CHAPTER 5: A Refuge for the Heart
01
“Dooone!”
Mariela stretched with a sigh. After lunch, she’d made high-grade heal potions and cure potions, several other potions and prototypes for her own use, and a stamp for sealing and engraving Magic Circles of Antidegradation. Because her work had been going so well, she’d even made stamps to label different types of potions, and she’d just finished affixing all the labels; Mariela had a bad habit of getting caught up in whatever she was doing. She’d filled all her time with crafting.
“A bottle for when you’re tired! The new and improved version! A Yummy Potion!”
It was just a low-grade heal potion with sweetener added to it. She gulped it down.
“Bleh, cough, cough. Gross!”
She’d tried to make a sweet potion that would go down easily by mixing in a paste made from dried apricots and some sugary berries she’d picked in the forest yesterday. However, once the smooth, syrupy taste of the fruit juice passed, the bitter astringency of the medicinal herbs filled her mouth and stuck in her throat. The nasty flavor wasn’t worth the potion’s recovery benefits.
“Here you are.” Sieg had returned unnoticed and offered her tea. It was delicious. Her “Yummy Potion” had been a failure, but next time would be a different story. She wasn’t about to give up. As Mariela drank her tea sip by sip, Sieg stored the potions in a wine box he said the inn’s owner had given him, and then he tidied up the materials and equipment.
Upon hearing that Lieutenant Malraux and the others had arrived, Sieg took the wine box with the potions and carried it to Malraux’s room, where the two of them were waiting. Once he handed the box to them, they began to review its contents with a magical tool used for appraisal.
Since potions deteriorated over time, tools like this one were often sold in shops that carried potions. It wasn’t a very expensive item; it was easy enough to have a rough understanding of a potion’s type and level of deterioration.
“This is wonderful. It’s as if they were just freshly made; they haven’t deteriorated at all!” exclaimed Lieutenant Malraux in admiration.
Well, yes, I would hope so. I literally just finished making them.
After they were done checking the potions, Lieutenant Malraux brought out the payment and several documents on a tray.
“Here we have the payment for the mid-grade and lower potions, as well as their receipt, and a confirmation of receipt for the high-grade potions.”
The payment came out to twelve gold coins and six large silver coins. To Mariela, it was an unbelievable amount of money. She signed the document where she was instructed to. This kind of document wasn’t something Mariela could create. She didn’t properly understand the workings of a business deal, so she would’ve been stumped had she been asked to draw one up. But since they’d told her not to worry about it, she was grateful she could presume upon their kindness.
“We will give you the payment for the high-grade potions after we have received it from the other party. Speaking of which, is the low price truly all right with you?” Lieutenant Malraux wanted to be sure.
She had already received so much for the mid- and low-grade potions. Depending on how or to whom the Corps sold them, they could probably make an absolute killing on the high-grade ones, the likes of which hadn’t been on the market for ten years.
“As long as you continue to use them, I don’t mind. Please let me know if you’d ever like to buy more.”
It’d be no issue for Mariela at all even if they sold for the same price as the mid-grade potions. If they cost too much, she’d feel guilty about it. She would be grateful for her potions to be bought even at a slightly high price.
“More, you say? How many would you be able to give us?”
She almost answered “I’ll just crank ’em out!” but instead she smiled and replied properly, “A lot.” Actually, that reply was plenty stupid, too.
Making vials was a big pain, but potion materials were easy to get. She wanted to set up a workshop with shelves brimming with a wide variety of materials, like Ghark’s Herbal Supplies, and focus fully on potion-making. She couldn’t have a potion shop in the open, but with the funds she received today, she could open an apothecary with a workshop. Just imagining it made her tremble with excitement.
When Lieutenant Malraux asked what she intended to do now, she answered, “I want to open an apothecary.”
“In that case, I think it would be a good idea to visit the Merchants Guild. If you register as a chemist, they will assist you in finding a shop and a place to live.”
This was good to know. She’d go there tomorrow bright and early.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” said Captain Dick. “Now let’s have a toas—”
“We are going to deliver the potions.”
“…Next time, then!”
The captain finally opened his mouth just to say that?
The stocky Captain Dick picked up the box with the potions and trudged after Lieutenant Malraux.
02
Before dinner, Mariela returned to her room to deposit the money: gold coins, and twelve of them, at that.
“Hey, Sieg—we can open up a shop with this!”
“Yes. As far as funds go, this is probably enough.”
Mariela hid the gold coins in a box of medicinal herbs, then invited Sieg on a predinner stroll.
“I’ve been cooped up in the room all day, so my body’s super-stiff.”
They walked along a main road toward the heart of the town. The day was winding down, but it was too early to call it evening yet. Other groups lined the road as the two of them took their stroll: carriages making their final delivery of the day, housewives who just finished shopping for dinner, children rushing home carrying materials they’d gathered in the Labyrinth under their arms.
The pre-dusk ambience was the same as it had been two hundred years ago, and it filled Mariela with nostalgia. However, the townscape and the fashion reminded her that this place was unfamiliar.
“Is this style of clothing the latest trend in the imperial capital, too? …Oh, just here? And they’re not trendy?
“Aren’t the wheels on that carriage kinda small? …Huh? They’re the same size everywhere?
“Something smells good… Ah, so if you bring your own container, you can take the food home with you.”
One by one, Mariela pointed out all the things that seemed out of place to her and bounced them off Sieg.
“Oh, that’s glive. Looks like they make it into juice.”
Glive fruit had a good balance of sweet and sour, and it reduced fatigue. At five copper coins per cup of juice, the price was a bit much, but it sold well to adventurers. The shops were probably opening for adventurers who would be returning from the Labyrinth at any moment. Mariela bought two cups of fresh glive juice at a stall near the Labyrinth, and the two of them passed through the Labyrinth’s outer wall.
“There really is nothing left, huh?”
