Interesting News

“Oh, Woody-sama, thank you for coming!”

At first glance, Degji-san was the sort of man who looked like a merchant.

He looked to be in his late thirties, with his whole body wrapped in clothing that looked like a cross between a robe and a toga, and he wore a white hat made from the same material as his clothes.

“Degji-san, it has been a while. How have you been?”

“Well, more or less, I would say. Just being able to live an ordinary life in this desert makes me feel quite happy already, yes indeed.”

Degji-san was about the same height as me, but sideways he was about twice my size.

He was big and stout, always sweating, and constantly wiping his face with a handkerchief.

“Recently, I have finally surpassed the weight I used to be back when I was in the kingdom. I intend to get even fatter still, yes indeed.”

“I think getting too fat would be a problem too, though…? Please take care of your body.”

Why did gaining weight make him smile?

If he had been skin and bones and needed to put on weight, I would understand, but I felt like Degji-san had already been on the chubby side to begin with…

“Ever since coming to this desert, all I did was keep losing weight, you see, yes indeed. So now I am savoring the happiness of being able to gain it back, yes indeed.”

“I see…”

So it was more like he was happy just to be able to eat plenty.

I could understand that feeling, so I decided to agree with him.

Apparently Degji-san used to be a traveling merchant, and he was extremely good with people.

Thanks to that physique and his gentle face, he had a strangely likable character that made him popular with everyone.

Incidentally, the reason he had come to the desert was because, despite being a merchant, he had fatally lacked any sense for business and had gone bankrupt.

He might not have had any talent for commerce, but I felt it would be a waste not to make use of a personality that no one disliked, so I appointed him village chief.

Incidentally, he possessed the aptitude of Orator.

Using the power of that aptitude together with his natural communication skills, he had been doing an excellent job of keeping together the villagers who had come from the kingdom for various reasons.

“Well then, if you could tell us right away why you called for us.”

“Yes, of course, certainly, yes indeed. Please look at this.”

What Degji-san had brought out as he spoke was—a massive lump.

Could that possibly be…

“Yes, just as Woody-sama imagined, it is a lump of iron, yes indeed. It seems that our ironworking industry has finally gotten on track.”

Guinea Village had an iron mine created by Wheel-san.

Apparently Wheel-san’s magical power gradually adapted itself to the Sanctuary, and as the population increased and people’s faith in him deepened, he was able to use proportionally more of his power.

By now, not only iron mines but also silver mines and gold mines had begun to be created.

And furthermore, though this was not yet public information, we had also become able to extract rock salt on a small scale.

In this desert, getting salt was difficult no matter what.

And when it came through traveling merchants like Ran-san and the others, the price rose quite a lot.

I had secretly been looking forward to the day when we might be able to produce salt ourselves, something absolutely indispensable to daily life… though that could wait for now.

Even so, I did not think it had been that long since I had asked them to begin refining the metals we were now able to extract… but it really could be done this quickly.

“Was there some reason it went so smoothly?”

“I believe the biggest factor is that some of the villagers possess aptitudes. If there is someone with the Fire Magic aptitude, they can produce the high temperatures necessary for ironworking, and if there is someone with the Alchemist aptitude, separating impurities and processing the material can be done smoothly.”

“I see… so it was because of the power of aptitudes that this came together so quickly…”

I might have been underestimating the power of aptitudes.

Apparently, the power of aptitudes held far more possibilities than my own paltry imagination had ever been able to envision.

—In the Kingdom of Aries, unless someone was extremely wealthy or had exceptionally strong connections, commoners were never made to undergo the Rite of Blessing.

At least in the kingdom, almost all aptitude holders were nobles.

And nobles were people who lived not by labor itself, but by the profits of labor.

Aptitude holders were simply few in number.

And among the small number of aptitude holders that emerged from noble society, many often took up special professions such as adventurers in order to make use of their abilities, so aptitude-bearing talent rarely made its way into the wider world.

Because of that, we had almost no know-how when it came to how to use aptitudes in work or how to apply them to industry.

There was not a single church of the Holy Faith in Wenti, and because the desert people had their own native beliefs, there was no room for the Holy Faith to enter.

Apparently there had once been a time when the Holy Faith might have spread in, but because the religion called the Faith of Wind and Tree that Shekuri-san had built up beforehand was too strong, it had not caught on at all.

So we were able to act based on practical benefit, without being bound by the religious notion that only nobles could possess aptitudes.

There were several people like Shekuri-san who possessed priestly-type aptitudes, and unlike the kingdom, there was also no influence from the Holy Faith.

This land of Wenti might be overflowing with possibilities that someone like me, a noble of the kingdom, would never notice.

“So in other words… you went out of your way to summon Woody-sama just so you could say, ‘We managed ironworking, amazing, praise us,’ is that it?”

“N-no, nothing of the sort! On the contrary, the consultation truly begins here!”

Degji-san hurriedly tried to calm Aira, who was lowering the temperature in the room as her power as a Water Magus leaked out.

Aira still did not calm down, but when I gave her hand a little squeeze, the presence of magic immediately dispersed.

Aira was very kind to me.

