Chapter 86
While the Heavenly Lord was going around massacring dark mages through bug abuse(?),
- Crunch!
Akion had now reached the final stage of green-bean production: threshing and sorting.
Specifically, they had to peel the well-dried parchment away to extract the green beans, then sort out the defective ones.
“Akion, are these green beans?”
“Yes. Once we roast them, they become coffee beans.”
After tightly packing the parchment into a narrow cylinder with spiral grooves and spinning it wildly, the parchment broke apart as the pieces rubbed and collided with one another.
The principle was to separate the parchment powder from the green beans inside by exploiting the difference in their mass and centrifugal force.
“Ugh, if only Big Brother were here….”
“Uuugh, working with metal is too difficult….”
“Ahem, Lord Juan is currently making a blood-soaked effort to inherit his title.”
“What kind of effort is it if he’s being worked to death on large-scale civil engineering projects!!!”
“A-Akion, that’s too cruel….”
This thresher, also known as an Engelberg thresher, was used for rice processing as well.
Naturally, nothing like it existed in this romantasy, so he had once again entered headbutting-dinosaur mode and was testing everything one painstaking step at a time.
“Enerysis, I miss you….”
“Uuugh… I wanna go home…….”
“Where do you think you’re going? You have to finish this before you leave.”
Akion had heard about the Eastern Continent before. Apparently, they grew rice there.
If he sold this there, wouldn’t they be horrified by its tremendous processing capacity?
“Ah, now I want to eat tteokbokki.”
Since they were at it, maybe they could make tteok, or tteokbokki.
And if they had fish, wouldn’t eomuk be nice too? With such thoughts, Akion put his two sisters to work.
“U-uu. Uuuuu….”
“Hic, heehee! Heeheehee!!”
“Gaaah, Miss Hermione and Miss Astera have broken down…!”
“I know the Saint’s past now… but this really is harsh.”
It was summer vacation.
* * *
How wonderful was it to be able to dump your own work on someone else?
Ever since becoming a professor, Akion had once again realized the happiness of being a tyrannical professor.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was slowing down his own research.
“It’s hot….”
He wielded engineering in this romantasy medieval world for the sake of a peaceful, whole, and comfortable daily life.
“I want to eat something cold….”
“Goldie does too….”
With that in mind, Akion had to find a way to survive this summer.
“Saintess, could you ask the Heavenly Lord why it’s so hot?”
“If I asked the Heavenly Lord for a divine revelation over something like that, I’d be punished by heaven, wouldn’t I?”
It was sweltering enough that even the ceiling fans Akion had made could barely help.
Apparently, once the weather became this hot, many people collapsed from heatstroke.
“Bweeeee.”
Goldie had already given up and was wearing nothing but the thinnest clothes, sticking her tongue out in front of a handheld fan.
“Goldie wants ice cream… I want to lick it over and over as I eat it….”
“It’s expensive….”
“But you have lots of moneyyy… And you don’t want to go outside, Young Master….”
In truth, Akion was also too exhausted from the heat to want to go out.
Walking under the scorching sunlight?
Oh, he would be drenched in sweat immediately.
“Eeeeng, Goldie wants ice cream! Montblanche honey ice creeeam~!!”
“Heehee, Akion. Goldie is suffering quite a bit too, isn’t she? Buying her one would surely boost her motivation to work.”
“Graaagh.”
Anyway, they had ice cream here too.
It was made at the Montblanche flagship store in the capital, where they even hired an ice mage and sold it in limited quantities each day.
“It’s incredibly expensive! If we’re going to eat it, I’d have to buy some for everyone here!!”
Of course, the price was equivalent to six months of living expenses for an average commoner family.
Even Akion found it difficult to buy it for everyone on a whim.
“Then shall I pay with my own money?”
“Put the imperial money away. It’s tax money…. I’ll buy it. I’ll buy it.”
“Wowee! Young Master, you’re the best!”
Still, it would look rather bad for his disciple, the Seventh Princess, to pull out her wallet.
In the end, Akion pulled out his own wallet and went outside for the first time in a while.
“Hehe, well done. Thanks to Goldie, Akion is finally getting some sunlight.”
“Exactly! People need to live while seeing sunlight, but he’s always holed up in the lab!”
“Graaagh, was this all part of a plan?”
Of course, on the way there it was revealed that the people around him had planned Akion’s outing,
and Akion slowly got roasted golden-brown beneath the sizzling sunlight.