Where the royal castle of Endalsia had once stood, Mariela couldn’t find even a fragment of anything she remembered. Of course, they were just things she’d glanced at from outside the outer wall, and she’d never gone into any of the buildings. This was the first time she’d been inside the castle walls, which now housed the entrance to the Labyrinth. The entrance was composed of huge stones that just looked like a single mass of rock so that it could be sealed at any time, and she didn’t see anything else resembling a building. The spacious interior of the castle walls looked like a plaza, except for the monster-warding bromominthra growing there, and peddlers and luggage carriers called out to the adventurers returning home from the Labyrinth. Just like Mariela and Sieg, there were other people going out for a stroll, too.
The two of them moved to the edge of the road so as not to get in the way of the adventurers, found a good rock to sit on, and had a swig of the glive juice.
“I wonder what we look like to everyone else,” Mariela muttered. A group of adventurers had just emerged from the Labyrinth along with several slaves in tattered clothes and carrying a large amount of baggage.
The Labyrinth City was a mass of land blockaded by the rugged mountains and the Fell Forest—a veritable solitary island. Very few members of the general public passed through its streets. The Suppression Forces continued to subjugate monsters on a regular basis to prevent another stampede, and no small number of lives were lost each time.
Even slaves were encouraged to reproduce, and their resulting offspring were raised in an orphanage as ordinary citizens. However, without any support, most of them made a living as adventurers or knights when they reached adulthood. Whichever path they chose, they became essential members of the Suppression Forces and protected the people from stampedes.
In addition, the forces dispatched by the margrave, who had jurisdiction over the Labyrinth City, there was also a mandatory draft of experienced adventurers from the imperial capital’s Adventurers Guild. However, even these two powers together weren’t enough to keep both the Labyrinth and the Fell Forest in check.
Securing rations was also important, and they needed more than what could be grown within the castle walls alone, so the grain-producing regions ended up expanding beyond the castle walls where monsters appeared. Although sentinels performed regular patrols and culled the monsters, no ordinary citizen would dare do any farming in such a dangerous place.
To compensate for this shortage of labor, slaves were sent to the Labyrinth City from the Empire. If another stampede arose out of the Labyrinth or the Fell Forest, both the Empire and the surrounding countries would suffer heavy damage, so those neighboring countries were also proactive in providing penal laborers and lifelong slaves. The ratio of slaves to the rest of the population within the Labyrinth City was greater than that of any other town within the Empire, or rather, even those in the neighboring countries as well. However, because the mortality rate was so extremely high, many of the slaves—penal laborers and lifelong slaves, for example—had no human rights.
Of course, these enslaved people were unintelligent and of poor character, and the average civilian wanted nothing to do with them. Under the direction of successful management—professionals, or “Skill Users”—most slaves were employed in areas managed by the government, such as food production or the Suppression Forces, both of which were directly under the margrave, or in the mines.
A small fraction of well-behaved slaves were sold to civilians. However, even if they didn’t go to professionals, they had to be supervised, so the majority were sold to businesses requiring many laborers, shops employing “nighttime company,” or the mansions of aristocratic families who collected slaves as “entertainment.” The small-to medium-size shops hired ordinary citizens who did business for them without needing supervision. Personally owning slaves was the privilege of experienced adventurers or the organized group of adventurers Mariela and Sieg saw just now, who brought them along as baggage carriers. It wasn’t common.
No matter what, it was highly unprecedented for a young girl like Mariela to own a slave.
When she’d indirectly asked Amber, who knew about Sieg’s circumstances, she’d replied, “It’s rare enough for a girl from outside the Labyrinth City to come all this way, and Sieg’s a pretty good-lookin’ guy, no? A girl living with a man who waits on her hand and foot—I’d wonder what kind of relationship they had.”
Mariela already harbored one secret—her ability to make potions. She needed to come up with a way to not stand out.
“I wonder if we look like siblings?”
“Siblings… I don’t think we do.”
“Urgh… Wh-what about something similar, like childhood friends? We’re opening a shop, so you’ll need to quit being so subservient and talk more normally.”
“But…that’s no good for a guard…”
Sieg didn’t seem to approve of Mariela’s idea. As someone who’d been a slave for a long time, not only was his master the absolute authority, but he owed Mariela his life; it was no exaggeration to say she held his life in her hands. Telling him to be “normal” didn’t mean he would know what to do.
Watching Sieg sit in troubled silence, Mariela took another gulp of the glive juice.
“This is the first time I’ve had glive juice,” she said, changing the subject.
“Because it’s…a southern fruit. It was likely gathered…from the Labyrinth,” Sieg responded. He seemed to imply that since glive grew in southern countries, it probably hadn’t existed here two hundred years ago.
“Nope, they sold it here, too. For about the same price. I just couldn’t buy any. If I had five copper coins, I’d spend it on five loaves of bread. I always wondered what it tasted like.” Mariela gazed at Sieg as she continued. “There used to be a beautiful castle here, y’know. I only ever saw it from far away, but it sparkled. My master said it was ’cause the castle was blessed by the spirits. But now there’s nothing left of it. There’s no trace of the house I used to live in, either. I don’t have a home to return to anymore.”
She’d thought winter was finally over that day, cloudy though it was, but winter would soon arrive again. With two hundred years gone by and not a trace of Mariela’s cottage left behind, this world was as alien to her as a foreign country.
“But Amber and the other ladies said they’d buy medicine from me. If I open a shop and work hard at it, I’m sure I’ll be able to make a living here.”
Sieg gave his all in listening to Mariela’s story, to the thoughts she wanted to convey.
“Before, I could never even afford glive juice. Formalities just don’t suit me. Like being called ‘Lady,’ for instance.”
Ahhh, I see.
Suddenly, Sieg understood—why she purchased him, why she didn’t dim the lights even at bedtime, why she kept talking about the most trivial things. And he understood the profound loneliness she felt in this world of two hundred years later. She wanted a place to belong. Not just a physical home per se but a refuge for her heart, a source of emotional support.
“I…understand. I’ll…give it a try.”
If that was his master’s wish, it was his duty to comply.
Since Sieg was originally from a remote village near the Fell Forest, they decided Mariela would also be from the same village and that she had traveled to the imperial capital to become a Pact-Bearer.
