Chapter 55
"Take that!"
The sound of the steel stake striking rock echoes through the area. Rock fragments come tumbling down with a rattling clatter, raising a cloud of rock dust.
I'm in the middle of excavating the rhodonite in the cliff after replacing my partner Ko○tsu-san's usual steel bucket with a hydraulic breaker, an attachment that drives a steel stake into the ground.
Unlike my previous work with the electric hammer, I can't make fine adjustments, so all I can do is smash through the rock with brute force.
Even so, its power is on a completely different level, allowing me to extract some fairly large crystals. It's truly a marvel of civilization.
There is one problem, though. Its fuel tank holds 400 liters. If I operate it for an entire day, the fuel tank runs dry.
Even if I process vegetable oil with my magic tool to make biodiesel fuel, I can only produce six liters per hour.
At that rate, making 100 liters takes more than seventeen hours. In other words, I have to run the magic tool for four days to make 400 liters of fuel, which the machine uses up in a single day.
At present, biodiesel fuel costs about 300 yen per liter. Four hundred liters of fuel costs 120,000 yen.
That much can be recovered by digging out a somewhat large crystal.
At first, I bought vegetable oil in ordinary supermarket-style plastic containers, 1.5 liters for 400 yen each, but 400 liters would require nearly 270 bottles.
Since that was clearly ridiculous, I searched Shangri-La and found canola oil sold in 18-liter cans.
Even then, 400 liters requires more than twenty-two cans. I'm buying it in huge quantities, but I wonder if there are purchase limits or if it might sell out.
I'd be in trouble if they suddenly told me one day that they couldn't sell it anymore...
Of course, there's also the question of why I don't simply avoid using heavy machinery.
After keeping this up for a month, I had excavated nearly 40 million yen worth of rhodonite.
Of course, I was in the black. I had easily recouped the cost of both Ko○tsu-san and the hydraulic breaker.
Well, I had already recouped the cost of Ko○tsu-san with the crystal I dug up before, and the cave spider still sitting in my Item Box should be worth money too, so buying it had been the right choice.
If I wanted to use it for violence, I could deploy it in a war and have it destroy castle walls, but I'd really rather not use it that way.
Still, based on this experience operating heavy machinery, I concluded that I should keep producing biodiesel fuel even when the machines weren't running and stockpile it in my Item Box.
That way, I shouldn't have any trouble even if I suddenly needed to operate a machine on short notice.
"Boss, what are you going to do with all those rocks? It doesn't look like you're selling them anywhere..."
While I was taking a break after climbing down from the heavy machine, Nyamena spoke to me. She seemed puzzled after watching me work so hard to excavate the stone.
Primula was with her too, but she remained silent.
As a merchant to the very core, she had lost some of her usual energy now that she couldn't conduct business.
I wanted to do something for her out of pity, but my middle-aged-man brain couldn't come up with any good ideas.
"This is a secret, but..."
"Yeah."
"I need stones to use my magic and summon beasts."
I need money to buy heavy machinery and the like, but I also have to pay for fuel afterward.
"Stones? You use stones?"
"That's right. Not just stones, either—I use things of value as payment to cast magic."
"I don't really get it, but if it's something valuable, couldn't you use gold coins?"
"Of course, gold coins work too. But once I use them, they're gone. And then what do you think happens...?"
"...I don't understand anything that complicated..."
Instead of Nyamena, who was wracking her brain with her arms folded, Primula answered.
"If you gathered up the city's gold coins and used them for magic, they would simply disappear. Then the city's gold coins would disappear too."
"As expected of a merchant. Exactly."
"So that means everyone would be unable to go shopping or collect their guild rewards?"
"If I gathered a huge amount, yes. But if I found a gold vein, mined the gold, and used it, there wouldn't be a problem."
"However, most gold and silver mines are under the kingdom's control. If you mined them without permission, you would very likely be charged with a crime."
"I figured. It's a matter that affects the foundation of the kingdom's economy."
Still, metals that weren't used in this world wouldn't be a problem—manganese, nickel, cobalt, and the like.
Even so, I didn't really need to go to such lengths to mine them.
There were plenty of other ways, too. For example, I could gather gold coins through business, use the money to buy antique furniture and works of art, then have Shangri-La buy them from me.
The excavation work ended, and it was time for dinner.
"Hot, hot! It's so hot, and this is delicious!"
"It's hot, nya~"
"Look, the cheese stretches this far!"
"Huff, huff. This red, fire-like sauce..."
After sunset, we all ate dinner in the orange glow of the campfire.
Tonight's menu was pizza. Primula had mastered the art of making cheese. We gathered around the outdoor table and enjoyed our pizza.
I bought the pizza dough and sauce from Shangri-La. Frozen pizza dough was sold in sets of ten for 1,500 yen.
The toppings were cheese, chicken, and vegetables, all of which we had obtained here.
I baked it in a kiln I had built myself. I made the kiln from concrete blocks and firebricks.
I used Anemone's Fireball to heat the kiln. Magic really was convenient.
It was enough to bake pizza, and I could store it in my Item Box when I wasn't using it. It might be useful for other cooking too.
It might be a little too small for baking bread. Besides, making bread from scratch would take a lot of time and effort.
Considering how many people I had to feed, buying bread would be faster, but I did feel like trying it myself.
I needed to teach Anemone how to make bread too.
"As long as we have this secret potion called rennet, we can make cheese."
