Winning Favor Was The Easiest Job! (2)

For a few days, life was ordinary.

Honestly, there had been all sorts of minor tasks, but at last, the ones who would make me busy came back.

“Will this be enough?”

Dozens of beastkin who had gone out returned with armfuls of something on both shoulders. There seemed to be no injured or dead.

Beastkin were strong, as expected.

“Don’t tell me these are all poison sacks?”

“Isn’t that obvious? And I spread word among the clans, too.”

“…Was that… necessary?”

Debik’s words left me a bit speechless, but he gave me a reason I could understand.

“There will never be another lord like you, and if you truly make a medicine that can press down mana, we’ll have no choice but to follow you.”

The line about there never being another lord like me landed with solid impact. I hadn’t expected Debik to think that far ahead. Of course I had no reason to refuse if many beastkin became domain folk, but when I thought about the quantity of medicine to prepare, the outlook felt bleak.

We were talking about one month’s supply per year—that was ten pills per person—and if there were over a thousand beastkin… what if it reached ten thousand?

“I’ll be crushed by work.”

Just the time needed to prep the pills would obviously take months. So I considered: what if, after finishing the compound, I left the process of shaping the pills into round tablets to someone else?

Reviewing the recipe and estimating, I learned the efficiency would drop by about ten percent, and I couldn’t know what variables that range might introduce.

“No data, and a ten percent hit… is this a gamble?”

It was literally a pill that lowered the ability to take in mana. In that case, should I simply suppress mana outright instead?

I thought it over, but given various circumstances, I judged it better to make absorption difficult and have a contingency for emergencies.

“If beastkin can’t use mana at all, are they only a bit stronger than humans…?”

Since I still had time, I first asked Debik to roughly gauge how many beastkin would likely accept it.

“How many beastkin do you think will come?”

“Well, I didn’t spread the news very broadly. I understand there are about ten thousand beastkin living in the Forest of Monsters and the Forest of the Demon Dragon; at least half might come, I think.”

Hearing Debik, I realized I should prepare for ten thousand. I was certain not just half would come. From the desperation I’d sensed in Debik, it was clear beastkin never took the Demon God’s month lightly.

What’s more, just judging from the number of poison sacks Debik’s side had brought now, it was enough to make medicine for ten thousand people.

A hundred thousand pills—an enormous amount—but I did not intend to make them all with my own hands without a few trials first. Since they were the ones who would be taking them, I planned to arrange things so they could handle it themselves somehow. For that, first priority was to move the more than one hundred poison sacks into the lord’s residence.

There was a saying that, for monster by-products, the rate of decay depends on handling. So the top-priority preliminary task I chose was extracting only the poison from the poison sacks.

This was simply a matter of draining off the poison and storing it, so I asked the beastkin to pour Scorpion King venom in one big vat and Armored Beetle venom in another, and I ran the numbers.

“We can manufacture enough medicine for ten thousand, but the problem is the other ingredients…”

They had brought in too many poison sacks. Moreover, considering the herbs needed for this medicine, I would also need grinding work for powders and pressing work for juices.

So what I thought of was to entrust those tasks to other hands first, then pass the completed powders and juices through a process of evenly “spraying” mana into them.

“If we can get at least fifty percent efficiency, this method should be the right answer…”

Having me do everything directly would involve far too much labor. Besides, the manufacturing process had eight total stages. There were six ingredients, and each one required different handling.

So I needed a way to minimize the steps. If I couldn’t do it alone, it meant I had to reduce the steps by borrowing many hands. First I asked Debik’s group to handle poison extraction, then I called in Debik’s wife, Hirna, and the fox-beastkin hostess, Reuma, separately and spoke.

“Ms. Hirna, could you grind these herbs into powder?”

“Powder? To what fineness?”

“Could you make it as fine as wheat flour?”

“If that’s all… I can do it.”

Hirna showed confidence, so after handing over the raw herbs, I gave the herb fruits to Ms. Reuma, the fox-beastkin hostess, and said:

“Ms. Reuma, please collect the juice from these. Do it like this—put the deseeded pulp into a cloth, roll it up, and then with a stick like this…”

When I showed the method used to squeeze liquid after decocting medicine, Reuma said it was a good way and promised confidently to handle it.

After asking those two women to take care of separate ingredients, I began preparing the other materials little by little myself and laying them out.

Watching the materials start to gather on the table, I first began to breathe mana into the ones I had handled.

I had deliberately not used mana during preparation. That way, I could see what efficiency the medicine would show if only the final infusion involved mana. Feeling the curious gazes of beastkin watching me work mana, I kept infusing for a good while; then Ms. Reuma and Ms. Hirna set two finished ingredients on the table and asked if there was anything else to do. I told them not for now and asked them to wait.

After that, I ladled a bowl of each extracted venom onto the table, then added Baal Shoot and Firegrass to the Scorpion King and Armored Beetle venoms separately, and waited for perfect breakdown.

I also did not use mana in this step, waiting for all components to be decomposed by the venom. Just then, Debik came over and asked:

“You used mana to manufacture until now—why not with this?”

