’s trying to keep her elegance as a beauty and is acting as reserved as she
could, I can still see her sniffling.

“Kurana-san, are you alright?” [Ryouma]

“Please don’t worry. I’m not sick. I just ate something amazing a while ago…” [Kurana]

“Something amazing?” [Ryouma]

“I believe it’s called ‘Shappaya’? It’s a dish wherein fish is soaked in liquid mixed with
salt and various herbs.” [Kurana]

“…Ah, could it be that dish that stinks a lot?” [Ryouma]

“You’ve heard of it?” [Kurana]

“I don’t know if it’s the same, but I know a processed food that fits the description.”
[Ryouma]

It’s probably a kind of food like kusaya [1].

It seems a person selling that came here and gave her one to try.

But as a member of the beast tribe, the smell was too harsh for her nose.
“In that case, why don’t you have this? It might be able to help wash your mouth of the
taste. It’s a cake that’s been recently popular among the women in my store.” [Ryouma]

“Oh, my. Thank you so much.” [Kurana]

I gave Kurana the cake and chatted with her a bit.

The next day.

I was so into my conversation with my research team that I lost track of time and
before I knew it it was already morning.

I had breakfast and prepared to go back to Gimuru, but when I got to the gate, it was
noisy for some reason.

“Did something happen?” [Ryouma]

There was a crowd of people by the road. I asked them that.

“Some adventurers were fighting among themselves. The ones fighting have already
been caught, but midway they started throwing some weird barrels at each other—
U…!” [Random Guy 1]

When the direction of the wind changed, a foul smell could wafted to our noses. When
I approached the source of the smell, even I was stunned.

“This smell…” [Ryouma]

“It stinks… Uppu…” [Random Guy 1]

As the direction of the wind changed, the crowd of onlookers walked away.

Because of that I could get a better look. The man from yesterday had been driven into
a corner by men and women of all ages.

“Hey! Do something about this smell! My equipments stinks!” [Angry Man 1]

“Even if you tell me that…” [Man from Yesterday]

“Because of all this trash here in front of my store, the customers won’t come! Why do
you even have all this trash piled up in the first place anyway!?” [Angry Woman 1]

“These aren’t trash! These are shappaya! It’s a kind of preserved food!” [Man from
Yesterday]

“Everyone, please calm down. He is also a victim like you people.” [Guard]

“I know that, but my store and all my goods are covered in this stinky stuff. Of course,
I could clean my equipment and the storefront, but the goods affected can’t be sold
anymore.” [Angry Man 1]

“You should blame that on the people who started fighting in the first place. For now,
let’s try to get the situation under control.” [Guard]

Presently, the thick liquid and fish that are probably the source of the smell are
scattered everywhere. The liquid was stored inside some small barrels that could be
carried with one hand. The people fighting threw those at each other, and this was the
result…

The guards did their best to control the situation, but there was no end to the number
of people complaining. Some of the anger ended up getting directed to the weak man
who owned the barrels.

But he himself was a victim. It feels bad to lay the blame on him.

…It would serve as advertisement for my store too, so why don’t I help them out a bit?

As such, I entered an alley with no one around and prepared some deodorant slimes.

[1] – Dried Japanese fish that smells really bad.

“How is it?” [Ryouma]

“Amazing… Thanks, boy!” [Victim 1]

“Who would’ve thought the day would come when slimes could be useful. The times
are changing.” [Victim 2]

“I’m sorry, but these aren’t for sale…” [Ryouma]

As I tried to deodorize the affected street and stores as much as possible, the victims
thanked me and gifted me various things. I thanked them and accepted their gesture,
then I advertised my store and left the town.

“Wait!” [???]

“?” [Ryouma]

When I was passing through the gate, someone stopped me. Just as I was wondering
what was up, the owner of that stinky preserved food was currently riding a carriage
and was in the meddle of being checked for passage.

“Thank heavens. I made it…” [Stinky Food Merchant]

“Is something the matter?” [Ryouma]

“I wanted to thank you for earlier. But when I tried to go back there, they told me that
you’d already left.

This man along with the rest of the victims was taken by the guards. Of course, not to
arrest him, but to confirm the damages received and to give due reparations. During
that time, I cleaned the road and deodorized the stores of the store owners that came
back first. This guy came last. Because of that we ended up passing each other.
“Ah, if you’re going to be leaving through this gate, how about accompanying me for a
bit? You seem to be on foot, so if you’re alright with it, I can give you a ride.” [Stinky
Food Merchant]

Technically, it would be faster if I went back on my own, but… this is a kind of fate too.
If it’s just to show his gratitude, I guess I’ll accept his offer.

“Oh, so you started peddling 12 years ago, Mondo-san. I guess that makes you a veteran
then.” [Ryouma]

“Ha ha, I wouldn’t go that far. There are a lot of people who’ve been at it for 30 or 40
years already, and I’ve just started being independent. Have you heard of Reetil? It’s a
village on the bank of Ratoin Lake.” [Mondo]

“I’m not familiar with Reetil, but Ratoin Lake is the biggest lake in this country, yes?”
[Ryouma]

According to the documents I received from the guild, a monster I need to train with
lives there. There are many fishing villages on the bank of that lake and one of those
is Shikumu Village. A party I’m acquainted with lives there.

“Shikumu is on the opposite shore of Reetil. I usually sell daily necessities to small
villages like that.” [Mondo]

“…Huh? Don’t you sell food?” [Ryouma]

“You talking about shappaya? That’s something made by Reetil. Reetil is my hometown.
My dad’s a fisherman, and because I wasn’t going to be inheriting the family business,
they told me to at least find a market for the business to contribute to the village.
Because of that they forced all these barrels onto me when I got back to the village.”
[Mondo]

“I see.” [Ryouma]

“But it’s hard to sell because it stinks so bad. Even if you wash it and cook it or boil it,
although the smell does get better a little, it still stinks. No one told me I couldn’t sell
it, but it’s still frustrating…” [Mondo]

“I saw you back at the Saionji Company.” [Ryouma]

“You saw me? I tried selling it there, but the stench was – as expected – bad and they
wouldn’t buy it. Well, I’ll keep at it and maybe I’ll find someone willing to buy it… Oh,
which way are you?” [Mondo]

A fork could be seen on the path up ahead. I’m going back to Gimuru, so I need to take
a left here.

“I’m going right.” [Mondo]

“Then I guess we’ll part here.” [Ryouma]

“You’re going left, huh? Well then…” [Mondo]

The carriage stopped.

Then he suddenly started searching his luggage, and then handed me a barrel that’s
been sealed tight.

“If you don’t mind, please take one with you. As a token of my gratitude and as a prayer
for your safe travels. If you take this with you, wild animals and monsters will be less
likely to attack you. Especially, the ones with a good nose.” [Mondo]

Personally, just letting me ride with him was already more than enough to show his
gratitude, but since he’s giving it to me out of good will, I decided to accept it. Besides,
it’s apparently also useful as a repellent… That’s not an appropriate way to use food
anymore, but…

Oh, maybe that’s why his dad forced him to bring these barrels with him…

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you too for your earlier help. Please have a safe travel.” [Mondo]

I parted with Mondo-san, and when I couldn’t see him anymore, I ran back to Gimuru.

The next day.

I gathered some herbs along the way, so by the time I got to Gimuru it was already
afternoon.
I dropped by the store, and they were doing well as usual.

But there were two reports different from usual.

One was that someone wanted an appointment with me. The person requesting it was
Serge-san.

“Of course, it’s alright, but what did he need?” [Ryouma]

“He says it’s about a magic tool.” [Carm]

Ahh, about the music box. I wonder if something happened.

…I’ll think about it when after I meet him. For the mean time, let’s just meet him first.
And the other one?

“A letter of gratitude and some goods to express good will came from the three
working girls’ village.” [Carm]

A letter of gratitude?... Have I done anything to deserve that?

“They’ve been exchanging letters with their village regularly. The thank you letter is
for your cordial welcome of their daughters. The goods have been stored in the second
floor.” [Carm]

The second floor?

The room there is currently being used to inspect the laundry given by the customers.
The laundry gets washed almost immediately, though, so that room has been pretty
much unused all this time, but it is fairly big. If they had to store the goods there…
Does that mean those three girls’ parents sent that many stuff?

Carm-san said he would call for someone to explain, so I went ahead up stairs.

“Oh~… This is amazing…” [Ryouma]

Mysterious jute bags were piled up in the second floor. And there weren’t just 10 or
20 of them. When I touched the bags it felt like a grain of some sort, but the smell
coming from the ones at the back reminded me of… Sesame seeds?
“Identify” [Ryouma]

Semisa Seed
Oily with plenty of nutritional content.
Although relatively easy to cultivate, it carries with it a strong fragrance that grows
stronger with heat.

So it really was something like sesame seed.

The sesame seeds back at Earth can’t produce such a strong aroma before being
roasted, but these seeds can.

“Boss, I’ve brought Jane-san.” [Carm]

“Thank you, Carm-san. Can you tell me what all these are for?” [Ryouma]

“Sorry, Boss. When we told our parents that the store we’re working at is a good place,
they went and did this on their own. These should be filled with wheat and semisa.
They sent them here both as thanks and as a gesture of good will to the owner and to
thee people working here…” [Jane]

Jane-san chose her words. I know it’s from her parents, but…

“It’s bribery, in other words.” [Jane]

“Uwaa, talk about blunt.” [Ryouma]

Looks like she gave up racking her brain for a better term. It’s good that she’s honest,
but the way she says it makes one want to throw those words back at her.

“Is this normal?” [Ryouma]

“Sometimes. When parents want their children to have an acceptable workplace…

After all, not all bosses are nice. Especially, when the subordinates are women. Parents
can’t really help but worry. They give gifts like this to ensure that good workplaces
remain good and the bad ones do change. That’s about it.” [Carm]
“Hmm… Well, that’s understandable. And since I’m not a parent, their protective
feelings are probably even greater than mine… But if they give us this much produce,
then wouldn’t they suffer a loss?” [Ryouma]

In the first place, Jane-san and the others left their village to make money. I can’t
believe their parents and their village has much leeway financially.

When I asked that to Jane-san, she says that this much won’t cause a problem.

When I asked for the details, she told me that their village is northeast of Gimuru.
Their village is situated near the border and was a reasonably rich farming village
until 10 years ago. Their main products include wheat and potatoes, and they also deal
with semisa and vegetables.

Most of the produce harvested in the village are transported across the border and
sold there, but 10 years ago, the territory across the border started a plan to develop
their farms, and since then their contract with them has been getting smaller.

The plan was brought forward by a man who couldn’t inherit his family’s headship,
being the second born or later, and with the financial assistance of the feudal lord, they
were able to hire specialists and turn the agriculture development plan into a huge
success. Currently, that area has become a well known grain-producing land in that
territory.

Compared to them, the village of the three working girls has lost much of its profits.
The villages neighboring them already had their own source of produce and didn’t
have any coin left to purchase from them. With no place to sell their produce, the youth
of the village had no choice but to leave the village and make money outside.

But since the only problem was that they couldn’t sell their produce, they had more
than enough to eat.

“The amount of produce taken as tax and the amount eaten by the villagers doesn’t
really change much, so all the unsold produce are just left there to spoil in the village.
Ah, but I can guarantee the quality of these!” [Jane]

“Since you have so much produce, why don’t you reduce it? You’re sending people
away anyway, so shouldn’t you have less people working on the fields?” [Ryouma]

“Because it would be a problem if we didn’t have any stocked up in case of a bad season,
and also because there are a lot of people who want to protect the fields that have
been with the village for generations. In the village, we each contribute money so we
can procure magic tools and cattle to use for farm work. We can also use the excess
wheat as feed. Saying that we can just reduce the production rate to make just enough
makes it seem as if all the effort we put into farm work is nothing but a waste.” [Jane]

I feel like she’s starting to complain.

Anyway, it seems sending all these back will just result in them being thrown out.

“…Alright. But the next time you contact them, please inform them that they don’t need
to send me these stuff. Whether they send me these things or not I’m not going to
change how I treat you. And as long as the person is willing to do a proper job, I can
accept other people from your village as employees.” [Ryouma]

“Really?” [Jane]

I don’t mind hiring employees due to their connection, and I will be needing more
employees if I’m going to be putting up a branch store. I still need to consult with
Carm-san, but as far as I’m concerned, as long as the person is willing to do the work,
then it’s all good.

Besides, I’ve also taken full advantage of my connection with the duke’s family and the
Morgan Company and the guild masters, so I’m not exactly in the position to find fault
with others that take advantage of their connections.

“Do note that they must do the work properly and not cause any trouble. Understood?
I will not give preferential treatment to someone just because you introduced them to
me. I also won’t favor someone just because everyone is acquainted with the person.
Though I will accept consultation if the person in question has some kind of special
condition that needs to be taken into consideration.” [Ryouma]

“Of course! That’s more than enough!” [Jane]

“That’s good then. What do you think, Carm-san?” [Ryouma]

“As long as we observe and interview them thoroughly, it should be fine. Just as the
boss has said, we do need to hire more people eventually, so it would be a huge help if
we could get people whose origin has already been confirmed.” [CArm]
“That’s good to hear. By the way, can you assess the value of all these?” [Ryouma]

“I’ve already assessed the value and have prepared everything in writing. If you need
a more precise assessment, however, someone that deals in food goods from the
Merchant Guild should be able to provide it.” [Carm]

“I see. We can just go with your assessment. Can you prepare the appropriate monetary
value when the girls contact the village next? I don’t want to accept all these for free.”
[Ryouma]

“Very well. We’ll deal with it that way.” [Carm]

“Wait a moment!… Does that mean you’re going to be buying all of these? Please don’t!
Our parents sent all of these on their own accord.” [Jane]

“But wouldn’t it be a waste to just send them back? After all, you have more than you
know what to do with. We’ll use it for the food in the store, so don’t worry about it.”
[Ryouma]

“Then, at the very least, please purchase everything at a low price.” [Jane]

“Then I’ll purchase everything at cost price plus shipping fee. That’s good enough, yes?”
[Ryouma]

“I think it’s fine.” [Carm]

“Alright.” [Jane]

Carm-san submitted a compromise proposal. Meanwhile, Jane-san muttered to herself,

“Is this really alright?”

Although the one benefiting from this the most is their village, as far as I’m concerned,
I was able to acquire a new place to source new employees from.
Evening

When work hours were about to end, Serge-san dropped by the store.

“I heard you wanted to talk about the music box.” [Ryouma]

“Yes. First, I wish to give a report of the current situation. Dinome Magic Tool Workshop
will soon be able to start selling the music box. To that end, they have started
accumulating stock.” [Serge]

It’s still some months away, but they’re already at a stage where they can start selling?

Serge-san showed me a sample of the product while talking.

“There will be different music boxes for nobles and commoners, right?” [Ryouma]

“Yes. The music boxes catered toward nobles are ornamental boxes with a magic tool
inside. The ornamental boxes will be made by order, so the customers can pick the
motif and material themselves.” [Serge]

So, a unique luxury item. And because the box will be made-to-order, Dinome-san’s
workload will decrease.

Compared to that, the music box for the commoners is just a branded small box. This
version will probably sell for a much more affordable price.

“Since the music boxes catered toward the nobles are made-to-order, I take it we will
be selling the common music boxes first?” [Ryouma]

“Yes. Selling the music boxes to the nobles will be taken care of by the company, so I
was thinking of unveiling the common music boxes during the Founding Festival.” [Serge]

“You plan to put up a store during the Founding Festival?” [Ryouma]

“Yes. The music that will be used in the music box is written by a popular troubadour.
We’ve promised to mention them as well as the name of their song. That troubadour’s
group of itinerant entertainers, the Semroid Troupe, will also be performing in Gimuru,
so we’ll be selling our music boxes there.” [Serge]

He sure figured out how to sell music boxes quickly…

“Just one thing. Where are you planning to perform?” [Ryouma]

“That’s actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.” [Serge]

Apparently, he wants to use the store as a dressing room, and the security guard’s
training area for the venue of the troupe.

…I should discuss this with the others first.

I called Carm-san and the head of my guards, Fei-san, and explained to them the situation.

After discussing it, it was eventually decided that the empty lot will be used as
proposed, but the dressing room will instead use the free room in the dormitory. Of
course, this was under the condition that no one would be able to enter the other areas
of the store.

“Thank you for your cooperation. With this I’ll be able to report something good. The
troupe will arrive within 2 weeks or so. I’ll drop by again when they arrive.” [Serge]

Like this the discussions with Serge-san came to a close.

I saw him off until the entrance of the store, then I went back inside.

“Hmm? Did you hear that?” [Ryouma]

“I think it came from the kitchen. I’ll take a look.” [Fei]

Fei-san quickly went to take a look.

“Umm… I didn’t hear anything.” [Carm]

“It was a really quiet sound.” [Ryouma]

While we were talking, Fei-san came back.

“Boss, there’s a terrible smell coming from a barrel in the kitchen. It seems Shelma-san
accidentally opened it.” [Fei]

“A barrel with a terrible smell?… Ah.” [Ryouma]

That must be the shappaya I got. It’s food, so I left it in the kitchen and forgot about it…

“Sorry. I was the one who left that there. It’s a kind of preserved food someone gave
me…” [Ryouma]

“You did? In that case, you better hurry or she’ll throw it away.” [Fei]

Throw it away!? That would be a terrible thing to do to Mondo-san!

“Excuse me!” [Ryouma]

I rushed to the kitchen, and true enough, Shelma-san was just about to throw the
Shappaya barrel into the trash can.

“Stop!!!” [Ryouma]

“Kyaa!? Boss. What’s the matter?” [Shelma]

“Shelma-san. I’m sorry, but actually, that’s a kind of preserved food someone gave me.
I know it stinks, but it’s not trash.” [Ryouma]

“O-Oh… Is that so? My bad.” [Shelma]

“No, it’s my fault for forgetting it here. Let me deodorize the kitchen for you.” [Ryouma]

I put the lid back on the barrel, and then used the Deodorant Slime to freshen up the
kitchen.

I’ve already gotten used to doing this sort of stuff, so I was able to do everything quickly.

“There.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you very much. But, are you sure you can eat that thing?” [Shelma]
Shelma-san found it hard to believe. But that’s understandable considering how bad
the stench is. I have the Stench Resist skill and I’ve already eaten something like it in
my previous life, so I’m alright with it, but someone who’s seeing it for the first time
will probably find it hard to digest.

“You need to wash off the smell first before eating it. That’s what the person who gave
it to me said… Do you want to try it?” [Ryouma]

“I’m actually quite interested, being a chef and all, but… I’m not sure…” [Shelma]

Looks like the shock from when she accidentally opened the barrel was too big, and
she can’t help but remember the stench when she smelled the stuff directly.

…Wait a moment. Just now, wasn’t I able to remove the stench of the Shappaya in the
room using the Deodorant Slime? In that case, why don’t I try soaking the Shappaya in
the Deodorant Slime’s liquid?

“Mind if I try something? I’ll put up a barrier first.” [Ryouma]

I know I’m the boss, but Shelma-san is in charge of the kitchen. She’s also in the middle
of preparing supper, so I made sure to get her permission first before trying out this
experiment.

First I took out the Shappaya and put them inside a large bowl. I thought the Shappaya
would become softer, but they actually managed to retain their shape. I lined up the
Shappaya, then I submerged them inside the Deodorant Slime’s liquid.

“For the mean time, let’s soak for 10 minutes.”

10 minutes later.

After removing the liquid from the shappaya, I gently washed the Shappaya, making
sure not to crush it. The deodorant slime’s liquid wasn’t poisonous, but I had to make
sure that no filth would be left, so I used water magic to wash everything off, and…
Done! The stench is gone!

Compared to before, the shappaya basically smelled like nothing now. But what about
the taste?
I roasted it over fire and ate it.

“!!” [Ryouma]

The more I chewed, the more the deliciousness of the fish came out. I thought I’d lose
some of the taste by washing the shappaya with the dedorant liquid, but it’s still plenty
delicious.

There’s still a little bit of stench from the shappaya’s liquid, though… Should I let it
soak for longer? It might be because I’m numbed to the smell already or it might be
because of the Stench Resist skill, but the thing is I don’t really mind the smell, so I’m
not actually sure if the smell is bearable now for a normal person.

“Shelma-san, I was able to remove most of the smell. What do you think?” [Ryouma]

“Oh, you’re right. In that case, I’ll have one… Mmm… It still stinks a little.” [Shemla]

“I see…” [Ryouma]”

“It’s much better compared to before, though. Before, it was so bad I couldn’t stand it,
but now, I can properly taste it. I think it might be best if this is prepared with some
herbs first rather than served as is.” [Shelma]

So, the stench is weak enough that it could be solved with something like that. In that
case, how about adding Jija— Wait. I don’t have any. I don’t have any herbs too.

…Right. Let’s use that Semisa instead.

I took a bag of Semisa from the second floor and wrung out some oil using alchemy.
The oil is plenty aromatic as is, but heating it up will release even more of the aroma.
I cooked the oil on a frying pan.

…And gradually the aromatic smell became stronger! I then added the Shappaya that’s
been treated with deodorant. After frying one side, I flip the pan and fry the other side.
I fried the Shappaya until both sides had turned crispy.

“Is it ready?” [Shelma]

“Yes. What do you think?” [Ryouma]

“…Mmm. Well, it stink way less than before now. I think it’ll go well with wine.” [Shelma]

Is the taste the problem?

“…What’s going on?” [Fina]

“Ah, no, it’s…” [Ryouma]

“We smelled something familiar!” [Jane]

“So we came to see what it is~” [Maria]

When I turned around, the three working girls were standing by the entrance.

“The semisa is our hometown’s taste, so—” [Jane]

“—Smelling it really whets our appetite!” [Fina]

“I see.” [Ryouma]

“Boss~ Is that tonight’s supper?” [Maria]

It’s an experiment actually…

“It’s alright. We’ll add it to our supper tonight.” [Shelma]

And that’s how today’s experiment concluded.

As a result, the side dishes for tonight’s supper increased.

After supper.

Shelma-san’s cooking was again simple and delicious. The employees also enjoyed the
Shappaya fried in sesame oil. The effect of the deodorizing liquid could be seen
immediately.

If I knew I could use the Deodorizing Liquid like this, I would have bought more
Shappaya. Too bad. So long as man lives, he will need food to sustain him. So it never
hurts to have too many preserved food.
“Here you go, Boss.” [Jane]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

After supper, Jane-san served me a cup of Dante Coffee. She prepared everyone else’s
favorite drink too, and we spent the time after supper like that.

“Funfufun.” [Jane]

…Still, Jane-san sure is in a good mood to day. The others are also in a good mood. Are
they that happy having the ingredients of their hometown used?

When I asked them that, apparently, that was one part of it, but there was also the
conversation this afternoon.

“When I think of how everyone in the village might be hired by the store, I just… Ah~”
[Maria]

“Of course, we’re also okay if you send us to different branches. Either way the
laundromat is a really safe workplace. We left the village to work, but while we’re able
to have an easy life working here, we can’t help but worry for those working elsewhere…”
[Jane]

“And with the way our village is, more and more villagers will eventually have to leave
to make money. At that time, if we could just ensure the safety of at least one more
villager, then we could be at ease by that much.” [Fina]

“I see.” [Ryouma]

“What would really be great is if we can sell our produce, though!” [Fina]

“That’s right~. If that happens, then everyone can live together again~” [Maria]

“It’s a waste that ingredients that delicious are just being thrown away.” [Fei]

“Unthinkable in our country.” [Leelin]

Fei-san and Leelin-san joined the conversation.

“What do you eat in your country?” [Shelma]

“Our staple food is Miyen. It’s made by kneading flour with water. Kind of like bread,
but we don’t cook it, and instead, put it in soup. When made long and narrow, we call
it Reemiyen. When it’s thin and long, we call it Parmiyen. There are many names and
ways of eating it.” [Fei]

Could this Miyen be noodles? That seems to be the case after hearing Fei-san’s
explanation. Or maybe it’s closer to flour dumplings since they put them in a soup.

“That’s interesting~” [Maria]

“I wonder how foreign cuisine tastes like…” [Shelma]

“Shelma-san, are you curious? If you want, I can make you some.” [Leelin]

“Oh, my, Leelin-san. Are you sure?” [Shelma]

“I haven’t eaten it in a long while too. Why not? The ingredients are wheat flour, water,
and soup. Everyone in our country is poor, so we don’t need any special ingredients.”
[Leelin]

What a happy conversation this has turned into.

“…Should we put up a stall?” [Carm]

“Huh?” [Leelin]

“Carm-san?” [Ryouma]

I was wondering what he was talking about so suddenly, but apparently, it was related
to our discussion with Serge-san.

“Although we’re not making a loss by lending the store, we can benefit more from the
deal depending on our actions. One way we can do that, I believe, is by providing some
snacks to the people coming to watch the troupe. If we provide them a place for them
they can rest at and prepare products that can attract their attention, we should also
be able to sell them some things. It’s a festival after all, so they should be more willing
to spend. And even if we don’t make that much, we can still use this as an opportunity
to deepen relations with the townspeople.” [Carm]

Carm-san… Although it’s just an idea, he’s sure thought it through.

Management is going well, so we do have the capital, and we might just be able to give
back a little to the people we’ve been making a killing from… This is another way to
enjoy the festival.

“What do you think? Everyone.” [Carm-san]

It would be impossible if the stall is to be tended by just me and Carm-san.

We need to get everyone’s cooperation.

“…If you’re doing it, I’ll help. I… don’t have anything scheduled.” [Dolce]

Unexpectedly, Dolce-san immediately agreed.

I thought he was focused on working on his diary, but it seems he was actually listening.

“I don’t have any experience putting up a stall, but I certainly love seeing people eat
my food. All the more when the customers praise my cooking.” [Shelma]
Shelma-san was also up for it.

“If we take turns like we do normally, we should be able to make time to go around the
festival even while tending to the stall.” [Fina]

“Hmm~ We’ll probably lose all our money if we play the whole day, so~ Why not?”
[Maria]

“I’m okay with it.” [Leelin]

“I agree with my daughter.” [Fei]

“Me too. Ah! Assistant-Manager, can we use our store’s wheat for the ingredients?” [Jane]

“We have to create an environment to preserve the food goods, but it should be fine.
Is something the matter?” [Carm]

“If we use our village’s wheat, some customers might ask where the wheat is produced.”
[Jane]

“What are you talking about?” [Dolce]

“Ahaha, forget it. I’m alright with working on the stall. It sounds fun.” [Jane]

After Jane-san agreed, Fina-san also agreed.

With that, the decision was a unanimous yes.

We’re putting up a stall! Great!

But then again, when you think about, couldn’t we just use the store?

Still, this is where the flow of conversation brought us, so I guess that’s that.

“Now, we need to check the cost of the ingredients and prepare some sample dishes.
We’ll have to lay the groundwork with Morgan Company… I’ll begin preliminary
investigations tomorrow.” [Ryouma]

If after that everyone still feels like putting up a stall, then we’ll put up a stall.
Two weeks later.

The employees were very busy due to having to work their regular hours while also
preparing for the festival.

In these two weeks, everyone was running about, cooking their respective local
cuisines, ensuring everything needed for those dishes was ready, and working with
the Morgan Company to deal with the security and the reception of the customers at
the festival.

But despite the busyness of the preparations, the morale of the employees remained
high. I was secretly shocked.

In my past life, we had yearly company recreation events to bolster the team spirit of
employees, but they were really just meant to satisfy the complacency of the upper
brass. The only ones excited about such events were a small portion of the company,
which included the people planning the event. The rest of the employees were merely
forced to participate under the pretense that such events were so-called ‘company
events’. A compulsory wastage of an employee’s free day, in other words.

Still, I get where they’re coming from. It’s obviously better if the employees could
develop some sort of unity. And it can’t be helped anyway if it’s company policy, but…
I really don’t want to see my employees make the same faces as those employees in
my past life.

For now though, everyone seems to be having fun. The stalls are gradually taking shape
and everyone is eager to work.

Moreover, it’s not just my employees who’ll be participating in the stall, for some
unexpected people have decided to help out.

“Boss! Zeke-san from the butcher is here!” [Carm]

“I hear you! I’m going right now!” [Ryouma]

I stopped working on the empty lot of the store and went to the reception office.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” [Ryouma]

“You didn’t make me wait at all. This is for today’s portion. I brought the goods to the
kitchen already.” [Zeke]

“…This is more affordable than expected.” [Ryouma]

“You’re purchasing so much, so I thought I’d give you a discount.” [Zeke]

One of the people cooperating with us was Zeke-san.

He helps out by providing meat for the trial dishes, and on the day of the festival, he
himself will be helping out in the stall along with his employees. A few days ago, when
I purchased a lot of ingredients, he asked me what I was using them for, so I answered
him, and in the end, he decided to help out.

When I asked him why, apparently, he and his employees want to spend time with
their family during the festival. But if they were to waste too much, they would be
scolded by their wives, so in exchange for helping out one day out of the two days of
the festival, I will be paying them them an appropriate salary.

If I get their help, preparations for the festival will become relatively easier and the
money that can be used for the capital will also increase. My employees won’t have as
much of a burden on the day of the festival and we will also have more opportunities
to mingle with others.

After establishing a win-win relationship like that, Pauline-san and her housewife
friends, Kiara-san and Mary-san, also got word of our deal. The three of them told me
that they were willing to help out with the trial dishes and on the day of the festival
itself if I gave them the same conditions. Presently, they are helping out in the kitchen
with Shelma-san.

Incidentally, because the housewives joined, word of the Semroid Troupe coming to
perform spread through the housewives intelligence network. Among other things,
when I showed my face at Pauline-san’s store, many of her friends had something to
say… Are we going to end up with a crowd like when we opened the store for the first
time? I should prepare for that possibility.

“Well then, Ryouma-kun. I’ll see you in the evening.” [Zeke]

I saw Zeke-san off as he left to go back to his store, then I went back to working on the
empty area.

Tonight, I will be checking the menu of the stall for the last time and open the place
that will be used as the venue of our social gathering. I have to at least prepare the
place a little.

Evening. After work hours.

I was checking some documents while waiting for the visitors at the office when Carm-
san came.

“Boss, Serge-sama and a representative of the Semroid Troupe is here.” [Carm]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I quickly went to the reception office.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” [Ryouma]

“Sorry to disturb you, Ryouma-sama. This here is the leader of the Semroid Troupe.”
[Serge]

“My name is Prenence Semroid. Though I may be young, I lead a troupe of itinerant
entertainers. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, young sage-dono.” [Prenence]

Inside the room was Serge-san sitting on the sofa, as well as another person at the
back. The person was a handsome man with dazzling hair like silver threads. He stood
out even as he sat. When he stood up and offered a hand shake, I responded, but… His
actions struck me as somewhat theatrical.

“The pleasure is mine. You can just call me by name. There’s no need for the sage stuff…”
[Ryouma]

“Oh? I see you are a humble man, wise— Ryouma-dono. The music box. That small box
that could spin that delicate sound… It is a work of wonder, I must say. It has given our
performances a new ‘flavor’. Moreover, the musical composition I composed was even
incorporated into it, allowing my music to reach more people than thought ever
possible… If you, Ryouma-dono, the man who developed that, is not worthy of being
called a sage, then who is?” [Prenence]

Is that thing really that big of a deal to musicians?… Or is he just flattering me?

Forgive my bluntness, but my first impression of him is ‘hard to deal with’.

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

“I should be thanking you. Not only did you bestow upon us the music box, you even
gave us artists a place to showcase our talents.” [Prenence]

“Yes. But the place isn’t really anything special, though. It’s just the empty lot of the
store that we rarely use.” [Ryouma]

“I saw it a little along the way. It’s more than big enough. I’m sure my friends will be
delighted.” [Prenence]

“Are they already there?” [Ryouma]

“Yes, they’re already at the venue.” [Prenence]

Just as planned. The details of the music box and the fact that I’m its developer aren’t
really things that should be spoken of in public; hence, our topic here includes not only
the details of the performance but also the secrecy of my identity, which is why only
the representative was called here.

“It would be rude to keep them waiting then. Shall we go over the details quickly?”
[Ryouma]

After getting their confirmation, I opened our discussion.