“It is I, Mariela, the super-awesome gal who came all the way to the Labyrinth City to rescue my enslaved childhood best friend! Kinda makes me sound like I’m the heroine in some story, don’t it? Like my adventure’s only just begun and stuff! Not that I can fight, though.”
The two of them returned to the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion as they chatted. Mariela beamed, feeling they’d come up with a good backstory. Her smile was infectious, and Sieg managed one, too. But just then, he realized something:
If they’d had any other slaves for sale, she might have chosen someone else.
Even though he’d long since grown numb to abuse and insults, this mere thought pierced his heart with a dull pain.
03
“Good morning, Miss— Ahem, lovely weather we’re having, Lady—er, lately, right, Mariela?”
“Pfaw, the heck was that?! Morning, Sieg.”
Thus began the first day of Sieg’s attempt at natural (?) speech.
They went down to the restaurant and placed their breakfast orders with Emily. Today, Emily’s hair was in pigtails tied high on the back of her head. Maybe she’d done it herself, because her hair looked squished, and the two pigtails were slightly off-center. When Mariela fixed them for her, she said, “Thanks! I’ll give you a big helping!”
Her father, the owner of the inn, stayed up until dawn when Amber and the others had finished their work, so Emily woke up early by herself and prepared breakfast for their customers.
“Sometimes the customers aren’t so nice, so that’s why Daddy stays awake until everyone’s work is over. Thanks to him, everyone says they can relax! So I’m gonna do my best, too!”
Still can’t quite tie your hair up right, though.
Emily hurried off to the kitchen.
Mariela admired how capable she was for a ten-year-old. The next moment, Lynx arrived with a bad case of bed head.
“Emily, get some for me, too! A big helping, pleeease!” he called to the kitchen before sitting by Mariela and Sieg. He scratched his stomach with a big yawn.
“Lynx, you’re practically an adult, so act more your age.”
“I was out late yesterday with the captain and the other guys.”
Probably acting as an escort for transporting the potions.
As they ate breakfast, Mariela asked him what the Black Iron Freight Corps did while they were in the Labyrinth City.
Apparently, they usually had a day off after they arrived, and they would spend it repairing the carriages or resting. On the second and third day, they split into two groups: one to stock up on goods they would take to the imperial capital and one to negotiate on the goods they would transport next. On the fourth day—today—they would buy things like food and prepare to depart. Early tomorrow morning, they would set out for the imperial capital again.
It took three days to travel through the Fell Forest, and another four after that to reach the capital. They would spend four days there to rest and stock up, and then return to the Labyrinth City back through the forest. That meant they would return around sunset on the eighteenth day.
“Sounds rough. Come back safe, okay?”
“Yup. But y’know, this time we got a ‘secret weapon,’ so if we make good time, we could be back at sunset sixteen days from now,” he said in a low voice so the people around them couldn’t hear. When Mariela told him she intended to open an apothecary, he replied with a laugh, “I’ll come visit when we get back. Just hang tight.”
As Lynx got up to leave, he for some reason thumped Sieg on the chest with his fist. Sieg looked back at him and nodded.
Huh? What was that about? Is this like what Amber was saying about wondering what kind of relationship two people might have?
Mariela cocked her head to one side, deep in thought.
04
“More trouble with an unauthorized chemist?”
In the office of the chair of the Merchants Guild’s Medicinal Herbs Division, Elmera Seele sighed. She was a woman in her early thirties wearing thin glasses, and the entirety of her brown hair, even the bangs, was gathered in a bun at the back of her head. She wore a long navy-blue dress that covered everything up to her neck, and though her legs peeked out slightly from the dress, they were hidden by boots. Her hands were also covered by gloves, so practically the only part of her that was exposed was her face.
The only makeup she wore was lipstick, and the subdued hues of her hair and dress left no sense of feminine grace about her.
Many people kept their distance due to the stubborn, superior aura she gave off, in addition to her promotion to chair of the Medicinal Herbs Division at a young age. Because she was the eldest daughter of the Seele family, a large business dealing in medicinal herbs, some people even said, “That’s just the kind of position you’d expect for a woman with no chance of becoming a bride.”
“I knew the exam was too hard, Miss Elmera. First, we ought to make it less difficult, and then the number of chemists will increase.”
“What are you talking about, Leandro? There aren’t even any potions in the Labyrinth City. What do you plan to do with more mediocre chemists? If we don’t improve the quality of the medicine, the mortality rate will never go down. The general difficulty of the questions on the exam is such that an alchemist who can make mid-grade potions can pass it.”
“When you say ‘mid-grade potions,’ they’re the potion equivalent of a B-Rank adventurer, yes? Adventurers begin at the F Rank. Don’t you think it’s extreme to not allow anyone without B-Rank–equivalent knowledge to become a chemist? There are no Alchemist Pact-Bearers here, but there are those with alchemic skills. You know they can dry and crush herbs even at a low level. Wouldn’t it be nice to let them become chemists so they can study and improve?”
“If they want to study, they can still do so without becoming a chemist. Our Medicinal Herbs Division has taken great pains to compile books, including The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Herbs and Their Effects, which can be read in the Merchants Guild library for free. We also periodically hold seminars for young people wishing to become chemists, and if they need work, they can apprentice at a guild-licensed shop where they can expand their knowledge of medicinal herbs.”
“That book you’re referring to—that tome with all the fine print and pages packed with information about herb characteristics and effects and extraction methods, yes? That would put a person right to sleep within minutes. By the way, my personal record is thirty seconds. No young person who just offhandedly thinks, Hey, maybe I’ll become a chemist! would read a thing like that. They’re not all as bright as you are, Miss Elmera. We ought to be a little more flexible when it comes to nurturing their talents.”
The man called Leandro, who was in his late thirties, was Elmera’s subordinate. Despite being older than his boss, neither he nor the other employees of the Medicinal Herbs Division had any complaints about her. They knew her abilities were the real deal.
Her meticulous appearance, as if she’d stepped out of a painting, and courteous behavior gave the impression she was difficult to approach, but if you got to know her, you would find her a friendly and sociable person. Although she was too serious in some respects, she freely gave her honest opinion and was always willing to lend an ear. Few bosses seemed to want to work hard with the rest of the team as she did.
