Chapter 34

The magic stones that supported Jirenu Territory’s economy from the ground up were, on the production side, being handled entirely by Kengo.

That day as well, a ship from the provincial capital of Azuria Province, to which Jirenu Territory belonged, had arrived from the Bax Company, and its cargo consisted of the mountain of mining supplies Kengo had requested.

There were construction tools such as giant pickaxes for the beastfolk, iron helmets to protect against falling rocks, candles to light the dark tunnels, wooden support pillars for the shafts, and so on. There were also pulley-like devices for hauling up baskets loaded with ore, and equipment for pumping out groundwater, the eternal enemy of mining.

The tools in particular were extremely expensive, and the expense hurt quite a bit. Worse, buying tools was not the end of it—maintenance would be necessary from now on, and that was another frightening thought.

We needed to make it possible to manufacture them on the island itself as quickly as possible. Otherwise the Bax Company might use that to take advantage of us, and we had to conserve our gold coins for imports as much as we could.

Jirenu Territory in particular was an island territory, and its food self-sufficiency rate most certainly fell short of one hundred percent. In other words, food always depended on imports, and if prices soared because of a drought or something similar, whether the island could buy food at that point would depend entirely on whether it had enough gold coins.

The more I thought about that sort of thing, the more I wished that capable civil officials would hurry up and come under Iiria’s command and manage it all.

And just as Iiria and I were busy with this and that, Kengo too was being run ragged improving the mines, so I had barely seen him lately.

There was something I wanted to discuss with him about the magic stone trade, so I visited the mine while delivering supplies.

As I was oddly sinking into the feeling that it had been such a long time, a large beastfolk man spotted me and called out.

“Behold! It is our savior, Yorinobu-dono!”

At the entrance to the mine there was a tavern made out of a remodeled natural cave, and a great many beastfolk were loitering there.

Hearing the shout, the beastfolk came swarming over.

To be perfectly honest, being surrounded by beastfolk over two meters tall was terrifying.

And when we had borrowed the beastfolk’s strength, a beastfolk named Dodol, who led the younger members among them, had regarded humans as enemies.

As I stood there flustered, Kururu suddenly stepped forward from behind me.

“Disperse!”

Kururu had insisted on coming along for some reason when she learned I was going to the mine, but perhaps she had known something like this would happen.

“Where is that fool Kengo?”

“Well, well, if it is not ‘Kururu the Cat Princess of the Iron Hammer.’”

Kururu looked displeased at being called by such a strange name by a lion-like beastfolk man who resembled Dodol.

“Cat Princess of the Iron Hammer?”

When I asked Kururu about it, she glared at me, so I kept quiet.

Word had probably spread through beastfolk society that Kururu had disguised herself as the wandering mage Draustel and used magic, and it must have become a topic of conversation.

And as for whom that “iron hammer” had been brought down upon, of course there was no need to ask.

Also, I really did think Kururu was a cat-type beastfolk after all.

“If you mean Kengo, he is deeper in the shaft. A tunnel started flooding this morning. He and the others have pulled back for now to deal with it… but if you wait a bit, he should return.”

“I see. In that case, let us carry in the cargo and wait at the tavern.”

Kururu said that while glancing back at me over her shoulder.

I felt a little relieved that she was not suggesting we go deeper into the mine to fetch Kengo ourselves.

Then again, I could not help but suspect that Kururu just wanted a drink.

“We shall help as well. Hey, you lot!”

When the lion-like beastfolk called out, deep voices answered from all around.

The unloading at the harbor had been done by humans, so it had taken quite a while to get the mining supplies ashore.

In the hands of the beastfolk, though, it was over in an instant.

When a pickaxe that had taken five men to lift was hoisted one-handed onto a shoulder, I understood why, even if only humans could use magic, humans had never been able to completely subdue the beastfolk.

“How is that fool Kengo? Is he useful?”

While overseeing the beastfolk carrying the mining tools inside, Kururu called out to the lion-like beastfolk man.

He too was giving various orders to the others, so he might have held some important position.

“Of course. He is more beastfolk than you are. Even if you added together your ears and tail, it still would not match how hairy Kengo is.”

The lion man said that and laughed, but Kururu’s face stiffened red at those words.

As I watched Kururu bristle her tail fur and kick the lion man’s log-like leg, I could not help wondering whether hers had perhaps still not grown in yet. Since I felt I would be torn to pieces if she realized I was thinking such a thing, I made a point of turning my face away.