“The stage-related matters will be left to the Semroid Troupe.” [Ryouma]

“Please leave it to me. It’s a rare opportunity for us to be able to stand on such a big
stage. We will definitely put on a good show.” [Prenence]
When they were just getting started, they usually played in smaller venues, such as
the town square or the bar. A large venue that could accommodate a bigger audience
like my store’s empty lot is probably a rare opportunity for them.

“I’ll leave it to you. If there’s anything you need, please feel free to consult us. If you
need some things or more people, either Serge-san or Carm-san should be able to help
you. And if you need help with the stage or to transport some things or other labor
work, you can look to me for help.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you for everything.” [Prenence]

“Next is… Oh, it seems that’s it.” [Ryouma]

“So it appears. If there’s still anything else that needs to be discussed, I’ll let you know.”
[Prenence]

“Shall we be off then?” [Serge]

After discussing what needed to be discussed, we went to the venue.

“It sure is lively.” [Ryouma]

In the venue were 6 temporary stores, each of which was built with Earth Magic. The
stores were only about the size of a stall, but they have been outfitted with the
necessary equipment for cooking. Around those stores could be seen our neighbors.
There were also some unfamiliar men and women of all ages.

“Ah! Ryouma! Hurry up and come!” [Rick]

Rick. I see Leni and Tony too. They are relatives of the people helping us, as well as
children. They should be able to give us a lot of feedback regarding the food.

“I’m starving. Mom says tonight’s supper is going to be served her—” [Rick]

“Don’t say unnecessary things. Behave.” [Pauline]

“Ahaha…” [Ryouma]

“Boss, thank you for your hard work. It’s a bit early, but I think we should start soon…”
[Carm]
“Yes. Let’s begin.” [Ryouma]

“In that case, please give the welcoming remarks.” [Carm]

I wasn’t sure if it was really okay for me to be the one to give the welcoming remarks,
but regardless, I took a glass filled with beverage with one hand and stood before the
crowd.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am the representative of the laundromat

‘Bamboo Forest’, Ryouma Takebayashi, and I would like to thank all of you for being
able to make it here tonight despite your busy schedules.” [Ryouma]

“…” [Rick]

Rick stared at me with eyes that seemed to be saying, ‘are we not eating yet?’

“…I understand that there are those among us who can no longer wait. As such, I shall
take it upon myself to keep this short. As everyone knows, we will be opening stalls to
celebrate this coming Founding Festival. I would like to work together wherever
possible with those who will be using the same venue. To that end, we have gathered
everyone here tonight. I’m sure there are many among you who are meeting each
other for the first time. As such, I would like for this as an opportunity for us to get to
know each other. A toast to our future cooperation… Cheers!” [Ryouma]

“Cheers!” [Everyone]

Everyone said ‘Cheers’ simultaneously. Although we had just under 40 people, this
social gathering still turned out to be quite the party.

While the party was going on, the cooks left the crowd and started cooking in the
temporary stores. Most of the cooking has actually already been done, though, so it
only took them a short while to complete their dishes. Before long, an appetizing smell
began to waft out from the stores.

While that was happening, I went around to greet the people and handed out voting
ballots that would determine the final products that would be sold on the stalls.

Each set of voting ballot contained 10 sheets. Of those, 5 sheets are ‘Food I want to eat’.
The other 5 sheets are for after eating, titled ‘The food that I found delicious’. The
results of the votes will dictate the products that will be sold at the stalls.
“This looks to be a success already.” [Prenence]

With a plate of food on one hand, Prenence-san came over with a 50-year-old man in tow.

“Thanks to you. How’s the taste?” [Ryouma]

“Even better than I expected. The rest of the troupe thinks so too. Look.” [Prenence]

The place he pointed at was a corner of the venue. Although this party was something
akin to a standing buffet party, some chairs and tables have been prepared should the
guests want to relax. There, a group of people dressed in what appeared to be traveling
clothes could be seen chatting with the people around them. Among the group could
be seen a cheerful-looking woman wolfing down one plate after another.

“Curious?” [Prenence]

“Well, she is eating rather passionately… Hard not to be shocked.” [Ryouma]

“Ha ha ha. Is that so? Her name is Maiya. The troupe’s biggest glutton.” [Prenence]

“She became an itinerant entertainer solely because she wanted to eat delicious food.”
[???]

It was the man behind who said that with a fed up tone.

“Soldio. I work as a sword dancer along with Maiya.” [Soldio]

“Happy to make your acquaintance.” [Ryouma]

…It’s a line of work I’ve never heard of, but I suppose it would be safe to assume that
they use a sword for their performances.

“We dance by ourselves and cut things. We also move in groups and do so in a very
showy manner. There are various programs, but you’re not wrong.” [Soldio]

“He’s Maiya’s uncle and the deputy leader of the troupe. He also works as our
bodyguard. So he’s not just a performer. He’s also a swordsman. Fights do tend to
break out during festivals, so feel free to rely on him when you need him.” [Prenence]

“Thank you very much. It puts me at ease knowing there are more people who can
protect the store.” [Ryouma]

“You can call me whenever I’m free. You can use Maiya too if you want. I don’t mind.”
[Prenence]

“What about me? Uncle.” [Maiya]

Didn’t notice she was there at all because of Soldio-san’s shadow. The person-in-
question stood up while carrying her plate with both hands.

“We were talking about you helping out with the security.” [Soldio]

“I see. Ah, you’re the representative from awhile ago. I heard you were young, but wow.
You’re really young.” [Maiya]

“That’s rude, Maiya.” [Soldio]

“It’s alright. I don’t mind. I am young.” [Ryouma]

Besides, it’s not like she’s mocking me. At least, it doesn’t feel that way.

“Are you enjoying the party?” [Ryouma]

“Of course! There are a lot of rare dishes, and when I think a dish is common and I eat
it, I’m suddenly greeted with a surprise. Like that hot dog for example. The bread is
spongy and the sausage is juicy. I’ve gone to so many places, but there’s not many
stores that can produce such a taste.” [Maiya]

Hot dogs are regulars in festivals, but the bread Shelma-san is using is the naturally
leavened bread we made before. The meat specialists, Zeke and Co., thought of using
the naturally leavened bread with a special sausage. Pauline-san then cooked that to
come up with a luxurious product.

The result was a juicy hot dog that fully brought out the taste of its ingredients. A feat
only a pro could do. Because of this the taste of Zeke-san’s hot dog was on a league
higher than its contemporaries, making it one of the favorites among the various dish
candidates.

“And then there’s Zilmar Cuisine. Coupled with a soup, it gives a relaxing taste that
warms the body.” [Maiya]

Fei-san and Leelin-san cooked Parmiyen. The dish they brought out, though, was a lot
closer to Wanton Soup than Flour Dumplings in Soup. The ingredients used were
simple, but after thoroughly boiling the meat and the vegetables, they were able to
bring out the goodness within it. Because of its gentle taste, I like to pair it with Meat
and Vegetables Stir-Fried in Semisa Oil.
“There are some strange dishes too, aren’t there?” [Prenence]

As Prenence-san said that, on his plate could be seen shell-less salted Dante Seeds
roasted over fire. I originally purchased the Dante Seeds to make Dandelion Coffee,
but it seems there are areas where people consider the seeds themselves to be a
delicacy.

Because of that I can’t tell anymore whether dantes are closer to dandelions or
sunflowers… The roots can be used for coffee, the seeds can be eaten, and when
wrung, oil can be extracted from them. Because of that I started planting more and
more of them with the help of the scavenger slime fertilizer and wood magic.

“I’m glad you like them. We have a lot of them prepared, so please eat as much as you’d
like. Although it would probably be a good idea to leave some room in your stomach.
It’s almost time for deserts.” [Ryouma]

“Really!?” [Maiya]

Really.

Many of the desserts are made by me. I’ve prepared food like Gomadoufu (crushed
sesame seeds boiled in water and chilled like tofu) and Sesame Dumplings.

For Gomadoufu, the sesame seeds need to be carefully ground until they are soft and
pleasant to the tongue. Afterwards starch is extracted from potato and added to it. It
is then cooked over fire until smooth, and then it is kneaded to shape and then cooled.
Once done, it can be eaten with honey made from brown sugar.

For the Sesame Dumplings, I first prepared the filling using semisa and brown sugar. I
added water and dante oil to refined rice flour and mixed it, then I used that to wrap
the filling. The raw semisa were like clothes upon the filling, while I fried the surface
with dante oil.

In this case, dante oil has to be used over semisa oil due to the amount and cooking
time. If the semisa oil were to be used instead, the resulting product will smell too
much like semisa and it will be too difficult to tell apart the ingredients from the
aroma.

On that point, the dante oil’s moderate fragrance cannot overpower the dish. When I
used Identify on the dante oil, I found out that its unsaturated fatty acid contained a
high amount of oleic acid, making it a smooth oil with high nutritional value.

Unfortunately, not much oil can be extracted from a dante seed. 15 grams of dante
seeds are needed just to produce a milliliter of dante oil. If I need 800ml of dante oil, I
will be needing 12,000g or 12kg of dante seeds.

Although dante seeds are healthy, it takes a lot of effort to produce enough of them to
make oil. So much so that extracting oil from them actually makes for good training
for my mana.

Thanks to that, though, I was able to come up with a delicious dish, but the amount of
effort it takes and the expense of brown sugar and refined rice flour limits the number
of dishes that could be made. Actually, the labor is still somewhat acceptable. The real
killer is that we can’t set the price lower than 20 suits a piece. That’s a little too high
for a dessert being sold at a stall.

There’s a high probability of the sesame dumplings not making it to the stalls, so I’ve
already prepared a substitute for it. An inexpensive wheat flour pastry that cuts down
on costs by using cheaper dough, Sesame Pastry.

When I said that…

“In that case, I better get my fill tonight.” [Maiya]

Maiya-san said that, and then left to get more food.

I feel like she’s already eaten a family’s worth, but it doesn’t seem like she’s planning
on stopping anytime soon.
When the party was in full swing, a concerning topic came out.

“There’s a monster on the highway?” [Ryouma]

“Yes. We came here through the southern plains, but before leaving Kereban, we heard
sightings of an ‘ant’ in the plains. Because of that we were on alert the entire trip. It
was really exhausting.” [Prenence]

Ant is the universal term for all ant-type monsters. There are all sorts, but in general,
they all possess a hard carapace that protects their whole body, as well as an inclination
to swarm their enemies. How dangerous an ant actually is. however, depends on the
variant.

“Could it be a murder ant?” [Ryouma]

Murder Ants possess a hard carapace and a sturdy pair of jaws. They are carnivorous
and they love to fight other living creatures. A swarm of such ants is undoubtedly a
threat. Depending on the size of the nest, the Adventurers Guild would rank an
extermination job for them as Rank C or above.

“Oh, no. If that were the case, we would’ve surely chosen a different route. It should be
a tunnel ant.” [Prenence]

“Hmm… Sorry. Can you tell me more about that variant?” [Ryouma]

“Let’s see… First of all it has the same hard carapace that ants are known for, but their
jaws, claws, and overall strength is weaker compared to the other ants variants. They
also don’t have any venom. Overall, their attacking power is low, but they’re also more
gentle compared to the other ants and won’t attack other monsters or people.

They specialize in digging soft ground and are known to expand their nest proactively.
The problem is that if you accidentally pass over one of their nests without knowing,
their nests will cave and your carriage will fall with it.” [Prenence]
The tunnel ant nests are reinforced by their bodily liquids, so it won’t cave in if it’s just
a Peron walking over it, but a carriage filled with luggage plus passengers is simply too
heavy.

Tunnel ants aren’t very dangerous, but they’re considered to be annoying pests for
people traveling on carriages.

“They must be a headache to the transportation industry.” [Ryouma]

“Hopefully it doesn’t affect the number of customers and the preparations for the
festival…” [Serge]

Serge-san, who was quietly listening beside us, seemed to be concerned as well.

…In that case, why don’t I pay them a visit tomorrow?

“You, Ryouma-dono?” [Prenence]

Prenence-san made an odd face when I said that, so I explained to him that I was an
adventurer. I also told him that I was planning to go to the Great Forest of Shurus.

“I see. So, that’s why you asked if it was a murder ant.” [Prenence]

In the great forest, other than the murder ants, there are also other ant-type monsters,
so seeing those tunnel ants should prove to be good reference.

“They might affect the flow of goods too, so I’m thinking of checking them out just in
case.” [Ryouma]

“That would put me at ease.” [Serge]

“It would be a great help to us too.” [Prenence]

Not just Serge-san but Prenence-san too?

“We can’t afford to show a poorly practiced show to the audience, so I was thinking of
using the plains near Gimuru as a practice area.” [Prenence]

Itinerant entertainers like themselves have to travel from one town to another, so
oftentimes they do not have a designated practice area. Moreover, their performances
are the products that they sell. They cannot afford to show them when still
unrehearsed, so they can’t practice in a place where other people can see them.

Unfortunately, tunnel ants have recently been sighted in the plains. Although there’s
only a chance that they might happen into one, that’s still enough to make them want
to avoid it. That’s probably why it would be a great help to them if I could do something
about the tunnel ants.

“…In that case, why don’t you use my place for your practice?” [Ryouma]

If they just need a place away from the public, then the Abandoned Mine should be
good enough. The duke’s family did tell me to use the place as I saw fit, so I’m sure
they wouldn’t mind if I lent it to some people to use for their rehearsal. There also
won’t be any dangerous monsters there. And in the rare case that a monster does
appear, it will be weak enough that Soldio-san can deal with it himself. He looks strong,
after all.

“Are you sure? The rumors about itinerant entertainers like ourselves aren’t exactly
flattering. Many of them say that we steal from other people and kidnap children. Of
course, we don’t do such thing nor plan to, but…” [Prenence]

“Ah, don’t worry about it. It’s not like I have anything worthwhile in my house.” [Ryouma]

Most of my stuff are inside my Item Box, so it really doesn’t matter if I lend the place.
Besides, it’s actually more dangerous for them if they try to enter my house. There are
plenty of stuff there that could cause a person a world of pain if handled poorly. All the
more so if there are still some uncured soap or caustic soda left.

“It’s fine. Really.” [Ryouma]

“In that case, thank you.” [Prenence]

“When will you be starting?” [Ryouma]

“If you’re alright with it, we’d like to start as soon as tomorrow morning.” [Prenence]

I’m pretty sure they just arrived. Are they really alright with that?

“Alright. I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow morning then. The place is straight from the
northern exit of Gimuru. I don’t think you’ll miss it.” [Ryouma]
Like this we made plans for tomorrow and concluded the social gathering.

The next day.

The Semroid Troupe visited my house, and I provided them a place to practice. I didn’t
really do anything special, though. I just told them not to go inside because it’s
dangerous, and prepared some water for them. The rest I left to Prenence-san. When
I got to the adventurers guild just before noon, there were fewer people than usual.

It’s nice not having to wait, but…

“Oh, Ryouma-kun.” [Maelyn-san]

“Good day. I hear that Tunnel Ants have recently been sighted in the southern plains.”
[Ryouma]

“I see word got to you quickly. If you’re looking for work relating to that, I’ve got some
here.” [Maelyn]

I just thought I’d mention it, but before I knew it, several job requests have already
been piled up on the desk.

“…Destroy the tunnel ants, look for nests… And dig? The first two I get, but what am I
supposed to dig?” [Ryouma]

“That mission is to dig out the nests. Just destroying the eggs isn’t thorough enough,
as there’s a chance they might still come back later.” [Maelyn]

“I see… Is this why there are so few guild members here today?” [Ryouma]

“Correct. We’ve already found several nests. There’s a people out there hunting right
now.” [Maelyn]

“…How much damage have the tunnel ants caused so far?” [Ryouma]

“Not much right now. But…” [Maelyn]

Maelyn-san’s expression turned dark. I wonder if something happened.

“I told you we found several nests, right? There’s a high probability that the tunnel
ants either came from somewhere to breed or they came here after breeding to look
for a new home. Because of that the guild thinks it’s still likely to find new nests,
making the odds for casualties on our side higher.

That’s why the guild wants to allocate more people into searching for nests. The Tamer
Guild is also cooperating with us to some extent, so we’ve been making progress.”
[Maelyn]

The tamer guild?

“Can you tell me more about that?” [Ryouma]

“There’s not much more to it. Guilds can work together too depending on the problem.
One such example is the tunnel ant infestation, which we’d all like to be dealt with
sooner rather than later. Besides, this town is close to the mines,
so there are a lot of people on the Tamer Guild’s side to help us out.” [Maelyn]

“…I don’t know if it’s okay to ask this from you, but is it also possible to get the job
from the Tamer Guild?” [Ryouma]

“Probably. Are you planning to take the job from there?” [Maelyn]

Uu, that look in her eyes…

“Actually, I’m also a member of the Tamer Guild, and its guild master has helped me
out quite a bit, but given my monsters, there’s not really a lot of jobs I could accept
from the Tamer Guild. So, I was thinking of going there to accept the job.” [Ryouma]

“So you want to return a favor? Alright. You don’t have to make that face. It’s up to a
member whether he wants to accept a job or not.” [Maelyn]

She laughed as she said that. Looks like I didn’t offend her.

“That’s good to hear. Still, though, I’m sorry I couldn’t accept the job here.” [Ryouma]

“I hear you. Feel free to accept a job from here when you feel like it.” [Maelyn]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I thanked Maelyn-san and left the Adventurers Guild.

 2

“Take care!” [Guard]

The guard at the southern gate saw me off as I left for the southern plains. I almost
never dropped by the Tamer Guild, so when I went there, I was mistaken for a new
applicant. There were no problems after clearing up that misunderstanding, however,
and I was able to accept a job normally.

“Let’s go!” [Ryouma]

“KURURURU!” [Rimel Birds]

As I yelled that out loud, the rimel birds I took with me flied up in the sky and assumed
a formation shaped like the letter ‘V’. I’m having them look for tunnel ant nests in
places likely to have one.

According to the Tamer Guild, the tunnel ants have a disposition to eject earth and
sand to their surroundings when digging out their nests. In other words, while they
may not make a mound when digging out a nest, any area with signs of having been
recently dug could possibly be a tunnel ant nest.

“KE!” [Rimel Bird]

“Oh, found one?” [Ryouma]

I used Shared Perception to see the world through Eins’ eyes, who was currently flying
still in the air. When I did, I saw a patchy area of earth within the verdant plains. With
just my bare eyes, the plains seemed endless, but from up above, everything was a lot
clearer.

I have no business with places that others have already started to dig or places where
people have already started hunting.

I used Dimension Magic and left the empty road.

Let’s take a look around here then…

“Dimension Home.” [Ryouma]

I brought the iron and metal slimes with me from the abandoned mine, so I released
them and had them line up. There were about 400 of them all in all.

I fed them a lot because I wanted to make a big slime, but I fed them a bit too much
and now they’re too many. Just 100 is enough to make a big slime, but now I have 200
iron slimes and 200 metal slimes. Still, with this many, there are also more things that
I can do.

I ordered the slime most skilled in transformation to turn itself into a katana, then I
gave out an order to the rest of the slimes.

“The rest of you don’t have to transform. Just proceed carefully.” [Ryouma]

At that, a line of metal and iron balls pushed their way through the grass.

A few minutes later.

“Found anything?” [Ryouma]

Although the slimes were weak, they had a strong sense for danger. That sense might
have weakened after evolving, but the iron slimes were still able to detect something.
There seemed to be something just a little up ahead. The slimes were cautious in their
own way. So even if it were just something that stopped their movements, they would
still proceed carefully.

One step, two steps, three steps… When we reached the place the Iron Slime was pointing
at, in that moment—

“!” [Ryouma]

An antenna peeked out of the ground. After which came several eyes. A giant ant that
was big enough to reach my chest had appeared.

Its appearance resembled that of cave mantises, but before it could fully come out of
the ground, I lopped off its neck with a swing from my katana.

“PIKI…” [Tunnel Ant]

“So this is a tunnel ant.” [Ryouma]

Two more came out after the first one. I hunted them in the same way.

After that no more appeared.

According to the information of the tamer guild, the tunnel ants move in the night in
order to avoid the time period when most of their enemies are active. Hence, they
rarely left their nest in the morning and just slept inside. Because of that only a few
guards would be found in the entrance. Unless the guards come back, there won’t be
any more.

The guards for this nest happens to be those three ants I just killed.

“With this, I’ve managed to find one nest… Oops. ‘Earth Needle’.” [Ryouma]

My job today is just to look for the nest, not exterminate them, so I just need to record
the location and leave a mark somewhere nearby. There’s no need to needlessly alert
the nest, so I left with my slimes and went to look for another entrance. I went to the
next likely location.

“Might as well let them roll.” [Ryouma]

The iron and metal slimes usually don’t have any opportunities to roll other than in
the abandoned mine, so I took this opportunity to let them roll through the plains.
When I told them that, a happy atmosphere began to emanate from the two types of
slimes. As soon as I gave them the signal, they all started to roll.

Wow. They’re fast. Recently, they’ve been getting faster and faster like some kind of a
speed demon.
“That’s the fifth one…” [Ryouma]

The rimel birds would find the target from the sky, then I would send the slimes to
search the area, and then I would com to confirm their findings and record the
location. With everyone working together, we were able to find the tunnel ant nests
throughout the plains quickly. All that’s left now is to report our findings and I could
technically end the job here, but being able to complete the job so easily kind of leaves
me feeling unsatisfied.

Although my job is just to find the nests, since I still have plenty of strength to spare,
why don’t I prepare a more detailed report? I think it would be great if I could find out
the size of each nest, as well as the number of enemies. If I send the slimes in, I should
be able to investigate the nests as well. But if I did that, then they would surely
encounter an enemy ant. In that instance, we’re likely to end up fighting them.

It wouldn’t be a problem if I could wipe the tunnel ants out, but if there’s a lot of them,
some of them might slip through and run away. Especially, since tunnel ants are
monsters that can travel underground…”Search.” [Ryouma]

“…No good, huh.” [Ryouma]

The flow of mana is too complicated. Probably because the tunnels inside the ant nest
are too narrow. I can’t use the spell on anything other than the entrance. If I try to use
the spell while visualizing the tunnel and pouring in a lot of mana, I’ll end up using too
much mana.

I continued to worry like that for 5 minutes when I accidentally stepped on the dug
out earth, and a clear footprint was left behind.

Hmm? Maybe…
Alright. Let’s give it a shot.

I used my search spell once more, but this time I used it with earth-attribute mana. I
used the same image I would use when casting Rock or Break Rock and imagined my
mana spreading into the ground.

“Search… Oh!” [Ryouma]

It worked!

My mana passed into the ground and spread, reaching places with no earth. Through
the wide open empty space that I could sense from the scope of my search spell, I was
able to understand the shape of the nest. I’m not detecting any tunnel ants.

I’m not searching inside the nest, so I can’t tell the exact number of enemies, but I can
tell that the ants haven’t been provoked yet. Also from the size of the nest and a tunnel
ant, I can give a rough estimate of how many can fit in the nest.

I made sure to make a rough model of the shape of the nest to ensure that I don’t forget
it. It was simple enough with the Rock spell. I also noted down the time the data was
procured… Good. From here on, I’ll also search the nests with the earth-attribute
Search spell… Calling it Earth-Attribute Search sure is a mouthful, though. It’s a Search
spell, but it doesn’t use neutral-attribute mana. Oh, I know. From now on, I’ll call it
Earth Sonar.

“Alright! Let’s go to the next nest!” [Ryouma]

I took the slimes with me and went to the next likely location.

Right, left… There are many paths I could take, but which one should I go for? Huh?

On Eins’ eyes was reflected a smallish cart pulled by a group of 6. Judging from the
stature of the 6, they seem to be children. I feel like I’ve seen them before somewhere…
Ah! I know! It’s Berk’s group.

“I should greet them.” [Ryouma]

 2

“Hey!” [Ryouma]

The six of them seemed to be taking a break, so I approached them with a loud voice,
so as to not scare them.

“Ryouma? We’ve been bumping into each other a lot lately, haven’t we?… Are those your
slimes behind you?” [Berk]

“Well, we do live in the same town. These are my metal slimes and iron slimes.” [Ryouma]

“As usual you sure have a lot of them…” [Wist]

Wist-kun’s face was cramping as he said that. I wonder if he’s bad with slimes.

“So, what’s your business here?” [Berk]

“I’m looking for tunnel ant nests. Tamer Guild work. I just happened to see you guys,
so I called out… Are you here for the tunnel ants too?” [Ryouma]

“We’re here to exterminate them. Sort of.” [Martha]

“Our real objective is to acquire the carapace of the tunnel ants… Desu.” [Finia]

These guys should be the half elf, Martha, and the half dwarf, Finia. They came here
for the carapace?

“A member of the senior group entered into apprenticeship as an armor craftsman. He

told us that if we brought him materials, he’d make us armor at an affordable price.”
[Ruth]

“He might say that it’s just for practice, but the senior craftsmen have already
acknowledged his abilities! He’s the real deal!” [Rumil]

The two Dog-Man Tribe pair of older brother and sister added.

“It’s just as Ruth and Rumil said. Ant carapace is lighter than metal and sturdier than
leather, so it can be used to make armor and shield. If we can get a lot of materials,
we’ll get some discounts, and we can also get paid for the ants that we kill, so I thought
of using this chance to get everyone outfitted.” [Berk]

“And besides… W-We used to frequently get herbs from these plains… So, it would be
nice if it could go back to the way it was sooner…” [Wist]

“I see.” [Ryouma]

I see their cart has only one tunnel ant corpse, though.

“But yeah… As you can see, we’re not exactly doing so well.” [Berk]

“We just can’t seem to find any tunnel ants…” [Wist]

“I guess we really should have gone in the evening.” [Ruth]

“That is what the big sister at the guild says… desu.” [Finia]

“But the night is dark, and there’s no telling just how many ants will come out during
it.” [Rumil]

“Yeah. If there’s too many, it’ll be a huge problem…” [Berk]

It seems they took their safety into consideration too…

“Want me to point you to where the ants are?” [Ryouma]

I tried suggesting.

My job is to ‘find the nests’. I just need to find them. There’s no need to destroy them
too. But approaching a nest means I have to kill the guards watching the entrance, so
I could leave the extermination of the guards to them whenever I approach the nest if
they want.

“…That would help us out for sure, but why would you do that for us?” [Berk]

“Hmm… Cause I feel like it.” [Ryouma]

Although our encounters with each other weren’t exactly very good, they have been
working hard. Seeing them like that has made me want to cheer them on. That’s all.
“What a weird guy… But, fine. If you’re willing to lend us a hand, we’re not one to shy
away.” [Berk]

Berk then told everyone that break was over.

I don’t know why, but they seem fired up.

With 6 more members in tow, I went back to work.

“Alright!” [Berk]

After grouping up with Berk’s party of six, we are now heading to our seventh nest.
We defeated a guard just now, which is why Berk was celebrating. Berk and his friends
have been fighting proactively all this time, but as for me, I’m just the guy carrying our
luggage. He said they wouldn’t shy away from help, so I thought he’d rely on me more,
but all they’re really relying on me for is to find the nests. But even that is being done
mostly by my monsters, so you could say I’m not really doing anything.

“Ryouma, the next one is last.” [Berk]

“You’re done already?” [Ryouma]

“We have enough materials already and our cart is full.” [Berk]

They’ve already loaded their cart with 12 tunnel ant corpses. Although they could still
load their cart with more if they just removed the carapace first, a poorly done removal
would affect the quality, so the craftsmen advised them not to. I don’t have any
experience dismantling tunnel ants either, so I better refrain as well.

I could store the corpses inside my Item Box, but then I’m not so sure if I’ll be able to
get back before it starts to get dark.

“Alright then.” [Ryouma]

We loaded the tunnel ant we just killed and resumed moving. We didn’t hurry or
anything. We just walked leisurely toward our next nest.

Still, I can’t believe there are so many nests. I guess they really are in their breeding
period.

It’s common for ant-type monsters to have a queen. But Tunnel Ants don’t seem to
care about that and just build nests and breed everywhere. In their case, queens only
appear when the infestation is really bad.

“…It should be around here.” [Ryouma]

While the 6 adventurers were preparing, I used Earth Sonar to craps the position and
size of the nest.

…?

“…Berk. I don’t think this nest will do.” [Ryouma]

“Is it too big?” [Berk]

“The opposite. This one is smaller than everything else so far. The distance from the
entrance to the deepest part isn’t long. It’s likely that if we attack, it won’t end with
just the guards at the entrance.” [Ryouma]

About a third of the usual size, I estimate. Although the nest being small also means
that there aren’t that many ants inside, considering the performance of Berk’s group
until now, the most they can take on is about 3 or 4 at the same time at most.

“Shall we go for a different nest?” [Ryouma]

“About that… Actually, we do want to familiarize ourselves with fighting multiple

opponents. Can you give us a sec?” [Berk]

Berk and his friends huddled together and talked. After a while…

“Ryouma, we want to fight. Something like last time might happen again, after all.” [Berk]

I see. Well, it should be fine against the tunnel ants.

“In that case, I’ll be fighting too.” [Ryouma]

If they really can’t handle it, I’ll step in.

“Are you sure?” [Berk]

“Supporting you a little should be fine.” [Ryouma]

…This reminds me of my time at my workplace in my past life.

You can find people like Berk or my former subordinates wherever you look, but that’s
only normal. After all, it’s a given for beginners to be sloppy. There’s no one who’s good
from the start. You might find someone good at dealing with things and quick to learn,
but no beginner can do a good job right off the bat. The only ones who can do a good
work right after employment are those with previous experience from working at
another company.

Because of that new employees had to be trained by the company, and I myself
watched over them for a few years. Unfortunately, I was lacking in leadership and the
only thing I could really be proud of was my patience.

A proper employee could complete about 10 jobs in a day, but a beginner could only
do about 1 at most and in some cases even none. My quota for each day would be to
complete 10 jobs, and the boss would expect 10 from the new employees, but they
obviously couldn’t finish all 10. As a result, I had to complete 19 jobs in total.

Since they can’t complete their quota, when training them, I start by ensuring that they
would at least be able to do that 1 job properly. Once they’re capable of doing that
consistently, I increase their load to 2. There’s no point in giving them more work if
they can’t even complete a single job, after all. Although 19 jobs is a lot, it’s still better
off than 20. The new employees can gradually make their way up to 10.

If their work is lacking somewhere, I compensate for it. If they makes a mistake, I point
it out. If they have a question, I answer it. No matter how many times they blunder or
how many times they ask the same question, I would help them.

…Berk and the others aren’t that strong yet, and it’s still hard for them to find the nests
on their own, but they can kill the tunnel ants in front of them.

So I should help them learn fully how to fight against the tunnel ants. There’s a lot they
can learn from that. Like the way to move their bodies and how to coordinate. Once
they’ve grasped that then we can search for a different enemy or I can start teaching
them how to find a nest.
To that end, I’ll cover the parts they’re lacking.

My subordinates at the time were about three at most and they tended to leave their
work unfinished.

“Ryouma? What’s the matter?” [Berk]

“…It’s nothing.” [Ryouma]

I was just thinking some unnecessary things. Berk and his friends aren’t my
subordinates, so they don’t count. They’re different from them.

As I concluded my thoughts, I took out another Iron Slime. I transformed it into a

katana and prepared to enter battle.
“Good job.” [Ryouma]

As expected, in the last nest, other tunnel ants came pouring out after we took out the
guards. the guards included, there were 15 of them all in all. I defeated 5 tunnel ants
ahead of time, so Berk’s party only had to take care of the remaining 10.

I figured that was a safe number for them, and as expected, they were indeed able to
defeat them all. They tumbled a little and were bitten here and there, but none of them
were gravely injured.

“Do you need water or healing magic?” [Ryouma]

“No— On second thought. Give me some water so I can wash my wounds. I have water
for drinking.” [Berk]

Wise decision. I poured water into a stone bowl using magic.