“Nurture your own talents first, Leandro. Otherwise I’ll never be able to retire, will I? And here I can’t even be with my sweet children and see them grow up.”
Although people gossiped that Elmera had “no chance of becoming a bride,” she in fact had a husband and two sons. When she got married, she had wanted to retire from the Merchants Guild, but the entire department stopped her. They couldn’t function properly without her, so they asked her to wait a little longer until her subordinates could manage on their own.
“Please don’t say that, Miss Elmera. You know none of us could possibly replace you.”
Leandro knew that a department that couldn’t function without a particular person would be eliminated. The employees were developing their skills, so even in the unlikely event Elmera quit, the department could manage if it got about ten more employees. However, it was quite rewarding and fascinating to work with Elmera, who was fighting to improve the medicinal situation in the Labyrinth City.
“In any case, we have to improve the quality of our chemists. Let’s plan a seminar. Something easy, like ‘How to Make Salves.’ And you can teach it, Miss Elmera.”
“Ughhh, I don’t have time to play with children…”
Elmera suddenly hunched over. Normally, she always stood straight as a pin.
It was a pity for her to carry such a burden. Leandro would divide some of her work among the other employees. As he wondered what to do about the schedule, a knock came at the door to the office.
“We have someone who wants to register as a chemist. She wants to take the exam right away. I’ve come to get the question sheet.”
“I will administer the exam. Take her to the first-floor conference room.”
Elmera quickly got to her feet and gave instructions to the receptionist at her door, ready to get back to it.
Whoa, that was bad luck. Miss Elmera’s enthusiasm will be running on empty right now.
She would need support. Leandro trailed after her.
“My name is Mariela. It’s very nice to meet you.”
Per Lieutenant Malraux’s advice, Mariela had come to the Merchants Guild. She was surprised; the building was very large, and when she told the receptionist she wanted to register as a chemist, the lady had led her to what was apparently the Medicinal Herbs Division. It seemed she would need to take an exam before registering. It was the first time she’d taken one, but even if she failed, she could take it as many times as she wanted. They told her she could take it right away, so she might as well give it a shot.
After a short while, she was led to a room at the back of the building. Before long, a stern-looking woman and a wimpy-looking man entered.
“I’m Elmera Seele, the proctor of this exam.”
“My name is Leandro Kaffa. Even if you don’t pass, we have seminars, so please don’t be too nervous.”
There was a pen and ink ready on the desk, so Mariela thought she’d be writing on paper, but it seemed she would just have to answer Elmera’s questions.
“Miss Elmera, this is…not an easier exam. This one’s even worse,” Leandro said with a troubled expression, but Elmera ignored him and began the first question.
“Tell me the processing method and effects of the apriore fruit.”
“Once you peel off the shell, you remove the astringency with trona crystal powder dissolved in hot water. The amount of trona crystals needed is……”
The other questions involved the effects and processing methods of mundane medicinal herbs such as bendan flowers, jibkey leaves, tamamugy seeds, ogre dates, and yurole flower buds, all things Mariela was well acquainted with. When she readily answered them, the difficulty rose midway through to include questions about high-grade materials—how to extract lunamagia, how to remove the poison from arawne roots and leaves, and how to process the venom glands of parasitic leeches. However, Mariela didn’t particularly mind and continued to answer.
It was fun to talk about things in her area of expertise. Elmera listened to her attentively, punctuating Mariela’s answers with “Mm-hmm” and “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” which in turn caused Mariela to become further absorbed in her explanations.
“Marvelous…! I wonder who you studied under? No, there’s no point in prying. You pass!”
Just like that, Mariela was now a chemist. It was so easy; was that it? The questions had extended to high-grade materials, but the details were all about the fundamentals.
“Um, would it be okay to sell medicine as a chemist? There’s no limit on what kinds I can make based on my rank, is there?”
“No, as long as you’re within the Labyrinth City, there are no restrictions. Is there a problem?”
“It’s just that the questions were all really basic.”
“My! Did you hear that, Leandro? There really are people who properly study after all!”
Elmera was elated. Leandro, who’d brought up the issue of difficulty in the first place, was in a tough spot.
This girl is just like Miss Elmera. She has no idea how difficult the questions really were.
If the chemist exam kept getting harder and harder like this, Leandro would have to pick up the slack. He’d come along with Elmera to provide support, but the number of people he needed to do that for seemed to have increased.
“Whew… Mariela, was it? You’re quite informed for someone your age. It’s rare for Pact-Bearers to come here from the imperial capital. I couldn’t have answered those questions as well as you did,” he said.
“What? If you’re a Pact-Bearer from the imperial capital, does that mean you can make potions there?” asked Elmera.
“Pact-Bearers can view Libraries, right? So they merely rely on a Library for anything they can’t memorize themselves.”
A Library was an informational repository that allowed a person to record and view all sorts of information about things that could be created using alchemic skills, from processing transmutation materials to crafting potions. It was said that information was bound to ley lines, meaning a Pact-Bearer could not view it once they left the line’s region. It was possible to connect to a Library after linking to a ley line with a Nexus, but even then, one could view information only from the same alchemic “school.”
There was no exact definition as to what an alchemic school entailed, but Mariela understood it had something to do with close relations such as masters and their apprentices.
“But I can’t view the next item in the Library if I don’t have the entire thing memorized, right?” Mariela asked.
“That’s not how Libraries are typically configured…”
Leandro looked positively dejected, unlike Elmera, who practically glowed as she said, “What a wonderful master you had!”
The Library could be “configured” by one’s master to disclose information based on certain conditions. For example, a recipe for a potion might be revealed once you reached a level that allowed you to make it, or it might be revealed from the start even if you couldn’t. Conversely, the master could configure things like dangerous recipes or recipes they wanted to monopolize so that only their successors could view them.
Sometimes a particular material had a large number of effects or tuning methods, and these were usually disclosed from the start.
Damn master. Stingy master. Evil master.
