Chapter 42

Once the Takahashi Workshop began to run, however clumsily, Nodon’s former mansion suddenly became lively.

The sound of magic stones being hammered rang out all day long, and during breaks there was cheerful conversation everywhere. By the third day of operations, no one was bothering to be surprised each time a magic stone was completed anymore, and the wide-eyed amazement at the end of the day over how many magic stones had been produced lasted only a few days.

At night too, everyone enjoyed food and drink together, and when the masters who had suddenly started working outside stopped coming home, their families who came to fetch them were invited into the circle for dinner as well, making things even livelier.

And the meals provided here had a very practical benefit for the masters too.

The original idea behind the drinking gatherings had been fellowship and exchanging information, but the masters, who had not only families but apprentices to support, were under considerable strain simply from household expenses.

So if their entire evening meal could be covered at Nodon’s mansion, there was nothing better for them.

And if one cooked for several families all at once here, the fuel cost for the stoves could be reduced tremendously. That was a plus for the masters’ household finances, and since the Jirenu Territory was an island and timber was limited, saving fuel was highly desirable for governing the territory as well.

As for the cooking, the masters’ wives and daughters had begun to stand in the kitchen, so I was relieved to be freed from the work of lighting the fire, washing and chopping vegetables, and stirring the pots while being scolded by Kururu.

Everything was going smoothly, but there was one unexpected thing.

I had thought Kururu would be able to relax now as well, but even after she left the kitchen, she did not seem all that pleased.

A little concerned, I asked Iiria about it, and after moving her gaze diagonally up to the right and then diagonally up to the left like a puppy following a butterfly with its eyes, she told me to come closer and gave me some advice.

So without saying anything to Kururu, I simply took her by the hand and dragged her into the kitchen.

And then I asked the masters’ wives to teach this girl how to cook.

Kururu was startled and tried to snap at what she saw as needless meddling, but when I said it was Iiria-san’s order, she looked resentful.

Despite not seeming suited to it at all in temperament, Kururu was always full of a desire to learn.

Iiria had said that the reason Kururu wanted to learn to cook and yet had kept away from the kitchen was probably because she had worried that, as someone with beastfolk blood, she should not be there. That having someone not entirely human prepare people’s meals was not something greatly welcomed.

But the masters’ wives did not seem to care much about that point at all, and were rather more flustered by whether it was really acceptable to have someone of such status, a retainer of Lord Iiria, standing in the kitchen.

Kururu had always been hardworking to begin with, and she was an extremely fast learner.

In no time at all she seemed to have become indispensable help, and apparently she was being taught all sorts of home cooking.

“The other people in the guild are furious with envy.”

The one who told me that was Marks, who lingered in front of Iiria’s mansion and partook every night in the meals at Nodon’s mansion.

“They keep sneaking over to watch all the time. If you called out to a few of them, some might want to join the group even if they had to give up their status as masters. Serves the guildmaster right.”

It was not as though I had wanted to rub it in the guildmaster’s face, so I did not much care about that part, but manpower was something we did need to think about.

“Still, even if we add new people, things have only just started running well.”

Marks crunched through fried fish bones, then swallowed with a gulp.

A team that was running well was something like a miracle.

If one carelessly added something to it, the good thing painstakingly built might collapse, but considering the future, it was not a problem we could avoid forever.

“We’ll need to think carefully about expanding the scale.”

But Marks still looked puzzled.

“Why not just add every last one of them who wants in?”

After a short pause, I asked him back,

“Would you take just anyone into your gang, Marks-san?”

Marks, who gathered together the slightly bad sorts around town, lifted his gaze to the sky for a moment.

“I see. I’d choose my people.”

“And the current workshop is made up only of people who had already decided this couldn’t go on as it was and came together to petition under Iiria-san. Even without any adjustment, their interests and feelings already line up with each other.”

“They’re all the same kind of losers. Of course they get along.”

Marks shrugged and gave a wicked grin.

“I get it now. In that sense, the ones sneaking around with their faces hidden under hoods to spy on you are no good. I hear the guild tavern is overflowing with people badmouthing this place.”

I could imagine it easily enough.

These underdogs were suddenly producing remarkable results through methods that defied common sense, so of course they would be resented. It was surely overflowing with sour grapes.

“But those guys might copy you on their own.”

He asked it in a tone that suggested, So is that where I come in?, but I shook my head.

“I don’t mind. If those people process a lot of magic stones that way, our sales will rise too.”

When I said that, Marks stared at me for a moment, then shrugged.

“You’re a strange guy.”

“Huh?”

“You came up with it yourself. Don’t you want to monopolize it and make a killing?”