“Ah, you don’t have to use the same water. I’ll prepare some for everyone.” [Ryouma]

“Huh? B-But it’s still clean… That would be so wasteful…” [Wist]

“If you keep using the same water it’ll get dirty. Even if it’s just a scratch, it would be
bad if some bad bacteria entered it.” [Ryouma]

“Bacteria (Saikin)? Recently(Saikin)?” [Wist]

“Oh, right. You can think of it as a kind of disease demon.” [Ryouma]

“…Wist. He said it’s fine, so just accept it.” [Berk]

“R-Right…” [Wist]
After washing his wounds, Berk left to pick up the corpses. Wist-kun followed after
him after washing his wounds. After the remaining four washed their wounds in turns,
I called my Rimel Birds and had them enter my Dimension Home.

Along the way back home…

“Ryouma-kun. Why are you so strong?” [Ruth]

Ruth suddenly asked me that.

“What is it all of the sudden~?” [Ryouma]

“You easily beat the goblins back then, and today you also easily beat the tunnel ants.”
[Ruth]

“They weren’t your opponent at all… Desu.” [Finia]

“You would have definitely beaten them faster were you alone.” [Ruth]

It must be because we fought the same monster that they were able to strongly feel
the difference between our strength.

That being said, it’s only a given I’m stronger since I trained my whole life. If I were to
be just around their level, I would instead be depressed. But since I look their age, they
took it the wrong way and ended up depressed themselves.

In that case…

“Well… Maybe it’s because I had a master to guide me.” [Ryouma]

With someone to guide you, you can train without having to worry about your
livelihood. I told Ruth and the others that having a master just makes that big of a
difference.

“Did that master teach you how to use those twin swords?” [Ruth]

“These aren’t swords, but katanas. Also, the reason I’m using two of them is to train
myself to use one with just one hand.” [Ryouma]

“Can you become strong doing that?” [Berk]

Berk showed interest, but there’s not much meaning in just using one hand to swing
your weapon.

This training is partly meant to increase my grip and physical strength, but its main
purpose is for me to be able to fight even if I can’t use one of my arms anymore.

The threat of injury is ever present in battles. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to
fight in perfect condition. If my arm is crippled in battle and I can’t use my weapon
anymore, then I will die. And even if I manage to use it without training, without the
skill behind the sword, I doubt I would be able to do much against an enemy that was
able to deeply wound me when I was still in perfect condition. In such a situation, I
would be at a huge disadvantage.

Because of that possibility I decided to start training myself to be able to use my katana
with only one hand. And that’s exactly what I did just now. I used two different katanas
with one hand on each and was freely using my skills regardless of if it was my left
hand or my right hand. Because of that it wouldn’t be apt to call it a Nitouryuu (dual-
wield katana) style that treats two katanas as one, but merely me using two different
katanas at the same time.

Of course, I had to properly train before actually trying it out in live combat. If I actually
tried to use a katana with only one hand without any training and then immediately
tried to use two katanas, it would have been a disaster. Receiving some kind of training
beforehand is definitely ideal.

Come to think of it, doesn’t Berk and the others have a master?

When I asked them, it turns out they learned the basics from a senpai, but those
senpais were busy, so they mostly trained by themselves. They could ask for guidance
from the guild, but they’re worried about how much they’d have to spend before
they’re good enough.

“We have to save money first…” [Berk]

“C-Can I ask a question too?” [Wist]

“Sure. What is it?” [Ryouma]

“R-Ryouma-kun, what do you think of when fighting? Umm… Aren’t you scared?” [Wist]
I see… Wist-kun certainly does seem to like the shy sort and when fighting he’s always
reserved and unable to attack proactively.

From what I’ve seen, Berk would use the lightness of his body to suppress the enemy
with a combination of his short sword and his martial arts. Martha would provide
support with her wood magic, while Ruth and Rumil would suppress the enemy with
their sword and spear, and then Finia and Wist-kin would use their hammers to finish
the enemy off with their great strength. That was how they fought.

Although they did well by coming up with a way to deal with the tunnel ants, Wist-
kun, individually speaking, was never really proactive in attacking.

It’s not just because he’s scared, but also because he’s too gentle that he never really
put enough strength in his attacks and had to attack the enemy 2 or 3 times to finish
them off. If he attacked with full strength right off the bat, he should’ve been able to
finish them off with a single blow.

Since he’s asking me about my state of mind, then he’s probably aware of his own
problem.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop being such a coward? Just hit them will all your strength.”
[Berk]

“Yeah… But when they stand in front of me like that, I just…” [Wist]
As expected, it seems this isn’t a recent problem for him. But what should I tell him?

“I’m… Not really thinking of anything, to be honest.” [Ryouma]

“Huh?” [Wist]

“When I fight, I fight. My focus is solely in the enemy’s movements as well as my own.”
[Ryouma]

As a person trains, he will gain confidence in his own strength. Saying this to him might
cause him to blame himself, but I don’t feel any fear when fighting tunnel ants.

“To that end, you really need to train and accumulate experience.” [Ryouma]

A politically correct opinion. It would be great if I could say something better, but I’m
just not that good at talking. I know he went out of his way to ask me, but sadly, this is
the best I’ve got. Sorry.

“Ryouma-kun, don’t blame yourself! Even the adults tell me the same things…” [Wist]

“Hmm? Is there another problem you’re dealing with?” [Ryouma]

“No, but…” [Wist]

“Wist was told that adventurer work doesn’t suit him.” [Berk]

“!” [Wist]

When Berk interjected, Wist went quiet. Bullseye, huh?

“Who said that?” [Ryouma]

“The others. We’re not the only kids in the slums doing adventurer work.” [Berk]

“Anyone can become an adventurer and it’s easier to find work when you have ‘former
adventurer’ in your resume.” [Martha]

“Everyone… is wary of the people from the slums. So they’re more at ease when
dealing with former adventurers… Desu.” [Finia]

“It’s because adventurer work is proof that we’ve done honest work.” [Ruth]

After Berk spat that out, the girls followed up with those words.

Meanwhile, Wist-kun was standing on the side with his shoulders dropped. Ruth tried
to console him, but…

“Don’t you get along with them? Those kids?” [Ryouma]

“It’s not that we don’t get along with them, but they’re really good at fighting. They
also make more, so lately they’ve been making fun of everyone else who does nothing
but gather herbs. Especially, Wist, since he has a strong body, but his personality is like
that… Seriously, Wist. Quit being so hesitant already! They’re them and you’re you!
Besides, compared to them, isn’t ‘this’ way stronger?” [Ruth]

I see I’m being used as a point of comparison. But don’t you kids think it’s a bit cruel
to be referring to me as ‘this’?

Still, these children sure have a lot going between them…

“But… If I keep working as an adventurer, the day will come when I have to kill people
too.” [Wist]

“That’s then! Even those guys haven’t killed anyone yet!” [Ruth]

“But didn’t Berk say it too?” [Wist]

“What!?” [Berk]

“You said that if I just attacked properly!” [Wist]

“Idiot! I didn’t mean it like that.” [Berk]

…Isn’t Berk getting too heated?

“Stop. There’s no point even in arguing here, you two.” [Ryouma]

Blood seemed to be getting to their head, so I stepped in.

I wanted them to calm down a little, so I listened to them while walking.

1. Just as they mentioned, those kids definitely told Wist-kun that.

2. Just as Berk said, there are many things they’re talking about that aren’t related to
their current situation just yet.

3. It’s also true that if Wist-kun were to continue working as an adventurer, he might
find eventually himself up against a wall.

4. Wist-kun is seriously thinking about things and wants to quickly become an adult
to help his friends.

5. It’s good that Berk is looking at the long term perspective, as that also goes to mean
that he’s planning to stay with them that long.

These are the key points.

Wist-kun is aware of his own problems, so although he’s a bit of a coward, he is trying
to improve himself. That’s why he’s so panicked and he feels like he’s not improving.
Berk seems to have realized that, but this is a personality issue. And Berk recognizes
the problem on the level of ‘don’t worry about it, just laugh and send the monsters
flying’. Because of that he has a hard time understanding why Wist-kun is so worried
about it.

…This is difficult.

“If you don’t mind me giving my opinion on the subject, I personally think you’re
worrying too much.” [Ryouma]

“Right?” [Berk]

“But…” [Wist]

“Listen until the end. It’s true that there’s no reason for you to be so worried about it
now. But it’s also important to think about the future. Not wanting to hurt other people
or other living things is an important thing.” [Ryouma]

“So which is it?” [Berk]

“It’s not an issue of ‘which’. Let’s put it this way… Right… Let’s say you’re in town and
you’re hungry. What are you gonna do?” [Ryouma]

“Obviously, I would eat my fill.” [Berk]

Berk immediately answered. No hesitation whatsoever. But what if you don’t have any
food at hand?

“Then I’ll buy from the store.” [Berk]

“Right now, we’re already well off enough to be able to eat at a store…” [Wist]

“Eating outside is expensive, though. If you can endure it for a bit, you should go out
to the fields and look for food there instead.” [Martha]

“You could also try trading with the neighbors… Desu.” [Finia]

Everyone gave their opinion one after another.

“You could also plant some crops and harvest them when the time comes. If you’re
willing to do some bad things, you could also steal.” [Ryouma]

“Stealing is bad.” [Everyone Else]

The six of them said.

“…You say that now, but didn’t you try to take away the monster corpses my party threw
before?” [Ryouma]

“Uu.” [Berk]

“T-That’s…” [Wist]

When I pointed that out, their expressions immediately turned for the worse. I might
have teased them a bit too much there.

“I’m not criticizing you. You seem to have turned over a new leaf, and I don’t really
think much of that incident anymore anyway.

…Let’s go back to the topic. It’s true that stealing is bad, but it’s one method you can
use. What I’m trying to get at is that there are many ways to accomplish something. In
the same way, there are other answers than the ones Berk and Wist-kun gave in
response to my question. The two of you are too extreme.” [Ryouma]

“T-Then what would you do? If you had to fight with a monster…” [Wist]

“It’s ‘necessary’ to take a life.” [Ryouma]

In order to eat. In order to dress oneself. In order to find work. It’s ‘necessary’ that’s
why I will take life.

And if they attack me, regardless of whether it’s a monster or a human, to protect
myself, I will take a life.

That’s all.

“It sounds complicated, but basically, don’t worry about stuff that will get in the way
when fighting.” [Ryouma]

Whether it’s a biting louse or a human, that’s one life all the same.

“In peace, even insects are treated like people. But in war, even humans are cut down
like insects.” [Ryouma]

In a situation where worrying can cost you your life, it’s better to stop worrying
altogether or find a solution to it.

It’s a family precept handed down in my family since days of old.

I don’t think it’s wrong.

I haven’t gone as far as to think of other people as insects, but at the very least, when
the time comes, I won’t hesitate to take a life.

…I believe that won’t be a problem for me.

But…

“That’s precisely why it’s important to have some hesitation in hurting others,
regardless of whether it’s another human or something else. Wist-kun, as a human, I
can resolutely tell you that there’s nothing wrong with the way you think. I won’t ask
you to solve that issue right away, but don’t you think it would be good if you could
find a place to compromise?” [Ryouma]

“…Yeah.” [Wist]

…That might have been a bit too deep. Everyone’s reaction is a bit slow. It’s not like I
gave a clear answer either. Problems like this can only really be solved by the person
himself.

“And in order to do that… Berk!” [Ryouma]

“Me!?” [Berk]

“Well, the others too, but from time to time, try talking to each other calmly, will you?
Without getting all hot blooded. There’s a lot of things you can do if you hear each
other out and talk calmly like adults. And Wist-kun, you can still continue being an
adventurer for the time being even if you don’t panic, right?” [Ryouma]

“Y-Yeah! It’s scary to fight, but it’s only been a year and I want to keep working with
everyone…” [Wist]

“Then just take your time to think. From what I’ve seen today, unless you do something
reckless, you shouldn’t suffer any major wounds.” [Ryouma]

No matter what answer he comes up with, I’ll accept it.

If he decides to give up adventurer work, I could ask him to come work at my store.
But I won’t say that for now… Oh.

We’re at the gate. After showing our guild cards, the guards let us through.

“Are you going to the adventurers guild?” [Ryouma]

“Yeah. We have to give a report first.” [Berk]

“I’ll be going to the tamer guild, so we’ll part here.” [Ryouma]

“Got it. Thanks for today.” [Berk]

“T-Thank you for taking care of us.” [Berk]

“You really helped us out… Desu.” [Finia]

Each one of them thanked me, and then we parted ways. I went to the tamer guild by
myself.

…I did something out of character…

Why did I say something like that?

I wanted to encourage him, but maybe I was meddling needlessly.

I’m a beginner myself. What was I acting so experienced for? I feel like I’m starting to
turn into a preachy person…

“Boss!” [Fina]

“! Ah, it’s Fina-san and Leelin-san. What’s the matter? Why are you here?” [Ryouma]

“We went out to buy some things.” [Leelin]

“We ran out of seasoning after cooking one trial dish after another. Also, we needed to
buy some miscellaneous consumables like paper and stuff. What about you boss?”
[Finia]

“I’m on the way back from a job. I just got back, actually.” [Ryouma]

“Did something happen? You look like you’re thinking something really deep.” [Leelin]

“Really?” [Ryouma]

“You looked worried. Is there something troubling you?” [Fina]

“That’s not it… I was just wondering if maybe I’ve started putting on the years…”
[Ryouma]

“What?” [Fina and Leelin]

Their face said they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
After reporting to the guild, I went back home. When I returned, I heard the sound of
music. Apparently, the people of the Semroid Troupe were still practicing.

I didn’t want to disturb them, so I made sure to quieten my step.

“…” [Ryouma]

I looked for a grassy place where I could see their rehearsal and then hid myself.

Maiya-san and Soldio-san are up on stage. They were introduced to me as sword

dancers, so that’s probably what they’re going to be practicing now. Soldio-san is
wielding a decorated round shield and a long sword. Maiya-san is also holding a
sword, but she’s holding two of them while dancing as if she were fighting.

Past the line, which I assume demarcates the stage, is their leader, Prenence-san, and
the musical band. As the two sword dancers on strange moved fiercer, so did the music
accompanying them. When the sword dancers were close enough to stare at each
other, the music went quiet, as if something was about to happen.

When their swords clashed, spells were cast, and sparks erupted here and there on
the stage. Even though no one was talking, it was like a story was being told.

I only saw their practice a little today before leaving when I lent them the place. But
that was probably just warm up considering the passion and pressure I could feel now.

I held my breath, afraid to pour water on these flames.

When the music turned to a peak, Maiya-san’s sword swung for Soldio-san’s neck, just
barely missing it. It passed through the neck hidden by the glamorous cape, releasing
the clasp that held it and allowing it to fall. In that same moment, Soldio-san fell. It was
as if his neck had really been cut.

With the thrum of the instruments, the story came to an end.

A few seconds later, when the atmosphere had loosened up, I found myself standing
up and clapping.

“Ryouma-dono, how long have you been there?” [Prenence]

“Sorry. I’ve been here for a while now, actually. I heard music when I came back, so…”
[Ryouma]

Was it bad for me to watch without permission?

“Oh, we don’t mind you watching, it’s just that we didn’t notice you at all.” [Soldio]

“We were just surprised.

It’s our job to perform in front of others, so we pride ourselves in being sensitive to
people’s gazes…” [Prenence]

Oh, so I startled them.

“By the way, how are the plains?” [Prenence]

“Not very good.” [Ryouma]

From what I heard when I went to report to the guild, other than the ones I’ve found,
sightings of nests were being reported one after another. The receptionist was also
actively looking for more help in finding nests and digging them. I was also asked to
continue working.

“If it isn’t dealt with sooner, it will cause a problem with the circulation of goods, and
there’s no telling how much of an influence it will have on the customers, so I’ll be
focusing my efforts there for the time being. If you’re alright with using my place for
your rehearsals, please feel free to continue using it.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you for your kindness.” [Prenence]

Prenence-san bowed to me first, then everyone followed. After that the people from
the troupe cleaned up and then went back to town.

It seems that last program was their last rehearsal for the day.
After sending them off, I entered training myself.

On an impulse, I tried copying the way they moved like they were dancing.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go very well. It feels awkward to move when using magic.

…Looks like it might be a good idea to train using magic while fighting in order to be
able to put on a performance with spells.

I need to combine my magic with my weapons. On this point, their movements are a
lot smoother tan mine.

Hmm~…

The next day.

“About performing with spells?” [Soldio]

“Did you become interested in sword dancing?” [Maiya]

When I welcomed the troupe for their practice, I went and directly asked the two sword
dancers.

“Seeing your performance yesterday made me want to learn it.” [Ryouma]

“I don’t mind teaching you, but why would you want to learn something like this?”
[Soldio]

When asked for the reason, I responded with what I felt yesterday.

I mainly fight in close combat with my weapons and my martial arts. Although I can
also use my magic, because I rarely use it during combat, I’m not used to it. I also
revealed that I wanted to widen my horizons.

“In other words, you want to turn the magic we use in our performance into something
you can use for combat?” [Soldio]

“Yes. If you have time, please teach me.” [Ryouma]

“Isn’t it fine?” [Maiya]

“Yeah. If it’s just a little, it shouldn’t take too much effort. Our weapons are different,
so you’ll have to use the same weapon as ours… Are you alright with that?” [Soldio]

“Yes. Of course!” [Ryouma]

“Then let’s do the practice the same time you came back yesterday. You still have work
and we have practice too, so we’ll teach you afterwards.” [Soldio]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I didn’t know what I would do if they told me it was a secret technique and they
couldn’t share it, so I was elated when they told me they would teach me just like that.

“Is there anything I need to prepare?” [Ryouma]

“Just your weapon. Today, I just need to determine your skill level.” [Soldio]

“Ah, leave some mana too.” [Maiya]

“Got it. I’ll be in your care in the evening then.” [Ryouma]

“Good luck!” [Maiya]

And then, evening came.

I was looking forward to the practice in the evening, so when I went to search for the
nests, I was able to find twice as many as I did yesterday.

When I came back home as promised, the people of the troupe were already cleaning
up.

“Sorry I’m late. Did I make you wait long?” [Ryouma]

“We finished just now. We’ll prepare immediately. Maiya!” [Soldio]

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” [Maiya]

Maiya appeared from the shadows of the luggage, carrying in her arms something
wrapped.

“This is your portion, Ryouma-kun.” [Maiya]

“This is… Firewood?” [Ryouma]

It looked like a small log. A firewood cut just big enough for me to be able to hold it
with one hand.

“We’ll start as soon as we finish cleaning up. Just wait a bit!” [Maiya]

“Ah, wait. Let…” [Ryouma]

She left.

“Just leave the cleanup to them.” [Soldio]

…Right. Looking at the way the people from the troupe are moving, they’re probably
used to this already. If I try to help, I’ll just end up slowing them down.

“Look at this before we begin. This is the sword Maiya and I use.” [Soldio]

It was a sword with many decorations just like the ones I saw before, but looking at it
up close like this, I see there’s also a strange pattern mixed in with all the decorations.
There also seems to be something coated on the surface.

“This is paint made from the fluids of the rainbow slug. When hit by light, it has a
property that allows it to store light for some time.” [Soldio]

Although the way they glow is different, it reminds me of fluorescent paint. Soldio-san
lit the sword up with light magic. When light fell upon the sword, it followed the line
of paint on the sword and glowed. When used well with swords and shields, it can give
the impression of sparks erupting to the spectators.

But in order to do that, you have to be able to quickly control your magic while fighting
with your sword. That’s not an easy task even if everything is scripted.

“To that end, you first need to become skilled at either the magic or the sword. That’s
why, today, I first want to see how good you are at either. I’ll think about how to teach
you based on the results.” [Soldio]

“I’ll be in your care.” [Ryouma]

“Hey! It’s ready!” [Maiya]

It seems they’re done cleaning up, so we switched places so we could begin training.

The people of the troupe were standing in a circle. Soldio-san and I walked into the
center of that circle.

…Hmm?

“Everyone is…” [Ryouma]

“I asked them to help out.” [Solido]

“Half of is curiosity on our part, though.” [Prenence]

“I see. Thank you for your cooperation. Please take care of me.” [Ryouma]

“Turn your weapon to Maiya’s direction.” [Soldio]

I held my Iron Slime katana.

“She’ll be throwing you sticks of firewood, and you’ll have to cut them down as they
come your way.” [Soldio]

One of the objectives of being a sword dancer is to be able to cut things thrown their
way. It is also one of the steps to being able to fight multiple opponents. In my case,
it’s going to serve as my test.

“You can cut the firewood however you want, but as much as possible, try to cut it at
the center.” [Soldio]

“Got it. I’m ready!” [Ryouma]

“Then let’s start!” [Maiya]

Maiya-san threw a stick of firewood. We’re just starting, so it’s not that fast. The
firewood drew a gentle parabola in the air as it fell toward me, and then I swung my
katana.

“Ah, you cut it? That’s amazing! Alright. I’ll throw you some more!” [Maiya]

Seeing the firewood cut in two, she threw the next one. I cut the next one just like I did
the other one. As Maiya-san threw one firewood after another, she gradually threw
faster and increased the pace. But I was still able to handle it.

Eventually, I was able to cut all her firewood.

“This is the last one!” [Maiya]

“Understood!” [Ryouma]

After cutting the last firewood, the test concluded. I was curious how I did, so I glanced
at Soldio-san. But for some reason, he was making a difficult face.

“Let’s go to the next one then.” [Soldio]

Everyone helped to gather all the firewood that had been cut, and then Soldio-san
distributed them to everyone except me. Everyone had a pile of firewood, but Maiya-
san and Soldio-san’s pile were painted red on the top and bottom part.

Apparently, my test was to dodge the firewood thrown by everyone while cutting
down only the ones from Soldio-san and Maiya-san.

“Begin!” [Soldio]

Soldio-san threw me a stick, and as soon as I cut it down, everyone started throwing
from their pile.

But usually it was only really one or two of sticks at the same time. 3 was the most
they threw simultaneously. I continued dodging those firewood while cutting down
only the sticks from Maiya-san and Soldio-san.
“…” [Soldio]

“…” [Maiya]

At first the two of them just threw the firewood at fixed locations, but after nodding at
each other, they took their piles and started moving around. They ran around the circle
formed by everyone and threw their firewood through the gaps between the
members. Soldio-san specifically timed his throws with other members’, making it
quite annoying to cut down.

I had to ‘focus’ to pay attention to the two of them while dodging all the firewood flying
my way. At the same time, I had to ‘decide’ which firewood to cut. On top of that I also
needed the ‘ability’ to execute the cutting and dodging.

After a test like that concluded…

“How did I do?” [Ryouma]

“I’ve got nothing to complain about regarding your sword.” [Soldio]

“Yep, yep. You did amazing!… But is there any point in using magic if you’re this good?”
[Maiya]

Piles of cut firewood were in front of me. I thought I did great myself, but it seems,
Maiya-san just thought I did well.

Actually, I don’t think I had any difficulties so far, but there’s probably more to it later.

“You’re so diligent.” [Maiya]

“You should learn from him. At this rate, he’ll surpass you before you know it.” [Soldio]

“I feel like he’s already better than me at swordplay, though.” [Maiya]

After chatting like that with each other, they next tested me for my magic.

In this test, I just had to use my magic normally and show it to them. There was nothing
special to the test.

But then I heard something really interesting.

“Chantless Casting?” [Ryouma]

“Yeah, just as the name implies, it’s using a spell without chanting. We sword dancers
have to maintain our expression while fighting. With chantless casting, we can cast
spells without having to move our mouths.” [Soldio]

“Well, this is actually a difference in style or school of thought. There are others who
would rather choose to hide their mouths, and there are others who would theatrically
chant their spells atop the stage. You could also just use a magic tool for your sword.
Actually, that one is probably the most common way to go about things.” [Maiya]

When Maiya-san said that, Soldio-san snorted.

“Those people are heretics. The old sword dancers used their mastery over sword and
magic to charm others. To think that such a profession would be degraded so low as
to turn to magic tools… Such people only use the sword for appearance and rely on
simple magic tools to cast spells. It’s because of people like them that people think
sword dancers are just for show and are worthless in actual combat.” [Soldio]

“Okay, okay. We get it already. Sheesh. I was just explaining.” [Maiya]

I don’t know long ago these ‘old sword dancers’ were from, but it seems Soldio-san
really emphasizes protecting tradition.

“Anyway, do your best, alright?”

“Okay! Please take care of me.” [Ryouma]

It’s a rare opportunity, so I’ll do my best to learn everything.

Founding Festival. Present day.

It’s been about 2 weeks since I started sword dancing with Soldio-san and the others.

Although Soldio-san found no ‘issues with my sword’, he found my experience in magic

‘lacking’. As such, my training revolved around casting my magic and using it while
moving.

The training method he taught me involved casting spells with a priority on speed
rather than power or casting spells at regular intervals. Naturally, it wasn’t possible
for me to learn everything in such a short period of time, but my ability to focus and
move while invoking magic has clearly improved.

Having someone to guide you really helps in making progress.

I also used the firewood throwing test we did that day as a reference for my morning
training. But instead of firewood, I’m having the iron slimes and metal slimes charge
at me from every direction.

Having lumps of metal throw themselves at you from every direction makes for pretty
good practice as far as dodging and parrying goes. Those two variants’ hardness and
my own body strengthened by ki. It would be extremely dangerous if not for those two
properties, but so far there hasn’t been any problems, so that’s that.

To the slimes, it’s a way for them to train their attacks. Just yesterday I saw one slime
taking care of a cave mantis. There have been many incidents in the past, where they
accidentally defeated an intruder, but now, they have officially recognized crashing into
their enemies as a form of attack.

With that the defensive strength of the abandoned mines will also go up. Continuing
the training looks like a good idea.

The guild prioritized the safety of the highway, so they were able to prevent any damages
to the town or any negative effects on the circulation of goods from the tunnel ants
that appeared in the plains. Although they managed to scare the town people a little,
they were successfully dealt with via a combination of human wave tactics and the
power of monster beasts. Thanks to that, tourists poured into town and the
atmosphere of a spectacular festival filled the air.

It was on the morning of such a day.

Everyone in the store gathered with faces full of spirit.

“Good morning!” [Ryouma]

“Ryouma-kun, good morning. What do you think of the place? Hey! Get me one breakfast
here!” [Pauline]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I was given a hot dog, so I happily accepted. It would serve both as breakfast and a way
for me to do some final checks before opening the stalls.

“Ryouma-kun, why don’t you take a seat?” [Zeke]

“Thanks.” [Ryouma]

Zeke-san the butcher offered me a seat, which I accepted.

“Sure. Still, this place sure has changed a lot.” [Zeke]

Indeed. At first, this was merely an empty lot, but now all sorts of structures have been
put up on it.

There’s an entrance facing toward the street, and at the very center of the once empty
lot was now the stage of the Semroid Troupe. There was apparently someone in the
troupe with such abilities. That person got materials from who knows where and
suddenly built up the whole stage.

I was busy with the tunnel ants, so I don’t know for sure, but I think they completed
the stage in just 1 or 2 days.

Before the stage were chairs and tables. There’s plenty of gap between them, so it
might appear disorderly, but these chairs and tables were actually arranged by
Prenence-san to optimize viewing area and moving space. In this way, the audience
shouldn’t have a hard time moving around or seeing the stage.

With stalls that serve food and drinks on the left side facing the stage and stalls of the
Morgan Company on the right side, the place gave a feeling that resembled that of a
food court in a department store.

There was also space provided behind the stalls on both sides. In the Morgan
Company’s case, they used that space for their storehouse. On our side, the space is
divided by a hanging banner and a stone wall since we’re using the space both to
transport ready-made goods and as the stage wing of the Semroid Troupe.

Public toilets were also installed separately in a corner so that guests and customers
will be able to use them as they pleased. Of course, we’re making the most of the slimes
and the store’s products.

In any case, we were able to complete all our preparation.

“All that’s left now is to wait for the festival to begin.” [Ryouma]

The Founding Festival will begin at 8AM.

Some hasty stalls have already started accepting customers at the main street, but our
stalls will wait until the festival has officially begun.

On the first day, the people in charge of the store will be Zeke-san, Pauline-san, and
the employees and wives of their meat store’s employees. Me and my staff won’t be
working till tomorrow.

“Shall we start soon?” [Zeke]

“Sure.” [Ryouma]

I feel like time goes faster when talking.

In order to make it in time for the opening of the stalls, I quickly finished my food and
cleaned up.

“I’ll be going then. I wish you all luck. I’ll come back in the afternoon.” [Ryouma]
“Just leave it to us!” [Zeke]

“You have fun too, Ryouma-kun.” [Pauline]

Since I’m not a customer, I’ll just get in the way of those who are working. My visit here
was really just meant as a greeting before the store opened. Now that the festival is
starting, it’s time to leave.

The rough voices of men and women fell on my back as I left.

A few minutes while walking idly on the street. The bells of the church started ringing.

“Ah, it started.”

Although the festival had already half-started, it was another thing when a signal was
officially given.

The enthusiasm of the people reached another level and the clamor grew rowdier.

It was as if all that pent up energy was now about to burst out.

The town looked dazzling with all the colorful cloths and flowers decorated along the
street.

Now then, where should I go?

I’ve already eaten, so I think I’ll check the food-related places later.

“Welcome! Welcome Our hamburgers are excellent!” [Stall Man 1]

“Traveling from town to town for 30 years! The legendary French Fries!” [Stall Man 2]

“Popcorn! Popcorn! We have popcorn here! It’s delicious!” [Stall Man 3]

Stalls that sold nostalgic food were lined up. Judging from the name of the dishes and
the contents, it’s likely that these are influences of the otherworlders from Earth.

“Can I have one order of French fries please.” [Ryouma]

“One order of French fries coming right up! That will be 5 suits!” [Stall Man 2]

Out of impulse from the nostalgia, I ended up buying some.

“Here. It’s the exact amount.” [Ryouma]

“Please come again!” [Stall Man 2]

After paying, I got a bowl made out of a huge leaf filled with French fries. I tried a piece
immediately, and the simple taste of fried potato seasoned with some salt spread in
my mouth.

“Delicious.” [Ryouma]

“Right?” [Stall Man 2]

Not only does it sounds good, it tastes good too. It’s just as I imagined it to be. I happily
ate away, and before I knew it, I’d emptied the leaf bowl. I actually wanted some more,
but I decided to stop there, Or there would be no end to it.

“Oh? Wait.” [???]

“Ah, good day.” [Ryouma]

When I passed by a stall, the gramps from the drug store I frequented called out to me.
Normally, he doesn’t deal with customers and just sits on a chair in the store while
watching people, but today, he seems to be selling something.

“Aren’t you the child that frequents our store? Here, take one with you.” [Drug Grandpa]

“Thank you very much. Is this candy?” [Ryouma]

At the end of the rod was a round lump. It was like a Candied Apple with no apple and
was powdery and colorful. When I tasted it, I found out that it was indeed candy.

“!?” [Ryouma]

…The moment it entered my mouth, my whole body broke out in shivers.

“What is this?” [Ryouma]

“Hihihi. Something good to eat when the weather is hot.” [Drug Grandpa]

It was so sour and bitter that I actually felt cold for a moment. It was a little salty too.
As I continued tasting it, I realized that some medicinal herbs that help against the
summer heat were present. If there’s some salt in it too, then it would would definitely
be able to prevent heatstrokes. The taste aside, it’s somewhat similar to ‘salt candy’. It
might really be suited for hot weathers.

“I’ll be selling here tomorrow too. If you like, come buy some.” [Drug Grandpa]

I don’t find it too sour… I think I’ll buy some tomorrow too.

I thanked gramps and walked away.

…After taking a better look at the stalls, I’ve found that there are all sorts of stuff being
sold.

…Fruits are still fine, but I wonder if vegetables can sell too. Pots and knives are being
sold too, but I’m doubtful that people interested in buying such things would come
here. Everyone is full of life and seem to be enjoying themselves, so maybe that’s why?

This stall here is selling toys, while that stall over there has targets to shoot at. It’s the
sort that uses a good bow.

“The young master over there. Want to give our shooting range a try?” [Stall Man 4]

“Thank you, but maybe next time.” [Ryouma]

There weren’t any prizes that I wanted, so I left. I kept on walking and eventually found
myself at the center of town, where the roads joined from every direction, making the
decorations appear conspicuously gaudy.

There were many street performers here.

“4~, 5~, and 6~!” [Juggler]

A juggler that kept adding more balls.

“Look!” [Acrobat]
Acrobats, who stood on places with little footing such as atop chairs balanced atop
each other.

