Chapter 41
#41. 99 Silver and 1 Gold Are Different
In the middle of a room filled with billowing steam.
Cedric was lying face down on a smooth bed carved from steelwood.
His body trembled like a fish on a cutting board.
Swish.
A huge shadow fell across Cedric's back through the steam.
It was Krok, the former chieftain of the Red Fang Tribe, wearing nothing but green underwear and holding a giant exfoliating towel in one hand.
"Guest. Tell me if it hurts."
At Krok's words, Kylan nodded with a satisfied smile on Cedric's behalf.
'Good. Just as I taught him beforehand, he even has the lines down perfectly.'
A faint aura gathered in Krok's hand.
Soon, the enormous towel touched Cedric's hunched back.
"Graaagh! My lord! Spare me…… Huh?"
Scrub, scrub. Swish, swish.
As Krok's huge palm slid down his back, Cedric's scream instantly changed into a strange sound that no one would want others to hear.
"Haaaaah…… It doesn't hurt……?"
"Guest. Your accumulated grime is thicker than wolf hide. I will strip it off at once."
The grime accumulated beneath his armor after decades spent roaming battlefields.
Krok's rough towel began briskly scratching all the itchy spots that Cedric's thick back muscles had kept unreachable no matter how thoroughly he bathed.
Rather than injuring his skin, Krok's touch stimulated his circulation and made the fine hairs all over his body stand on end.
"Oh…… Ooooooh! There……! A little lower…… yes…! A little more there……!!"
A moan escaped Cedric's lips.
The other vassals were no different.
"Aaaaaah……! This is paradise!!"
"To handle aura with such precision……!"
"For service like this, I wouldn't regret giving a whole gold coin as a tip!!"
The orcs' rough breathing and the vassals' blissful moans echoed through the bathhouse in a strange harmony.
Kylan smiled as he watched his subordinates' blissful expressions.
"Looks like a success."
At this level of response, the body-scrubbing service was certain to become the hot-spring resort's most popular attraction.
'We could give it a fancy name and charge ten silver for it. Something like a Premium Battlefield Fatigue Recovery Course.'
Kylan quietly turned away, leaving the men hopelessly addicted to the orcs' body-scrubbing service behind.
While his vassals relieved their fatigue, a privilege he, too, deserved as lord awaited him.
He headed to the very back of the resort.
It was a private outdoor bath completely cut off from the outside world.
Rattle.
When Kylan slid open the door and entered, Eleanor greeted him with flushed cheeks, her bare white shoulders revealed through the steam.
Kylan, still wearing his robe, lowered himself into the warm hot-spring water.
Moonlight from the night sky and the gentle light of the artificial sun she had set aloft blended together, making fantastic ripples of reflected light glitter across the water.
"Haaah……"
As he sank into the hot water, an involuntary sigh of pleasure escaped him.
From the orc incident to the city's redevelopment.
How long had he been running without a moment's rest?
His knotted muscles finally felt as though they were beginning to loosen.
"Your Highness, is your fatigue easing?"
Eleanor splashed her way over and gently wrapped her wet hand around the back of Kylan's neck.
Her wet platinum-blond hair clinging to her collarbones was dazzlingly beautiful.
"Haha. I only just got in……"
"This hot water and all this steam rising from it…… I see it all as gold that will fill the territory's coffers."
Such an unabashedly capitalistic remark, emerging from a romantic outdoor bath.
Kylan smiled and pulled Eleanor's slender waist tightly against him.
"To my eyes, you in my arms look far more dazzling than tens of thousands of gold coins."
"Oh my…… Your Highness, honestly."
The outdoor bath for the two of them alone.
Amid the gentle splashing of water, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess's hot, sweet respite deepened.
***
At long last, the great opening day of Winterwald's hot-spring resort dawned.
Ahead of the official opening, the square before the Grand Ducal Castle was plastered with posters.
The faces of the vassals who saw them first thing in the morning turned pale.
A grand council meeting was convened shortly afterward.