In Mariela’s case, until she could create all the disclosed potions with just alchemic skills—no tools—she couldn’t view the recipes for any new potions, nor could she see new information on materials until she perfectly memorized and processed the disclosed ones. Although she didn’t pry, she guessed from Leandro’s reaction that these prerequisites were quite harsh.
She had thought that was just the way things were, so she’d learned the information without minding too much. Now that she thought about it, though, she had started out able to view certain information unrelated to potions as much as she liked. Things like 101 Delicious Recipes You Can Make with Alchemic Skills, Essential Alchemic Products to Make Your Life Easier, and Alchemic Housework Techniques for the Busy Housewife. Even as she’d wondered, Who the heck registered these? she’d looked through them all.
The Delicious Recipes were especially helpful. Since her master couldn’t cook at all, it had been Mariela’s job since childhood to prepare the ingredients her master brought in. Just as Delicious Recipes claimed, the dishes made with alchemy were delightful, and the two of them were both completely satisfied. Mariela got hooked on the food and didn’t think it was at all strange that she could see only these kinds of recipes in the Library.
“Mariela, you want to open an apothecary in the Labyrinth City, correct? Where do you plan to establish it? If you’re going to sell medicine to the shop in the Adventurers Guild, we can make an introduction.”
“Um, I haven’t decided on a place to live yet, so I came here to register and ask if you could refer me to a residence where I could open my shop.”
Mariela got sidetracked when her master entered her thoughts. Elmera’s question brought her back to reality along with her original purpose for coming here.
“Well! Leandro, take her to the Residential Affairs Division. Please be sure to show her some good properties. Don’t forget to prepare her chemist license and resident registration. Mariela, when you’ve settled in, please feel free to bring some medicine. Ah yes, here’s a congratulatory gift for passing the exam. The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Herbs and Their Effects is a collection of all the medicinal herbs identified within the Labyrinth City, though it might only contain information you already know.”
Despite what her appearance would suggest, Elmera seemed to be a passionate person. Mariela felt very welcome.
The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Herbs and Their Effects was a thick, elegantly bound tome that looked far from cheap. Mariela had asked if it was all right for her to have such an expensive item, to which she was told, “It was transcribed by someone who had been reassigned to the Medicinal Herbs Division, so by all means!”
When she turned the pages, she found scattered tearstains here and there. “It’s imbued with purification magic,” Leandro had assured her, “so it’s not dirty.” Maybe the “tears” were actually drool instead.
The tome contained some herbs Mariela wasn’t familiar with, but even for the ones she did know, it had harvesting information such as the strata and seasons in which they could be found in the Labyrinth, so it was very helpful. What an incredible encyclopedia. She was very grateful.
Mariela thanked Elmera as she left the room. Elmera showed her out with a smile that lit up her entire face.
After meeting up with Sieg in the hallway, Leandro started toward the Residential Affairs Division with the other two.
“You are something else…,” Leandro said admiringly after they’d parted from Elmera.
I wonder why…?
Sieg looked elated.
I wonder why…? Mariela, the only one who didn’t understand, tilted her head to the side.
05
Leandro led them to the Residential Affairs Division. The margrave entrusted this department with governmental tasks such as resident registration, residence management within the Labyrinth City, and mediation.
“Ah, Vice Chairman Leandro. I’m surprised to see you come all the way here.”
The person in charge of residential services greeted Leandro.
This guy’s a bigwig.
“Chairwoman Elmera has asked us to show some good properties to this young lady, Mariela.”
Elmera’s an even bigger wig. She seemed totally obsessed with herbs.
Mariela’s thoughts were slightly rude. When asked if she had any particular housing requests, she replied, “Somewhere with a yard where I can grow herbs, plus space for a storefront.”
“An herb garden…?” the housing official repeated, a concerned look on his face as he flipped through his categorized files on vacant properties.
“There are plenty of vacant storefronts, aren’t there?” asked Leandro.
“Yes, but as far as those with an herb garden… All the housing with agricultural space is booked. Properties where one can safely grow food are popular. We have several available shops in good locations, but their yards are small and paved for carriages.”
Leandro and the housing official put their foreheads together as they pored over the files.
“Um, I can plant an herb garden outside the Labyrinth City…”
When Mariela suggested this compromise, she was met with objections of “Absolutely not!” and “That’s dangerous!” She watched the two of them hemming over this and that property as she sipped on tea one of the ladies from the Residential Affairs Division had prepared for her.
Oh, this tea’s good. I wonder if they sell it in the Merchants Guild shop? I’ll buy some before we go home.
“What about this?!” Leandro exclaimed as if he’d just found something. The housing official, on the other hand, looked positively morose.
“There’s a tree growing right in the middle, which would make it hard to grow many herbs. It doesn’t look like we have authorization to cut it down, either. Furthermore, the shop space was added to the building with a lot of cut corners and has deteriorated significantly.”
“Ahhh, that one? Looks like a half-finished former mansion.”
“Indeed. It’s been remodeled by previous residents and from rezoning, so you might say it’s a bit, ah, unique. The property is spacious enough, but the cost makes it hard to manage, and it’s remained vacant.”
Mariela peeked at the document out of curiosity. It showed a map, a rough sketch, and an overview of the property. The location was a little ways back from the northwestern district’s north gate, close to the center of the Labyrinth City. Many ordinary citizens lived in the northwestern district, and its streets were lined with shops like the one where she’d bought clothes for herself and Sieg, as well as general stores. And since it was so close to the Labyrinth, adventurers probably frequented the area, too. It was a great location to open a storefront.
Hang on, isn’t this the Spirit Sanctuary?
As the name suggested, the Spirit Sanctuary was a nature preserve teeming with spirits and an abundance of sacred trees. This was where Mariela’s master had taken her when she connected to the ley line with a Nexus.
“Quit fooling around. If you make friends with the spirits and tell them your name, they’ll guide you,” her master had told her as she traipsed through the Sanctuary. Under the guidance of the spirits she’d befriended, Mariela was able to connect to the ley line with a Nexus. Although she’d gone to the trouble of making friends with the spirits and telling them they’d play together again, she never returned to the Sanctuary and thus never got to see them. Since she had missed her spirit friends so much, Mariela had convinced her master to tell her their location. There was no doubt about this place.
