By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 4 (eBook)

Roy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020
363 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-6904-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Now that Ryoma has parted ways with the duke's family, it's time for him to begin a new life on his own in the abandoned mine he manages. Assorted issues take place at his laundromat, but as he solves them, he installs more security equipment in the store and becomes closer with his employees. When it's suggested that he starts training new staff so he can open a second laundromat in another location, Ryoma seeks out the ideal spot for his new store by going on a solo adventure for the first time! Ryoma's connections with the kind people around him further expand his world in the fourth installment of this daily life fantasy!

Textauszug

Chapter 3 Episode 1: The Melancholy of Separation

After I saw the duke’s family off, I decided to do some training and ran back home. On the way to the abandoned mine, I spotted tons of adventurers and assumed they were after the grell frogs. As long as I was nearby, I figured I could go catch a few myself. I took my waders out of my Item Box and changed my destination to the swamp.

The swamp was once again packed with adventurers. There were at least a hundred of them from what I could see. Some went to other swamps, so this wasn’t even everyone. There were a few of them wearing jumpsuits or waders as well. They must have been selling nicely.

I noticed a group of five who were all wearing jumpsuits and waders. And furthermore, I recognized them. It was Sikum’s Pier, the group that sold me the bloody slime. I went over to greet them, but it looked like something had happened. Kai was a bit disgruntled, and the others were patting him on the back, trying to cheer him up.

“Hello.”

“Hm? You’re that Ryoma kid, right? Thanks for helping out the other day.”

“No problem, I got a nice slime out of it,” I said. The man who was drunk last time walked up to me.

“You that guy who bought the slime?”

“Yes, indeed I am.”

“Yeah? Sorry about before. I’m Thane. I guess I went at you while I was drunk, but I can’t remember any of it. Thanks for buying the slime, though. Plus, you tipped us off as to how we could make a profit here,” he said. Thane was behaving totally differently right now. He acted like your typical drunk before, but now he seemed to have his act together.

“It was nothing. Anyway, did something happen? It looks like something’s bugging Kai.”

“Nothing I’d consider a problem, but there was a little something. Before that, though, let me introduce these guys,” Kai said and looked to the two men who dragged Thane away before. First, he put his hand on the shoulder of the slightly short one. “This is Kei, my little brother.”

“I’m Kei. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“And this is—”

“Peyron. Nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Peyron.”

“The five of us make up a party called Sikum’s Pier. You know about it?”

“Yes.”

“Actually, we used to be fishermen,” he said, but I had no idea why he brought that up.

“Sorry, Kai’s bad at explaining things,” Shin said, taking over for Kai. “I’ll tell you the rest.”

From what he told me, Sikum was a village by the biggest lake in the country. They were born there and raised as fishermen, so they were used to handling nets. While it was somewhat different wading through mud than through water, they were quicker than the other adventurers and able to catch many grell frogs. They’d made a killing on this over the last few days, and they had already captured over twenty frogs today alone, but when they took their eyes off their basket of frogs for a moment, someone swapped it with their own. These baskets were lent out by the guild, and many of the adventurers had identical ones, so there was no telling who committed the crime.

“I see. So someone stole your catches?”

“I guess, maybe.”

His response was oddly ambiguous. While I was wondering about that, Kei showed me their basket.

“As far as the number of frogs go, this basket actually has more than ours did,” he said. This basket had a few more than twenty grell frogs, but they all looked weak. A couple of them in particular were injured and hardly breathing.

“Some idiot was catching their frogs wrong. They won’t be worth as much like this, and they’ll be even more worthless if they die. If we try to take them back to town like this, they’ll all die on the way there.”

“So they swapped with our healthy frogs, then.”

“We could just catch some more, but it still sucks. That’s all.”

“Do you know how much you’d make selling these?” I asked.

“Two hundred sute if they’re alive, however weak, when we get to the guild. Fifty if they’re dead. Probably something in between if they’re on the verge of death. After getting screwed over with that slime, we made sure to look all this up in advance.”

“And if they’re in good condition, you’d get a thousand sute per frog?”

“Right. What about it?”

“Will you sell me these grell frogs for three hundred sute each?” I requested.