“N-no, if I stay under the sun any longer, I’ll die…!!”
“You won’t die, Saint.”
“How do you know that!!”
Of course, he knew he wouldn’t die, but since Akion was feeling spiteful, he wanted to argue.
Did they really have to hang him out to dry under the sun like this!!
“I know from torturing dark mages. They really don’t die easily!”
“……”
But since she had apparently tried hanging them out to dry herself, he couldn’t think of anything to say in response.
Akion had been reminded of how cruel the Saintess actually was when dealing with dark magic, despite how warmly she had been treating them lately.
“Hehe, Akion. Just accept it humbly and keep walking.”
“Yesss……”
As Aysirel had said, Akion could do nothing but droop and drag himself along.
*
Still, the Imperial Academy was located on the capital’s main street, so…
“Wowow~! It’s the Montblanche flagship storeee!!”
They eventually arrived at the Montblanche flagship store that Goldie had so desperately wanted to visit.
“Wow.”
It was an enormous five-story building, quite large by medieval standards.
“How did they even build this…?”
“They built it somehow.”
“The athletics department should keep quiet.”
Looking around, it was clear that all kinds of architectural techniques had been applied.
Arches, Roman concrete—more primitive than Akion’s—and, above all…
“Isn’t this a yakhchāl?”
“A yakhchāl… Hmm, it sounds like the name of a region in the southeastern desert….”
A dome-shaped structure built high on the building’s exterior.
It was a traditional evaporative cooler used since ancient times in regions of the Middle East, such as Iran.
Its cooling performance was so excellent that it could even make ice in the desert.
“No wonder they sell ice cream….”
Akion had wondered why he was talking about milk ice cream, but seeing this feat of architectural engineering made him understand.
“Young Master, Tower Master, Sister Aysirel, Saintess, Emp— ahem, Sister Flare! Welcome!!!”
“Yes, yes. Let’s go inside.”
Whenever Akion saw things like this, he marveled at the wisdom of his ancestors.
He imagined how much fun it would have been if they, too, had possessed a modern educational environment.
“Whoa, are there really this many people just at the entrance?”
“Saint, stay close to me.”
“No, stay close to me—.”
When they entered the bustling Montblanche flagship store,
- Whoosh~!
“Wow.”
A cool breeze, evidently produced by that cooling structure, greeted him.
“Whoaow~ It’s so cooool~”
“How fascinating. There’s no sign that ice magic was used….”
No wonder the place was overflowing with customers.
Above all, Montblanche was a bakery targeting wealthy customers.
“Oh my. Isn’t that someone from the Count Orlando family….”
“Wowee, Goldie’s neighbor lady is here too!”
In other words, it was a bakery frequented by noble ladies and others who had money to spare.
“So, that’s what I was saying, hohoho!!”
“Ilon, take this. I should bring it home as a gift for Father.”
There were very few men, aside from servants attending to others.
“Would someone as shabby as me be allowed to enter such a prestigious place…?”
“You entered the Enerysis branch just fine! A young master of a count’s family shouldn’t be intimidated in a place like this!”
Since this was a place where important people gathered, there were even seats where they could sit and eat, so Akion could not help but feel the scrutiny of such people.
“That’s….”
“Hmm, could it be Enerysis?”
“He doesn’t look like that guy….”
“Hmm….”
However, the atmosphere around Akion was strange.
People were discreetly pointing at him, and he could even hear them whispering about him.
“It sounds like the people inside are talking about me. I’m just being overly self-conscious, right?”
Akion assumed he had misheard them because of the fatigue from his work as a professor.
Besides, wasn’t Enerysis’s hair rather distinctive?
“Right? Even his hair is the same.”
Mysterious hair with a silver base and blue highlights.
It was a color almost synonymous with Elena Enerysis, the great archmage and first head of the family.
Since only the Enerysis family had hair like that, Akion was about to dismiss it as mere self-consciousness.
“No, they’re actually talking about you.”
“Eh.”
“They aren’t directing murderous intent toward the Saint, but unpleasant things are being said.”
But as Aysirel and the Saintess had said, it was not his overactive imagination.
“Grrr… Young Master, stay right beside Goldie!”
“From what I overheard… it seems to be more about your family than about you.”
Apparently, they were talking specifically about his family, the Enerysis family.
Goldie, who had been eagerly searching for bread and ice cream, noticed it too and came back, while the Tower Master moved to Akion’s side and glared at everyone around them.