“Because the quantity of medicine is large. I’d love to handcraft everything for you, but then I wouldn’t be able to do anything else because of this drug—I’d be buried in work. That’s inefficient. I’ve got a lot to do; I can’t be tied down by just medicine, can I?”

Debik looked at me as if to say being tied down would be fine, so instead of answering him, I spoke to Hirna.

“If I do, I won’t be able to make invigorators. With all this pill prep—are you okay with that?”

At that, Debik jumped in alarm and looked away from me, and Hirna, who had figured out what this was about, seized him by the wrist and dragged him off somewhere.

It was like watching a bull being led to the slaughterhouse, but I cleanly ignored it and first began infusing mana into the already-liquefied Scorpion King venom.

Since I had to pass through this step for all the ingredients, I tracked mana consumption and used my free hand to jot times and such on a sheet.

I planned to work at roughly one minute of mana operation on average per batch, labeled that unit “1S,” and finished the same operation for the rest as well.

With all materials ready, it was time to mix them in order. Debik, dragged off earlier, returned looking forlorn and set to squeezing Scorpion King poison sacks.

“Sorry, but even if you’re in an awkward spot, it can’t be helped. I don’t want to live buried in work.”

Even now, this was basically an “investment.” Winning their hearts?

No—this was more like putting a “leash” on them with medicine. Once they knew the utility, they’d have no choice but to rely on me to reduce sacrifices—that was the angle.

Debik had blown it up too big from the start, but I didn’t think that was bad either.

What would it feel like to take in nearly ten thousand beastkin as domain folk?

I entertained a stray thought, then finally began compounding.

I first took the Scorpion King venom and added two prepared ingredients. One was “powdered Vitality Grass,” and the other was tartar-fruit juice.

When the two ingredients were mixed into the Scorpion King venom, it began bubbling and gave off a bluish vapor. Seeing that, I told those nearby to step back and took a dose of the neutralizer I’d made in advance as I said:

“During manufacturing, toxins from Scorpion King venom and Armored Beetle venom will volatilize into the air. You’ll see it. This blue vapor—if you inhale it, you may faint or your heart may stop, so be careful.”

That applied to situations with heavy inhalation, but since there could be accumulation during the process, I took the neutralizer in advance.

All the beastkin stared in fascination. Even several maids and knights came outside to watch. The meeting of beastkin and humans looked a bit precarious, but I figured they could draw closer step by step, and I kept my mouth shut to focus on the medicine.

We had to let the noxiousness bleed off first, so I set the Scorpion King venom aside. Next, I shook in the appropriate amounts of the ingredients Hirna and Reuma had prepared into the Armored Beetle venom and ran the same process.

The Armored Beetle venom was close to a “hallucinogenic poison”—calling it a “narcotic” wouldn’t be far off. In high doses it would stop the brain or heart—but since this was to be used for medicine, I planned to draw only the medicinal properties through neutralization.

So this time, the Armored Beetle venom exuded a red-tinted mist.

There was a stir; it got noisy around us. Lifting my heel and glancing outward, I saw many beastkin had arrived. Some must have rushed over at Debik’s news.

And Debik looked at me and said:

“Looks like the dogfolk and tigerfolk kids came; I’ll go meet them.”

“Ah, as you like. If anyone starts a commotion, fights, or… stirs up trouble, please tell them that not only will there be no medicine, they also won’t be accepted as domain folk.”

“They’re not the types to balk at that sort of warning, but…”

“They may think nothing of it now. I wonder if they’ll feel the same later?”

When I gave a light smile, Debik flinched. Why was he startled?

I didn’t know which part surprised him, but he said he understood and walked toward the entrance of the lord’s residence. Watching him go, I pulled over the two venoms whose neutralization was nearly done and began kneading them in a one-to-one ratio into the powdered herb from the Forest of the Demon Dragon called “Puru Puru Grass.”

“Puru Puru Grass” was a kind of large-grain herbal material; when finely ground it became a powder like “flour.” Its taste was similar, too, but its effect was “absorption and blending.”

It was a peculiar herb that, when in powder form, drew in liquid components and pulled out only the beneficial parts; you could make an astonishing variety of preparations with it—no wonder it was called the king of versatility.

“For moist, liquid-bearing ingredients, this one is essential, huh…?”

I kneaded diligently without using mana yet. In other words, I was using mana only on the “materials.”

I did, however, push a slightly larger total amount of mana through—just enough to exceed what the whole process would consume—and, confirming it had transferred well, I basically did something brute-force that ignored the letter of the recipe.

But something I often felt while making medicine was that “the recipe isn’t the only answer.”

Pharmacy had taught me the same thing, which was why I chose to try it. When the kneading finished to a good consistency, I slapped the mass down hard on the table and said:

“Now then, beastkin friends, it’s time I asked for your hands.”

To those looking at me as if to ask what to do, I formed a pill the size of goat droppings and said:

“I would be very grateful if you could make pills about this size!”