“I’d like to see that property, please.”
Two hundred years had gone by, but she wanted to visit the Spirit Sanctuary again.
After thanking Leandro, she and the housing official headed for the location in question.
According to the official, the northwestern district had suffered the most severe damage from the Stampede and become almost barren as a result. Homes had been built when reconstruction first began. Apparently, this property was one of them and was originally a small mansion owned by aristocrats. The house’s exterior was made of sturdy stone, and even after more than a hundred years, it still met the Labyrinth City construction standards.
When the aristocratic quarter in the southeast district was rebuilt during the reconstruction, this area’s residents moved to more suitable dwellings over there. The remaining residences were sold to civilians, but the position of the outer wall was changed in accordance with the Labyrinth City town planning, shaving off about a third of the rear yard, and a garden was placed in front instead.
Residences in the Labyrinth City generally had no front yard, but even the ones that did had only a narrow space for lighting, and the rear yard took up a large amount of the acreage. The yards weren’t meant to be scenic; rather, it was more logical for them to take up space in the back where they were out of sight and could serve for practical things like setting up a carriage storehouse or livestock shed, or raising crops.
Since this house had a roughly thirty-square-foot front yard in accordance with town planning, it felt half-finished from the point of view of a Labyrinth City inhabitant.
Furthermore, the area that used to be the kitchen had been demolished so as not to hinder the growth of the tree that was right next to the house. Normally, the tree would have been cut down, but the housing official consulted his files and explained that such permission hadn’t been obtained, and the instructions were instead to alter the building accordingly.
The most recent residents of this property were apparently two families who ran the place as a restaurant. Where the demolished kitchen stood, they’d added a galley and dining room by laying a roof across the front garden between the house and the outer wall that ran along the main street. It was a building addition in the strictest sense, but only the galley had been properly built, whereas the storefront just had a tarp over it—perhaps due to budget constraints. The living room and terrace seating with the tarp across it made for a decent shop atmosphere, though.
“The terrace will be cold in the winter. Also, given the size of the plot, the rent is rather high.”
Rent was three gold coins per year, which was one coin more than the typical rent for a storefront of a similar size and condition. The winter season brought fewer customers, too. The previous residents had moved, waiting for another store property to become available.
As the housing official went over the details, they arrived at the location.
“That’s a sacred tree.”
“A sacred tree.”
Mariela and Sieg spoke in tandem. A single large tree towered above them slightly to the east of the plot’s center. It was higher than the roof on the second floor, and they could see it just by looking up from the front entrance.
No wonder they didn’t have permission to cut it down—sacred trees protected humans from monsters. By all rights, it should have been impossible to build a house next to it. It was said that a sacred tree will wither if you try to surround it and take it for yourself—“A sacred tree’s spirits will transplant elsewhere,” as the saying went.
Two hundred years ago, this spot housed the Spirit Sanctuary, but now it was unrecognizable. Had it really been abandoned? Judging from the tree’s size, it must have grown from the seeds of the sacred trees that once inhabited the Sanctuary.
Mariela wondered where her spirit friends had gone. There used to be so many of them, and now she couldn’t find a single one; this lone tree was all that was left of its former glory.
She passed through the house and went straight for the tree. The soil around it was dry; it seemed as though nobody was taking care of it.
“Water.”
She put more magical energy than usual into the water she poured over the base. The spirits who guided Mariela to the ley line had been delighted by her magic-infused water, so she was sure this sacred tree would like it, too.
Mariela gently touched the trunk.
“Hello. I’m Mariela. Would it be okay if I lived here?”
These trees were said to house spirits; she wondered if this one did, too. Not that she’d be able to communicate with it even if there was, though.
Slowly, gently, one of the leaves drifted down into her hand. It was flat, about the size of Mariela’s palm, and it was a valuable potion ingredient. It looked as though it belonged to a deciduous type of tree, but sacred trees never lost their leaves, even in winter. Plucking one by force would cause it to wither and die immediately, so if you needed one, it was essential to ask for it.
I wonder if that means I can live here?
Following Mariela’s lead, Sieg watered the tree as well. For some reason, he got about ten leaves in return.
Whoa, that’s quite a warm welcome. Guess he’s a popular guy, huh?
It seemed the sacred tree was just fine. The yard looked as if it had been scaled back at some point, but there was still plenty of room for an herb garden. In fact, bromominthra was growing with wild abandon over about sixty-five square feet of the garden’s surface. She could make all the monster-warding potions she wanted.
Even if the land itself was relatively barren, medicinal herbs would grow without issue as long as the soil was rich with magical elements. Such was the case for the Labyrinth City, the monsters’ territory.
The housing official led Mariela and Sieg on a tour of the interior. The Labyrinth City had architectural standards; in essence, buildings needed to be strong enough to withstand monsters if they stormed the town.
First, all plots of land had to be completely surrounded by a stone wall over one head tall. The wall’s thickness had similar requirements—about the width of one person. The exterior likewise had to be dense as well, and all first-floor windows required iron bars to prevent monsters from getting in. Finally, all cellars had to be stocked with one week’s worth of provisions in case of an emergency.
Although not specified in the construction standards, magic-absorbing daigis ivy crawled along the outer wall and the building to hide their presence from monsters by preventing the inhabitants’ magical energy from leaking out. Instead of multicolored flowers, the brilliant reddish-purple leaves of the bromominthra herb had been planted in the flower beds to repel monsters.
To soften the heavy, prisonlike construction, the iron bars on the first-floor windows had been wrought into whimsical shapes such as ivy and flowers; a cloth of various colors had been draped like a tarp from the roof to the outer wall, from which a large banner hung in lieu of a proper signboard advertising the shop. A spirited place like this, with its exotic townscape and decorative masonry, ain’t too bad at all, thought Mariela.
The building seemed plenty sturdy; it was said to be a former mansion, and it looked to be structurally sound. The first floor had a spacious living room, as well as a smaller room in the back about a third of its size—probably a parlor. A few tables and chairs from the restaurant had been left behind.