This part of town isn’t that much different from the festivals in my psat life. Personally,
I was more taken by the magic tools and monsters used rather than the food and the
performances. There’s a man balancing on a ball atop a monster beast that looks like
a giant armadillo for one. I have no idea which one of them is supposed to be the main
character.

While looking around, I suddenly felt like I just saw someone familiar in clothes that
stuck out like a sore thumb through the gaps between the crowd.

In front of a store, which many people came in and out of, stood a nun. The tumult
from the festival goers and her clothes really didn’t fit. The youths tending to the stores
and the passing customers had noticed her too, as she seemed to be worrying over
something.

What is—!!

“Color Slime” [Signboard]

The signboard of the store got my attention.

“Good morning, Bell-san.” [Ryouma]

I called out to the nun, and she vigorously turned around.

“Oh, Takebayashi-san. Good morning.” [Bell]

The nun cheerfully greeted me back. Behind her was as a large box, inside of which
were a multi-colored slimes.

Seeing that reminded me of the time when they asked me for advice on raising slimes.
They never said anything about it again, but I wonder if they decided on raising one in
the end.

“Yes. I asked the children after that if they’d like to raise one, and they said they did.
So I started studying Monster Taming and the Contract Spell. I’ve been going at it until
just last week.” [Bell]
“I see. So, today you’re…” [Ryouma]

“About that, there’s actually something worrying me…” [Bell]

We moved places so as to not interfere with business, and apparently, it has been
decided that she would be taking on the responsibility of raising slime. In connection
to that, she also has to provide the slime. The problem now is how to acquire the slime,
but she couldn’t make up her mind on whether to catch it herself, buy it at the previous
store, or ask the guild to get her one.

“Buying at that store is cheaper than asking the guild, but I feel like the slime in that
store is less lively than the ones in Tamer Guild.”

“You’re not wrong.” [Ryouma]

I took a look at that Color Slime too since I was curious about it, but it’s not an
advanced variant. It’s just a slime colored by making it drink colored water. And the
reason why Bell-san thinks the slime isn’t lively is most probably because of the paint
it was made to ingest.

“Slimes do change colors depending on what they ingest, but that’s usually only for a
moment until they finish digestion. How well they digest something depends on what
it is, so it’s probable that that store made them ingest paint that’s specifically difficult
for a slime to digest.” [Ryouma]

From the faint aroma I picked up, they probably used Mizurina Herb. Although it can
also be used to make green dye, the components of its aroma is also used make insect
repellent. It’s full of fiber so it’s hard to digest.

Moreover, because it also contains insecticidal properties, it can weaken the slime,
making it take even longer to digest.

“I see…” [Bell]

When I was trying to figure out the evolution conditions, Mizurina herb is one of the
herbs I refrained from giving the slimes unless they themselves wanted it. Incidentally,
only the poison slime wanted to eat it.

“Well, even if people eat it, at most they’ll just feel some discomfort. The herb is also
used to make clothes, so it’s not exactly dangerous, but since children will be touching
the slime a lot, I can’t exactly recommend it.” [Ryouma]

I don’t think it will, but it would be dangerous if it evolved into a poison slime.

“If you’d like, I could prepare a slime for you. I’m an adventurer, so I go out of town a
lot. In fact, I work outside of town everyday.” [Ryouma]

“In that case, please allow me to oblige you.” [Bell]

She happily accepted my offer. The church has helped me a lot, and they’ll probably
continue helping me in the future. Even as someone who owns the store, it would still
be a joyous thing if they could remember me. The clergy have much influence in
regional communities. Fufufu… And on top of that, with this I’ll also be able to slowly
proselytize people about the goodness of slimes… Or at least that’s what I’m plotting.

“Hmm?” [Ryouma]

“Is something the matter?” [Bell]

“Over there.” [Ryouma]

A grim-faced child was standing at a corner of the street. From his hairy and drooping
ear, it was easy to tell that it was a child from the beast tribe. It’s hard to distinguish
their gender, but this child looks a bit too young to be walking by himself… I don’t see
anyone likely to be his guardian either.

After mentioning that the child seems to be acting odd—

“*Sniff… Mommy… Mommy!”

“That’s not good.” [Bell]

“So, it really was a lost child.” [Ryouma]

I followed after Bell-san who rushed to his aid immediately.

“Fei-san, one reemiyen and stir-fried vegetables please.” [Ryouma]

“…Is something the matter, Boss? You just got back, but you look so tired.” [Fei]

“It’s a long story…” [Ryouma]

After spotting a lost child, Bell-san and I took the child in our care and looked for the
parents, but no matter how much we checked the area, we couldn’t find them. In the
end, we had to bring the child to the guards. But then another problem came up.

The lost child refused to separate from Bell-san.

From the start, the kid was already about to cry, but Bell-san was used to children and
she was able to console him, but… Yeah, it was pretty amazing. Who would’ve thought
that kid could cry so much. Anyway, the guards were all like me, and well… As men
with no childrenof our own, we all eventually gave up.

In the end, we had to leave the kid to Bell-san. I helped out a little by buying food, but
after a while, she saw the clock and started to become troubled.

The church had opened a bazaar to sell the dolls made by the children and items
donated to the church. The reason she was troubled was because it was almost time
for her turn to watch over the bazaar. But at the same time, she couldn’t just leave the
kid behind nor could she leave him to someone inexperienced like me.

So the natural conclusion was – of course – for me to take over her shift.

“Why would it end up like that?” [Fei]

“Actually, she told me it would be enough if I just informed the church, but I thought I
would be able to help if it’s just a little. For some reason, though, the moment I started
helping out, everything became hectic and all sorts of annoying people appeared.”
[Ryouma]
Most people shopped with good behavior, but there were some problem people too.
To make things worse, a group of drunks joined in. “Cheers to Tekun-sama!” They
would say, while trying to enter the closed church… They’ve already come of age, so
they’re not exactly a bunch of rowdy youngsters, so I wish they’d drink moderately
and act their age.

Moreover, the people watching over the church were mostly made up of the church
orphans. Of course, there were volunteer adults and guards too, but with all the trivial
things piled up, we ended up having too few hands. I myself look like a child, so they
thought I was one of the church orphans. And there was clearly a lot of hurdle for
young women (obviously normal citizens) to deal with drunk uncles with good
physique unless they were used to it already.

So, out of good will, in order to not allow them and the guards to lose face, I decided
to take the front lines and deal with the customers while making sure to pay attention
to the situation. From time to time, I would run to the storehouse to get an item and
then go back to deal with the customers. When push came to shove, I had to jump out
and hold a customer down.

But there were children watching, so I had to restrain myself. Besides, while that
customer may have been a nuisance, I couldn’t exactly treat him like the thugs that
troubled my store before.

Putting it bluntly, I ended up having to put more effort in order to not hurt the guy too
much.

I’ve always been living a stress-free life since coming here, so it’s been a while since
I’ve been stressed so much… I wonder if this is proof that I’ve been slacking too much.
But then again, if I were to start feeling like I did back then, that would also be bad.

“In any case, good work out there. Here. You’re reemiyen and stir-fried vegetables.
Sorry to keep you waiting.” [Fei]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

Anyway, let’s eat.

After paying, I took my tray and found a seat. The Semroid Troupe were performing
regularly atop the stage, so there were a lot of people in the food court. It wasn’t like
this morning when it was easy to find a seat.
“Ryouma-sama!” [Serge]

“Ah, Serge-san!” [Ryouma]

As soon as someone called me, I saw Serge-san raising his hands. He was mixed in with
the normal customers and was also eating.

“If you’re looking for a seat, this table is free.” [Serge]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I accepted his offer and sat on the same table as him.

“You’re eating too, huh.” [Ryouma]

“Yes. From here I can see how our stalls are doing and the food here is also delicious
and affordable. Most of the employees also eat here.” [Serge]

“I’m happy to hear that… Your stall seems to be doing well too.” [Ryouma]

The stalls of the Morgan Company were also filled with customers.

“Thanks to your efforts, there’s no end to the customers. It’s also because we’ve put
up stalls where people gather, but that aside… Oh, that’s convenient. Please take a
look.” [Serge]

“?” [Ryouma]

Looking at the direction he pointed at, I saw a customer arguing with a stall employee.
In the customer’s hand was a music box.

“It’s fine, right? Just give me one more.” [Customer]

“My deepest apologies. But this product is currently limited to 3 per customer.”
[Employee]

“That’s why I’m begging you. Can’t you do something about that? Look. I have a
daughter and a son, and I have two married older brothers too. I want to buy them
some nice souvenirs.” [Customer]
“…Customer. If I may ask, how many times have you visited our store already?”
[Employee]

“Hah? This is the first?” [Customer]

“Really? Because I feel like this is your second time already…” [Employee]

“Aren’t you just imagining things?” [Customer]

“Really?” [Employee]

“…Fine.” [Customer]

“Thank you for understanding.” [Employee]

The customer put down the music box and quickly left the premises.

“What was that?” [Ryouma]

“He probably wanted to resell. Ever since starting to sell music box, people like those
have started to appear. We’ve limited the number that can be sold to a customer to
prevent them from buying everything up, but there are a lot of resellers like that who
keep coming back.” [Serge]

“Is that alright?” [Ryouma]

“Don’t worry. We’ve prepared a lot of employees, so people like that shouldn’t be able
to influence normal customers. We’ve already taken resellers into consideration and
have thought up a plan. If word of the music box were to spread through selling, we’ll
be able to use that to open up the market.” [Serge]

There were normal customers around us, so Serge-san omitted some of the details,
but I could feel his overflowing confidence.

“Everything is within predictions, in other words.” [Ryouma]

“We’ve established a department that specializes in music boxes, and Dinome’s

Workshop is also eagerly producing music boxes. The workshops at Kereban were also
interested in, so we were able to greatly increase the number of craftsmen producing
them.” [Serge]
“Greatly increase?” [Ryouma]

“The magic tool workshops of Kereban aren’t limited to just Dinome’s Workshop. He
has his connections too and other workshops that he trusts. There are also workshops
that have been struggling financially that he was able to buy up.” [Serge]

“This sure has turned into something crazy.” [Ryouma]

“These workshops and the apprentice craftsmen will all be placed under Dinome-
dono, so the contents of their work and the management won’changed at all. It’s not
really that big of a deal.

Currently, Dinome’s Workshop has successfully reduced its burden in producing

music boxes, while other workshops have been alloted work, allowing them to deal
with their financial issues. As for the sales of the products and the financing, please
allow me to take care of that.” [Serge]

My deal with Dinome-san is that he will be the one to publicly appear as the developer
of the music box. As long as he keeps that part of the deal, I have no right to say
anything even if he merges companies or increases the number of craftsmen. If
anything, being able to form a win-win relationship is something to be happy about.

“I believe this takeover will also bring much profit to you, Ryouma-sama. The magic
tools that can be forged at Dinome’s Workshop are limited to the neutral, fire, water,
and light elements. But with the introduction of more craftsmen under Dinome-dono,
demand of other elements can now be met should the need arise.” [Serge]

I see. If Dinome-san keeps his end of the deal, it seems this turn of events will prove
convenient to me.

“I believe it won’t be long before he asks you if there’s something you want.” [Serge]

“I guess I’ll have to think about it then. Should I use this opportunity to develop
something new?” [Ryouma]

As food for thought, I could give him an idea and have him develop a magic tool. That
idea would then given birth to another idea… Eventually, I’m sure I’ll run out of
materials, but for now, this looks to be an infinite loop.

Serge-san seems to have thought of the same thing, as he’s wordlessly smiling at me
like that.

…Ah, I’m done.

“Gochisosamadeshita.” [Ryouma]

“Oh? Done eating already? That was fast.” [Serge]

“I’m an adventurer, after all.” [Ryouma]

Spending too much time eating will quickly use up one’s lunch break and might cause
one to miss out on his meal.

So I quickly eat while talking. It’s an indispensable skill I picked up while working as
a salary man in my previous life.

“I’ll go buy some drinks. What would you like?” [Ryouma]

“Can I ask you to get me some of that ‘Barley Tea’?” [Serge]

“Sure.” [Ryouma]

I bought two cups of barley tea from the store and then came back.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Here.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you very much… Fuu… Ahh, this kind of tea is good too. It has a different aroma
to black tea and herb tea, but I can’t get enough of it.” [Serge]

“I’m glad you like it.” [Ryouma]

“Still…” [Serge]

Serge-san glanced at my store.

“Your store sure sells a lot of strange things, Ryouma-sama.” [Serge]

Now that he mentions it, he’s right.

There are 8 products being sold at my store:

Water

Fruit Juice

Barley Tea

Reemiyen

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Dante Seed.

Sesame Pastry

Hot Dog

For water, juice, and barley tea… We’ve already prepared them beforehand, so it’s just
a matter of pouring them. As for the other 5 products, they were picked out according
to the results of the survey.

Of the stranger things among our products, there’s Barley Tea and Dandelion Coffee.
Just as Serge-san said earlier, Black Tea and Herb Tea are most common in this country,
and you won’t find any barely tea here. Dandelion Coffee might be a thing somewhere,
but it’s definitely not something normal in this country either.

And then there’s Reemiyen. Due to the dangers and costs of travels, people aren’t able
to travel to different countries as easily. Because of that, save for a very small group of
entrepreneurs, most people would see foreign culinary as something unusual.
Moreover, Fei-san and Leelin-san’s homeland, Zilmar, is a rather chaotic country that
barely even engages in diplomatic relationships. Just recently, there were a lot of
people who ordered Reemiyen out of curiosity.

And there’s Dante Seeds, which are a delicacy in one region, and Sesame Pastry, which
is also a rare dessert. As such, 4 out of 8 of the products we sell, that is half of all of our
products, appear as ‘strange’ to your everyday citizen.

This is the result of analyzing the survey we gave out during the social gathering.

“As expected, people will get tired if you just sell the usual. From the looks of things, it
seems people order those 4 strange products the most.” [Serge]
When I looked around me, I noticed that he was right and many customers were
indeed eating those unique dishes.

“Wow, so this is Zilmar Cuisine.” [Customer 1]

“Pasta mixed with soup… This is pretty unique.” [Customer 2]

“It’s hot. But it sure tastes good when paired up with this cold barley tea.” [Customer 3]

“So semisa could actually be turned into jam like this?” [Customer 4]

From the murmurs I heard around me, it seems the customers liked the products a lot.

“By the way, what will you be doing in the afternoon?” [Serge]

“The ice sculpture to be used on stage is due today.” [Ryouma]

Since Soldio-san started teaching me, I also found more opportunities to talk with the
members of the troupe. I once mentioned I could sculpt something out of ice and they
showed much interest. When I showed it to them in person, the leader of the troupe
and the person responsible for building the stage was inspired, and the next day, much
to my surprise, they handed me a written proposal which suggested to include the ice
sculpture among the stage decorations.

The Semroid Troupe would will be displaying the performances of the sword dancers
and the acrobats during the day, which required a lot of movement, so the ice sculpture
will be brought in when the sun sets. It will be brought in during the evening when
music was the focus in order to help set the mood.

“I’ve already prepared some magic tool lighting under the sculpture to light it up.”
[Ryouma]

“My subordinates informed me. It seems like it’ll be quite a sight to behold.” [Serge]

“I plan to sculpt something that can be put on display, but as for whether I will have
the leisure to watch or not…” [Ryouma]

“True. From the looks of things, I doubt you’ll be able to take your time. As far as
business goes, though, busyness is a good problem to have.” [Serge]
We laughed and talked like that until we emptied our cups.
“Something like this, I guess.” [Ryouma]

Within a room that was turned into something akin to a refrigerator through a
combination of Barrier and Ice Magic stood a row of ice sculptures.

“Hmm… Yep. This should do.” [Ryouma]

Looks good, I thought, so I called Prenence-san over to check the sculptures.

“Prenence-san, the ice sculpture is complete. Please take a look.” [Ryouma]

When I entered the room in the dormitory that had been opened up to be used as a
dressing room, what greeted me was a pure white robe that was opened up in front.
The only decoration on it was an embroidery woven with golden thread, which could
be found on the chest part. Prenence-san appeared while wearing such clothing.

Stain would stick out like a sore thumb should it get stained even a little, but without
the slightest trace of blemish on it and Perence-san himself being a silver-haired
adonis, it gives off a mysterious aura.

“Over here.” [Ryouma]

“Ohh!” [Prenence]

The room was cold to keep the statue from melting, but Prenence-san didn’t seem to
mind that at all as he looked at the row of sculptures from an angle.

“A pair of birds, a plate of fruits, a beast running, and my harp. It is exactly as I’ve
ordered.” [Prenence]
The leading part of tonight’s program tells the tale of a traveler who defeats a terrifying
beast that has struck fear into the hearts of the people. I carved the sculpture with that
theme in mind.

The pedestal is made of wood. In order to carry these and set them all atop the stage,
I had to use what the people of the troupe had prepared.

“Are we putting these on stage as planned?” [Ryouma]

“Yes. We’ll be able to bring these in after the next performance. I’m sorry for asking
you to do something so unreasonable so suddenly.” [Prenence]

“It’s alright. It was in order to design a good stage, after all.” [Ryouma]

“Fufufu… We shall put on a performance that will not lose out to the beauty of the
stage. You have my word.” [Prenence]

After smiling that fearless smile and checking a couple of things, he went back to the
dressing room. As for me, I went back to the stalls.

“Otsukaresama desu. Do you need help anywhere?” [Ryouma]

“In that case, boss, please help wash the plates used for reemiyen.” [Fei]

“Okay.” [Ryouma]

It’s common practice in this country to use a kind of leaf to wrap food with. And it’s
commonly done in stalls, but the leaves aren’t suitable for dealing with liquid, so we
had to use wooden tableware.

One of the madams working with us, Mary-san, has a husband who works with wood,
so we were able to easily get some. The customers return the tableware after eating
to the return window, and then the people in charge divide the trash and the different
types of tableware, and then they clean them.

“Tableware and trash received!” [Ryouma]

“Ussu!” [Fei]

After dividing everything into bags, I carry them and bring them to the laundry room
within the store.

The return window at the stall is just there to gather the goods. After all, we have
professionals to deal with the filthy dishes.

“I’m counting on you.” [Ryouma]

Although the goods we’re talking about are a bit different than the usual stuff we deal
with, the cleaner slimes can deal with them all the same. Meanwhile, while they’re
working on that, I bring the garbage to the basement for the scavenger slimes to deal.
By the time I come back up, the dishes are already done. I then bring those back to the
stall. The tableware have already been divided beforehand, so I don’t have to think any
further on it after retrieving them from the slimes, and all that’s left now is for me to
place them in the appropriate shelves.

“Next!” [Ryuoma]

“Yes!” [Fei]

But there were a lot of customers. And dishes were sold endlessly, causing the used
tableware to continuously pile up.

“…This is actually amazing.” [Ryouma]

While I was transporting the dishes like a piston, the line of customers seemed to have
actually increased.

“Carm-san! Should I reorganize the lines!?” [Ryouma]

“Yes please! I’ll leave it to you!” [Carm]

Carm-san is usually well dressed with orderly hair, but with how hot and busy the
store was, he had no choice but to bundle his hair with a bandanna, making him look
exactly like your stereotypical stall onii-san.

I saw something weird. I supposes that just goes to show how busy it is, though.

“Ryouma-sama!” [Serge]

“Ahh, Serge-san. We met just a while ago.” [Ryouma]

“You seem very busy. If you need some help, we have some free hands if you’d like.”
[Serge]

“By all means! Please!” [Ryouma]

As I gratefully accepted his offer, I put up the rope for organizing the lines.

“Found him! Boss!” [Employee]

“Yes!? What is it?” [Ryouma]

“A customer who went to the washroom just now told me that the toilet has run out of
water.” [Employee]

“Toilet water… Ah, the water for washing hands!? Got it! I’ll fix it immediately!” [Ryouma]

I explained the situation to our reinforcements and left.

“Excuse me, I’m the manager. I need to take a look. Excuse me… Oh, good.” [Ryouma]

If it’s just this, then I’ll be able to fix it in a jiffy. Or rather, this isn’t even really broken.

There’s no water service here, so I just filled the large container inside the water storage
tank with water. The water can be refilled using the bucket that’s been provided nearby.

Currently, the container isn’t even half-filled anymore.

In other words, the only reason the water isn’t coming out is because there’s no water
left. The public had already used it up.

I quickly went where the tank was and filled it up with water.

“Done!… Ah!” [Ryouma]

The water was fixed now, but it suddenly came to my attention that the soap had been
stolen.

I’d put it inside a net woven out of the sticky slime’s threads and connected it with a
cord just like the bucket, but someone actually went out of his way to cut the cord with
a knife…
The net, the cord, and the soap are all hand made, so they’re all virtually free, but if I
don’t report the soap having been stolen, my troubles might increase.

Anyway, I’ll take some precautionary measures, and after cleaning myself with the
cleaner slime, I’ll go back to work.

Starting tomorrow maybe I should make the net and the cord with the hardest threads
from the sticky slime… But then again, if I use something harder, it might hurt more
when rubbing.

“Excuse me, the person over there!” [???]

“Me?” [Ryouma]

While I was thinking up a countermeasure as I walked, an auntie with sharp eyes

called out to me.

“Are you someone from the store?” [Sharp-Eyed Auntie]

“Yes. Is something the matter?” [Ryouma]

“About this kid, he entered the lot by himself.” [Sharp-Eyed Auntie]

When the auntie moved her body to the side, the figure of a young boy was revealed.

“Apparently, he got lost from his parents because of the smell. Sorry, but can you call
the guards?” [Auntie]

“Alright. I’ll call them now. Please take a seat and wait.” [Ryouma]

I called Carm-san and asked him to give them some barley tea as service while I ran to
the station.

These sort of festivals are fun, but the livelier the festivities the busier the management
gets.

And then, evening came.

When the clock ticked past 8, it was time for the first day to come to a close.

Although the festival spirit didn’t cool down, and there were those who were planning
to continue at a bar, most women and children were already on their way back home.
Most of the customers have also left, and the only customers left are those that came
before we stopped taking orders. Everyone is cleaning the store up with a feeling of
relief.

As for me, I was with the butcher, Zeke-san, and his wife, counting the proceeds of the
day and distributing profits.

“Well then… These are the profits for today. These are the ingredients consumed for the
day. After subtracting the cost for the ingredients consumed, the amount calculated as
per our agreement is about 312 suits per person. Is this correct?” [Ryouma]

“…It is.” [Zeke]

“We sure made a lot. With this, I’m sure everyone will be happy.” [Pauline]

Although it’s not that much individually, but because we were able to keep down the
expenses of the ingredients thanks to the wives, and because of the selling of a large
amount of sales we made, we were able to turn over a profit. Even the payment for the
people who helped out was increased. Instead of just giving them pocket change, we
gave them enough to live off of for 3 days.

“Thank you for helping us.” [Ryouma]

“What are you saying? We were compensated too. You don’t have to act so reserved.”
[Pauline]

“Once you hand out the wages of the employees, there might be some who will want
to work here for real.” [Zeke]

The two of them laughed as they said that.

“Still, they were amazing, weren’t they?” [Ryouma]

“Indeed. Well, a lot of things happened here like the performances and the new
products of the Morgan Company.” [Pauline]
“There are a lot of things to attract people’s eyes, and it was also convenient for people
to take a rest at.” [Zeke]

We’ll be able to expect a lot of customers tomorrow too.

“Now then, we’ll distribute the pay and then go home. Although they might be just
next door, but I can’t exactly leave my kids to themselves.” [Pauline]

“See you tomorrow. Do make sure to drop by during break time.” [Ryouma]

“Yes. Otsukaresamadeshita.” [Zeke]

The two of them left the room. After greeting everyone I left.

When I went outside, I saw the members of the Semroid Troupe gathered at the stage
wing.

…What are they doing?

They’re gathered together but they’re not talking. They’re just looking at something
quietly in the same manner. They had their backs turned to me, so I couldn’t see what
they’re looking at, but they seemed really focused.

It looked it would be better not to disturb them, so I waited for a few minutes. Then
without any signal, something changed.

“Otsukaresama desu.” [Ryouma]

“!? Otsukaresama desu!” [Male Performer]

“Otsukaresama desu.” [Everyone Else]

I wonder if I startled them.

I’m pretty sure I saw the young guy at the very back jump when I called out…

“Ryouma-dono, did you need something?” [Prenence]

“I thought I’d say goodbye before leaving. What were you doing?” [Ryouma]
“Praying. look.” [Maiya]

A prayer. As Maiya-san said that, she pointed at the thing they were looking at.

It was a masked sculpture wrapped in many colorful cloths. Each cloth was only about
the size of a handkerchief, but with so many of them layered it looked like the
sculpture was clothed in actual clothing.

“Is that the statue of a god?” [Ryouma]

I’ve never heard of this god, though…

“It’s weird, right? You might not be able to tell like this, but this is actually Manoairoa-
sama’s statute.”

“Manoairoa-sama.” [Ryouma]

…Ah, the name is present within the knowledge the gods. I haven’t met him, but it
should be a god like Gayn and the others.

“The god of the wind?” [Ryouma]

“Yes. A great god who is the personification of the winds that travel this world and
watches over people. Being also the god of travels and performing arts, there are many
traveling entertainers who worship Manoairoa-sama.” [Prenence]

Normally, everyone prays individually, but on days like this when they’ve found much
success, the troupe offers a prayer to Manoairoa-sama together.

“And the decorations?” [Ryouma]

“We traveling entertainers do not stay in one place for a long time. Wind of the spring.
Wind of the summer. Wind of the fall. Wind of the winter… We visit the towns with the
wind, and with the winds we look forward to our next destination. These cloths are
proofs of our travels.” [Prenence]

“Meeting good people, increasing our members… Or when a performance is a success.

Whenever we make good memories like those, we buy a cloth at that town. We can’t
increase our luggage while traveling, so we make a remembrance of those things
instead and begin a new journey. The cloths wrapped around the statue represent our
gratitude for blessing us with such encounters.” [Maiya]

“In other words, it’s a custom of traveling entertainers. I don’t know when it started,
though.” [Soldio]

Maiya-san and Soldio-san explained to me.

Back at Earth, there was also a way of remembering things by putting corresponding
things on body parts, but the traveling entertainers of the past must have come up
with this method themselves in order to leave behind their memories.

While I was thinking something like that, I watched as the members of the troupe
cleaned up the statue of the god.
The next day.

“Barley Tea, was it? Yeah, uh… Three of that, and then two orders of water. This is enough,
right?” [Customer]

“Yes!” [Ryouma]

I’m tending to the store first thing in the morning. I can use Ice Magic, so I’m in charge
of the drinks.

“Sorry to keep you waiting! 3 orders of barley tea and 2 orders of water.” [Ryouma]

“Wow, that’s really cold. This is great. Thanks.” [Customer]

“Please enjoy~ Next customer!” [Ryouma]

“Two barely tea please.” [Customer 2]

A few hours passed in the blink of an eye as I dealt with customer after customer, and
then a face I was acquainted with appeared.

“Next~… Ah, Jeff-san!” [Ryouma]

“Looks like the stalls are a success.” [Jeff]

“Thanks to you.” [Ryouma]

“Anyway, give me seven orders of barley tea.” [Jeff]

“Understood.” [Ryouma]

I quickly prepared the tray and the barley tea.

“Did you come with your friends?” [Ryouma]

“Don’t know if I’d call them that, but they’re some people you know. Look.” [Jeff]

“?” [Ryouma]

When I looked toward the direction he pointed at, I spotted some familiar faces…

“Oh, it’s Berk and the guys.” [Ryouma]

It was the 6-man novice adventurer party. They seem to have split up and were buying
food from our stalls.

“You gave them some advice recently, yeah? You advised them to talk to other
adventurers?” [Jeff]

“Ah… Yeah, I did. Wait, do you mean?” [Ryouma]

“Yep. That old man, Wogan, introduced them to me and now I have to watch over them.”
[Jeff]

“Really? That’s great to hear. Here.” [Ryouma]

“Yeah. Good luck.” [Jeff]

After paying, Jeff-san left and rendezvoused with Berk and the others.

I didn’t think Jeff-san would end up taking care of them, but he’s a skilled adventurer
himself and he also comes from the slums. He might be able to understand Berk and
the others better. Although it’s not really any of my business, it puts me at ease to
know.

After that they enjoyed the food and then went back home. Apparently, they were
together for the festivities. As Jeff-san watched over the overly enthusiastic novice
party, he left with a smile on his face.

10 minutes later. Another familiar face showed up.

“Yo.” [Wogan]
“Welcome!” [Ryouma]

It was the guild master of the adventurers guild. Wogan-san came with Tigger-san from
the weapon shop.

“Barley Tea for me. You?” [Wogan]

“I’ll have the same.” [Tigger]

“Understood! Sure is rare to see you together, though.” [Ryouma]

“Really? We might look like this, but we used to be on the same party.” [Wogan]

“Huh, really?” [Ryouma]

First I’ve heard of that.

“It’s a story from before we retired.” [Tigger]

“Tigger has always had a good eye for equipment. On that regard, he was the best in
our party. He was also particular with money, so he managed our party’s funds. After
he retired, he moved full time into the weapon industry.” [Wogan]

“I didn’t have good eyes. You were all just sloppy. If I left you alone, you’d spend all
your money on liquor and women, and then wake up the next day without a single
suit.” [Tigger]

“We were young. And besides, it was a fitting lifestyle for an adventurer. No?” [Wogan]

“Even if you tell me that…” [Ryouma]

If he’s looking for affirmation, I’m not sure he’ll find it from me.

“Don’t sweat it. It’s better you don’t copy him.” [Tigger]

“What was that?” [Wogan]

“You two sure get along well. ‘Freeze’ Sorry to keep you waiting.” [RYouma]

“So this is barley tea.” [Wogan]

“Is this enough?” [Tigger]

“Yes. Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

The two were about to leave, but then Tigger-san seemed to have recalled something.

“You haven’t been coming lately. Is your equipment alright?” [Tigger]

“Yes. It’s still fine. The armor and knife I purchased from you have been serving me well.”
[Ryouma]

“That’s good then… What happened to your search for the katana? Haven’t heard
anything from you since then.” [Tigger]

“Ahh… Lend me your ear for a bit.” [Ryouma]

I briefly told him about my situation in hushed voices, then he closed his eyes.

“I can’t believe you managed to solve that problem like that.” [Tigger]

“Sorry.” [Ryouma]

“If you can use it, then it’s fine. It’s not my place to tell you how to use your familiar.
Don’t push yourself.” [Tigger]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

After that he left with Wogan-san, and after taking a breath, went back to town.

“Good day.” [Nun]

“Welcome!” [Ryouma]

This time it was the sister from the church, Betta-san, who visited. She came with the
children of the church. It’s already around noon, huh.

“Thank you for helping us out yesterday. And Bell too. You really saved us.” [Betta]
“Please don’t mind it. If it’s just something like that, I can help anytime. You’re always
taking care of me, after all. And I’ve heard the stories.” [Ryouma]

In the church, they look after children with no relatives. Their lives are by no means
luxurious, but the two sisters are spending money despite having to be thrifty to allow
the children to enjoy the festivals like a normal child.

“For 18 people, right?” [Ryouma]

“Yes, please. Come on. You kids too.” [Betta]

“Please!” [Kids]

“18 orders coming right up.” [Ryouma]

As the voice of the children simultaneously resounded, pleasant eyes gathered from
the people nearby.

“Yesterday we were at the bazaar, but today we’re going to enjoy the festivities!” Said
a child I worked with at the church. That kid bought several people’s worth of hot
dogs, but he smiled happily just like any child.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. There’s a lot, so it’s a bit heavy. Please be careful.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you very much.” [Kids]

“You’re welcome. Next customer~!” [Ryouma]

“Yahoo!” [Mizelia]

“Ryouma, it’s been a while, nyaa.” [Miya]

“Are you doing well?” [Wereanna]

“Barley Tea for four please.” [Syria]

This time it was Miya-san and Wereanna-san’s party.

“It’s been a while. Haven’t seen you lately.” [Ryouma]

“It’s because we left town for a job. Miya was with us too.” [Wereanna]

“I’m glad you came back safely. Here. Barley Tea. I’ve chilled it for you.” [Ryouma]

The customers came one after another.