But at the same time, she was harsh toward everyone except me, to the point that she had proclaimed a mysterious doctrine herself called the Woody Extremist Faction.

While I found that side of her endearing, I still wished she would be a little more pleasant to other people too.

“A consultation…?”

“Yes, next I would like you to look at this.”

What Degji-san brought out next was a whole series of products made from wood reinforced with metal.

Wooden mugs with iron fixed to the handles and joints, tableware that used wood in the handles, and similar items came out one after another.

“These are the products we are currently able to make here, yes indeed.”

“They seem pretty good, don’t they?”

“Yes, I believe they are more than good enough to sell, yes indeed.”

Every product Degji-san showed us looked to me as though it was of sufficiently high quality.

I was not much of a judge of such things, but at the very least, they seemed like the sort of products that would not look out of place on the shelves of a general store.

“We have a man here who once apprenticed under a woodworker, and another who possesses the aptitude of Metalworker. They worked very hard, and things have finally begun to take shape, yes indeed.”

“So is this about wanting sales channels to distribute these?”

“Yes, that is part of it. But our biggest concern right now is what to do with the iron that we cannot possibly use up merely by employing it as parts in this way, yes indeed…”

Apparently Guinea’s ironworking industry was going well… or rather, it was going too well.

In Wenti, I could produce trees by using Smile Points, which meant that fuel was effectively unlimited.

Because of that, a considerable amount of iron ore was already mineable, and there was even enough leeway to keep making various technical improvements.

And as a result of getting a bit too enthusiastic, iron had already begun to pile up, and before long they would be able to produce so much that the iron goods used in Guinea Village and Tree Village alone would be nowhere near enough to consume it all.

It was certainly something to be happy about, but it was also true that figuring out how to use the great quantities of iron that would continue to be produced from now on was a difficult problem.

Once the matter became this large in scope, it made sense that they would need to consult the lord, which explained why I had been summoned.

“If possible, we would want to process the iron before selling it…”

“Our transport costs are high, so ideally we want to keep it from being too bulky, yes.”

That was right. The transport costs in our territory were extremely high.

First, while crossing the desert, we had to hire adventurers to escort the caravan so it would not be attacked by the monsters living in the desert, which meant we had to add those escort costs on top.

And that was not the end of it.

After that, we still had to enter Conrad territory, cross the wastelands, head to a major city, and then from there make our way into other domains.

Basically, if you wanted to sell goods across the lands of multiple nobles, you had to pay something called a transit tax in order to be allowed to do so.

So whenever we sold goods anywhere outside Conrad territory, we had to pay tribute money to Father.

Iron was heavy no matter what, and it took up space too. If we had to transport something like that over long distances, it would not go so far as to put us in the red, but it would undoubtedly leave us with only a very thin profit margin.

If only we had been closer to a major city, this probably could have prospered as a village with an iron mine, and thinking that made me feel a little frustrated.

“If we want to sell iron at a high price, then turning it into weapons and armor would obviously fetch the best value.”

“That is certainly true, yes indeed. However, while we do have craftsmen here, we do not have a single blacksmith… yes indeed. And when I asked Maton-san, it seems there is not a single one among Wenti’s people either…”

When talking about ways to sell iron for a high price, the first thing that came to mind was of course processing it.

Take iron, which could not be sold for that much on its own, and turn it into something that could be shipped out at a high price.

In a kingdom where conflict continued both domestically and abroad, the iron goods with the greatest demand were naturally weapons and armor.

Decorative metalwork came next, but with such goods, the price really varied wildly depending on the skill of the artisan.

Looking at the long term, raising and training such people might be an option, but right now what we needed was a way to consume iron.

If we needed something right away, then unless we could poach a highly skilled artisan, it would be hard to expect demand beyond everyday goods.

“Then should we go pick out some new slaves who can do blacksmithing?”

“Woody-sama, I think it would be better not to do that. We are already drawing attention from the royal capital as it is.”

“Ugh, right…”

Previously, I had bought large numbers of slaves in order to prepare for emergencies and to gain Smile Points.

Apparently that had caused various problems within the kingdom, and we had been indirectly told to refrain for a while from poaching personnel or buying up slaves.

Slaves were a valuable labor resource, so if too many of them vanished, it would become difficult to maintain the current industrial structure.

So for the time being, it would be difficult to rely on slave labor.

In that case, I supposed the fastest approach would be to poach people capable of blacksmithing.

Fortunately, we were not lacking in wood, and it was not as though we were in such financial trouble, so if the terms were good enough, it felt like it might work.

If it was the second- or third-best artisan from a workshop who had not yet branched out to start one of their own, maybe we could lure them away.

“Woody-sama, in fact, this Degji has heard one interesting story, you see.”

“Interesting…”

“A story…?”

Aira and I both tilted our heads in confusion.

Then Degji-san, looking at us, wiped his sweat with a second handkerchief he had somehow switched to at some point and said the following.

“In fact, it seems that if one goes even farther north beyond where the Dark Elves used to live, there is said to be a race of demi-humans called dwarves living there. If we ask the Dark Elf residents to guide us, then perhaps we may be able to negotiate with them… this Degji shall commit the folly, yes indeed.”