And then…
“Oh-hohohohohoho~!!!”
- Resounding!!!
“What is that? What’s going on?”
An enormous laugh loud enough to shake the building struck the first floor.
- Thud thud thud!!!
“Juan Enerysis, you dare dump me and then bring more women here─?!!!”
A red-haired, roll-bun noblewoman came rushing out from the back of the store, calling out his brother’s name.
“Wow, a bread roll.”
“Didn’t I tell you on the day we broke up?!”
- BANG!!
The problem was that, to Akion, the woman’s ferocious presence was almost at a knight’s level.
“Never again!!”
“W-wait a minute─.”
- Rumble rumble rumble!!!
“Don’t ever show that face in front of me again─!!!!”
From the aura surrounding her swinging fist, she apparently held a grudge against Juan Enerysis.
As Akion instinctively shrank back from the surging murderous intent,
“How dare you go after the Young Master─!!”
- Crackle crackle!!
Brave Goldie stepped forward to block her.
She stood in front of Akion with lightning magic wrapped around her body, raising her guard as though she had resolved herself to protect him.
- Halt!!
“Oh my. It isn’t Juan.”
“……What? Why aren’t you hitting me?”
Akion, standing behind Goldie, was disappointed that the situation had become anticlimactic after the real target abruptly appeared, but anyway.
“Phew, I thought it was him again. When I saw someone with the same hair dragging a whole crowd of women around, I thought that silver-haired black bastard had come back.”
“Oh.”
The red-haired roll-bun noblewoman casually spewed racist slurs.
Akion had never encountered this type of person before, and he was left flustered and speechless when…
“I apologize for causing such a disturbance.”
- Flutter
The red-haired roll-bun noblewoman pulled her skirt out to either side and displayed proper aristocratic etiquette.
“I am Scarlet Montblanche, the proprietress of this Montblanche flagship store.”
The furious woman who had been raging like an active volcano only moments ago was gone, replaced by a demure noble lady standing before him.
Akion was confused. Was this really the same woman who had just directed murderous intent at him?
“And I am Juan Enerysis’s ‘ex-girlfriend.’”
“Ah.”
“Therefore, I’m afraid that, as customers, the members of the Enerysis family cannot enter this establishment.”
But if she was the ex-girlfriend of his brazen brother, who had acted however he pleased, then that changed things.
“I must ask you to leave politely.”
If she was a young lady who had been wronged by that shameless brother of his, then such a reaction was understandable.
Although that did not make throwing a punch at someone entirely forgivable….
“Lady Scarlet, may I borrow your ear for a moment?”
But Akion had a secret weapon.
Scarlet frowned, but knowing that Akion had no power whatsoever, she lent him her ear for the moment.
And then…
“This is a secret for now, but about my brother….”
“Yes.”
“He became a eunuch after picking a fight with me.”
“From now on, Young Master Akion will be treated as an honored guest of my establishment~!!”
Akion’s statement was slightly distorted, but it was still technically true, and it immediately put her in an extremely good mood!
“Wowee!! Then will Goldie be treated as an honored guest too if she comes?!”
“Oh-hohohohoho!! Of course~!! You there, employee! Prepare the VIP room immediately!!!”
“I’m at a loss for how to repay your hospitality, Proprietress Scarlet.”
“Oh-hohohohohoho!!! Young Master, you’re practically my benefactor!!!”
Everyone was bewildered by Scarlet’s sudden change of attitude.
“Young Master, what exactly did you say?”
“I know the Saint’s silver tongue is impressive… but how exactly did you calm someone that furious so quickly?”
The people watching from behind were terribly curious and asked him, but…
“It’s a family matter.”
Akion kept quiet for his brother’s sake.
Of course, that brother was neither lovable nor worthy of respect, and after mouthing off to the Tower Master, he had become a eunuch whose masculinity had been destroyed.
“Young Master… you’re kind.”
“Mm-hmm. That’s our Saint!”
“Hmm, Young Master can’t possibly be that kind….”
“Tower Master, you heard what Akion said too, didn’t you?”
“I shall refrain from comment….”
After all, he was family!
“Hohoho!! Young Master Akion, come this way~!”
“Thank you, Proprietress Scarlet.”
Besides, thanks to his brother, they were receiving VIP treatment at Montblanche.
Following her lead, Akion and the others were ushered into the VIP room.