“It is good to see you well, Cat Princess. Of course, not only Kengo, but Yorinobu-dono helping by delivering tools this quickly has also been a great aid. On behalf of my companions, let me thank you.”

The beastfolk man held out a lion’s paw, large and rough, with heavy claws.

It took me a moment to realize it was a handshake, and when I grasped it, it was softer than I expected.

“The production of magic stones will double… no, perhaps it will even double again beyond that.”

“That much? Then what have you all been doing until now?”

When Kururu said that, the lion man’s mane wavered like a heat haze.

“I shall forgive your rudeness, Cat Princess of the Iron Hammer. Without Kengo, we would have rotted away in the depths of the mine. It was that terrible. Until recently, we were splitting rocks with these hands, digging them out, and carrying them on our shoulders with no tools at all.”

Kengo had said that even when there were cave-ins and people were injured, they had been made to keep working while simply cradling broken arms.

“…Sorry.”

Kururu admitted it had been a careless remark and apologized bluntly.

The tension left the lion man’s mane, and he held out his paw again.

Apparently, he liked shaking hands.

“Kengo told us that Yorinobu-dono would sell the magic stones we dug out and make a great fortune.”

When those lion eyes turned toward me, my back straightened.

“Uh, yes, I will… do my best.”

When I answered awkwardly, Kururu gave me a somewhat exasperated look, but the lion man narrowed his eyes happily and asked for another handshake.

While all this was going on, the great pile of cargo quickly disappeared deeper into the mine, and in exchange, a group of soaking-wet beastfolk came out—and among them was one oddly small beastfolk figure, which turned out to be Kengo.

Among the unloaded supplies had also been a large amount of soap.

Watching the drenched beastfolk laughing uproariously outside the mine while covered in suds, Kengo—who was far less hairy than they were—returned ahead of them with a refreshed look on his face.

“Thanks for bringing the supplies.”

I just shrugged at his thanks.

“For even Kururu-chan to come all this way too, what kind of wind is blowing?”

When Kengo, who treated Kururu like a niece, tried to pat her on the head, Kururu dodged him with a thoroughly disgusted look. Since she was called a cat princess and all, maybe she disliked water.

“I wanted to talk about the magic stone trade. Do you have time?”

“Hm? Yeah.”

Kengo wiped his face roughly with coarse linen, slung it over his shoulder, and cracked his neck.

“Sorry I have been so busy that I could not leave this place. I read your proposal, Yorinobu. I think it is good.”

“I heard the mine’s output might increase fourfold. What about that?”

“Fourfold is probably conservative.”

That surprised me a little, and I found myself exchanging a glance with Kururu.

“If we really pushed it, I think ten times over would be easy. But that would only make the mine run dry faster, and if Yorinobu’s proposal does not work out, there is no point in increasing production alone.”

Beside me as I nodded, Kururu glanced toward the beastfolk making a racket a short distance away, then turned her gaze back to Kengo.

“Neither I nor Iiria-sama really understands Yorinobu’s proposal. It is about increasing magic stone exports, but…”

“Even if raw stone production increases, processing cannot keep up at the current pace. What Yorinobu is trying to do is increase the processing side.”

It was the sorrow of primary industry.

If you exported raw materials as they were, the profit was low, and more than anything, the industry itself would never develop.

Since magic stones were a limited resource, they had to be processed, sold for as high a price as possible, and bring as many gold coins as possible into Jirenu Territory.

Furthermore, if the craftsmen who processed them developed, and if the production of tools those craftsmen used developed too, then various kinds of work would arise within the territory. More than the sale price of processed magic stones, the economic development of Jirenu Territory itself ought to be the greater benefit for Lord Iiria.

“I heard that. I also heard why. Because you make vastly more money selling them after processing than selling them raw. What I do not understand is the method.”

Kengo looked at me, and I shrugged to mean that yes, I had explained it too, but failed to make them understand.

“What he says has to be wrong. If you want to increase processing, why would you reduce the number of workshops instead of increasing them?”

Kururu’s slender finger was thrust right in front of my face.

Kengo showed an ambiguous expression that was almost a smile, then scratched his head.

“It is not exactly that we are reducing workshops…”

“According to his plan, the workshops the masters run will be dismantled, and the masters too will be reduced to half-trained status alongside their apprentices. And after doing that, he says processing will increase more than ever. I cannot make any sense of it.”

I had explained it several times, but not only Kururu, even Iiria had failed to understand.

Or rather, in Iiria’s case, she seemed to have gotten some strange misunderstanding, and had burst into laughter halfway through my explanation.