“…”

After thinking for a bit, I shrugged.

“To monopolize something takes talent like Nodon’s, and I don’t have that. But if I were just one part of something enormously large, wouldn’t it be possible to get my share without anyone getting especially angry?”

No one knew better than I did how much of a petty commoner I was.

Marks blinked at me.

“Besides, there’s no point if only I make money.”

If I were certain I could return to my original world, that would be one thing, but if not, then I had to think about making games here.

And when that time came, it would mean nothing if there was no one to play with me.

“You really sound like you mean that.”

Marks said that in exasperation and licked the oil from his fingers.

“Well, I’m one of the ones living off the leftovers too. I’m counting on you.”

After laughing together with Marks, I entered Iiria’s mansion.

Unlike Nodon’s mansion, which was overflowing with people throughout the daylight hours, this place, now that petitions and the like had quieted down, was calm and comforting.

When I headed into the courtyard, I found Iiria basking in the sun in a chair.

That was the positive way of putting it; the more accurate way was that she had abandoned the stack of paperwork piled on the table and was sitting there in a daze.

“Kururu-san is going to scold you again.”

When I said that in exasperation, Iiria, without even opening her eyes, kicked her feet like a child.

“I hate to bother you while you’re already tired of working, but I need you to approve the magic stone transaction.”

When I said that and set the documents on the table, Iiria finally opened her eyes, and they were dimly clouded over.

“Kururu hasn’t paid any attention to me at all lately.”

I almost said, Isn’t that because you refuse to do your work?, but it was true that Kururu had practically taken up residence at Nodon’s mansion, learning cooking in the kitchen and joining the apprentices to learn magic stone processing whenever she had time.

“I shouldn’t have brought workshop business to you at all.”

All I could do in response to Iiria’s slumping shoulders was give a wry smile.

“But thanks to it, you’ll be able to collect a lot of taxes.”

Even before Iiria’s eyes opened wide, her dog ears snapped upright.

“Really?”

“The amount of processed magic stones is so high that even now it’s roughly double. I hurriedly applied for another deal with the Bax Company.”

“Now that you mention it, not that much time has passed since the last transaction.”

Iiria sat upright, looked at the documents on the table, and stared wide-eyed.

“Eh… are these numbers real? But if the workshop people get more used to it, this means it’ll go even higher, right?”

“That’s right. So it’s about time we had the next discussion.”

Iiria’s ears had been flicking happily at the unexpectedly good performance, but at my words she immediately grimaced and picked up a quill pen to begin signing the documents.

“You mean hiring people here?”

“Yes. Unless you want to stay tied to this paperwork forever, I suppose.”

Once the confirmation of rights and such was finished, what came next were disputes among townspeople that needed mediating, and all sorts of matters that required judgment from the lord. For example, if some artisan guild in town wanted to hold a guild festival, they would need permission from the lord to hold it and might also petition for a donation, and if it were a large church-sponsored event, in addition to a great many permissions, the seating order of participants would also need to be confirmed. Since such events also served as places to show who in town was close to the lord, they were apparently fairly important.

In other words, every last bit of work that Iiria had sulkily abandoned up to now was pouring in, though for an ordinary lord these were apparently things civil officials would handle.

“If only there were about five Kururus…”

“All five of them would just take up residence at that other mansion.”

Iiria let out a deep sigh.

“Besides that, without officials you can’t collect taxes, and you need someone to manage those officials too, and in the end without taxes you can’t do any of the things you want to do. More frightening still, someone like Nodon might come barging in.”

Especially the latter part was far from impossible.

“The most likely one would be the Bax Company, right?”

She changed from a sluggish, spoiled girl into the face of a lord.

“Almost all major imported goods pass through that merchant company, and more than anything, it’s frightening that they monopolize the purchase of our magic stones.”

“…”

Iiria placed a hand on her chin and thought in silence.

“Since it’s said to be a merchant company run by nobles, they may try to take us over before we grow too large.”

After all, Cole of the Bax Company had apparently gotten along very well with Nodon.

“Would it be difficult to sell to another merchant company? If there were others who wanted to trade with us, we could use them as a deterrent.”

“We have no connections at all. Or rather, I don’t even know where Azuria Province is, or how the Empire stretches beyond it.”

There was a map in Nodon’s merchant house, but I had no real sense of distance from it.

“And if we bypass their trade too carelessly, it might be taken as a declaration of war.”

Iiria’s face tightened into an unmistakable frown.

“Honestly… why is everyone like this…”

Ruffling her fluffy hair, Iiria sulked.

“So I think we need to quietly ally ourselves with someone stronger than the Bax Company.”