"I heard this medicine is synthesized through alchemy, but it's contained in the stomachs of young herbivores."
"...What?! Really?"
Primula froze while eating her pizza and cried out in surprise. I stopped her from trying to hug me with her hands covered in pizza sauce.
"Even herbivores drink their mothers' milk when they're young, right? Apparently, they need it then. It's not like I've ever tried using a real stomach, though."
"Ah, I knew it—Kenichi really is the Sage."
Primula gazed at me with sparkling eyes, but...
"No! Kenichi is a god!"
Anemone seemed determined to make me into a god no matter what. As if there were a god who looked like some middle-aged guy like me.
"I'm neither the Sage nor a god, though..."
"But, Boss, if you're keeping the Forest Cat, an emissary of God, at your side, then you must be... And you can use that huge iron summoned beast too..."
"That's right, nya."
"I told you, I'm not. Oh, and don't say things like that in public. You might be persecuted as a heretic."
Anemone hurriedly covered her mouth with her hand.
Come to think of it, there was something bothering me, so I decided to ask the beastfolk about it.
Cats aren't supposed to eat onions, are they? There must have been some in the meat buns.
I wondered whether beastfolk might have some problem with them too. But so far, there had been no problems, and neither of them had complained of any physical discomfort.
I figured onions must be bad for Bell, the Forest Cat.
I took an onion I had bought from Shangri-La out of my Item Box.
"Have you ever seen a vegetable like this?"
The three of them—Myaree, Nyamena, and Anemone—sniffed it repeatedly.
"I've never seen one this big, but isn't this a bulbroot?"
"Yeah, that's what I think too, nya."
"Are you two sure it's safe for you to eat?"
"Huh? It's a vegetable that doesn't often show up in markets, but it's safe to eat..."
"Unyaa."
Apparently, there was a similar vegetable here. Well, wild onions, shallots, and rakkyo were like that too. Maybe it was something along those lines.
"I was wondering whether catfolk might have the same problem, since onions are poisonous to Forest Cats."
"We're not cats, nya."
"That's right, Boss."
"You're right. Sorry, sorry."
Well, when you put it that way, I suppose so. They looked like cats, but they were human, after all.
I had asked something rather rude, but it would be a problem if it turned out to be poisonous.
After dinner, I lit a lantern and lay down on my bed.
It was already pitch-black outside. Nyamena had returned to her hut, and Bell was curled up in the corner of the room.
Anemone was lying face down on my stomach, reading a book—but she was heavy.
She was small, but maybe she was heavier than Bell. She probably weighed somewhere between thirty-five and forty kilograms.
"Are you full?"
"Yeah!"
I had no idea what she found so enjoyable—when I stroked her head, she purred atop my stomach.
"Myaree, could you let me use your lap as a pillow?"
"Sure, nya~!"
Myaree knelt formally beside my head, and I rested it between her thighs. I fit snugly there.
Her thighs were covered in soft, fluffy fur and warm—she made the best pillow ever.
I took a ring out of my Item Box and examined it. The Crotton couple had given it to me, but I had completely forgotten about it.
"Is that the ring you got from Marie's parents?"
"Yeah. I left it in my Item Box and completely forgot about it."
"Is it made of gold, nya? Could it help make up for the money you lent them, nya?"
"That might be asking too much."
"If you keep doing things like that, you'll go bankrupt someday, nya."
People kept saying that to me. But I had lent the money to Marie and Crotton's wife. I didn't expect anything from that bastard Crotton.
Well, I hadn't expected to get the money back from the beginning.
The ring in front of me had a somewhat chunky design, with a round, flat stone set into it. But looking at it reminded me of a scene from a certain anime.
It was a story in which holding two rings facing each other revealed letters along the seam between them.
Remembering that, I pressed the stones of the rings together and spun them around—and there really did seem to be something resembling letters engraved there.
"Ah, it'll probably say something cheesy like, 'Let us engrave our love here together.'"
I spun the ring around so I could decipher the writing.
"Hmm, there really are letters. Let's see... 'Place this in the eye that gazes upon Astrantia.'"
To overlook Astrantia means looking down on it from above, right? The only place like that would be atop a cliff.
"Figure anything out, nya?"
"Maybe it tells us where some treasure is hidden."
"Really, nya?" "Really?"
Anemone, who had been lying on my stomach, raised her head.
"Yeah, it looks like there's something meant to be used with this ring at a place where we can look out over Astrantia from atop the cliff."
"Nyaa! Let's go look right now!" "I'm coming too!"
"Sure. Let's go exploring tomorrow."
As the three of us got excited talking about treasure hunting, Primula joined the conversation.
"Are you coming too, Primula?"
"No, I'd like to go to town, though..."
"Are you going shopping?"
"Yes... And I'd like you to come pick me up in the evening."
"Sure, no problem. Treasure hunting shouldn't take that long either... Probably."
"Are you going alone?"
"No, I'm taking Nyamena with me."
"She probably wants to go treasure hunting too, but she's employed by you, Primula. Hahaha."
Hmm, I wondered what Primula planned to buy. If she wanted me to come pick her up, she must have been planning to buy something large enough to put in my Item Box.
What could it be? Had she found some nice furniture that would sell for a high price? Well, she had a good eye, so I would leave that to her.
Once the plans for tomorrow were settled, I helped Anemone with her studies, then went to bed.