“Yeah, I can do that, but are you sure?” Shin asked and cocked his head.

“It’s more than we’d get selling them to the guild, so there’s no reason to refuse.”

“He’ll be taking a hit, though.”

“If I were planning to sell them to the guild, maybe, but I’m taking them for personal use.”

“Like what? Can you make medicine?”

“Yes. I can use them to make antidotes and the like, so I figured I would come get some frogs to stock up on medicine.”

“Yeah? Well, if you can pay more than the guild, we’d appreciate it.”

“We can just catch some more for the guild. Go ahead and buy all of these.”

“Thank you.”

I bought twenty-five grell frogs from Sikum’s Pier for five hundred sute in all.

“You’re something else.”

“I wondered about this when you bought that slime for a small gold coin. You’ve got a lot of money to shell out.”

“Considering all the business his store gets, it’s no wonder.”

“You’ve been to my store?”

“Yeah, we were just planning on a trial run at first, but it was really cheap, quick, and great for our clothes, so we’ve been frequenting the place.”

“Especially over the past few days, just to clean this sludge off.”

“I was surprised to see how useful those slimes could be. At least they’re good for something.”

“It’ll be tough not having that laundromat around when we go back home, though. Could you open a branch in our town? I could talk the Fishing Guild into giving you a good location.”

“We discuss opening new branches sometimes, but it’s too early for that right now.”

“I guess you can’t just open new stores on a whim, huh. But if you do want a branch in Sikum, get in contact with us. We could at least help you find a location.”

“We don’t typically leave our village, unless it’s to visit a village nearby. Should be easy enough to get in contact with us.”

“If we use our connections in the Fishing Guild, maybe we could get you a better place than the Merchant’s Guild could.”

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

We came to a nice mutual agreement, thankfully. I parted ways with them and finally headed for the mine.

■　■　■

Arriving at the mine, the first order of business was to let my slimes and limour birds outside, so they could play around. With that done, I dug a hole in the side of a random tunnel to set up some living space, as well as a medicine mixing room. My shelves and furniture were made of stone, but that was good enough for now.

I called my bloody slime and cleaners over to process the grell frogs. The weak ones had to be taken care of quickly, and I still had grell frogs from a couple days ago sitting in water tanks in my Dimension Home. They were healthy when I caught them, so they could survive for at least a week. The average medicine man would take advantage of that time to process the frogs as cautiously as possible, but thanks to my slimes, I didn’t need to take it slow.

First, I drew a separation magic circle off to the side of the room, then set up as many stone containers as I would need for all the parts I was cutting the frogs into. I took the grell frogs out of my Dimension Home and left them in a stone cage in the corner of the room, concluding my preparations. I decided to start with the frogs I bought that day.

When I picked up a random frog, it struggled in my hands. I held onto it firmly so it wouldn’t get away, then killed it with a knife. I sent the bloody slime into the gash and let it absorb all the blood. Next, I needed to cut the frog into pieces. Following the knowledge from my Medicine skill, I divided it into the necessary parts. Not a single drop of blood oozed out as I did; the bloody slime seemed to do a perfect job. After that, I washed all the parts with water to get rid of the frog mucus, as well as any filth that got on while I cut them apart. The mucus lowered the quality of these parts, but it was extremely difficult to remove. Not only that, but handling the parts too roughly could damage the organs, also reducing their quality. That was why you had to be cautious. It was a job that demanded a lot of attention. If I were taking the normal approach, that is.

When I gave my cleaner slimes their orders, they consumed the frog parts and the entirety of the containers that held them, then began to remove the mucus. The work was done in a matter of seconds. I checked the parts, but despite how fast they went about it, no damage had been done.

There was one last job to do. The processed components needed to be dried. This would normally involve the use of wind and fire magic, but the time it took and the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.8.2020
• Reihe/Serie: By the Grace of the Gods
• Reihe/Serie: By the Grace of the Gods
• Illustrationen: Ririnra
• Übersetzer: Noah Rozenberg
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: Adventure • Fantasy • Isekai • Light Novel • Magic • monsters • Slice of Life
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-6904-2 / 1718369042
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-6904-7 / 9781718369047