“…”

“Of course, if we merely become subservient, it’s just the same problem all over again, so we need to become fairly strong ourselves too.”

Iiria drew in a deep breath and let it out with obvious displeasure.

“In the end, it all comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

When I shrugged, Iiria’s gaze shifted to the approval documents for the magic stone transaction.

“If we want the Jirenu Territory to earn money, we have no choice but to increase exports, and there’s nothing but magic stones for that. And if we want to increase magic stone processing, then we need more artisans, and we also need the people who support their lives, their work tools, and everything else. The same goes for the mines.”

Iiria did not look at me, but from the movement of her dog ears I could tell she was listening properly, so I continued.

“To support a larger population, we’ll need to import food, but of course that means money leaving the Jirenu Territory. So we have to develop the island itself so that it can support as many people as possible.”

Iiria closed her eyes, looking as if she were carving words onto a slate inside her mind.

“And then, so that we can depend on the outside of the island as little as possible, we also need to think about attracting artisans and developing industry. If expensive tools and equipment can be made on the island instead of imported, then that much more gold can remain here. And we need civil officials capable of understanding this not merely as the business of our own merchant company, but as the condition of the island as a whole.”

The reason my speech kept speeding up was that I simply found thinking about things like this irresistibly enjoyable.

Drawing plans in the silent Nodon mansion by candlelight felt just like determining the outline of the internal-affairs phase of a strategy game, and it was genuinely exciting.

Iiria was slightly put off by how eager I had become, but this girl was not just some spoiled lazy child.

After chewing over and swallowing everything I had rattled off at high speed, there was one thing Iiria asked in the end.

“Do you have no plan to make a fortune with composite magic stones?”

That technology that was hidden in the history of magic stones, either forgotten now or deliberately concealed.

In a world where the price of magic stones increased exponentially with size, the fact that one could make endlessly huge magic stones by grinding tiny magic stone fragments into powder and reshaping them completely overturned the rules of the game. It was an outrageous secret.

We called them composite magic stones, but anyone who saw one would immediately understand that it was abnormal, so at present we could not even sell them openly, and they were just treasure rotting unused.

“If the world learned of it, it would cause a tremendous uproar.”

Even in the most peaceful version I could imagine, the Empire that had hidden this historical secret would probably send a band of assassins or something to wipe out everyone connected to the Jirenu Territory. It was not a level of secret that should become known to the public.

But the worst possibility was not even that.

What I feared was the possibility that literally everyone in the world had truly forgotten this fact about magic stones over the course of history, and would panic in trying to react to it.

Since one could produce endless giant magic stones, the military balance would collapse in an instant, some foolish person burning with ambition would carelessly revive the legendary magic circles left in various places, and the result would obviously be something like nuclear war.

And according to my prediction, the Empire before the current Empire, and the Empire before that one as well, had destroyed themselves after the unchecked expansion of magic circles.

When I explained what seemed likely from a strategy simulation game perspective, Iiria nodded thoughtfully.

“Still, whether it really turns into the worst-case flow depends on whether those legendary magic circles are real, right?”

Iiria was a clever girl.

“We need research into magic circles too. According to Kururu-san, parts of the ancient giant magic circles preserved in places like the church clearly function, and there is a high possibility that they are constructed with logic different from that of current magic circles.”

“…Haaah.”

Grasping her fluffy hair with both hands and combing through it with her fingers, Iiria shrank her neck in a great hunch.

“So in other words, we also need to gather people who can investigate things like that.”

I answered with a shrug of my own.

“It would have to be someone we can trust, but where are people like that supposed to be?”

In this rough, merciless, careless world.

“We managed to become that sort of people ourselves, so I’m sure they exist.”

“…”

Iiria, who had seen far too much of this harsh world, looked up at me with suspicious eyes.

But she soon smiled tiredly and lightly smacked my arm.

“You bad man.”

“Huh?”

Still smiling, Iiria bared her teeth in a little grimace and picked up her quill pen.

“Yes, yes, I’ll work, so the audience is over.”

I wondered whether I had said something rude, but Iiria did not seem to be in a bad mood, so I decided it was probably fine.

“Ah, if you see Kururu, tell her to come back once before sunset.”

As I turned to go from the courtyard back into the building, Iiria said that to me.

She did not even look up from signing the documents.

She was probably going to complain about having been neglected.

“Very well, I’ll tell her that you were sulking.”

Iiria waved her hand at me in a shooing gesture.

When I went back to Nodon’s mansion smiling and passed along Iiria’s message, Kururu, who had completely blended in with the apprentices and was holding a hammer and chisel, made the face of a child who had suddenly realized she had forgotten her curfew.