On the other side of the corridor was a lavatory, a bathroom, and a storeroom. The latter was against the wall that looked out onto the sacred tree, and since the wall was new, this must have been the former kitchen. The door to the rear entrance had also been installed far back to correspond with the new wall, and immediately upon entering, there was a staircase that led to both the second floor and the cellar. The cellar was divided into several rooms, which was entirely too much space for just two people.
The second floor had four rooms, plus one for storage. A small balcony had been built on the wall, which slanted to avoid the sacred tree. There was also a staircase that led up to the roof, where most people dried their laundry—hence the stairs.
Once they got a professional to check the plumbing, it looked as though the place would be ready for use with just a good cleaning. Depending on her budget, Mariela could even spiff up the place by changing the wallpaper or installing curtains and carpeting.
An addition had been constructed on the south side of the building where a thirty-foot-long yard had once stood between the main gate and the entryway; the previous residents used the building’s exterior and the outer wall to build a galley and restaurant area. Having said that, the roof reached only far enough to cover the galley, while the restaurant had a tarp ceiling over the deck floor. Since the outer wall lacked windows, the tarp might have been intended as a source of light, but the passage of time had left it torn, allowing wind and rain to damage the deck floor. The interior had been painted a pale color—perhaps to emphasize that this area was, in fact, part of the interior—but much of it was peeling and looked downright shabby. All that remained of the former storefront was a built-in countertop against the building side of the wall.
If I’m gonna have a shop, this is it, but we’ll have to do a lot of fixing up, thought Mariela as she toured the storefront portion.
“I assume it’s okay to make repairs to the building. Could you recommend a carpenter?” she asked. The housing official looked slightly taken aback.
“Of course, as long as it complies with the building code. I will introduce you to someone familiar with the code,” he explained. “However, given the state of the property, I daresay the repairs will be quite costly.”
First, all land was under the dominion of the margrave and rented out. Rent was calculated based on the total size of the plot and the building, along with the corresponding section’s unit price and levied in addition to taxes every year. Given the possibility of property damage from monster attacks, collecting annual rent provided proof that a resident was still living, and in the unlikely event a house was destroyed, it could be rebuilt by order of the margrave. Since all land was property of the margrave, there had yet to be an instance where a house was unable to be rebuilt because the landowner could not be identified.
“Rest assured that your leasing contract will be renewed so long as you abide by housing laws, and you will not be subject to any impromptu evictions. For further details, please refer to the Residential Affairs regulations found within the Labyrinth City’s special laws, etcetera, etcetera, blah, blah, blah…” The housing official began to blather on, so Mariela urged him to cut to the chase.
“In short, a residential leasing contract will be executed along with your resident registration, proof of existence, and tax collection, in addition to any emergency provisions.”
There were two types of buildings—purchased and rented—and this one appeared to be the former. Mariela was apparently free to use any of the house’s leftover items or remaining vegetation in the garden however she liked. It did, however, come with certain provisions, such as “the sacred tree may not be cut down.”
“As far as the price of the property is concerned, given the severe deterioration of the addition along with the main building’s depreciation from age, the total will come to three gold coins. The annual rent for the plot is also three gold coins. Since we’re already about two-thirds through the year, rent for the remainder will be one gold coin. Any further particulars will be calculated for you once you return to the guild, but we will require four gold coins at the time of the leasing contract’s execution, followed by an annual cost of three gold coins starting at the beginning of next year. Furthermore, the main building has no kitchen, and the one in the extension is in bad condition. It appears the repairs to the storefront will be quite expensive.”
Indeed, this property was very complicated. It was too expensive for the average citizen, and even for someone with agricultural skills, the crop yield would be too low to make a profit. The size of the building itself was much too small for a wealthy merchant, and it was some distance from the aristocratic quarter, too.
“This place is fine. Please set up the contract.”
However, for an alchemist, it was a mouthwatering property. To have a sacred tree in the garden was almost too good to be true. So long as Mariela was able to sell potions, paying the rent would be a breeze.
They returned to the Merchants Guild and drew up the contract the same day, and Mariela paid the four gold coins. After receiving the key and a copy of the contract, she was hit with the reality of having obtained the mansion of her dreams. She couldn’t fully suppress a smirk.
“I will arrange for the carpenters. May we choose who will be starting the work right away? Since you were referred by Chairwoman Elmera, I’ll be sure to send skilled carpenters. Please feel free to consult me personally about the repair plans and expenses. I will contact you on-site tomorrow afternoon.”
The negotiations went off without a hitch. According to what the housing official told Mariela, she was allowed to move in today, but the property was normally cleaned and reorganized first. And carpenters were going to be arranged for as well. Apparently, luggage would get in the way of their work, and there was also the risk of it getting stolen.
Even so, she was thrilled. There were even four rooms on the second floor. Where should she set up her workshop? How should her storefront look? She had to check what furniture and other things she needed, too.
Back at the Merchants Guild shop, Mariela purchased some bread and a bottled drink. She remembered to buy the tea she’d had in the office as well and headed to the house with Sieg a second time. They ate lunch under the sacred tree and discussed what kind of remodeling they wanted to do.
06
“I’ll line up shelves starting around here and put the worktable over here! That’ll make a fine workshop, don’cha think?”
“Sounds…nice. What about a bedroom?”
“Next to the worktable! That way, when I’m tired, I can go straight to bed!”
“So…your bedroom…will be next to the workshop, then.”
“Awww man, but going between rooms is such a pain!”
“Don’t worry. I will…carry you.”
“What, am I luggage now? What about your room, Sieg?”
“Next to yours…would be…fine…”
“Isn’t the room right at the top of the stairs bigger, though?”
“That would make…a nice guest room. That seems…suitable, since you can fit two beds in it.”
And so the two of them began to discuss how to allocate the rooms.
They decided on the second-floor ones right away. The large one farthest to the right would be the workshop, and the rooms to the west of it would be Mariela’s bedroom, Sieg’s bedroom, and the guest room.