I worked the stall while taking turns with others so I could eat and rest.

We were really busy, but I could feel the zeal and the liveliness of the town on my skin.

Before I knew it a faint darkness had already covered the world. The distant setting
sun leaving behind nothing but a lingering memory. But despite that, the surrounding
crowds seemed to suggest that they were just starting, as they grew even noisier.

“I’m back~. Boss~ I’ll take over, so you can have your supper~” [Maria]

“Thank you very much. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.” [Ryouma]

I quickly ate my supper. I say ‘supper’, but all I would really be eating is our stall’s
special hot dog.

“Are you going to be having supper here tonight too~?” [Maria]

The preparation period included, I’ve been eating here a lot lately, so that’s why she
said that.

The food tastes good, I can get the food without having to line up, and I can go back to
work immediately, so it’s really convenient.

Hot dog provides carbs and meat. If I eat it with stir-fried vegetables, the nutritional
value I can get is surprisingly good. I suppose the oil and salt content is a bit high, but
it’s hot throughout the day and with how much energy I consume, I think it’s probably
fine… Yeah, it won’t be a problem. I’m young too.

People say that this kind of thinking is a trap when someone becomes aware of their
age, but… I never had any problems in my past life, so I’ve never really experienced it.
As such, I ordered 4 hot dogs without a care and one plate of stir-fried vegetables.
After pouring myself a cup of tea, I leave the cash and find myself a seat.
…Oh, is that seat free?

There were three women seated on a four-seater table, who looked like they were
about to stand up… And then they did.

Immediately, I secured the seat for myself.

“Itadakimasu.” [Ryouma]

I bit my hot dog. Soft bread greeted my teeth, followed by an elastic skin, out of which
poured out the juice of the meat. As I tasted the sourness of the ketchup layered over
the hot dog, more and more of my saliva came out. There was quite a bit of girth to it,
but it gradually managed to pass through my throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” [Prenence]

Prenence-san’s voice resounded loud and clear. Even though I’m seated by the
entrance, I could still hear his voice clearly despite all the tumult from the other tables
and the crowds of people.

After announcing that the performance would be starting, three female dancers went
up the stage. They danced along with the music, gathering the attention of the onlookers
and quietening the crowd.

I’ve seen them many times during practice, but they really are amazing.

Maybe it’s because of the influence of light novels, but when you talk about dancers,
most would imagine them to be scantily dressed. Unlike that usual image, however,
these women don’t show much skin. The girls all wore the same dress, which was a
one piece with a thick fabric and many colorful frills. Only a little bit of the sleeves and
the feet were shown, and they would dance while lifting up their skirts a little.

Moreover, because the tip of the skirt had weights, when they turned, from time to
time, their skirts would expand.

As such, the male customers near the stage would try to look up at their skirt and the
female customers around them would glare at them coldly. For one, a husband who
brought his family had just been slapped by his wife.

“This looks to be a success.” [???]

“Yes, fortunately…? Guild master!” [Ryouma]

I wondered who it was that was talking to me, but then I found out it was actually none
other than the guild master of the merchant guild, Grisiera-san. Moreover, behind her
was the guild master of the tamer guild’s Gimuru branch, Taylor, and a young man I
wasn’t acquainted with, who was carrying a tray.

“Is something the matter? Why are you here?” [Ryouma]

I believe this is actually the first time we’re meeting outside the guild by chance.

“It’s not good for the body to stay cooped up inside all the time.” [Grisiera]

“We’re using the festivities as an opportunity for us old people to walk around town.”
[Taylor]

“I see. If it’s no trouble, won’t you accompany me?” [Ryouma]

“I’d be glad to.” [Grisiera]

“Excuse me. Oh, sorry to make you carry my food.” [Taylor]

“Something at this level, please don’t mind it.” [???]

…Who is this man? I thought he might have been someone from the guild, but the
atmosphere about him says otherwise.

“My apologies for my belated introduction. I am Arnold Bernheid. You are Ryouma
Takebayashi-sama, yes?” [Arnold]

He knows who I am. Anyway, I should return the greeting for now.

Still, he looks to be human. He has a slender build and looks to be in between the latter
half of his 20s to the first half of his 30s. His dress gives me a feeling similar to that of
Carm-san, but his sharp eyes and his black glasses gives a strict impression… At the
very least, I shouldn’t have met him before.

“I’m sorry, have we been acquainted before?” [Ryouma]

“Not directly. But I have heard of you from above.” [Arnold]

“Ryouma. This kid is… You know… You remember how those guys from the public
office got scolded severely? He is the successor of the chief back then.” [Grisiera]

“Oh, that time.” [Ryouma]

Oh~ I’d heard that someone new had taken up the post… So, that’s him.

“I’ve been hearing rumors of you for some time now. Not only did you provide the
impetus for discipline to come down upon the corrupt officials, you even provided
support for the cleanup afterwards. Moreover, just recently, you accepted a job and
contributed again.” [Arnold]

By recently, I assume he’s talking about the tunnel ants.

“Thanks to you, my work has been greatly reduced and I am able to focus on disciplining
my staff.” [Arnold]

“I was simply doing what I wanted, but I’m happy to have been of service.” [Ryouma]

“By all means, please do continue to use your abilities as you have until now.” [Arnold]

It seems he’s wanted to meet me ever since taking up office, but due to the suddenness
of his appointment, he had too much to deal with, from the leftover work to dealing
with the subordinates, and it wasn’t as if he could actually summon me just to thank
me. Moreover, because they were investigating and exposing crimes of embezzlement
and collusion, he didn’t want to meet me carelessly. Looks like they chose a rather
prudent person.

Well, in order to straighten what is bent, it would be a problem if they didn’t do that
much. It also helps a lot that they’re not causing me any trouble. If I can continue living
and managing the store as I have until now, then I don’t mind cooperating.

“Thank you. Although I can’t give you special treatment because of my position, I will
do my best to ensure that the law is followed dutifully. Of course, if you are able to
contribute something, and provided it is true and is reported to the upper brass, then
as a result of that, I might be able to give you some special privileges.” [Arnold]

“He said a lot, but basically, he’s saying that you’ll be treated like everyone else.” [Grisiera]

“It’s not easy to make a contribution that would give you special privileges.” [Taylor]
“What I meant was that I was expecting much from Takebayashi-sama.” [Arnold]

“Well, let’s leave it at that.” [Taylor]

“He might actually do it. Who knows?” [Grisiera]

As Grisiera-san said that, she glanced at Serge-san’s stalls.

“…Did you tell him something?” [Grisera]

“What ever could you mean, I wonder.” [Ryouma]

Although I don’t really feel like hiding it from her, but I’ll play dumb for the mean time.

“By the way, Ryouma-kun.” [Taylor]

“Yes?” [Ryouma]

“How is life in town going for you? It’s been some time since you came here. Is there
anything you find inconvenient?” [Taylor]

“If you have anything on mind, just say it. You only meet this gramps rarely.” [Grisiera]

“Right… Everything is certainly different from before, but I’m not particularly
inconvenienced by anything. If I had to say then it’s actually convenient now that I can
buy whatever I need easily.” [Ryouma]

…Still. I was originally born on Earth and was brought here after death. And then from
the Forest of Gana, I came to Gimuru… I sure traveled a long distance.

When I look to my left, I see my comrades who work with me at my store. When I look
to my right, I see my business partners. When I look in front of me, I see the troupe,
who I became acquainted with just recently, currently performing. And beside me is
the big wig of the public office, whom I just met today.

Other than that, of the customers that came today, there’s also the son of the book
store, Dansbel-san. There’s the gramps from the pharmacy, whose name I don’t even
known. There’s also the neighboring wives, who I came to know during the
preparations for this festival, and the members of the guild who remember me from
our last job.
I’ve gotten to know a lot of people.

I don’t know if this place is better than the forest.

The forest has its own charm.

But…

“Hmm. From the look on your face, I guess you’re doing just fine.” [Taylor]

“Yes. I think so too.” [Ryouma]

My current life isn’t bad.

As I reflected upon this happiness, the night gradually passed.

The next day.

After the brilliant festivities came to an end and the night passed and the day came,
Gimuru went back to how it usually was.

Festival decors could still be seen here and there on the street corners, but they’ll be
cleaned up in a day or two. The merchants that came from elsewhere have already
closed their stores, and there are even groups who’ve already left town.

“Because of all the merchants that came for the tourists, the southern gate is so hectic
right now.” [Guard]

When I passed through the northern gate, the guard stationed there said that
thoughtlessly.

As for me…

“We’ll reuse that part!” [Stage Commander]

“Alright, we’ll divide it then!” [Prenence]

The person in charge of the Semroid Troupe’s stage gave out orders as the members
dismantled the stage.

I specialize at carpentry too, but when it comes to stages and other related stuff, it’s a
bit different, as such, helping them out should prove to be quite educational. Even just
by dismantling, I can somewhat understand the construct of these thnigs.

“Excuse me, what do I do with this screw-like pillar?” [Ryouma]

“That’s for the stage setting, so we’ll be reusing it. You use it by wrapping your hand
around the knob under and lifting it up along with the people and stuff loaded on it.
We didn’t get to use it this time, though.” [Stage Commander]
“I see.” [Ryouma]

There are hidden apparatuses that can’t be seen with a glance. These are all actually
quite interesting.

“Boss!” [Dolce]

“Dolce-san. What is it?” [Ryouma]

“The guards came for the soap thief incident.” [Dolce]

“Got it. Excuse me.” [Ryouma]

“I heard you. We’ll be fine, so just go.” [Soldio]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

Dolce-san and I went back to the store together, passing by a great many crowd along
the way.

It’s right after the day of the festival, but despite working a lot during the festivities,
my store is in business as usual.

At first, I was considering making today a holiday, but then the husbands and wives
that worked with us told me that they had a lot of dirty clothes piled up because of all
the preparations that had to be done, so seeing as there would be a demand, I decided
to make it a regular working day. In exchange, I decided to hold a party in the evening
like the social gathering we had before.

My suspicions about were proven true when the customers this morning were 20%
more than usual. Moreover, Arnold-San, whom I just met yesterday, was present too.
The Founding Festival occurs every year, so the decorative cloths and flags used aren’t
one-time things.

In the previous year, before people deposited their clothes, the job of sorting the
clothes and washing them would be split, but this year, given our store’s price and
efficiency, they’re actually considering asking us to take care of everything insead. It
was for that reason that Arnold-san came.

I’m not sure if he’s decided on us just yet, but we might be able to sign an unexpectedly
huge contract.

“Excuse me.” [Ryouma]

Now then, to meet with the guards.

I entered the reception office, and the male guards stood up from the sofa.

We went through the usual greetings as per formalities, and then we went on to the
topic.

“The other day a report was filed for a thief who’d stolen a bar of soap. We apprehended
him just recently. Is this your soap” [Guard]

A package was placed on the table in front of us, and then opened. Inside was the soap
used at the store. It even had the net attached.

Did they really catch him? No offense to the people who search very hard for these
sort of stuff, but I honestly never thought that my stolen good would actually be
returned to me.

“Of course, there are times when stolen goods never come back, but you see, the soap
thief wasn’t just into soaps, he was also a pickpocket. But he was not as successful as
a pickpocket as he was a soap thief, and his poor attempts landed him with us. Caught
him just yesterday, in fact. When we seized his luggage from the inn he was staying at,
we found this. A report had been filed, so we were able to confirm that he was indeed
the culprit.” [Guard]

So, I got lucky. I’ll pray to Gayn and the others later.

While I was thinking that, they asked me to sign a form to confirm the return of the
stolen item. After looking through the document, I signed it.

“…Yes. Everything is in order. Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

The guard accepted the document with a smile and quickly left.

Looks like the guards are busy too.

“FUN, FU, FU~N.” [Fina]

After seeing the guards to the entrance, I heard Fina-san humming as she carried
goods into the store.

“You sound like you’re in a good mood today.” [Ryouma]

“HIYA!? Oh, it’s you, Boss. Since when were you there?” [Fina]

“Just now. The guards just left.” [Ryouma]

“Ahh, from a while ago…”

“Did I startle you?” [Ryouma]

“A little… Do you know this song?” [Fina]

“It’s Prenence-san’s song, right?’ [Ryouma]

She blushed, her face turning beet red. She was humming pretty well. I don’t think
there’s really anything to be embarrassed about… Rather than that, I wonder if
something good happened to her.

“Ah, that’s right. Listen to this, Boss. Actually, just now, a customer I was dealing with
asked me, ‘Aren’t you going to sell those barley tea of yours anymore?’ And then he
said, ‘There were a lot of customers, you know?’ ‘It was really delicious.’ ” [Fina]

Oh… So something like that happened.

“Until now tea made out of barely hasn’t sold well at all, so hearing someone tell me
those things made me so happy.” [Fina]

That’s also the reason why they had to leave their villages to work. But in that case,
why don’t they sell Barley Tea then?

“At this store?” [Fina]

“At your village. If you can’t sell barley as is, then why don’t you try processing it first?”
[Ryouma]

When it comes to processing raw ingredients and selling them, one has to first
consider what product would sell, but in this case, they don’t have to do that, as they
already know that the people want barley tea. At the very least, it’s guaranteed that
there’s a market for it.

Incidentally, after calculating all of sales last night, we found out that 70% of the sales
from beverages were made from barley tea. People didn’t just buy the drink and try it
once, there were also many returning customers who bought the drink more than
once.

If it could sell that well in just two days, think about how much it could sell were it to
be sold properly. There might be even more people who’ll come to like it.

Their village cultivates barley, which is the main ingredient of barley tea. And then
there’s the process of transforming barley into something suitable for tea. Wouldn’t it
be good if with just those two things alone they were able to sell their crops to the
public? If they are able to make this happen, they’ll be able to reduce some of the crops
they’re making so much of and also increase the income of the village.

If necessary, I could also write them a letter of introduction to Pioro-san. The barley
tea sold at the festival were made by roasting the barley from their village. Even they
could make it by themselves. If they work together with the Saionji Company… Yeah,
it could work.

I might be being overoptimistic, but the possibility isn’t zero.

“There’s a lot of stuff to consider like the how much grain your village can produce,
and I’m sure a lot of work will have to be done.” [Ryouma]

“At the village, we plant many different types of grain to combat sickness. Barley
makes up about 30% of all our crops, but we should be able to increase the yields
starting next year. Still, is it really okay to sell the tea at the village?” [Fina]

“I feel like I’ve said this to someone before, but even if I try to sell the tea myself, it’s
going to take a lot of effort. I might have a store, but my current goal is to go back to
my village, so I don’t really have the time to sell Barley Tea.” [Ryouma]

But there are people who want barley tea, and there’s a village that wants to sell their
barley.

In that case, it would be best if said village worked with the Saionji Company instead.
At the very least, it would be a lot better than if the business just rotted in my hands.

“You once said that you would be willing to accept others who want to work at your
store. If this works out well for our village, there might be less people who’ll want to
leave.” [Fina]
“The store isn’t hiring right now anyway, so it’s fine if only those who want to go to
town come. If I can’t get enough employees from your village, then naturally I will look
elsewhere. Besides, it would only trouble me if the people who come to work here do
so begrudgingly. Those who want to remain in the village should remain. There is also
the saying that people only understand a parent’s love when it’s too late, so I believe
if it’s possible to spend time with one’s family, then one should do so instead.”
[Ryouma]

I’ll be fine as long they send me some tea from time to time.

“…Boss, can I send a letter to my dad about this? I want to ask the entire village to
consider it.” [Fina]

“Of course, it’s fine. I’ll send a letter to the Saionji Company too, so they can plan for it
from their end as well. After all, we’ll only end up troubling them if we just suddenly
bring the topic up without giving them time to prepare.” [Ryouma]

“Fina! What are you doing!” [Jane]

“Ah, sorry!” [Fina]

Oops. Talked a bit too much there… Even though she was supposed to be in the middle
of work.

“Sorry, Jane-san. I was the one who called her. Sorry to you too, Fina-san. Let’s talk
again later.” [Ryouma]

“Yes!” [Fina]

I parted with the two and went back to help disassemble the stage.

That night.

At the food court, after most of the belongings within the store and on the stage have
been put away, the same people from the previous social gathering were gathered.

“Boy, am I starving! Today, mom’s again g—!?” [Rick]

“Don’t say unnecessary things.” [Pauline]

Even the exchanges before the opening remarks were the same as last time. The party
began with everyone smiling.

Last time the food served were those that would be served in the stalls, but this time
around, we’re serving food that could be made from the leftover ingredients.

For example, Shelma-san cooked a hearty dish full of ingredients like the sausages
meant for our stall’s hot dogs or the vegetables meant for our stall’s stir-fried vegetables.

As for me, my contribution was Shio Yakisoba (Salt Fried Noodles).

I used the noodles and vegetables meant for Reemiyen, and then turned the chicken
soup into a special sauce by adding the juice of lamon into it and seasoning it with salt
and pepper. I then fried everything on top of an iron plate I made using alchemy… A
‘JUU’ sound resounded as I cooked the dish and a fragrant aroma spread.

“Mmm! Smells great! I want a huge serving please!” [Maiya]

“Me too!” [Rick]

“Coming right up!” [Ryouma]

Their appetite stirred by the aroma, Maiya-san and Rick were the first to ask for a
serving, but they were most certainly not the last, as more and more people followed
suit.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting! Has everyone received their portion?” [Ryouma]

“There’s 7 more.” [Leelin]

“If you add us, that makes 10.” [Fei]

“Okay! In that case, I’ll cook it all at the same time.” [Ryouma]

I cooked the shio yakisoba (salt fried noodles) in front of the 10 people. Leelin-san and
Fei-san were helping with the guests, but I made sure to prepare their portion too. Of
course, I didn’t forget to cook enough for myself as well.
…Now then, I thinks it’s about time I ate too. But where to sit…

“Boss!” [Carm]

Oh, Carm-san is calling me. It seems he’s with Serge-san and Prenence-san. Let’s join
them.

“Welcome.” [Prenence]

“Over here.” [Serge]

“First, a toast. But with what?” [Carm]

“Let’s see…” [Ryouma]

There are children my age too, so we should probably keep it to barley tea.

“Otsukaresamadeshita, everyone. Cheers!” [Ryouma]

“Cheers!” [Everyone Else]

The aromatic barley tea invigoratingly passed through my throat, leaving me with a
pleasant feeling.

“Fuu… It’s only now that I can feel that the festival has finally ended…” [Ryouma]

“Indeed. But this is also a new beginning for us.” [Prenence]

“Oh, right. You’ll be traveling to another town soon.” [Ryouma]

“Yes. Tomorrow we will be departing for a town called Dovana. There’s another festival
there.” [Prenence]

So they leave as soon as the festival ends, huh? Must be difficult…

“It wasn’t that bad this time for us since everything was already prepared for us, from
the lodging to the venue.” [Prenence]

In order for them to make a living as traveling entertainers, they sometimes have to
leave on the very night a festival ends just so they could find a good spot in the next
town they’ll be performing at. Because of that there are times when they have to sleep
in their carriages if they can’t find an inn.

In that case, I wonder if it was really a good idea that I called them out here. Aren’t
they just being forced to attend this party?

“Please don’t worry. We have some room in our schedule. We can afford it. Besides,
thanks to our contract with the Morgan Company, we won’t be having as much
difficulty in securing a venue and a place to stay at.” [Prenence]

“As much as possible, we need to provide a good place for the troupe so that the
announcement of the music box goes well. As such, I’ve already contacted the branch
store and have asked them to secure a place.” [Serge]

“I see. So, that’s how it is.” [Ryouma]

“The music box we’ve prepared sold out too, so we should be able to expect much from
here on… And as far as things to look forward to go, there’s also the prospect of selling
this barely tea.” [Serge]

“Huh? Did Fina-san talk to you?” [Ryouma]

Carm-san was the one who answered my question.

“She dropped by my place earlier, asking about the demand and the prospects of
selling barley tea. She said you gave your permission. I don’t know what the people of
their village think, but from the looks of things, they’re intent on convincing them.”
[Carm]

I see.

“So, what do you think? The prospects, I mean.” [Ryouma]

“I think it’ll be a lot cheaper than black tea, which goes to say that the commoners will
be able to enjoy it. Considering the sales from the stalls, there’s more than enough
value in them to be sold in the store. At the very least, it shouldn’t net a loss. And
assuming we’ll be cooperating with the Saionji Company, although I’m a mere amateur
on matters regarding food products, I do believe this is a good business opportunity.”
[Carm]
“I agree. Although Carm isn’t certain about being able to work with the Saionji
Company, in my opinion, if it’s Pioro, there’s no way he’ll reject you. He’s not the sort
of man to throw away any potential food product that comes his way.” [Serge]

When the two of them said that, I heaved a sigh of relief.

“A drink sold at the corner of the festival will save a village that has been wandering
for a long time… Yes. I think I can make a song out of this.” [Prenence]

There was just one guy who was looking at something completely different. You’re
going to turn this into a song?

“Stories of someone or something being saved are always famous. That’s why many
people choose that as a topic since there’s a high probability that people will like it.
But making a beverage the hero… Now, that’s really putting a new spin on a known
formula, don’t you think? Would you mind if I wrote such a tale? With the barley tea
as the topic, I mean?” [Prenence]

Things sure have taken an odd turn. A story about barley tea? What do I say to this?

“As long as you don’t put my name on it, I suppose. And I’ll have to talk to Fina-san and
the others. They’re the ones who’ll be selling it after all. Them and their village.”
[Ryouma]

In the end, I decided to just delegate the issue.

“In that case, please excuse me.” [Prenence]

He stood up and immediately looked for them.

“He’s serious, huh… No. Maybe he’s drunk.” [Serge]

“He hasn’t drunk that much though.” [Ryouma]

“I say just let nature take its course.” [Carm]

I wonder what’ll happen in the end…

“Ryouma-kun” [Maiya]
“Ah, Maiya-san.” [Ryouma]

“It’s the last night, so how about you perform with us?” [Maiya]

Several of the people from the troupe were gathered at the area next to the stage.

The last, huh… Alright.

“Excuse me, I need to go.” [Ryouma]

“Do your best, Boss.” [Carm]

“Break a leg.” [Serge]

After that, I was able to show off the results of my training while being accompanied
by the sword dancers.

The song emphasized the pace, and everyone would clap every time I cut the firewood.

When the song ended, the crowd broke into applause.

I got carried away and ended up taking out my guitar and playing anime songs that
aired on Saturday mornings and Sunday evenings.

But by happily performing with everyone from the troupe, I was able to make some
memories with them before parting.
It has already been one month since the Founding Festival ended and the Semroid
Troupe left.

The festival was like a turning point of some sort, as the summer gradually grew hotter
this past month. When I went out to catch a slime to be donated to the church, I found
a slime that liked to eat wind mana and was able to make it evolve. All the while, I
never once slacked in my training.

Before I knew it, it has already been half a year since I parted with the members of the
duke’s family. When I showed my face to the adventurers guild, Wogan-san called me.

“Ryouma, you’ve been doing well lately. At one point, I thought you’d go and become a
merchant instead.” [Wogan]

“Ahaha… Well, I’m an easygoing guy.” [Ryouma]

“Well, when a man is put in a position over others, regardless of his natural
inclinations, he will have to carry some responsibilities and do some work… Anyway,
going back to the topic, are you free for 2 weeks starting next week?” [Wogan]

I have plenty of waterproof cloth stocked up and I don’t have any work that needs to
be done soon.

“Yeah, I should be free.” [Ryouma]

“I see. In that case, there’s a job I’d like you to take. It’s just a gathering job, but because
of the amount, as much as possible, I’d like someone who can use dimension magic to
participate. If you could accept the job as a transporter, it would be a huge help. Also,
one of the monsters you want to fight will be making an appearance at the gathering
point.” [Wogan]

“Really?” [Ryouma]
“Yeah, the enemies will be treants. The material to be gathered will also be taken from
them.” [Wogan]

A treant!

Treants are plant type monsters that take on the appearance of a tree. They hide
among trees and attack people and other monsters. There’s a lot of them living at the
Great Shurus Forest. They’re a dangerous breed of monsters that specialize in mimicry
and surprise attacks.

“I will be briefing the other members for a more detailed explanation, so if you feel
like you’re up for it, drop by the guild again tomorrow afternoon. If you decide to take
the job, you can register then.” [Wogan]

“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” [Ryouma]

“Yeah. Take care.” [Wogan]

Having decided that, I had to inform the others that I would be going out.

The next day.

As promised, I dropped by the guild and was brought to a room, where Miya-san was.

“Nyaa? Ryouma, you were called too, nyaa?” [Miya]

“They wanted someone who could use dimension magic.” [Ryouma]

“We’re bringing back that much, nyaa? What in nyaa world are they building, nyaa?”
[Miya]

“Who knows?” [Ryouma]

We chatted idly like that while waiting, and then Wereanna-san’s group came with
Raypin-san. Asagi-san came too. The last one to arrive was Wogan-san, who then
briefed us on the job.

“…And that’s how it is.” [Wogan]

To give a short summary of what he explained to us, the objective of the job is to secure
lumber. To that end, it would be best to hunt the treant and bring their lumber back.
We need to bring back at least 300 treants worth of lumber, and any extra will be
compensated for properly.

I don’t know how big a treant is, so I can’t say exactly just how much lumber 300
treants is equivalent to. Regardless, I’m sure it’s a lot. Now I can understand why they
wanted mages that could use dimension magic like me and Raypin-san to come.

The team will be departing in two days.

I don’t see any issues, so I think I’ll participate. Everyone else also looked like they were
planning to join.

After the job application was concluded, Wereanna-san suddenly asked this.

“What are all these treant lumber going to be used for?” [Wereanna]

“Ahh… You’re aware that the population of this town is decreasing, right?” [Wogan]

“Well, yeah. After all, one of the mines was mined out. Even if it’s just one mine, there
should be a significant number of people who lost their job.” [Wereanna]

“The head of the previous office wasn’t so enthusiastic in that regard. Meanwhile, the
newly appoint head – although he’s yet to do anything – is actually quite enthusiastic.
Population growth, profit increase, and the improvement of the city environment. In
other words, he has a lot in mind.

The job this time is because the proposal of the staff has been accepted, and now, they
want to create a product that will garner fame and gather people… Unfortunately, this
town doesn’t have anything other than mines and iron.” [Wogan]

Wouldn’t the place where the rimel birds are often sighted serve as a decent tourist
attraction?

“Someone proposed that too, but the rimel birds show up around the same time when
the grell frogs are being hunted, so they can’t be used to attract tourists. Stopping the
grellfrog hunting would cause the profit from that to vanish, so that’s no good either.
Besides, the rimel birds aren’t around all the time, and what the public office wants to
is a famed product that’s available all year round.” [Wogan]
Huh… I’m pretty sure developing a town isn’t that easy. I don’t know much about it
myself, but isn’t it fine as long as you have something you can sell? There’s no need to
be picky, right? Just make the most of whatever advantages you already have. Kind of
like the festival… Yeah. Isn’t that good enough?

“Isn’t it fine even if it’s not all year round? You could treat it like a seasonal event.”
[Ryouma]

“Seasonal events are nice and all, but this is a mining town. When the mines are mined
out and there’s no fixed income, the only source of income will be those seasonal
events. As such, the bigwigs want something that could be sold all-year-round.” [Wogan]

Ah, I see… Now that he mentions it, he’s exactly right.

“Well, it’s not like I don’t understand where you’re coming from. The situation isn’t
that bad just yet, so I also think it would be fine if we gradually worked at it… But,
anyway, that’s how the discussion of the bigwigs went and now they want to build a
tourist town beyond the southern gate. At the center of which, they will be building
their new attraction, the Fighting Arena.

Along with that, they will also be building inns to accommodate the participants and
the spectators, as well as other facilities. The main point is to make money by selling
tickets and getting people to gamble. It will take a lot of money until everything is
completed, but the profit to be made afterwards is equally big.” [Wogan]

“A fighting arena and a gambling system, de gozaru? I’m sure that’ll bring a lot of money,
but the public order is sure to suffer, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

Indeed. I can easily imagine all the thugs going around.

“And that’s why it has to be a new town. The arena, the inns the participants and the
guests will be staying at… Everything is to be made at the new town. This town will
continue as it’s always been and remain a mining town. The management will just be
managing both this and that town, so you can just consider it as a new town.

The funds allocated to public order will also be greatly increased, so there will be
many more guards than before. The gambling will be managed by the town and
supervised throughly.

And – this is directly related to Wereanna’s question – but the construction of the arena
has been entrusted to Perdre Bekentein.” [Wogan]

Everyone else other than me was shocked when he said that. Is he famous?

“Who is he?” [Ryouma]

“Mu, Ryouma, you don’t know, de aru? He is the second son of the Household of
Viscount Bekentein. Supposedly, he should be assisting his older brother in managing
their territory, but he has instead chosen to devote his life to his work as an architect,
de aru.” [Raypin]

“He is a celebrity among architects and is so renowned for his genius that it is said
there are none who could match him, but at the same time, he is also renowned for his
weird behavior.” [Syria]

A deep person… In more sense than one.

“Apparently, when they consulted him, he was able to suddenly come up with a good
idea, so he accepted the job right there and then. But when he accepted the job, he
demanded this one condition: ‘I want all the important parts of the arena to be built
with treant lumber! I will not build it unless it’s with treant lumber!’ Or so the story
goes. And that’s why we want to start gathering treant lumber as early as now.” [Wogan]

Is this the so-called loneliness of an artist? I asked around a bit, and it turns out that
while Treant Lumber certainly has its place in buildings, it’s usually used for the staves
of mages and isn’t really a known material for buildings.

But Perdre Bekentein is a renowned architect so skilled that a little unreasonable

demand like this would apparently be forgiven. They do say he’s an unparalleled genius.

While I was thinking that, the briefing ended and I left the area.

On the day of departure.

I’ve been preparing all this time, but technically, all I really did was move the stuff
inside my Dimension Home to the storage in the abandoned mine, closed the entrance
with earth magic, and then prepared some countermeasures for thieves.
That and I also finally tried expanding my Dimension Home just as Sebasu-san taught
me.

Each time I did it, I felt the burden on me increase, but by relying on my great mana
reserves and training, I was able to expand my dimension home to the same size as
the first floor of the employee dormitory at my store. I don’t know how big a treant is,
but I’m sure this much space should be able to accommodate a respectable amount.

While I was thinking stuff like that, I was still at the southern gate of Gimuru… I’m not
being idle. I’m just waiting for the others.

“Are they not coming yet?” [Ryouma]

When I looked around me, there was no one around. While I was wondering that to
myself and looking around, I saw Raypin-san and Asagi-san walking from the distance.

“Good morning! Raypin-san, Asagi-san.” [Ryouma]

“Good morning, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Good morning, RYouma. Are you doingg well today, de gozaru?” [Asagi]

“I’m doing fine. Thank you.” [Ryouma]

After that we rendezvoused with Miya-san and the others, and rode on the carriage
and two horses provided by the guild master. After receiving our food supplies, we set
off on our journey. Incidentally, the carriage was meant for transporting goods, so it
was Mizelia-san who drove it.

The southern part of Gimuru was full of trees, so as we swayed inside the carriage, the
scenery passing as by painted a tranquil scene.

During that time we discussed our plans with our leader, Asagi-san.

“Inside the forest, Miya, Wereanna, and I will be the ones to fight the treants. Raypin
and Ryouma will be responsible for transporting the defeated treants. On top of that,
Raypin will also be in charge of searching for the treants, while Ryouma will be his
escort. Is that clear, de gozaru?” [Asagi]

We all nodded to show our agreement. Although that was the gist of it, it didn’t mean
I wouldn’t be fighting at all. Everyone already knows that I’m participating to gain
experience fighting treants, so they will also be providing me opportunities to
accomplish that.

After that we also discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the treant with the monster
specialist, Raypin-san.

From him I found out that since treants attack by moving their branches, we have to
watch out for attacks coming from above. As for the weakness of the treants,
apparently there’s a lump on their body that looks like the face of a person. If you
damage the area surrounding that lump or detach or break the part under it, you’ll be
able to kill them. This time, though, our objective is to gather treant lumber, so we have
to minimize damage as much as possible.