“What exactly is this bun-gyou?”

Kururu pronounced the word in Japanese, looking suspicious.

In this world, the common sense was that a craftsman became fully fledged by mastering a skill and setting up a workshop. Then again, that had generally been true in my old world too before industrialization began.

By contrast, magic stone processing was the work of carving magic circles into magic stones of standardized sizes according to fixed rules—in other words, it was made up of a vast combination of simple tasks.

In the current workshops, the apprentices only handled preliminary work, and carving the magic circles was something reserved for masters who had undergone long training.

So if you wanted to speed up the pace of magic stone processing, then as long as you followed the common sense of this world, the only option was to increase the number of masters. But becoming a master required years of training, which was terribly inefficient.

So I had racked my brain, and then realized that even if apprentices could not handle every task, they still possessed the simpler carving skills.

If that was the case, then I thought that by breaking down each stage of magic stone processing into separate parts, assigning the difficult tasks to masters and the easy tasks to apprentices, it might be possible to make use even of the unskilled.

But once you did that, a certain number of people became necessary for the chain of processes, so the workshop format, in which one master had only a handful of apprentices, no longer fit.

Ideally, the magic stones would be passed from right to left, each person completing the task assigned to them, and by the time a stone reached the final workbench, it would be a finished product.

When I explained it like that, Iiria had doubled over laughing.

Apparently, the sight of masters and apprentices all lined up in a row, busily passing magic stones from one to the next, had seemed far too strange to her. She had found it absolutely hilarious, laughing so hard her fluffy hair became even fluffier, while her dog-like tail wagged furiously.

“Is it hard to picture if it is only explained in words? To us it seems perfectly obvious.”

Kengo looked at me, so I nodded as well.

At that, Kururu’s face became openly displeased.

“This is a story about that world you two used to live in, is it not?”

Instead of lighting up at talk of an unknown world, Kururu for some reason always got irritated when our old world came up.

“Well, they say you should try something before judging it, so why not just try it?”

Kengo said that without paying any attention to Kururu’s mood.

While we were talking, the beastfolk seemed to have finished washing up, and they called Kengo’s name.

“…As for this bun-gyou you speak of.”

Kengo, who had called back to the beastfolk, turned toward Kururu.

“Like Iiria-sama, I also do not think it will work.”

Kururu had been positive even about the reckless plan to bring down Nodon, and yet for some reason she was negative about this.

“Hm… So Iiria-chan is against it?”

At Kengo’s question, Kururu inserted her usual, “Call her Iiria-sama!” before sighing.

“Iiria-sama says we should at least try it. After all, you managed to bring down Nodon.”

Though Kururu did not seem convinced, she was loyal to Iiria.

“Really… the things you two do make no sense.”

“But thanks to that, this is where we are now.”

When Kengo said that, Kururu grimaced with displeasure and waved him off with a shooing gesture.

Kengo laughed cheerfully and walked off toward his beastfolk companions.

Watching him go, I said to Kururu,

“But division of labor itself exists in this world too, does it not?”

At the Nodon Company, merchants and artisans from all over town had gathered to petition for revisions to their dealings. Among them were people from all sorts of trades, and for example, those involved in producing clothing were divided into multiple guilds.

There was a Spinners’ Guild that washed raw wool and spun it into thread, a Weavers’ Guild that turned that into cloth, a Dyers’ Guild that handled fulling and dyeing, and a Tailors’ Guild that made the cloth into clothing. The shepherds who raised the sheep seemed to be a completely different group from the artisans, and there were even various guilds of merchants who specialized in raw wool, yarn, or fabric. The work of making clothes and turning them into goods was divided among a tremendous number of people.

So it was certainly not the case that everything in the process was assumed to be done by one person alone, and yet both Iiria and Kururu remained skeptical of my proposal.

“You mean the matter of clothes? I already told you, that is not bun-gyou.”

“Wh—?”

I did not understand Kururu’s reasoning at all.

But apparently the reverse was also true, and they seemed exasperated that I failed to understand that distinction.

“However… annoying as it is, what that fool Kengo said is true.”

“?”

Kururu looked at me and twisted her face in displeasure.

“Thanks to your reckless ideas, we have what we do now.”

Kururu glared at me, baring her canine teeth like an animal trying to intimidate something.

But more than intimidation, it just looked like a girl pouting and going, eeeh.

“Come on, quit dawdling and let us go back!”

At that, I hurriedly trotted after Kururu.