Count Rian, unusually, raised an objection.
"Y-Your Highness! No matter how excellent the facilities are, the basic rate for one night's stay is one gold coin!?"
Beside him, Viscount Argen, who had only just received a flyer, trembled as he held the paper.
"Th-three…… three gold coins……?"
He soon sprang from his seat and shouted.
"And a private villa costs a full three gold coins, doesn't it!? Even if the continent's merchant kings have flocked here, who would pay such a fortune just to wash and sleep!?"
One gold coin merely to wash and sleep was certainly a shocking price. Three gold coins for a private villa went without saying.
No matter how wealthy the residents of the new city had become, it was not an amount they could pay lightly.
Kylan merely smiled serenely back at them.
"Don't worry. If the hot spring we dug up were nothing more than hot water, no one would come…… but haven't you all experienced that it isn't?"
At Kylan's words, the vassals, including Cedric, who had recently suffered through backbreaking labor, gulped.
They had just arrived at today's meeting with skin smooth as if newly reborn and eyes that sparkled.
The hot spring's effects needed no further explanation.
'We struck an unbelievable jackpot.'
After enjoying the bath with Eleanor all day yesterday, Kylan had become certain.
What the orcs had dug up was not merely a hot spring, but the 'Fountain of Life' that Eleanor had discovered in the middle and latter parts of the original story.
Its location differed greatly from the place Kylan remembered, but if its effects were similar, that hardly mattered.
Not only did it relieve fatigue, but ordinary minor ailments and muscle aches vanished as though washed away the moment one entered the bath.
Any adventurer who had soaked in it even once would have no choice but to realize that paying two gold coins, not one, was still a bargain.
If anything, his only concern was whether there would be so many regulars that they would have to dig several more hot springs.
That was Kylan's sole worry.
"Besides, take another look at the poster you're holding. Where exactly does it say one gold coin?"
At Kylan's words, the vassals checked the poster again with puzzled expressions.
But their confusion only deepened.
[1 Gold 50 Silver X ➔ Grand Opening Special: 99 Silver!! (Breakfast Included)]
"It…… does say one gold coin… doesn't it……?"
"Your eyes must be knot holes. Look more carefully."
"I-it does say ninety-nine silver, but even so, that's……."
Kylan sighed and shook his head.
Eleanor had recognized the difference between 99 silver and 1 gold at a glance, after all.
"Yes, you're right. Ninety-nine silver is practically the same as one gold coin."
Kylan continued with a faint smile.
"But the human mind is terribly shallow. The moment the unit drops from gold to silver and the leading number changes, we're wired to unconsciously feel that it's incredibly cheap."
"……Is that so?"
On top of that, hearing that breakfast was included made people feel as though they were getting an enormous bargain.
Without realizing that the meal was being paid for with their own money, of course.
It was the '39,900 won' marketing trick that TV home-shopping channels had used to death…… and still used to this day.
Eleanor, now even more beautiful after thoroughly relaxing in the hot spring, smiled.
"Your Highness always seems to be ahead of his time."
"Ha ha. You're no slouch yourself."
***
"Big brother…! Sniff…! Sob…!"
"What's wrong with you this early in the morning?"
"My neck…… It's stiff as a gargoyle statue and won't turn……!"
A restaurant in Winterwald's new city.
Rick, a veteran adventurer from the South, groaned as he clutched his rigid neck.
"That dire wolf hunt yesterday was pretty rough…"
"You feel it too, right, big brother…? At this rate, my body will fall apart before I can meet a pretty wife and have rabbit-like kids……!"
Gale snorted as he knocked back his beer.
"Think back to when we were chewing on moldy scraps of bread in the South! We're practically printing gold coins by chopping up monsters and doing odd jobs at construction sites, so when would we have time to rest?"
As Gale said, their wallets after settling in Winterwald had become incomparably fuller than they had been in the South.
But it was also an undeniable reality that fatigue was piling up bit by bit.