Although it wasn’t necessary to focus on not damaging it so much, it was important to

keep it in mind.

We will also have to pay attention in case there’s an advanced treant variant. Higher
treant variants move slower, but their branches are thicker, so they resulting force is
also greater. Moreover, because they can also use wood magic, they’re a huge pain to
deal with for the advance guard when they extend their branches and their vines.

Also, the only way to tell the difference between treants and normal trees is by sensing
the trace of mana on them. Other than the face-like lump on them, they’re not any
different from normal trees. And with the lumps sometimes being at a blind corner,
it’s very difficult to tell them apart just by looking at them. On the other hand, if you
can easily sense their magic, then distinguishing them is a trivial task.

Lastly, and I’m digressing here a bit, but apparently, they can walk. They move slower
than slimes, but they can uproot themselves and walk.

It sure is a bit hard to imagine trees walking on their own volition, though. I mean that
just goes beyond common sense.

In the first place, just what are monsters?

“Monsters, de aru?” [Raypin]

After our discussion concluded, I asked Raypin-san that question and as it turns out,
monsters are beasts, plants, and other natural things that that mutate due to mana.
Using treants as an example, treants are trees that absorbed mana and became a
monster. If monsterification is a mutation caused by the absorption of mana, then I
can come to terms with trees being a monster.

Come to think of it, Pauline-san did mention monsterification to me before… That time
too she was talking about plants.

“Are humans not affected?” [Ryouma]

“Although there are cases wherein one absorbs too much mana and ends up in a state
called Mana Intoxication, there are rarely any cases wherein so much mana accumulated
in a human that it caused a mutation, de aru.” [Raypin]

Humans know by instinct to protect themselves, so they would usually involuntarily

release mana. As such, no such mutations occur among humans.

I asked him about mana intoxication, and apparently, it’s not an easy state for humans
with huge mana reserves to find themselves in, and even for normal people, it usually
only happens when they use too much magic stones or mana potions or eat too much
monster meat.

Raypin-san also says that most of an organism’s mana lies in their blood, so there’s
actually no need to be that concerned about eating meat. The symptoms from mana
intoxication are mild, so catching it from eating monster meat is a very rare case that
one could only blame to bad luck. It was a topic that was apparently so trivial that
Raypin-san could laugh while talking about it.

While we talked like that, we leisurely proceeded even as we paid attention to our
surroundings.

Raypin-san also said that there were no monsters near Gimuru that would attack a
carriage with 7 adventurers inside. Just as he said, not a single monster attacked us as
we left town.

I talked a lot with Raypin-san about monsters and slimes while we traveled. With
Mizelia-san, I talked about all the places they’ve visited, and with Asagi-san, I talked
to him about miso and soy sauce.

“Miso Soup… That sure is nostalgic… Who would’ve thought that you could get miso
soup and soy sauce from Renauph… Thank you for telling me, de gozaru.” [Asagi]
“If you’d like, I could make some miso soup for supper tonight. I have the ingredients
for it.” [Ryouma]

“Really!? By all means, please, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

And just like that, I was put in charge of our supper.

Inside Raypin-san’s dimension home, I brought out miso soup, meat and potato stew,
and rice.

Everyone enjoyed the food, but Asagi-san was so moved by the miso soup that he shed
tears of joy.

“Asagi, you haven’t been back to your village for a long time now, huh?” [Wereanna]

“Umu. My village is in an island far far away. It’s not easy to go back, de gozaru. Besides,
at the dojo where I studied the way of the sword, we are basically kicked off the island
and told to become an adventurer, de gozaru. And we can’t return unless 50 years have
passed or we become an S-Ranker, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

“50 years? Why so long?” [Wereanna]

“Apparently, the ancestor who founded our dojo traveled the world for years, de
gozaru. One could sharpen his sword or broaden his perspective. Either way, our
discipline demands that we survive the outside world. It is our training, de gozaru.
After all, there are strong monsters and all sorts of people here that can’t be found in
the island, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

“Is your island well protected? Won’t they be troubled if someone strong leaves for 50
years and doesn’t come back?” [Syria]

“Rest assured. The only ones sent out on a journey are those seeking to master the
sword, de gozaru. Those who learn swords for self-defense, those who defend the
village, those who are practicing at the dojo, the masters of the dojo. There are many
capable people among those staying at the village, so there’s nothing to worry about,
de gozaru.” [Asagi]

We talked like this over supper, and then when it was time to sleep, we all started
preparing our sleeping bags.
I have to say, though, this place sure is big…

“There was a time when I couldn’t go back for a long time because of my research. So
in order to fit my Dimension Home with my research material and all my furniture
plus my monster specimen, I kept on expanding my dimension home.

Nowadays, though, I rarely leave Gimuru, so I usually leave most of my luggage at

home. Because of the job this time, I had to take out even more stuff, de aru.” [Raypin]

I don’t know what to say about expanding his dimension home being quicker than just
cleaning up, but… The result sure is amazing. There’s nothing here, so it feels even
bigger than it is. It’s easily twice as big as my dimension home. I have to keep working
hard.

After my sleeping bag was ready, there was nothing left to do, so I went to sleep.

I quickly slept and the day after, we departed on sunrise.

While Ryouma was traveling on a carriage, a class was being held in the academy at
the imperial capital.

“Let’s begin the class. First—”

The teacher uninterestedly read the contents of the textbook. It was a simple boring
class and the students quietly listened. Among the crowd of students was a girl. It was
Elialia.

She corrected her posture and watched the teacher on the podium while doing her
best to endure the boredom.

When the morning classes ended, she stood up from her chair and went to the magic
training area at the corner of the campus. The students were free to use the facility for
their own personal training, but it was a rare sight to see anyone use it other than
during class hours. In other words, it wasn’t a popular place.

Elialia sat herself on a bench at the corner of that training facility and started eating
her packed lunch. When lunch time ended, she started practicing her magic. When
afternoon classes end, she would go back to her dorm room.

It has already been one month since she entered school, but this was usually how her
days went.

“Fuu…” [Elia]

Elia stopped casting magic and sighed.

(It’s only been a month, but I can’t stand how boring it is anymore… I didn’t think the
classes would be this boring…)

From the first year to the third year, various foundational and cultural subjects are
studied. From the fourth year to the sixth year, the focus shifts onto specialized subjects.
And after graduation, each student would enter apprenticeship or training
corresponding to the course they wish to take in life.

The subjects Elia were studying were the most basic of basics. Basic history of the
country and geography, math, magic, and swordsmanship training mostly meant to
build the body. All of these first-year subjects are learned by nobles before entering
the school.

Because of that the classes were too simple for Elia and she found no sense of
accomplishment even though her grades were good. On top of that, there were nearly
40 students in a class, but there was no one who tried to talk to her. Of course, they
weren’t ignoring her or bullying her, it was just that the commoner students and the
nobles were too scared of her great magic prowess and her status as the duke’s
daughter, so they avoided involving themselves with her more than what was needed.

Elia herself felt like they were avoiding her, so she didn’t bother to try to mingle with
them either. Although there were people that she was incompatible with personality-
wise, but if she were to try and forcefully mingle with others, even if they were scared,
they wouldn’t be able to refuse her. She didn’t want a relationship like that.

As a result, despite having already spent one month in school, she still had no friends.
She spent her days at the school passing the boring hours while enduring the loneliness.

“I knew it before enrolling, but… Sigh…” [Elia]

When she sighed for the second time, a voice suddenly called out to her.

“What’s the matter? Ojou-san.” [???]

“Huh!?”

Elialia didn’t know that a person had come, but before she knew it, there was a girl
behind her.

“Oh, my… You’re Count Willdan’s…” [Elia]

When Elia turned around, the person behind her was shocked, but she bowed her
head nevertheless.

“Excuse me. I am the oldest daughter of Count Willdan, Michelle. I couldn’t tell it was
the daughter of the Jamil family from behind. Please forgive my rudeness.” [Michelle]

She was Michelle Willdan. Although she was the daughter of the count, she had little
of the feminity one would expect from a female student. Her hair was cut short, so that
it wouldn’t touch her shoulders. For her bottoms, she wore a pair of men’s pants and
for her top she wore a shirt for women. Her personal effects focused on practicality
rather than looks and she carried with her a plain large black bag. With her
androgynous face, it looked like she was trying to disguise herself as a man.

“By all means, you weren’t being rude. Differences in social status are irrelevant here.
And I didn’t notice you myself.” [Elialia]

Students of this school, regardless of being commoners or nobles, are required to wear
their uniform in order to avoid making them conscious of their difference in status.
There were no stipulations on accessories, however.

Because of that nobles intentionally wore golden hair ornaments, bracelets studded
with jewels, or other expensive accessory in order to show off their status. The luxury
of their accessories was also a way for them to display the wealth of their family.

But Elia hadn’t worn any such accessories. Although that was in the spirit of the
school’s ideals, to Michelle, the lack of accessory meant that she was a commoner
female student.

“Thank you very much.” [Michelle]

“…Can I call you, Michelle-san?” [Elia]

After saying that, Elia didn’t feel that Michelle was avoiding her. Considering what she
was thinking about just now, Elia decided to try and strike up a conversation.

“But of course, ojousama.” [Michelle]

“Please call me Elia. As I’ve said before, social status doesn’t matter here.” [Elia]

As she said that, Michelle smiled again and answered Elia.

“…Fufu. In that case, I’ll call you Elia. I’d also prefer it if we could drop the formalities.
It’s exhausting.” [Michelle]
“I don’t mind. I prefer it that way myself.” [Elia]

“I see. By the way, as I was asking earlier, is something the matter?” [Michelle]

“No, I don’t have any problems in particular. It’s just that the classes of this school are
a bit…” [Elia]

“Ahh… Yes, I share your sentiments. I myself am just pretending to be taking classes
and just doing my best not to get caught up in some weird faction. Because of that I
don’t get to talk to people much during break time.” [Michelle]

“Oh, my. You too? I thought for sure you’d be popular…” [Elia]

Michelle laughed again when she heard that.

“Ha ha, that was true at first. There were girls who mistook me for a guy and embraced
me, but as soon as I told her that I was just wearing these clothes because they’re
convenient and that I wasn’t a man, most of them left. And I’m not that sociable too.
It’s troubling, so sometimes I avoid others too.” [Michelle]

“Really? So is that why you’re here?” [Elia]

“Ah, today is different. Today I’m here to experiment with this.”

As Michelle said that, she took out a paper from her bag.

As Michelle said that, she took out a paper from her bag. On that paper was a magic
formation draft drawn with a pencil.

“A magic formation… Are you an alchemist?” [Elia]

Michelle went wide-eyed when she said that, but she quickly smiled again and said.

“Unfortunately, I’m not an alchemist. I’m merely studying magic formations.” [Michelle]

“Magic Formations, huh.” [Elia]

Magic Formation is a minor field that originates from the magic formations of alchemy,
which would emit light when mana was coursed through them. Why do magic
formations give that reaction? Can that reaction be used for anything? The field of
Magic Formation is one that seeks to answer such questions.

After being explained that, Elia looked at the magic formation drawn upon the paper
with deep interest.

“So there was a field of study like that, huh.” [Elia]

“It branched out from alchemy and hasn’t achieved any major results, so it’s becoming
less and less popular. The reason I came to this school is because I heard that there’s
a teacher who teaches the subject here. Unfortunately, it seems the teacher in question
retired last year. Now, I have no choice but to learn by myself. I have too much time on
my hands.” [Michelle]

“Really?” [Elia]

“Really. By the way, Elia.” [Michelle]

“What is it?” [Elia]

“I’m surprised you knew that alchemy uses magic formations. Even though there’s so
many rumors flying around that says that alchemy needs medicinal ingredients or
sacrifices to be used. You also don’t seem to have a bad opinion of alchemy.” [Michelle]

When Michelle said, Elia realized that she’d slipped. Michelle seemed to have picked
up on that as she immediately added.

“I’m not prejudiced against alchemy or anything. If anything, I’m interested in it.”
[Michelle]

“Interested?” [Elia]

“Magic Formations originated from the magic formations used by alchemy, so I’m also
interested in it. I don’t think it’s weird. I mean it is the origin of my field. Of course, I
hate the frauds that give a bad name to alchemy, but it’s not like all alchemists are
frauds. There are also real alchemists in this world, who continue to research their
field, hoping to bring out results, just like magic formation scholars. At least, that’s
what I think.” [Michelle]

Elia was relieved when she heard that.

“I see.” [Elia]

“If possible, I’d appreciate it if you could teach me alchemy.” [Michelle]

But Elia wasn’t an alchemist. Although she may have gained some knowledge from
being acquainted with Ryouma, she wasn’t skilled enough to teach others. And even if
Michelle might not be prejudiced, Elia couldn’t help but hesitate to introduce Ryouma
when this was their first time meeting.

“Unfortunately, while I have met an alchemist in the past, I don’t study the subject
myself.” [Elia]

Naturally, Elia refused her. Michelle didn’t continue to pester her after that, and
meekly backed off and prepared to perform her experiment.

She placed the paper from before on the ground and took out a pink-colored powder
from her bag and started mixing it with ink.

“Michelle-san. What is that?” [Elia]

“It’s ink. Just ink. The powder is made from crushing fire and neutral magic stones and
mixing them together. The formations used in Magic Formation is different from the
ones used in Alchemy. Mana can’t course through them with just the magic formation
alone. That’s why I have to mix the ink with powdered magic stone and then write the
magic formation with it.” [Michelle]

“Will something change if you do that?” [Elia]

“All I know is that the effect changes according the attribute of the magic stone mixed
with the ink and the power changes according to the ratio of magic stone.

For example, if you draw a formation using ink mixed with fire-type magic stone and
course mana through it, you can create fire. The strength of the fire can be regulated
through the ratio of magic stone in the ink and the fire itself can be controlled through
the formation.

You can’t just draw the formation any order you want either. First, you have to draw a
circle and then inside it draw the pattern. This part I don’t understand very well.”
[Michelle]
“What do you mean?” [Elia]

“The efficiency varies according to the pattern drawn inside. But I don’t know which
pattern is most efficient. Because of that I have no choice but to draw all sorts of
patterns to try them out and figure out which one fits for what purpose and which one
is most efficient. Thanks to that, though, I need a lot of money to be able to purchase
all the magic stones I need. Which consequently results in my research not
progressing all that much.” [Michelle]

“I see… Michelle-san, why are you researching this?” [Elia]

“Because it’s fun. A subject not researched by many and hasn’t advanced as a result.
Another way to put it is that there’s still a lot more to be discovered. I want to discover
those things and find out if they can be useful.

Besides, I’m the daughter of a count, and the household of Willdan has always been a
line of researchers, so my family is supportive. ‘If there’s something you want to
research, then go ahead and research it,’ is what they told me. And they even gave me
funds to help advance my research.” [Michelle]

As Michelle said that, Elia couldn’t help but think that she resembled Ryouma to some
extent. Michelle drew the formation with the ink she mixed and then said.

“I don’t know what reaction will come of this, so please keep your distance.” [Michelle]

Elia immediately moved away from the formation. Seeing that, Michelle sent her mana
coursing through the formation, causing a red light to illuminate.

When Michelle saw that, she quickly ran away from the formation, and 5 seconds
later… A small fire ball flew out of the formation, shooting itself above the formation
and giving rise to a sound akin to that of a firecracker.

“Kyaa!?” [Elia and ???]

“Ho, ho… So, this is the kind of a reaction this one makes… Hmm?” [Michelle]

At first, Michelle was preoccupied with the reaction of the formation, but then she
realized that there were two voices that cried out, so she turned around. When she
did, she noted that the owner of the voice was a female student from the fox tribe who
had entered the training facility.
“It seems I startled you. Sorry about that.” [Michelle]

“It’s fine. This is a training area, after all. So, it’s a given that there would be loud noises
here. If anything I should be apologizing for intruding.” [???]

“Please don’t. It’s nothing like that. You’re Miyabi-san, yes?” [Michelle]

“We’re in the same class, right?” [Elia]

“It’s an honor to have the daughter of the Willdan family and the daughter of the Jamil
family remember me.” [Miyabi]

Miyabi answered formally just as one would expect when one spoke toward nobles.

“There’s no need to be so formal. Will you be training here?” [Michelle]

“Actually, I came here to pass a message to the daughter of the Jamil family.” [Miybabi]

“To me?” [Elia]

“Yes. An acquaintance entrusted me with a message. So, I thought I’d call out to you
today.” [Miyabi]

Rumors might spread if others found out that it was a man who entrusted Miyabi with
a message, so in order to avoid that, she took her time this past month, looking for a
time when she could talk to her alone. One month after enrollment, she came to the
training facility where Elia always went alone, but for some reason, Michelle was here
today, so she was actually panicking a little inside. Still, she was calm enough to be
able to answer.

“A message for me?” [Elia]

“Yes. Does the name ‘Ryouma’ ring any bells to you?” [Miyabi]

“From Ryouma-san!?” [Elia]

Ryouma hoped to give an opportunity for Elia and her to be friends, but whether they
really became friends or not, whether they got along and got to know each other or
not, was still something that depended on the both of them. Because of that, although
Ryouma did try to give them an opportunity to be friends, he didn’t say anything to
her. They have a common acquaintance, so it’s not like they won’t have anything to
talk about.

But another reason why Ryouma didn’t tell her was because he wanted to surprise
her. So, yes, there was indeed a little bit of impishness regarding why Ryouma hadn’t
said anything to her.

“So, you do know him.” [Miyabi]

“Yes, but how do you know him?” [Elia]

“I got acquainted with him through my dad. When I told him that I’d be going to the
academy, he asked me to pass you a message.” [Miyabi]

“I see…” [Elia]

It was then that Michelle joined the conversation.

“Is that an acquaintance of yours, Elia? That Ryouma guy.” [Michelle]

“Yes. He’s a bit weird, but he’s my friend.” [Elia]

“Well, you’re not wrong. He’s definitely not normal.” [Miyabi]

“Oh~” [Michelle]

When Miyabi heard Elia say that, she muttered that out. And when Michelle heard that
Ryouma was a strange guy, she couldn’t help but become interested.

“So, what did Ryouma say?” [Elia]

“‘Do your best’. He seemed worried about you.” [Miyabi]

Although it was only a few words, Elia could understand Ryouma’s feelings from them.

There was no reason to ask another person to pass on such few words. He could have
just written a letter. So, he must’ve remembered that Elia told him she had ‘no friends’
before they parted, and this was his way of helping her meet Miyabi. At the very least,
this was Elia’s conclusion.
“Thank you very much. I have indeed received his words. And, Miyabi-san… Meeting
like this must be some sort of fate. If you’d like, won’t you be friends with me?” [Elia]

“Are you sure? I don’t know if someone like me is worth being told that.” [Miyabi]

“Social standings don’t matter at a place like this. And besides, it’s too lonely to spend
the rest of my days at school without any friends.” [Elia]

“In that case, please take care of me.” [Miyabi]

“Can I join you ladies too? I don’t have many friends myself.” [Michelle]

Miyabi accepted Elia’s offer with a smile. And Michelle joined in as well.

Like this the three girls were able to meet and after shaking hands, their lunch break
ended.

When they got back to the classroom, they had to endure the boredom of the afternoon
classes again.

But on that day alone, they might have enjoyed themselves more than usual.
After school the three girls talked idly at a corner of the courtyard.

When lunch had ended and they had to return to their classroom, they took the
opportunity to get to know each other along the way.

After having gotten to know each other to some extent, Michelle proposed this.

“Hey, do you guys want to group up for training?” [Michelle]

At this school, the students had to form groups of 5 to 6 people for magic and sword
training.

But because of personality issues, differences in perspectives, people with no sense of

competitiveness, and nobles who did not want to be treated as equals with
commoners, the grouping has been left to the students.

Nobles would group up with other nobles. Commoners would group up with other
commoners. And even if some students didn’t follow that, they would still only form
groups with those they acknowledged. Doing things that way minimized the odds of
problems occurring or the group breaking up.

But in the instance where there are still students with no groups left and the time
given has already passed, the leftover students will be made to form a group
regardless of social standing and/or add them into an existing group that lacks
numbers. In those cases, the social standing of the students aren’t taken into
consideration. After all, the school has always remained steadfast on their policy not
to discriminate students by their social status.

But in that case, it’s not hard to imagine that the students forcefully grouped together
might end up with a terrible experience. If two ruffians were to be put in the same
group, then the only thing the people within the group could do would be to pray they
got along.
Although Elia and Michelle would by no means be treated coldly, if there was someone
they got along well, it would of course still be best to form a group with such people.
That’s why Michelle suggested to group up, and Elia and Miyabi also agreed.

“But in that case, we’ll need two to three more people. After all, the groups need to be
5 to 6 people each.” [Elia]

“That’s right. If we don’t fill the whole group up, the students without a group will be
pushed into ours.” [Michelle]

“Do the two of you know anyone who doesn’t care about status and doesn’t have a bad
personality?” [Miyabi]

“I can think of one such person.” [Michelle]

“Who?” [Elia]

“Riera Clifford. The eldest daughter of Baron Clifford.” [Michelle]

“Baron Clifford… If I recall correctly, he used to be a knight, but was promoted due to
his achievements. The Clifford family is known for producing brilliant knights every
generation.” [Miyabi]

“Exactly. Although she’s a little proud and fussy about rules, she’s not the sort of
person to look down on other people because of their social standing and will
acknowledge others if they have the skill. She treats every student equally.” [Michelle]

“She certainly fits the bill. Are you acquainted with her?” [Elia]

“There was a time when we met frequently. But then I became busy with my studies
and my hobby research, while Riera was busy with her training, so we were no longer
able to meet as frequently.” [Michelle]

It was in this way that the three of them decided to invite Riera Clifford to their group.

The three girls headed to the training area for swordsmen.

When they arrived, Michelle pointed to a corner of the training area.

“She’s over there. Let’s go.” [Michelle]

At the place Michelle pointed at was a girl who’d tied her hair into a bundle behind her
and was completely focused on swinging her sword. There was a dignified atmosphere
about her.

She was tall for her age and her face stood out from the crowd as she was quite the
beauty.

Although there were a lot of male students watching her from a distance, Michelle
called out to her.

“Riera, can you spare me a minute?” [Michelle]

“Michelle? What’s the matter? And those girls are…” [Riera]

“W-What’s with that guy?” [Male Student 1]

“He actually has two girls with him…” [Male Student 2]

“And yet he’s still calling out to Clifford-san?” [Male Student 3]

“Such a daring guy despite his frail body.” [Male Student 4]

“He’s like a woman. Ah, wait a moment. When you look at his face… Huh? Is that a guy?”
[Male Student 5]

“Could he be a girl… Hmm?” [Male student 6]

“…Anyway, let’s find some place to sit and talk.” [Michelle]

Under the impolite gaze of so many and being the object of misunderstanding,
Michelle took Riera and brought her out of the training area. Elia and Miyabi followed
them to an unpopular resting area.

They sat themselves on the benches and explained the situation that led them to find
her.

“I see. So you came to invite me? Thank you. I would love to join your group of three.”
[Riera]

“Really?” [Elia]
“That’s great!” [Michelle]

Elia and Miyabi were elated, but Miyabi calmly asked Riera.

“Are you sure you’re okay with us? From what I’ve heard, you have the top grades in
swordsmanship and have been invited by several groups already.” [Miyabi]

“It’s true that I’ve been invited, but they’re all groups I can’t find myself liking. It’s
obvious they just want to use me as a tool to improve their grades. And there were so
many that didn’t even bother to hide their lewd stares… And besides, I can’t stand
people that look down and act against commoners. I don’t want to be friends with
those who mistakenly see their hubris as the pride of the nobles.” [Riera]

Riera wore her youth and her zeal on her chest as she said that. Although still a
student, her heart and mind were already that of a brilliant knight.

Like this Riera was able to join them. Unfortunately, they didn’t know who to invite
next.

“…I can’t think of anyone. I don’t know that many people.” [Riera]

“That’s because all you care about is your sword.” [Michelle]

“Isn’t the same true for you too, Michelle? All you care about is your studies. Although
it might only be your curiosity but you can’t really speak for others.” [Riera]

“True. But in that case, we’ll have no choice but to rely on Miyabi. Being an apprentice
merchant, I’m sure you know a lot of people, right?” [Michelle]

“Unfortunately, I don’t really know that many people either. It’s only been a month
since school opened, and if I have to limit it to only the students with a decent
personality that haven’t entered a group yet, the number quickly goes down. Besides,
we’re all girls, so the new member has to be a girl too, right?” [Miyabi]

“If possible, a girl would be best. Although a guy is fine too as long as he doesn’t look
at us he doesn’t give us weird looks.” [Riera]

“It’s because your figure is so good, Riera-san…” [Elia]

“Seriously, we were just on the same level before, so why is there suddenly such a big
difference between us? I can’t believe you’re so tight in all the right places too.” [Michelle]

“Where are you looking!?” [Riera]

“Hmm… Everything?” [Michelle]

“Don’t stare! We may be both girls, but it’s still embarrassing!” [Riera]

“Calm down, Riera-han. But in that case, I really don’t have that many candidates in
mind…” [Miyabi]

“But you do have some in mind, right?” [Elia]

“Yeah, but then the balance of the group will break. I have four people in mind who
can enter the group, but three of them are mages. If we go into combat practice now,
the only one among us who’ll be able to engage in close combat is Riera. If of those
three, two of them were to join, then our group will be composed of one swordsman
and 5 mages.” [Miyabi]

“Right, that would certainly ruin the team’s balance.” [Elia]

“I’m not particularly concerned about our grades, but there’s also some danger to
practical training…” [Michelle]

“It would be hard for me to defend 5 people. If we get surrounded, it’s over. The
teachers will be monitoring and supporting us during practical training, but it’s not
good to rely on them. If possible, it would be best to have one more member who can
fight in close combat.” [Riera]

“Unfortunately, while the last person I have in mind is not completely inept at fighting,
she specializes at stealth missions and the use of traps, so more of a scout and less of
a warrior… And speak of the devil, she’s here.” [Miyabi]

“UUu… I was rejected today too…” [???]

Elia and the others turned to where Miyabi was looking at, and there, a girl with dog
ears and short hair was sitting on a bench. Although her head was hung low, she gave
the impression of being a lively person.
“Is it her?” [Michelle]

“Her name is Kanan. A commoner. She’s skilled with her fingers and specializes in
making accessories and other devices… After the basic education, her plan for the
future is to become a craftsman.” [Miyabi]

“I see… So what do we do?” [Michelle]

“I have no complaints as long as her personality is fine. If she can’t fight, I’ll just do my
best to protect her.” [Riera]

“I’m okay with her too.” [Elia]

“In that case, I’ll call out to her. Wait here for a bit… Kanan-han, do you have a minute?”
[Miyabi]

“Huh!?” [Kanan]

When Miyabi called out to the girl who had her head down, her head suddenly sprung
up.

“Ah. You’re, Miyabi-san, right?… Do you need something from me?” [Kanan]

“I’m looking for members for our group, so I was wondering if you’d like to…” [Miyabi]

“Really!?” [Kanan]

The moment Miyabi mentioned the word, Kanan jumped up and took her hands, startling
her.

“Anyway, my other group members are here too, so let’s talk first.” [Miyabi]

“By all means please!” [Kanan]

Miyabi brought Kanan to where Elia and the others were. Kanan’s eyes were sparkling
as she introduced herself in a loud voice.

“I am Kanan Shuza! Please take care of me!” [Kanan]

Michelle seemed to have noticed something from her last name and said.
“Please take care of me too. There’s something bothering me, though. Your last name
is Shuza? Could it be you’re…” [Michelle]

The moment Michelle mentioned her last name, Kanan’s face grew cloudy, causing
Michelle to be unable to finish her sentence. But because Kanan could tell what she
wanted to ask, she answered her.

“Yes. It might sound arrogant to say so myself, but I am indeed from that famed magic
craftsman family of Shuza. Unfortunately, I’m no good as a magic tool craftsman, so
please don’t expect anything from me on that front.” [Kanan]

“No good?” [Michelle]

“Because I’m an enchanter that uses special enchantment.” [Kanan]

“I see…” [Michelle]

“Sorry, but can I ask you to explain that further?” [Riera]

Kanan, Michelle, and Miyabi seemed to understand, but Riera and Elia had no idea
what they were talking about.

Because of that Kanan had to explain enchantment magic.

“Since ancient times, Enchantment Magic has always been a branch of magic that only
those with born with a special body could use. It is said that only to those who have
inherited the lineage could use it.

Presently, with the increase of descendants, enchanters are being born throughout the
world, but from time to time, an enchanter is born with the same type of body as the
first and is capable of special enchantment.” [Kanan]

The person born with the constitution is unable to cast any magic other than
enchantment magic.

“But enchantment magic needs to be used alongside the spell one wishes to enchant
the object with, so since I can’t use any magic other than enchantment magic, I can’t
make a magic tool alone.” [Kanan]

“I see… Sorry for asking you something so sensitive.” [Riera]

“It’s alright! Since you need to decide whether you’ll be accepting me into your group
or not, it’s only natural to ask about it!” [Kanan]

There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in her as she said that so honestly. It’s true that in
practical training, which is still somewhat dangerous, one should say what one is
capable of and not, but just because one ‘should’ say it doesn’t mean that one should
so easily divulge information that could be disadvantageous to oneself. If it’s
something hard to say, then one could be equivocal about it, and a bad person could
just outright lie.

What Kanan was saying now was essentially her saying that she was incapable of such
things. Because of that the four girls looked upon her favorably.

“I think it’ll be fine if it’s her. What do you guys think?” [Riera]

“I agree.” [Michelle]

“I too would love to have her join us.” [Elia]

“In that case, we’re decided.” [Miyabi]

When Kanan heard that, her jaws dropped to the floor. And what came out of her wide-
opened mouth were a few words.

“…Huh? You’re accepting me? Me? I can’t use sword, you know? I can’ use magic too!”
[Kanan]

“We don’t mind that at all.” [Elia]

“Your abilities aren’t the important part.” [Michelle]

“If you can’t fight, I’ll just have to protect you.” [Riera]

“So join our group, Kanan-han. Of course, if you don’t want to, you can refuse…” [Miyabi]

“No way I’d refuse!! Thank you so much!! Groups have been rejecting me all this time,
so I was really worrying what to do!! Thank you so much for taking me in! I look
forward to working with you!!” [Kanan]
On that day, Kanan was able to avoid having a terrible school life from having a split
group. Although after this, when she finds out that the three girls other than Miyabi
were all nobles, two of which was the daughter of a count and the other the daughter
of a duke, she was so shocked she almost died, but let’s leave that story for another
time.

What’s important is that these girls were able to create friends they could talk with at
ease. Though quarrels might occur between them from time to time, there was no
denying that the school life of these girls have turned for the better.
It’s been three days since we left Gimuru.

I spent most of time taking care of our food and learning how to handle horses from
Miya-san and Mizelia-san.

When we left Gimuru, monsters like goblins attacked us many times, but Raypin-san
immediately dealt with them with his magic. Even when there were a lot of them, they
couldn’t reach us given that we had a carriage’s worth of first-rate adventurers.

There was little opportunity for me to fight, and with nothing to do, I had too much
time on my hands. So having heard that being able to drive carriages would prove
useful, I asked around and they happily taught me.

Because of that, for the first time in my life, both in this life and my previous life, I’m
learning how to drive a carriage.

“You’ve got most of the basics down. All that’s left now is for you to familiarize yourself
with it.” [Mizelia]

Nice. Mizelia-san, who was watching me from beside me, gave me her seal of approval.

“Thank you very much, Mizelia-san.” [Ryouma]

But I still can’t say that I’ve fully learned it just yet. If I don’t keep practicing after this
job is over, I’ll forget it again for sure. Should I buy a carriage when I get back?… But I
feel like I won’t have much opportunity to use it, so it feels like a waste. I’ll also be
needing a horse. Hmm… I better think it through first.

4 hours after that, the forest finally came to view.

Another 20 minutes later, we could see the gate of a town.

There will be a lot of pedestrian traffic from here on, so I switched seats with Mizelia-
san.

I leisurely watched the gate and the townscape, and as it turn out, this town is a lot
smaller than Gimuru. But it was still fairly lively. All the buildings in town were built
with wood and we often passed by carriages loaded with lumber. I wonder if this town
is thriving with forestry.