They had been working their bodies to the limit without taking a single day off because the pay was simply too good.
Then Sena, seated beside Gale, slowly rotated her slender wrist and let out a small sigh.
"Ah… my wrist. Why is the hide on the monsters here so tough? My arm's been aching terribly lately, you know?"
No sooner had her small complaint left her lips than Gale, who had not even spared Rick a glance, startled and spun around.
"Y-your wrist hurts? Haven't you been overdoing it lately? Want me to buy you a potion?"
Even if the guild covered 80 percent of potion costs, there was no way that would apply to a slightly sore wrist.
Gale, who was always going on about money, fidgeted anxiously while watching Sena's reaction.
It was then that Rick, dumbfounded by the blatant difference in attitude, opened and closed his mouth.
"Big brother! Big brother!! This is incredible! I hear the Grand Duke has made something again!"
A Southern adventurer who had entered through the restaurant door excitedly slapped a poster down on the table.
"What is it this time? Let me say up front, I'm not taking on backbreaking labor for a while."
"Me neither~"
When Gale and Sena waved him off at the same time, their companion shouted, spraying spit.
"It's not that! It's called a hot-spring resort, and every adventurer who's been there is making a fuss about feeling like they've been reborn!"
Rick scanned down the poster curiously.
But soon his face twisted into a frown.
"Look at this, big brother! It says one gold and fifty silver for one night's stay for four people! Isn't that insane? We finally even bought a house—do we really have to pay this fortune to stay there?"
At Rick's grumbling, Gale nodded as well and pushed the flyer away.
"Of course not. It would have been unimaginable luxury back in the South. Shouldn't we save that money and move into an even bigger house later?!"
Just as Gale was firmly shutting the idea down.
Rick, who had been studying the flyer, rubbed his eyes and shouted.
"Huh? Wait a minute, big brother! Looking closely, it isn't one gold and fifty silver—it's ninety-nine silver!? Grand opening special! And breakfast is even free in the morning? They say we get meat pies too!"
"You idiot. It's a textbook sales tactic! Ninety-nine silver and one gold are only one silver apart, so they're the same thing! I'm not going!"
Gale snorted.
Even after learning to read, that idiot Rick was still an idiot.
"But, big brother…!"
The younger adventurer who had brought the flyer showed no sign of giving up.
“Brother Hans's secret to beating an ogre and advancing to mithril rank was this very hot spring!"
"Mithril…?"
Gale's eyes widened.
Mithril was effectively the highest adventurer rank.
Of course, there was a rank above it called adamantite, but it was merely a nominal rank that no one could obtain without completing a national-disaster-level quest.
"It's just a rumor… How would soaking in some water get you to mithril…?"
"I'm going."
That was when Sena leaned toward Gale with a languid expression.
"I've been wanting to try this hot spring thing anyway. They say your skin gets incredibly smooth if you soak in the baths?"
"……."
Gale's eyes wandered through empty space, as if imagining something.
Before long, his gaze settled on Sena's swaying hair and shoulders.
Bang!
Gale slammed his hand down on the table and sprang to his feet.
"Let's go to the hot spring right now! An adventurer's body is their greatest asset, after all!"
"Huh?!"
Rick gaped at him in disbelief.
"Big brother! Weren't you just saying not to waste money? That it was a sales trick!!"
Sena poked Gale in the side with a mischievous smile.
"Hehe. That's what I thought. Why did your tune suddenly change? Could it be… because of me?"
Gale's face flushed bright red.
He repeatedly cleared his throat and pointed needlessly at Rick.
"O-our party's strongest combatant, Sena, says her wrist hurts, doesn't she!! I decided this for the sake of party welfare! If you're worried about the money, Rick, you can stay home and watch the house by yourself!"
"No, when did I ever say I wasn't going?~!!"
Rick shouted indignantly, but Gale was no longer listening.
When Sena casually slipped her arm through Gale's, his face flushed bright red once again.
Even in Winterwald, ruled by brutal capitalism, the adventurers' youth was blooming.