…While I was thinking to myself, we arrived at our inn. We had 3 men and 4 women
in our party, so we separated ourselves into two groups and checked in. After that we
gathered intel on recent treant sightings at the guild and prepared for tomorrow.

The next day.

“Are you ready, de gozaru?” [Asagi]

At Asagi-san’s voice, we all nodded and stepped into the forest.

At the lead were Miya-san and Mizelia-san. Next were Syria-san and Wereanna-san.
Then me and Raypin-san. And then at the rearmost was Asagi-san.

The forest was dimly lit and thick. If it were just that it would be no different from the
Forest of Gana, but something felt different. Somehow, the air felt stagnant, making
the place feel stuffy.

“Mu… There’s one already. Miya, there’s a tree a little thicker than the others 10 meters
ahead, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Is that the one, nyaa?” [Miya]

“Yes, de aru.” [Raypin]

Miya-san pointed to a tree and asked. The tree she pointed at was a needle-leaved tree
that had a trunk with a diameter of 30 to 40 centimetersand a height of about 4
meters. It really looked no different from the surrounding trees. It was a little bigger
than the other trees just as Raypin-san said, and I feel like the branches are longer too,
but unless you really pay attention to it, it’s not something you’d notice.
After Raypin-san confirmed the target and the others confirmed that there were no
other treants nearby, Mizelia-san and Miya-san took out their axes and approached
the tree. The enemy today is a treant, so the women have equipped themselves with a
nata hatchet and a small axe.

When they approached the tree, its branches suddenly bent and whipped at them
from above.

But they easily dodged them. It sure is surprising how those branches, which look so
hard, are able to move about so easily. They even tried to wrap themselves around
Mizelia-san after she dodged.

But Mizelia-san just cut them down with her axe. When the branches of the treant
drooped a little, its trunk tilted slowly.

“It’s okay now, nyaa!” [Miya]

“It’s dead.” [Mizelia]

As we approached the two girls waving at us, I noticed that Miya-san’s axe was stuck
to the treant.

I was standing at a shadow earlier, so I couldn’t see very well, but it seems she’d struck
the face-like lump of the treant with her axe. Its forehead had been cleanly cut in two.

“If you dodge the branches and hit it like this, you can kill it, nyaa.” [Miya]

“It’s fairly easy to defeat when alone, so next time, why don’t you give it a try yourself,
Ryouma-kun?” [Mizelia]

“Thank you very much…?” [Ryouma]

While I said that, I noticed that Raypin-san, who was beside the two girls giving me
advice, was making a difficult face.

“Raypin-san, what’s the matter?” [Ryouma]

“We found one too quickly, de aru. Treants are monsters that favor the darkness of the
deeper areas of the forest. It’s rare to find one near the entrance of the forest like this,
de aru.” [Raypin]
Now that he mentions it, there weren’t any reports of treants near the entrance of the
forest from the information of the guild.

“There might be a lot of treants deep inside.” [Mizelia]

“It could also just be a stray treant, but we better be careful, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

At that, we all became alert. As we cut off the branches of the subjugated treant, we
stored them in Raypin-san’s dimension home and we started walking again.

After walking for a while, we found another treant.

“Here’s one, de aru. Ryouma, give it a try, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Alright.” [Ryouma]

I stepped forward and drew my big iron slime katana. By the way, the sheathe is the
big metal slime. Thanks to the harden skill, the big iron slime katana is plenty durable
and sharp. They’ve already gotten used to transforming, themselves, so in the rare
instance where the katana is broken, they can just remake it instantly.

…Using my mana perception, I once again confirmed the target treant. I clad my body
and katana in ki and held my katana in the eight directions stance. This treant is
thinner than the previous treant. When I entered its attack range, its branches came
whipping at me from above.

As I dodged it, I got around to the right side, where I was able to see its lump that was
its weakness. Immediately, I swung down my katanas and scraped off the face of the
treant from the side.

The moment I cut out its face, the treant let out a groan, but it didn’t harm me in any
way. The cut off lump fell and hit the root of the treants, then it rolled to the ground.

It seems I was able to kill it with one stroke. As mana quickly left the treant, its
branches drooped and its trunk tilted just like the previous one did awhile ago.

“Doesn’t seem like there’s any problem, de aru.” [Raypin]

“We need a lot more, so let’s keep this up.” [Syria]

The dangerous part about treants is their ability to mimic other trees and attack by
surprise. Which goes to say that as long as you can spot them before entering their
attacking range, their threat level quickly plummets. For the mean time, it seems we
won’t be having any problems with dealing with them in one-on-one scenarios. I don’t
know how we’ll fare when fighting a forest of them, but we’re about to find out very
soon.

After that we continued to hunt treants inside the forest until it was afternoon. Around
the time when I had gotten the hang of fighting them, we found a forest of treants, so
we killed them all and retrieved their lumber.

When we counted our kills, we found out that we’ve already managed to hunt 147
treants. Originally, this part of the forest was supposed to be open and be a place for
people to rest at, but because there were so many treants, it looked like the forest was
merely continuing. This wasn’t in the report yesterday either.

“We still have time, so there’s no need to rush securing the treant lumber. Right now
I’m more concerned about the discrepancy between the report and the actual number
of treants here, de gozaru. We should report this to the guild as soon as possible…”
[Asagi]

There’s certainly a huge discrepancy. If you include everything we’ve hunted until
now, we’ve alerady gathered nearly 200 treants. Our minimum quota was about 300
treants, but now that we’ve gathered more than half of that so quickly, we decided to
go back to town for the time being.

When we reported the strange situation of the forest to the receptionist girl, erm…
woman would be better fit I suppose given she was a bit old… But anyway, she made
a mysterious face and said this.

“I see… Thank you very much. Actually, there were others who came before you who
reported that the forest was acting strange. We’re actually in the middle of sending
people deep into the forest to investigate.” [Receptionist Woman]

“I see. Do you have any idea what could be causing this outbreak, de aru?” [Raypin]

“There’s a possibility than an Elder Treant may have been born. Treants are always
being born at that forest, and once every few years to a decade or so, we get a report
of one being sighted.” [Receptionist Woman]

“So that really is the case… Would it be a problem if we entered the forest? Regulation-
wise, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Feel free to enter it as you please. There won’t be any problems so long as you’re A
Rank or B Rank.” [Receptionist Woman]

I’m an E Rank, but I’ll just keep quiet, I think. Besides, it doesn’t seem like she plans on
stopping just me from entering the forest. And as far as the woman was concerned,
since we were going to the forest anyway, we might as well take a subjugation job.

Adventurers could accept multiple jobs at the same time. Taking one job and then
another job on top of that that could be done within the vicinity of the first job to
increase one’s income is common among adventurers that have the effort to spare.

In this case, we can pick up a hunting job and be compensated for hunting the treants,
and at the same time, we can also collect them and bring them back to Gimuru with
us, allowing us to be paid a second time for a collection job. The only objective of the
job here is to defeat treants, while the objective of the job from Gimuru is to gather
treant lumber, so doing both at the same time won’t cost us any extra effort, while
giving us double benefits. We can complete the job if we just hunt treants like we did
today.

Like this we gathered information and also picked up a treant subjugation job.

The next time we enter the forest will be tomorrow, so I’m free until then.

“I don’t have any plans, so now I have a lot of free time on my hands.” [Ryouma]

It would be a waste to just kill time, so I entered my Dimension Home and trained with
the slimes.

Today I’ll be training the spear with the poison slimes.

As I set my mind on that, some 10 minutes later, an idea suddenly came to mind.
What would happen if I gave Melzen’s spear to the poison slime?

That spear rotting in my Item Box. It might be a bit heavy, but surely even the poison
slime should be able to use it as a spear. But I wonder if they could use it as a magic
weapon… I know now that when a slime evolves, it releases mana, but can it only
release mana during evolution? Or can they do it anytime they want?

Curious. I have to test it.

I called over a poison slime and ordered it to release mana. When I did, it readily
released mana. This might actually work!

Now that it’s come to this, I quickly took out Melzen’s Spear from my Item Box.

I ordered the poison slime to hold it and infuse it with its mana. The next moment, fire
shot out of the end of the spear.

“! It worked! Can you swing the spear?” [Ryouma]

The poison slime handled the spear in front of me. As expected, because the spear was
heavy, its movements were slower than usual, but… It can definitely use the spear. But
as the slime continued to show off its skill with the spear, it gradually grew slower and
slower.

“It’s tired? Normally, I can never notice it when they’re exhausted. Maybe it’s out of
mana?” [Ryouma]

I better put a stop to this.

But just as as I was thinking that. The poison slime dropped the spear and its body
shrunk.

“What happened!?” [Ryouma]

I ran over to the slime and examined it, but its life didn’t seem to be in danger. It was
still somewhat weakened, though. It’s now about half the size of a normal poison slime
and its movements are dull… For the meantime, I fed it poison-type mana while
looking after it.

“I doubt it’s because of the Shrink skill that it became smaller. After all, the poison
slime doesn’t know that skill.” [Ryouma]

I used monster identify on it, and just as I thought, it didn’t have the Shrink skill. Then
why? Is it because I made it use mana?… I can’t think of any other reason, but then
why would its body shrink when it uses mana?

“Body… Mana… Could it be, it used its own body?” [Ryouma]

I don’t have any proof, but is it possible that slime bodies are made out of mana? With
that I found an explanation on why the slime shrunk after using mana. I can’t think of
any reason other than that.

But mana is neither something that could be seen nor touched like a slime’s body. The
slime’s body being mana might be able to provide an explanation for the phenomenon,
but…

“…No. Let’s put this matter away for now.” [Ryouma]

For the meantime, I’ll just accept the hypothesis that slime bodies are made out of
mana. I’ll reconsider it after talking to Raypin-san.

When supper came, I asked Raypin-san, but he said he didn’t know either.

In the first place, there were barely anyone in the world who would give something as
expensive as a magic weapon to a slime, so actually, just the fact that the slimes could
even release mana was a shock to Raypin-san.

In the end, however, the conclusion he came to was that it was possible. Monsters
contained more mana within their bodies than normal animals, and even monsters
that couldn’t use magic were no exception. As such, the slimes being able to use mana
wasn’t anything surprising.

But the argument that the slime’s body itself is mana, which would be why they shrunk
after using mana, wouldn’t be able to hold for cases like the earth slime or the heal
slime since they always use mana but don’t shrink.

More research is needed…

The next day.

We’re hunting and gathering treants today too.

Still, there sure are a lot of treants. We’ve been taking turns taking breaks from hunting
from morning until noon, and we’ve already gathered approximately 600 treant
lumber.

“My Dimension Home is going to be full soon, de aru. I think we should end the day
soon, de aru, but what about you guys, de aru?” [Raypin]

We’ve already accomplished our goal and we still have time. No one disagreed, so we
decided to end our job for the day.

“! Ryouma! Look at that, de aru!” [Raypin]

While on our way out of the forest, Raypin-san suddenly pointed at the sky and yelled.

At the direction he pointed at was a small green ball floating between the trees. Is
that… A huge dandelion fluff on top of that thing? What is that?

“It’s a slime, de aru!” [Raypin]

“A slime!?” [Ryouma]

“The fluff slime possesses the ability to fly, de aru. I believe you don’t have this slime
among your ooze, right, de aru?” [Raypin]

“Yes. In fact, I never even knew about it. Can we catch it?” [Ryouma]

“A trivial task, de aru. ‘Pick Up'” [Raypin]

Raypin-san gazed at the slime above, stretched out his hand, and then chanted.
Suddenly, the slime that should have been floating in the sky appeared just some
distance away from his hands.

“What was that?” [Ryouma]

“A dimension spell that teleports the target near your hand. The condition is that you
need to be able to see the target. Also, it’s hard to aim, so it doesn’t have much use, but
depending on who or what you’re using it against, you can use it to catch something
without harming it at all. Which is why I use it to catch monsters for research, de aru.
I used the same spell to catch the grell frogs I needed for research, de aru.” [Raypin]

“I see.” [Ryouma]

Now that he mentions it, during the grell frog outbreak, he did mention catching them
with a spell. So this was the spell he used.

“Enough about the spell, hurry up and make a contract with it, de aru. This place isn’t
exactly safe, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Right.” [Ryouma]

I quickly formed a contract with the fluff slime in front of me.

It was just big enough to fit the palm of my hand.

After forming a contract with it, I stored it in my Dimension Home, and then I thanked
everyone for keeping watch for me. I might have walked a bit quicker than usual after
that.
 2

The sun still hadn’t set by the time we got back to town. I went straight back to our inn
and used Monster Identify on the Fluff Slime.

Fluff Slime
Skills
 Flight Lv1
 Accelerate Growth Lv5
 Lighten Lv10
 Photosynthesis Lv3
 Absorb Lv1
 Split Lv8

It has Photosynthesis, so I guess it doesn’t need Digest. The Absorb is probably for
water. As for the Flight, Accelerate Growth, and Lighten skills. They are skills I’m
seeing for the first time. And then there’s… Woah! The level of Split is so high! But
since the fluffy parts do stick like dandelion fluffs, does that mean it reproduces just
like dandelions do?

For the meantime, I decided to lift up the Fluff Slime and test its Lighten skill.

“!” [Ryouma]

The moment the skill was invoked, all the weight vanished from the slime and it
became light. Although, it was already lighter compared to the other slimes, it still had
some weight to it. But now, even that weight was gone.

It’s still the same size, though. I’m curious what’s going on with its physical mass, but
it seems the only thing it can lighten is its own body. Well, if it could affect other things
too, then someone should’ve long realized that it would be useful for carrying stuff.

Hmm… While the slime is under the effects of Lighten, the little wind I make from
moving my arms is enough to send it flying. This is probably the Flight skill… I feel like
it’s closer to floating rather than flying, but it can change its altitude by changing its
weight and/or the rate by which it gains or loses it. That being said, that doesn’t really
change the fact that it’s just relying on the wind to move it.
After observing it, I spoke to Raypin-san, and apparently, Fluff Slimes can ride on the
wind and reach distant places. It’s a monster that could be spotted pretty much
everywhere.

Just that there’s rarely ever a lot of them. The Split level is so high, though, so why?

When I asked that, the Fluff Slimes do spread just like dandelion fluff when splitting,
but not all of the fluffs become a Fluff Slime.

And in the case that a lot of Fluff Slimes are born, a nearby village could find them
annoying and request that they be exterminated.

As for what the Fluff Slimes are capable of, that’s something I’ll have to think about
after this job is over.
The next day.

We’re hunting treants again today. If there’s anything different, it would be that I’ve
already gotten used to fighting them. Because of that I was able to beat them a lot
easier compared to when I first fought them during our first day.

Thanks to that, the quota that would’ve originally taken one week could now be
finished much earlier. If our hunting rate were slow, it would’ve taken us two weeks
to meet it, but considering our hunting rate today, we might be able to finish up by
today or tomorrow and be on our way back to Gimuru the next.

“Ha!” [Ryouma]

With a stroke of my blade, I cut the face of the treant from the forehead to its jaw.
Continuing, I slashed upward with my katana and cut the face of the treant to the right
in half. A different treant came whipping at me with its branches from above, but I
dodged it and cut its branches down.

I’ve been thinking this for a while now, but when I cut the treants from the side, their
faces really look like a mask.

While I was thinking something dumb like that, I finished defeating the third treant.
When I looked around me, there were no more treants nearby.

“Looks like you’ve already gotten used to hunting treants, Ryouma.” [Mizelia]

“Ryouma has always been good with the sword, so it didn’t take him long to get used
to them, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

“There’s no waste in his movements, nyaa.” [Miya]

“Thank you very much. My grandfather throughly beat my martial arts into me, so I’m
actually quite confident with it.” [Ryouma]
Although the forest is a bit dangerous, we can still talk casually like this with each
other. It’s not good if we’re too relaxed, but it also won’t do us any good to be too tense.

As we progressed deeper into the forest, the air changed.

Mana Perception…!

“Raypin-san” [Ryouma]

“Umu. There’s a lot of them, de aru. Unfortunately, I can’t tell how many of them there
are exactly from here, de aru. Asagi.” [Raypin]

“There’s probably an elder treant at the end of this, de gozaru. Let’s proceed while
making sure we have a path of retreat. If it’s too much for us, we’ll retreat and bring
back information to the guild, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

We paid attention to our surrounding as we advanced.

“Ha!”

“Nyaa!!”

“—!”

“EI!”

“Wind Cutter!”

A new forest of treants appeared from the direction we were advancing in. The treants
that noticed us moved toward us and attacked. There were so many of them that we
couldn’t deal with them all.

The women attacked the faces with axes and nata hatchets, while Asagi-san cut below
the faces with his long sword. Raypin-san supported with his magic, while I made sure
to take down the treants that tried to go behind us to prevent us from getting
surrounded.

“…”

There was no end to the treants that came from the forest depths. Fortunately, the
treants weren’t strong individually. Moreover, the treants we were fighting had
unrooted themselves so they could move, so whenever we beat them, they would
tumble to the ground and free up our line of sight.

“We’re still holding on, but there’s no end to them!” [Syria]

No one responded to Syria-san, but everyone knew that we all agreed with her.

“From my mana perception, almost all the trees in this area are treants, de aru! Let’s
cut them all down, de aru!” [Raypin]

“Don’t push yourselves! It’s not a shameful thing to retreat!” [Asagi]

“We know!” [Wereanna]

“We can only enjoy our life while we have it!” [Mizelia]

Despite what everyone was saying, they weren’t actually all that serious. After
glancing at the enemy, we would quickly move to the next treant and fight. As
expected, everyone was either an A Rank or a B Rank, and this level wasn’t anything
to them.

I decided to focus on my job, as the treants coming my way increased a little.

I sheathed my katana and ordered the Big Metal Slime, who was acting as a sheathe,
to separate themselves.

“Mu!? What are you doing, de aru?” [Raypin]

“I just thought I’d up my pace!” [Ryouma]

There were 100 metal slimes on my feet. I picked up two slimes and ordered them to
transform.

The metal slimes transformed into throwing axes.

Throwing axes are projectiles, so naturally, I strengthened them with ki and threw
them.

“O…”
“O… Oo…”

The two axes cleanly drew an arc and struck the face of the two treants that
approached. In the next moment, the treants fell. I took another metal slime, turned it
into a throwing axe, and threw it. Like that I just kept throwing one metal slime
throwing axe after another!

From my experiences until now, I know that the mana of the treants isn’t distributed
perfectly equally.

The mana throughout the body of the treant may seem equal at first, but there’s
actually one spot where there’s more mana than anywhere else. That place is none
other than their weakness, their ‘face’.

Apparently, the face of the treants is necessary in order to distribute mana throughout
its body. In other words, it’s the equivalent of a human heart to them. And when that
spot is damaged, their mana would quickly leave their body, and they would die… If
you liken their face to the heart, and their mana to blood, then they’re really just like
humans.

But unlike blood, the flow of mana can be grasped with Mana Perception. Which
means that as long as you can use Mana Perception, you can find the weak point of the
treants. That’s why I know exactly where to aim.

By attacking them from outside their range, I could take them down in a single blow.

And since I’m not using mana, I won’t run out of mana nor will I get tired easily since
my body is strengthened by ki… Honestly, treants are actually pretty easy now.

Even better, had I been merely using normal throwing weapons, then I’d eventually
run out of axes and be unable to attack anymore. But what I’m throwing are metal
slime throwing axes. After throwing them, they can pick themselves up and roll
themselves back to me. Therefore, my ammo is infinite and I don’t even have to waste
my time gathering my axes.

The treants would attack the metal slimes when they tried to come back after being
thrown, but given how slow the treants already were, chasing after another target only
made them easier to hit and I could kill them before they could even get into range.
This battle is actually now so easy it no longer feels like one.
By the way, all the metal slimes that got hit were unharmed. There simply was no way
for wooden branches to put a dent on what were basically lumps of iron.

It was in this way that I one-sidedly gave the beatdown to all the treants that tried to
get behind us, while the rest of the party took down the treants in front.

In the blink of an eye, the number of treants dwindled and the surrounding area
turned into a graveyard of treants. The normal trees in this part of the forest were
sparse.

“Anyhow, it looks like we managed to survive that… Still, it sure is strange, de aru.”
[Raypin]

“What is?” [Ryouma]

When Raypin-san muttered that something was strange, I asked him what was bothering
him.

“First of all, there’s too many treants. In fact, I’ve never seen these many gathered in
one place, de aru. The second reason is this place. Treants are trees that become
monsters due to mana, but I’ve never heard of such a large area of trees being
transformed into treants. Lastly, because of that, de aru.” [Raypin]

Raypin-san pointed toward a giant tree in the distance. I could feel powerful mana
coming from it, so it’s most likely…

“That’s an elder treant?” [Ryouma]

“So it seems… But while I’ve seen elder treants many times now, I’ve never seen one
that big and with such powerful mana to boot, de aru. I’m also concerned why that
elder treant isn’t approaching us, de aru.” [Raypin]

Miya-san had approached the tree and was a little closer to it. She asked before I could
ask.

“Maybe it just hasn’t noticed us yet, nyaa?” [Miya]

“Impossible. We’ve killed so many of its brethren. It’s possible it doesn’t think it can
win against us, so it’s not attacking, but then it would be even stranger for it to simply
stay rooted there instead of running away, de aru.” [Raypin]
In that case…

“Is there a reason it can’t move from that spot?” [Mizelia]

“Reason would lead one to believe so, but there’s no precedence for such behavior. At
the very least, I’ve never heard of an elder treant that’s neither attacking nor fleeing,
de aru.” [Raypin]

“It’s a bit dangerous to leave it alone, so we should either kill it or at least bring back
some information to the guild. Raypin, Ryouma, how’s your mana?” [Wereanna]

“No problem, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Actually, I’ve barely used my mana.” [Ryouma]

“Oh, right. I never thought you’d actually turn your slimes into throwing axes and
throw them, de gozaru… Alright. In that case, keep your guard up, and we’ll rest a little
bit more. After resting, we’ll take down that elder treant, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

After making up our mind to hunt the elder treant, we went over the special traits of
the enemy again.

Just as was previously mentioned, the elder treant is a more advanced variant of the
treant, so after being reminded that we had to watch out for its wood magic, we went
to rest.

During our resting period, everyone was interested in my slime projectiles. Especially,
Syria-san, who used a bow.

※Slime Weapon※

“Ryouma-kun. Those weapons of yours were slimes, right?” [Syria]

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve all seen my huge scavenger slime from before. It’s not much
different from that. Just that the slimes I’m using now are metal slimes and iron slimes.
In other words, it’s just an ooze of slimes fused with each other.

I specialize in the katana, but unfortunately, it’s very hard to get one nowadays, so this
is how I solved it.” [Ryouma]

“It’s good that you were able to solve your problem, de gozaru. But your metal slimes
turned into an axe, did they not?” [Asagi]

“Yes. My weapons are formed thanks to the special ability of the slimes to ‘shape their
body into anything’ and the special trait of the metal and iron slimes’ ‘metal body’. By
taking advantage of these two traits, I’m able to acquire a weapon that can transform
into anything. Some few days ago when I went to buy equipment, I spoke with Tigger-
san from the weapon store.” [Ryouma]

He ran a weapon shop, so he was interested in the slime, and I talked to him about
various things.

We talked about many things, such as, “If it can change shape, then it should be able
to transform into other weapons” “You should be able to change its shape according
to the circumstance and the enemy” “Even if the shape is the same, if it isn’t strong
enough, it’ll just end up being dangerous to you instead.” In the end, I cooperated with
Tigger-san, and successfully taught the slimes all sorts of different weapons.

“Knives and katanas were no problem right from the start, but weapons like axes,
which I rarely used, were a bit harder. Tigger-san said that they still had a long way to
go.” [Ryouma]

“And in the end, you were able to get a result like that scene just now. Wasn’t it difficult
teaching them so many weapons, de aru?” [Raypin]

“Not really. The slimes share their experiences while fused, so after learning the
weapons as a big slime, they could still retain the knowledge after separating.” [Ryouma]

Moreover, not only can the slimes come back on their own after being thrown, they
also possess the skill of big slimes, ‘Enlarge’ and ‘Shrink’, so I can freely change the size
of my weapon from a one-handed sword to a great sword. Because of that even if the
katana gets dented, the slimes can just fix the dent immediately.

“What a crazy weapon.” [Wereanna]

“Not only do you not need to spend time buying replacements, you also get to save
money.” [Mizelia]
“Forget the time and money, the reliability of a weapon that has infinite durability is
ludicrous.” [Syria]

“Running out of ammo is normally a problem when using ranged weapon too, nyaa…
This is just cheating, nyaa…” [Miya]

The women were all audibly very shocked.

“Oh, right…” [Ryouma]

I took out a rope from my Item Box.

“Check out this rope. Don’t you think it’s very durable? It’s made out of the most
durable thread that my sticky slime can puke out.” [Ryouma]

“It’s certainly slender and durable, nyaa.” [Miya]

“Try cutting it with this axe, Mizelia-san.” [Ryouma]

“Alright… Huh? I can’t seem to cut it.” [Mizelia]

“It’s durable, right? I spoke to Tigger-san about the material of this rope too, and in
the end, he decided he would try using it to create an armor.” [Ryouma]

“Ryouma, one of these days your whole body is going to be covered in slime, nyaa.” [Miya]

We chatted like that while resting.

When break time ended and we started walking toward the elder treant, a change
suddenly occurred on the metal slime.

“Please wait.” [Ryouma]

“What’s the matter?” [Asagi]

“The metal slime is… afraid?… It seems to be scared of something.” [Ryouma]

Because of the effects of the contract, I can tell how the metal slime is feeling. Right
now, it’s so scared it’s barely able to keep itself from running away. This fear… Is there
something here that it’s weak against?
“Is it okay, nyaa?” [Miya]

“Unfortunately, my metal slime won’t be able to fight.” [Ryouma]

“Withdraw them then. It’s best not to push them needlessly.” [Raypin]

I stored my metal slimes into my Dimension Home. Still, I’m concerned. That fear
wasn’t normal. I thought maybe they have an enemy in the vicinity that’s really strong
against them, but the only thing in the area is an elder treant.

“Are elder treants especially strong against slimes?” [Ryouma]

“Never heard of it, de aru.” [Raypin]

…Just as he says, the only ones scared were the metal slimes. The iron slimes are
perfectly fine. Just what is wrong with the metal slimes?… Well, at least the iron slimes
can fight. I do have some spare weapons with me, but the iron slime katana is my best
weapon.

We continued on our way toward the elder treant while paying attention around us.
This time a change occurred to our surroundings.

“The tree to the left!” [Raypin]

“Nyaa!” [Miya]

When we passed by the sparse trees, they were just normal trees. I know this for sure
because of my Mana Perception. Raypin-san was probably the same too. But from
those sparse trees, one such tree beside us suddenly attacked. The tree had suddenly
transformed into a treant.

Fortunately, Raypin-san was able to immediately detect it and order Miya-san to kill
it.

“What’s going on, de aru?” [Raypin]

“Raypin?” [Wereanna]

“This tree was not a treant until just now, de aru. It just suddenly transformed. But
such a thing should be impossible, de aru.” [Raypin]
Treants are trees that mutated into monsters due to the presence of mana, but the
mutation is not something that occurs in an instant. Normally, it’s a slow process.

While Raypin-san said those things, another tree among the sparsely placed trees
transformed.

“Raypin-san.” [Ryouma]

“Umu. The treants are being born one after another, de aru.” [Raypin]

“Well, this is unexpected…” [Mizelia]

“There’s no way we could have expected something like this.” [Asagi]

There’s way less of them compared to before, so they’re not exactly a threat, but this
unusual situation is still concerning. While thinking that, I focused my Mana
Perception in order to be able to deal with the surrounding treants. As I did, I felt mana
coming from the soil.

“There’s something under the ground! ’Break Rock’ ‘Breeze’!” [Ryouma]

I broke the part of the ground where I sensed mana from with Break Rock, and then
conjured a strong wind with my wind magic to blow the rest of the ground away.

Underneath the ground was the root of a tree. It was from that that I felt the presence
of mana.

When Raypin-san saw that, he yelled.

“The root of an elder treant!… Could the elder treant be injecting its mana into the
trees through its roots and transforming them into treants, de aru? That would explain
why trees transform quicker when an elder treant appears. Still, I can’t believe there’s
actually one strong enough to be able to use it to sneak attack on us. What a surprising
discovery, de aru!” [Raypin]

“Leave the research for later! Defeat them first!” [Syria]

“Is the only way to solve our predicament to defeat the elder treant?” [Mizelia]

“It’s likely, de aru. If we just leave the elder treant be, there’s a chance more treants
will appear, de aru.” [Raypin]

“There’s 500 meters until the elder treant. Let’s make a run for it and take it down
quickly, de gozaru. Ryouma, I’ll leave the rear to you. We’ll take care of the elder treant,
so you take care of the pursuing treants, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

“Understood!!” [Ryouma]

It didn’t take long for us to start moving.

Wereanna-san, Miya-san, Mizelia-san, and Asagi-san took out the treants in front,
while I, Raypin-san, and Syria-san followed from behind.

Thanks to how slow the treants moved, they couldn’t block our way. But as we neared
the elder treant, its main body attacked us.

We were still outside the range of its branches, but it was able to attack us through its
roots buried in the ground.

It used wood magic just as the intel said it could and tried to seize us it with its roots.

Raypin-san cut the roots with his Wind cutter, while we cut at them with our weapons.
There were a lot of them, however, and it was especially hard to dodge the attacks by
our legs… Oh, I know!

“Pavement!” [Ryouma]

This is a spell I used when building the pavement for the store. If I harden the ground
with this, I should be able to buy some time.

“I’ll support you!” [Ryouma]

“Thanks!” [Wereanna]

Like this we were able to run up to the elder treant and attack it.
We ran for the Elder Treant while brushing aside the roots that attacked us.

The surface of the elder treant was dark and the circumference of its trunk was greater
than 10 meters. Being around 20 meters tall, it was a large tree and had a grace about
it appropriate for its great stature. But because of the swollen lumps and cracks on its
trunk, it looked more sinister than majestic.

On top of that, the face on the trunk of the elder treant was an ellipse as big as an adult
and was positioned near the roots. The texture and the size of it only served to make
the whole tree appear spookier.

“Ryouma, Raypin! Stay away from branches and support us! Syria, you support them!”
[Asagi]

We confirmed that we received our orders and stayed where we were just as we were
ordered to.

While the ground was paved via Pavement, I turned my iron slimes into axes and
threw them at the slow treants to wipe them out. Raypin-san supported me with his
magic, while Syria-san cut the roots that approached me and Raypin-san.

…Asagi-san and the others were attacking the elder treant, but it was a lot more
tenacious than expected. On top of its large body, the wood magic, Grow, was
particularly troublesome.

Originally, Grow wasn’t a healing magic, but because the elder treant was a plant type
monster, Grow could make it grow, thereby causing an effect that’s essentially the
same as healing. Right now, we have the advantage, but we can’t let our guard down.

“OoOOOO!”

I heard a strange sound I couldn’t make heads or tails of. I don’t know if it it’s supposed
to be a groan or a scream, but when I looked to the side, Mizelia-san had struck the
face of the elder treant with her axe. They’ve been hitting the elder treant for a while
now, but this last attack was deeper than anything they’ve dealt to it yet. Without a
moment’s delay, Wereanna-san and Miya-san attacked the elder treant again.

But…

“Tch!” [Wereanna]

“Nyaa!?” [Miya]

The elder treant suddenly counterattacked. A black ball appeared from its mouth and
shot toward Wereanna-san. Despite being taken by surprise, she was able to dodge,
but because the elder treant followed up with an attack from its branches, she had no
choice but to stop attacking.

That spell just now… That’s the darkness-type spell, Dark Ball!

Wereanna-san was forced to stop, but Miya-san was still continuing. This time the
elder treant released a black mist from its mouth. When Miya-san saw that, she
jumped back.

“What is going on, nyaa!?” [Miya]

She cried out in surprise. When I took a closer look, I saw that her axe was quickly
rusting.

“What was that just now!?” [Wereanna]

“That was a dark ball! This elder treant can use dark magic too That effect is probably
from dark magic as well, de aru!” [Raypin]

…Hey, hey, this wasn’t written in the intel.

“There are too many unexpected things surrounding this elder treant! Retreat for
now! We need to come up with a plan first, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

At Asagi’s behest, we didn’t try to forcefully defeat the elder treant and instead decided
to retreat.
 2

After leaving the attacking range of the elder treant, we rested while talking.

“Miya, how’s your arm?” [Mizelia]

“My arm’s fine, but this axe is a goner, nya…” [Miya]

When Miya-san showed her axe us, the metal part was clearly rusted and the edge of
the blade was already crumbling.

“When that black mist touched it, this happened, nyaa.” [Miya]

“This is terrible.” [Asagi]

“If our weapons get turned into this, there’s no way we’ll be able to fight.” [Mizelia]

“Raypin, can’t you think of a way?” [Wereanna]

“I’ve never heard of an elder treant that can use any magic other than wood magic. I’ve
also never heard of a darkness-type spell that can cause weapons to rust. One way to
deal with dark magic is to use healing magic as light magic to purify the mana, but…
That’s not something we can regularly rely on during battle, de aru.” [Raypin]

So the effect of that darkness-type spell is rust?… Could it be that’s the reason why the
metal slimes were so scared? But in that case, then why? Wait, now that I think about…
It’s still a hypothesis, but I should mention it to the others.

When I told everyone my hypothesis, we decided to go back and fight the elder treant.

There’s a lot of unexpected things surrounding this elder treant, but it’s not actually
that strong. And even if things do get dangerous, we can easily run from it, so it wasn’t
all that risky to try out my plan.

“Let’s go!” [Asagi]

“Pavement!” [Ryouma]”
I turned the road into pavement again to block the elder treant’s root attacks. When
we neared the elder treant, the elder treant started releasing black mist. Looks like it’s
wary of us.

“It’s here!” [Mizelia]

“Let’s try it!” [Ryouma]

I threw an iron slime throwing axe. I aimed at the face of the elder treant and threw it
with all my strength.

The axe drew a parabola in the air as it plunged into the black mist.

“OOOOO!”

The iron slime axe splendidly landed on the forehead of the elder treant.

Due to the effects of the contract, I could tell how the iron slime was feeling. Because
of that I knew that it was alright.

“It’s unharmed! As I thought, that spell can’t affect the iron slime!” [Ryouma]

“Good. Now, let’s finish this treant, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

As Asagi-san said that, he moved for the elder treant’s face. Miya-san, Mizelia-san, and
Wereanna-san followed too. The last to follow was me, as I was casting Fire Arrow
while attacking.

The plan I proposed to everyone was to use the iron slime weapons and armor to fight.

When I recalled how the metal slimes were so scared before fighting the elder treant,
I figured that the metal slimes must’ve naturally feared it because it was metal.
Raypin-san could see where I was coming from.

As such, since the iron slimes weren’t scared, then I figured they must’ve had some
way to resist that mist. But it wasn’t all conjectures too. Another reason for my plan
was fueled with a piece of otherworld knowledge, which I taught to them under the
excuse that it was my grandpa who taught me.
The purer the iron is the harder it is to rust. And the iron slimes evolved after eating
nothing but the iron produced from my alchemy. In other words, they possess a body
of super high purity iron.

Another reason why we decided to try out my plan is because it was likely that the
elder treant could not make all metals rust equally.

Although it is true that the impossible could be made possible through the conjuration
spells born from the visualization of the phenomenon and the employ of mana, it
doesn’t mean that anything can be done so long as these two conditions are fulfilled.
To some extent, the rules of nature are also in play.

Yes. Nature can be twisted with the employ of a spell, which requires the union of
mana and imagination, and yet the more the laws of nature are twisted, the more mana
is consumed. Which goes to mean that there is a limit. And it is because of that so-
called limit that I was able to predict that a piece of metal that was naturally difficult
to rust would prove to be equally difficult to rust magically.

Yet with just that, the iron slimes would still be in danger should the battle continue
for a long time, so I made sure everyone understood that point.

As such, before committing to the battle, we decided that we would first test the
waters by throwing one slime at the treant. If this attack were to fail, then I am to
quickly retrieve the slime and run away. Afterwards, I will heal the slime using the
method Raypin-san taught me. The most important part of a slime is its nucleus. Some
rust on the surface will not be a problem. As long as the spread of the rust can be
contained before it reaches the nucleus, the slime can still be saved.

But if the attack works, then we will continue with the battle. Using the information
we got from our last battle with the elder treant, we came up with a plan to defeat it
in as little time as possible. Once the battle is over, I will gather my slimes and heal
them with light magic just to be safe. If we can’t defeat the elder treant, then in that
case, we can just run away again。

Everyone agreed to help me retrieve the slimes and retreat, so we challenged the elder
treant to another round of war.

“Heave ho!” [Ryouma]

This time, I’m fighting at the frontlines as well, so the battle is a lot fiercer than before.

In the first attack, the elder treant whipped its branches at me from above. In its
second attack, it shot out a Dark Ball toward me. In its third attack, it blocked the road
with its roots.

The elder treant also tried to entangle me, but I cut its branches and forced my way
through.

And now, the face of the elder treant is right before me. I’m going to keep running
toward it like this and strike it with my sword.

“OOOOOO!!” [Ryouma]

Or at least that’s what I had in mind, but as expected, the elder treant wasn’t about to
just watch me cut its face, and as it prepared to shoot out another Dark Ball, it whipped
its branches toward me.

Twisting my body, I moved along the direction of the branches and spun
counterclockwise, then with a stroke from my blade, I cut down the branches. The
excised part fell to the ground.

At this point, the Dark Ball finally launched itself toward me, but I dodged it and
quickly found myself underneath its face. If this were a human, this would be the point
where I lopped its neck off from left to right with a stroke of my blade, but while ki-
clad sword cut through the elder treant like hot knife through butter, leaving a large
wound in its wake from which a great amount of mana poured out, it was not down
for the count just yet.

“UoOO!” [Elder Treant]

Oh? Is the elder treant feeling threatened now? It seems to be the case since it reduced
its attacks and started healing itself with wood magic.

Unfortunately for it, there wasn’t a soul here who was just going to watch it as it
recovered.

“Flame Lance!” [Raypin]

Raypin-san casted a fire spell and shot it straight into the elder treant’s wound.
It was the intermediate spell, Flame Lance, too.

Shooting fire right into a wound is bound to be super effective. True enough, the
regeneration rate of the elder treant immediately went down a level.

Not willing to miss the opportunity, Miya-san and the others went all out, and traces
of their weapons could be seen thoroughly engraved on and around the elder treant’s
face.

But while they went all out on the elder treant, I didn’t join them and instead prepared
to launch my attack.

I ordered the Big Iron Slime it to bring 15 slimes out of it and then transform.

Very quickly, the big iron slime turned into an iron ball that could be carried with both
arms. Iron thorns dotted it and there were even semi-circle handles that were open at
the center on it. As for the separated iron slimes, I put them together to build a chain,
then I attached them to the handles on the iron ball.

It took me roughly 5 seconds to complete everything and change my weapon from a

katana to an iron ball and chain.

“I’m ready!” [Ryouma]

This iron ball specializes in dealing a lot of damage in a single blow. It’s perfect for
dealing with large-type monsters. When I pulled on the chains, it made a ‘jara jara’
sound. The only condition to use it is a strong physique or strengthening magic since
the iron ball is heavy. As for me, I can use it thanks to my ki. When I swung the iron
ball and chain, it made a sound like it was cutting through the air.

I’m not used to it myself, so I can only hit unmoving targets with it!

“Good. Clear the area!!” [Asagi]

At Asagi-san’s signal, everyone who’s been attacking until now immediately stopped
and cleared the area.

My target was none other than the elder treant’s face!

“HAa!” [Ryouma]
“!!?” [Elder Treant]

The iron ball hit it right at its nose.

In the next moment, cracks appeared on the elder treant’s face and even more mana
poured out.

Its face was already covered in wounds and was very fragile, so when the iron ball
landed on it, its face gave in.

I was originally planning on beating it 4 to 5 times, but it looks like I took it down with
just one hit. The roots and branches around have already stopped moving. But… It
seems it’s still alive, after all.

“Finish it, Ryouma.” [Asagi]

“You’re the one with who contributed the most, after all, Ryouma-kun.” [Syria]

“End it once and for all.” [Mizelia]

“Alright.” [Ryouma]

As I spun the chains again, I threw the iron ball with all my strength, hitting the forehead
of the elder treant.
’TOGO’ resounded a loud dull sound, then the elder treant’s face crumbled.

Mana poured out powerfully from the elder treant, but it only lasted for a while, before
the flow gradually weakened, and before long, I couldn’t sense anymore mana.

“Is it dead?” [Ryouma]

“It should be, de aru.” [Raypin]

After confirming that there were no problems, I used my light magic to heal the iron
slimes. It doesn’t look like they got hurt at all, but just to be safe.

Anyway, it’s great that everything ended without a hitch.

While I was thinking that, I shot Light Ball at the iron slimes.

“Well, it’s over… for now, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

As Asagi-san said that, his eyes turned to the piled up corpses of treants.

Oh, right. We still have to gather those. How long is that going to take us? Not to
mention, both mine and Raypin-san’s dimension home are already full.

“Don’t worry. As soon as you finish healing your slime, we’ll go back to the town to
report once. We’ll get some help then to carry all of these. We can get the costs
reimbursed at the guild when we get back to Gimuru.” [Asagi]

And so, we went back to town and reported to the guild.

We’ll leave the gathering of lumber for tomorrow. For now, let’s just get a good night’s
rest.
The next day.

The adventurers guild sent 15 adventurers to the place where we fought the elder
treant yesterday.

Today we’ll be relying on their help to gather the lumber, but everything that can’t be
stored in Raypin-san’s Dimension Home will have to be stored at the guild’s storage
temporarily. The guild will deliver them by carriage at a later date.

Why? It’s simple. We killed too many treants. So many, in fact, that even the
adventurers that were dispatched to help us were shocked when they saw the scene
of carnage. That was a staggering forest of over 1000 dead treants.

There were just too many of them during the battle that we really couldn’t do anything
unless we beat them first. And with every member of our party within their attacking
range, we ended up defeating every single one of them. When all was said and done,
this was the result.

Actually, I was pretty worried about the forest considering how many treants we
killed, but when I asked the local adventurers about it, they said it was fine.

Apparently, the trees of this forest are a type of tree called Torigiri, and while there’s
not that many places they can grow, they possess a powerful life force. In fact, they
grow so fast, it only takes them half a month to grow back after being cut. And even in
seed-form, they’re ridiculously fast, needing only about a year before they can be
harvested as lumber.

That’s why even if we cut so many trees today, it doesn’t really matter. Come next year,
this place will be thriving with the lush green of life, almost as if nothing had ever
happened. In the first place, there’s not a lot of people who go this deep into the forest
to harvest lumber, or at least that’s what the guy tells me.

And while his explanation managed to convince me that everything would be alright,
it also served to remind me that I really am in another world.

How many years would it take for a seed to grow into a tree back on Earth? It would
take decades for sure, and yet the seeds here only need a year. It seems Earth’s
common sense doesn’t always work around here…

“Let us begin, de gozaru!” [Asagi]

At Asagi-san’s behest, we started gathering the treants. From time to time, we would
happen onto a living treant, so we would swiftly take care of them, and then go back
to gathering lumber.

Asagi-san and the others gathered the lumber in one place, then Raypin-san and I
stuffed them into our Dimension Homes and went back to the village to store them.
Rinse and repeat.

By working together and transporting the lumber with magic, we managed to finish
everything by 3PM. I also sent Eins to the adventurers guild at Gimuru, so they could
prepare to receive the lumber.

In any case, with this we have managed to complete another objective for our treant
lumber gathering mission, and the adventurers that came to help us went back to
town.

As for us, though, we still had one more job left to do.

“Sure saved the best for last, didn’t we?” [Syria]

It was time to disassemble the elder treant and claim our spoils.

The job we received from Gimuru was to gather lumber from the treants. The elder
treant wasn’t part of our contract.

At times like this, its up to the discretion of the hunter on what to do with the hunted
prey. In our case, we’re going to be using it to pay for the help we got from the
adventurers guild. Or at least a part of it anyway. Elder treant lumber is actually a
really good material to make staves with. They’ll surely sell for a high price in the
market, so it would be really wasteful to just throw them away. As such, we’re going
to be claiming a part of the treant for ourselves. We sure got our work cut out for us,
though.

“Well, it’s the last job. Let’s hurry it up and get this over with.” [Wereanna]

Wereanna-san took out her nata hatchet. First things first was cutting the branches. I
climbed up the ladder I prepared beforehand, but the elder treant was so big, there
were still places I couldn’t reach even with the ladder.

So, I asked the others to deal with the branches I couldn’t reach, while I took care of
only the ones I could.

Of the tools I used was the durable rope woven out of the sticky slime’s thread and the
metal slimes that were turned into metal fittings for securing stuff.

First, I took the end of the rope and made a knot and a loop, then when I was sure that
the metal slimes were in place and secured, my grappling hook was completed. I
swung my grappling hook, and with my eyes set on the target, I threw it.

The grappling hook flew into the air just as I’ve intended, wrapping itself around the
thick branches.

I tugged on the rope several times, but it didn’t even budge. Looks plenty sturdy to me.

Using the rope, I climbed up the tree until I was in a good position to aim, then I cut at
the branches one by one using my Wind Cutter. When I’d run out of branches to cut, I
changed positions and repeated the same thing.

At first, I thought it would be easier to just let the branches fall to the ground, but
apparently, the branches are better suited for making wands or staves than the trunk,
so since they’re likely to break if I cut them off from the tip, I had to do it the hard way.

Slowly but steadily, I cut the branches one after another, until eventually, there was
nothing left to cut. I was able to finish cutting the branches within the day, but there
was still work to be done. We decided to just leave it off for tomorrow, though. As
expected, climbing up and down a tree over and over is really exhausting.
 2

The next day.

Today, we’ll be working on the elder treant again as a continuation of our work yesterday.

We’re done cutting off the branches, so today we’ll be digging out the roots and then
cut them off.

“Hey, guys! Check this out!” [Ryouma]

But something unexpected happened.

When I dug out the roots with me and my earth slime’s earth magic, many rotted
crates right under the elder treant appeared.

“What’s the matter?” [Syria]

“Did something happen?” Mizelia]

“It seems something has been buried here. Look.” [Ryouma]

“Are these… crates?” [Mizelia]

“There’s a lot, nyaa.” [Miya]

“Why would these things be buried here?” [Wereanna]

“For the mean time, let’s take a few of them out and see what’s inside, de aru.” [Raypin]

As Raypin-san said that, we carefully retrieved the crates and opened them.

Inside one of the crates were many cloudy-white-colored stones.

“What are these things?” [Ryouma]

“They’re magic stones, de aru. Used ones. When magic stones have mana, they’re
transparent like a crystal, but when they run out of it, their color changes to that of a
cloudy white. So all of these have already been used up, de aru.” [Raypin]
“…It might be a good idea to inform the guild about this.” [Mizelia]

“I’ll go ahead and inform them, de aru. You can keep digging and examining the crates,
de aru.” [Raypin]

No one disagreed with him, so Raypin-san teleported back to town.

As for us, we recovered the rest of the crates one after another and opened them. Most
of them were filled with used-up magic stones. But there were also some magic stones
that haven’t been used up yet. Among those, we found some neutral-type and darkness-
type magic stones.

We also found out why there were so many magic stones here.

“I’m back. Did anything happen, de aru?” [Raypin]

“Good day. I was sent by here by the guild… Eek!?” [???]

The girl Raypin-san brought back with him wanted to greet us, but because of that she
saw the things by our feet.

I’m sure anyone would be shocked if they didn’t have the time to prepare themselves.
After all, the things by our feet are corpses. Skeletons, in fact.

“T-Those are?” [Guild Girl]

“They were buried with the crates, de gozaru.” [Asagi]

Although their bodies have long rotten, it could still be seen from structure of the
bones that they probably belonged to several men.

“They still have some of their belongings with them too.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you very much…” [Guild Girl]

“Are you alright?” [Ryouma]

“Oh, I’m okay with blood and wounds, it’s just corpses like these that I’m bad with…
Sorry about that. Please let me help you.” [Guild Girl]
I examined the corpses’ belongings with the frightened girl, and from the ledger they
had with them, we found out that they were magic stones merchants. The illegal sort.
These magic stones were probably the goods they were smuggling.

We still don’t know if the reason they chose a place this deep into the forest was just
for a deal or if this was were they hid their smuggled goods, but we do know that it
was because th elder treant was able to suck so much mana from these magic stones
that it was able to grow so big.

Its also likely that it was because of these stones that it was able to summon so many
treants and even became able to use dark magic. The reason the elder treant couldn’t
move from here was most likely because it couldn’t run away while carrying all these
crates full of magic stones.

“Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll leave you to continue your work. Have a nice
day!” [Guild Girl]

Looks like she just came here to check the situation rather than investigate. She looked
like she was running when she left.

After watching her leave, we went back to work.

Now that the elder treant has been laid on its side, I had the iron slime and metal
slimes turn into large saws, and with those we cut the elder treant apart and then
stored it in my Dimension Home. With that, we’ve completed all that we needed to do
at this town. Unfortunately, because of what we found at the end, the sense of
accomplishment that we should be feeling has turned complicated.

And so…

“How about we drink today?” [Ryouma]

In order to get rid of that strange atmosphere, as well as reward ourselves for the job
we’ve done until now, we decided to treat ourselves to a drink after supper. The place
we would be drinking at was my Dimension Home.

“We still have to travel back to Gimuru, but at least, we’ve already secured the needed
lumber. This job is as good as done. Tonight, let us toast, de gozaru. Cheers!” [Asagi]

“Cheers!” [Everyone Else]

At Asagi-san’s toast, we all started drinking and ate the snacks in front of us.

The snack we chose to go with our drink tonight is tempura.

Apparently, you could get a lot of wild vegetables at the forest where we hunted
treants. There was a lot being sold at the town grocery.

Only Asagi-san knew about tempura, but I talked a lot with the others on our way here,
so they were already interested in trying out Japanese cuisine.

What was even more surprising, though, was the fact that the people of this country
apparently don’t have many opportunities to eat deep-fried food.

“And here I thought French fries were commonly sold considering the Founding
Festival we just had recently.” [Ryouma]

“It’s not like we don’t have deep fried food, but you know how deep fried food wastes
a lot of oil? Well, because of that it costs a lot of money, and it’s also a bit wasteful
throwing all that oil away. To top it off, you can’t reuse the oil because they say it’s bad
for your health.” [Syria]

“And if you don’t know how to cook well, you’ll end up starting a fire. That’s why that
sort of cooking is usually eaten at festivals.” [Mizelia]

So that’s why people tend to avoid it at normal households…

I think that’s a bigger waste, though. Using a lot of oil is the right way to cook. And
besides, the reason why reusing oil is bad for the body is because of the oxidation, but
in my case, I can just use alchemy to separate oxygen from the oil, and as long as the
oil is clean, I can use it again.

…In fact, even if it’s dirty, I could just use Alchemy to separate the filth from the oil and
I could still use it. I know it’s a bit late for me to be saying this, but I just realized that
I’ve been using alchemy for cooking like with oil and juices. I wonder, am I really using
alchemy correctly? Well, it is convenient, so I don’t plan on stopping using it anytime
soon.

“I gotta say though, Ryouma, your slimes sure are weird.” [Mizelia]

“Slimes are omnivorous, so I suppose it’s not that strange to see one drinking, de aru,
but…” [Raypin]

“It’s really tasting it. It’s even eating snacks.” [Syria]

Right. On top of the 3 men and 4 women in here, we also had a special guest. Mr. Slime.

Ever since I gave it ale, it would approach me whenever I started drinking by myself.
At first, I thought it was just like the slimes that drank water, but it jumped straight
into my mug of ale.

I eventually made a sake cup especially for it, and then gradually, it got more and more
used to drinking.

Lately, it would even pour for me by itself whenever my cup went empty, and it also
started eating snacks.

While I was telling everyone that, the slime suddenly started shaking.

“Oh, could it be?” [Raypin]

“What’s going on, nyaa?” [Miya]

“The slime is evolving.” [Ryouma]

“Huh!?” [Kanan]

There’s no doubt about it. It’s evolving. When I told everyone that, all eyes gathered
on the slime.

Just like the other slimes, it started releasing and sucking mana, then after about 10
minutes, it evolved.

“…It stopped, de aru.” [Raypin]

What kind of slime did it evolve into?

Drunk Slime
Skills:
  Produce Alcohol (Ethyl) Lv4
 Disease Resist Lv3
 Absorb Lv1
 Split Lv1
Divine Protection: Divine Protection of Tekun the God of Wine

…Wait just one moment. It drinks alcohol, so it’s fine that it’s called drunk slime. It also
makes sense that it learned the new skill, Produce Alcohol (Ethyl). That makes perfect
sense since it likes to drink alcohol. But why in the world did it also receive Tekun’s
divine protection? Can you even give a slime a divine protection?

…Ah, whatever. I’ll just ask Tekun about later. For the mean time, let’s check its mana…
Darkness, Water, and Wood, huh.

Raypin-san called out to me.

“Ryouma, what did it evolve into, de aru?” [Raypin]

“Ah, umm… It seems it evolved into a Drunk Slime. It also learned the Produce Alcohol
(Ethyl) skill. It’s probably a skill to produce alcohol.” [Ryouma]

“So another weird slime, de aru?” [Raypin]

I took out a new mug and asked the slime to show off its new Produce Alcohol (Ethyl)
skill. As expected, when the Drunk Slime started puking out its guts into the mug, the
substance stank of alcohol.

According to the results of Identify, the slime puke was about 40% alcohol and was
safe for human consumption. But…

“Fuu… It’s liquor, alright. But…” [Ryouma]

“But?” [Raypin]

“It’s all strength and no taste.” [Ryouma]

It’s not particularly tasty nor smelly, it’s not delicious too. This isn’t something you
drink by itself. You gotta soak it with something like Japanese plum brandy or some
fruits and turn it into a fruit wine of sort. Yes. This needs researching.
While I was thinking that, we toasted again to celebrate the slime’s evolution. And as
we enjoyed ourselves with the liquor and the snacks, we concluded the day in
pleasure.
A few days later.

When we returned to Gimuru and reported to the adventurers guild, we were swiftly
brought to a meeting room.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I got the gist of it from Ryouma’s message. I’m glad you all
made it back in one piece. So, yeah. Let’s hear that report.” [Wogan]

At the guild master’s behest, Asagi-san started his report. His report wrapped up the
main points well, so it was easy to understand, and the whole thing didn’t even take
10 minutes.

After getting permission to leave, however, the guild master spoke.

“Oh, sorry. Ryouma, I need you to stay.” [Wogan]

And he asked me to stay behind.

I don’t know why, but if the guild master says so, then I guess it can’t be helped.

Like that I found myself alone in a room with the guild master.

“Give me a sec… I know it was here somewhere…” [Wogan]

The sound of pages of documents being flipped filled the room.

“…Found it! It’s this one. Because you came back a lot earlier than expected, they’re
still accepting applications. Want to give it a shot?” [Wogan]

The words ‘Training for New Adventurers’ was written on the document the guild
master handed to me.

…According to this, the training will last for 5 days starting in the morning 5 days from
now. The training will be about ‘Camping Techniques’, which are necessary for any
adventurer to work. It will be held at a place known as the ‘Field of Poisonous Insects’.

As for the application, the lower part of the document is actually it, and if I fill in the
name section and submit it, I’ll be able to join.

There’s nothing strange about that, but there’s just one thing. This form isn’t actually
an application for a trainee. Rather, it’s an application for an instructor.

“It’s a training program about camping for new adventurers. It’s not like you’ll be
going some place particularly dangerous like a snowy mountain. And besides, what’s
the point in sending a guy who’s lived all alone by himself out in the woods for so many
years to ‘camping’ training?” [Wogan]

Point taken. So, that’s why he wants me to teach them?

“It’s part of it. But this job is also for your sake.” [Wogan]

“What do you mean?” [Ryouma]

“You want to raise your rank to go to the Great Shurus Forest, right? Well, the thing is,
you can’t just raise your rank by being strong. If you take jobs like this proactively,
though, you’ll be able to raise your rank a little faster.” [Wogan]

Huh… I didn’t know that.

“Of course, that’s provided that one has the strength appropriate for the rank in the
first place. It would be a huge problem for the organization if the low rankers don’t
receive proper training, so we treat people who help us out on that front a little better.
In your case, there’s nothing to complain about as far as ability goes, but your age is
definitely an issue. You’re too young.

In the first place, the so-called C Rankers, which is the rank at which you’ll be able to
enter the forest, are people who’ve given up on improving their rank any further and
have switched it up to making a moderate living while preparing for retirement. It’s a
rank a normal guy would achieve after much effort through the years. So, if you want
to rank up quickly, then it would be best if you take jobs like this.” [Wogan]

“I see.” [Ryouma]
“As your rank rises, so does the difficulty and danger of the jobs increase. There will
be more jobs you can’t accept alone, and there will be more cases where you’ll have to
make an impromptu party with people you’re meeting for the first time.

…I’ve been thinking this since I saw you register at the guild. You’re the type of guy
who prefers to be by himself and doesn’t like working with others, right? If you include
this last job and the latrine pits, you worked with Asagi and the others twice. If you
add the time you entered the abandoned mine with Miya’s group, that makes three.
You formed a group with others that many times, and I’ve never heard of anyone
complaining about you. It’s also unlikely that you wouldn’t be able to keep up with
others, although you might find them a bother. Anyway, I won’t say anything bad. But
you should get used to forming groups with other people from now on. Get used to
forming parties with people you don’t know.” [Wogan]

Is this job that helpful in that regard?

“I think so. The impromptu parties I mentioned earlier mostly choose their leader
based on who’s the highest ranked or the strongest. You’re aiming for the top, so it
would be really pathetic if the time came and you said ‘I can’t do it’.” [Wogan]

…The guild master did personally recommend the job… And it’s for my benefit, so…
Why don’t I give it a shot? As awkward as I may be at it.

“Alright. I’ll do it. One thing, though. This document only mentions the destination and
the schedule. Who are the other instructors?” [Ryouma]

Shouldn’t I talk to them first about how we’re going to teach the students?

“Ahh, don’t worry about it. You’ll get to know them on the day of training. That’ll be
enough.” [Wogan]

When the guild master talked about the details a bit more, I found out that the training
camp is a bit different from what I’d imagined.

First, the new adventurers that will be participating are either coming alone or as a
party. They will be doing their own preparations for the camping, and then they’ll
meet with the instructors and leave town together. But there won’t be anyone who’ll
be put in charge of the students.

“I left the management of the event to an experienced adventurer I picked. As for you,
your job is to aid him. Make the necessary preparations and gather at the designated
time. As for what to teach, you can just teach them how you camp. That’s also how the
other instructors do it.

Besides, I say camping, but it’s really just people bringing their stuff and making do
with whatever is out there. There are a lot of ways to make things work. As long as the
adventurers can see how veteran adventurers do things and learn the ropes, then I’m
sure that’ll prove useful and be of help to them someday.”

And that’s why he’s just letting us do it our way, huh?

“You don’t have to do or say anything extra to teach. Those who want to learn and feel
like learning will learn from how you do things. Just be sure to answer when they ask
you a question. The most important part about being an instructor is to make sure
that everyone’s safe. So if you see them doing something dangerous, stop them. But
you can heal them with healing magic, so it’s fine to let them get hurt a little.” [Wogan]

What a rough teaching policy. It’s almost as if they want the students to get hurt. And
the job of the instructors is to ensure that that ‘hurt’ isn’t permanent.

…Huh. But then again, maybe they’ll remember it better that way. Interestingly,
though, the responsibility of an instructor with a curriculum like this might actually
be heavier than normal.

“Good day, Maelyn-san.” [Ryouma]

After leaving the meeting room, I went to the designated location and dropped off the
treant lumber from my Dimension Home, then I went to see the receptionist.

“Oh, Ryouma-kun. You’re here to receive your compensation, I take it?” [Maelyn]

“That and I’ll also be applying for the training next week. I would also like to purchase
some information.” [Ryouma]

I presented my guild card and my application form.

“Information… Alright. How about this booklet?” [Maelyn]

The receptionist took out a booklet from under the reception desk. It seemed to have
the information regarding the ‘Field of Poisonous Insects’.

“I thought this might fit the bill since you just wanted to purchase information on the
‘Field of Poisonous Insects’ to prepare for the training camp. What do you think?”
[Maelyn]

“Yeah, this could work. But how much information does this booklet actually have?”
[Ryouma]

“It has information on the poisonous insects presently living in the area. Information
on the medicinal herbs that could be gathered from the area. And finally, it also
provides geographic information through the inclusion of a simple map. It was made
just for the training camp, so it actually has all the necessary information.” [Maelyn]

That’s what she says. I guess I’ll take her word for it.

“I’ll take it then. Take the payment from the payment for the treant lumber.” [Ryouma]

“Thank you for using our services. How about taking another job while you’re at it?”
[Maelyn]

This time she handed me a list of jobs.

“This is?” [Ryouma]

“The training camp isn’t just about going there and camping. Doing work while you’re
there is also a part of it. In fact, one of the obligations of a trainee is to perform a job
during training. Although you don’t have to do any since you’re an instructor, but if
you do take a job with you, you’ll be able to make a little extra.” [Maelyn]

Hmm… Huh?

When I looked through the list, I noticed there were a lot of collection jobs for
poisonous insects and medicinal herbs. Every one of these things can be used to
concoct medicine, so it’s not that strange, but…

“Excuse me. About the job to collect the roots of the Giamana Herb, would it be alright
if I brought the goods to a branch in another town?” [Ryouma]
It’s not difficult to find Giamana Herb and gather them, but you have to bring them
back quickly, as you only have about half a day after digging one out – or at most,
within the day – to bring them back before the herbs can’t be used anymore. I don’t
know where the Field of Poisonous Insects is, but considering the schedule of the
training camp, it’s likely that the herb and its roots will go bad if I have to bring it all
the way back here. They might still pay for it, but I doubt they would considering it
would be an inferior product then.

There were also other herbs on the list that either require special handling or are
difficult to gather.

Especially, this ‘Bark of Tormak’. Isn’t it out of season to be looking for something like
this?

When I think of Tormak Bark that’s meant to be used as an ingredient for medicine,
the only thing that comes to mind is that naturally peeling bark that can be found at
the end of winter at the onset of spring. Even if you scrape the surface of trees right
now, the material you’ll get won’t have the potency expected of a medicinal ingredient.

“Oh, right. I forgot to tell you. Hey, lend me your ear.” [Maelyn]
Maelyn-san leaned over the counter and brought her beautiful face near mine.

“I can’t talk too loudly, but the thing is this list actually also includes ‘traps’ as part of
the training curriculum. All these jobs can be done – either via completing them or
giving up on them – as long as one gathers information beforehand properly, but
without that, there are also jobs here that’s sure to fail. Of course, these won’t leave a
mark on their record.” [Maelyn]

“Ahh, I thought it might be like that.” [Ryouma]

I wonder if this is how things are usually done.

“That’s a bit hard to answer. All guilds train their members, but the circumstances
change according to the environment, so the methods are usually left to the discretion
of each branch… I’m sure there are other places that do things like we do here, but I’m
sure there are also those who would prefer to study intensely for a month in a
classroom instead. So, in other words, it’s completely dependent on what the people
in charge want.

Oh, as for the methods we’re applying at this branch, they’re all the guild master’s
ideas.” [Maelyn]

Well, he did pull a surprise attack on me during my registration exam. Figures, I guess.

“You can tell other instructors about this if you want, but please keep it a secret from
the trainees. Please.” [Maelyn]

“Alright. Also, I won’t be taking any other jobs this time. This way I can pay better
attention to the students.” [Ryouma]

“Sure. Now, here’s your payment for the last job you took. Your party members’ share
has already been split and the cost for the information has also already been deducted.
You can have your guild card back too.” [Maelyn]

“Thank you very much.” [Ryouma]

I stored the payment in my bag, then I left the guild.