On the other hand, they couldn’t come up with a good plan for the living room and inner parlor on the first floor. The living room was twenty feet wide by forty-six feet deep when viewed from the door, and it had a fireplace on the end of the long edge. Mariela had heard that aristocrats would line up long, narrow tables in rooms like these and lounge about as they dined. However, it was just her and Sieg—they didn’t need a living room this big.
That said, she thought the fireplace was great. When winter came, she wanted to get all warm and cozy and sit on the hearth drinking hot cocoa.
“But the fireplace wouldn’t be able to warm a room this big, huh?”
“If we partition one section, it might work.”
“What would we do with the sectioned part?”
“A guest room?”
“We’ve already got one on the second floor. Who would visit us anyway…?”
Neither of them could come up with a decent idea. The kitchen and shop were far beyond Mariela’s scope; she’d lived in only a small cottage before, and no image came to mind. Sieg seemed to be in the same situation. They realized they needed to buy a lot of things, too, but there were so many that they didn’t know where to start or where to put them.
“Let’s talk with a carpenter.”
From the very start, they were keen to delegate everything to a third party.
For the time being, they decided to go buy what they needed today and tomorrow and look at a variety of shops.
Sieg needed a change of clothes and a cloak, and Mariela had only one tunic and pair of pants. Her shoes and bag were falling apart, so she planned to buy new ones at Elba’s Shoe Shop. That place had lots of things she needed, like knives she could use for harvesting and cooking, and sewing kits.
They took a look around, focusing on the stores near their new home. In the middle of their browsing, they caught sight of a sign that read MERLE’S SPICES.
“Merle” must’ve been the name of the shop’s poster girl. Mariela pictured a cute kid like Emily at the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion as she peeked inside. It seemed to be a place offering spices and tea for sale. A large number of spices Mariela had never seen before lined the shelves.
“Whoaaa, that’s not something you see every day!”
“Gosh, new faces. You two from outside the city?” An amiable and rotund middle-aged woman greeted them.
More than half of the items seemed to have been gathered in the Labyrinth. As with medicinal herbs, the Labyrinth had vegetation from all over the world due to the differing climate in each of its strata. Low-efficacy spices like these apparently grew in the earlier levels and were perfect for beginning adventurers to gather along with herbs for pocket change. Thanks to this, spices made the rounds in the markets of the Labyrinth City, and even the skewers in street stalls were sprinkled with salt and pepper for a delicious effect.
“The sugar’s a little expensive…”
“It takes a lot of time to process sugar turnips. If you want it for cookin’, this crude sugar I have here’s perfect. I even put it in my tea, too.”
Sugar turnips were a locally cultivated crop used to make sugar. Boiled turnip dregs were used for livestock feed, and crude sugar along with a small amount of regular sugar could be extracted from the broth. Because processing technology wasn’t well-developed, this made only a small amount of refined sugar, and it was expensive. Crude sugar contained both sugar and impurities, and it was well-known as an inexpensive flavoring used by the masses for cooking and other purposes because of its distinct taste. Although sugar-refining technology seemed to have improved over two hundred years, much of what came from the turnips was still crude sugar.
Incidentally, sugar turnips were a favorite food of orcs, and during the harvest season, the creatures were drawn to them. Farmers set traps around their fields, of course, and even sentinels and adventurers would go orc hunting, too. A large volume of orc meat was distributed during the harvest season and benefited the Labyrinth City as food reserves during winter.
“Auntie, you eat too much of that sugar. I keep tellin’ ya, you’re gonna turn into an orc!” A young boy who appeared to work there teased the woman.
“Quiet, you. And call me Miss Merle here in the shop. Hey, go get me that delivery from a little while ago.”
So the barrel-shaped woman was Merle. The passage of time had not been kind to her.
Mariela bought four pounds of the crude sugar and left the shop.
Before they returned to the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion, they stopped by Ghark’s Herbal Supplies; the shop was open, but nobody was inside. Surprised at his negligence, she called him loudly.
“Hellooo! Ol’ Man Ghaaaark, are you in heeeere?”
“Sure aaam! In the back. C’mon round.”
After calling him three times, she was summoned to the rear yard. When they arrived, they found an enormous bean pod hanging over a pot of boiling water. Five similar pods were piled up next to the pot.
“These are creeper seeds, aren’t they?!”
“Aye, I got a big catch. There’ll be an expedition to the Labyrinth soon, y’see. I picked ’em fer a group of adventurers.”
Creepers were bloodsucking monster plants with vines, and creeper rubber, a high-quality material, was made from the viscous liquid inside those vines. Disposable rubber made from shoddy, cheap creeper saplings was widely distributed in the Labyrinth City.
Mature creepers bore seeds that were tightly packed in pods. Creeper seeds were both extremely effective in medicine and extremely nutritious. Not only were they an ingredient in Regen medicine, which raised a person’s natural resilience and provided a continuous recovery effect, but they could be eaten as is, and a single seed provided a complete, nutritious meal.
However, it was much more difficult to subjugate a mature creeper enough to steal its seeds than it was to obtain its viscous liquid. For one thing, a seed-bearing creeper was intelligent—as far as a plant could be, anyway. To spread out and propagate, the seeds burst from their pods with a bratatatatat like a flurry of sling stones. The parent creeper then used these like projectiles to shoot at its prey. Getting struck by one felt like being hit by a pebble, but since a single pod contained anywhere between one hundred and two hundred seeds, the rapid-fire assault was unbearable. Creepers used this barrage of seeds to lead prey into the clutches of their vines, paralyzing it with their poisonous thorns before finally sucking the victim’s blood—a truly fiendish combo.
“How did you—?”
“Seed-bearin’ creepers are intelligent, yeah? So alcohol works on ’em.”
Apparently, you could pour alcohol mixed with sleeping medicine onto a creeper’s roots and then cut off as many pods as you liked while it slept.
“So that’s how you do it?”
Mariela had an epiphany. There were still so many things she had yet to learn. Had all her painstaking work gathering individual fallen seeds from creeper habitats been for naught?
“Yowww… This time I blundered a bit, though. Curse that infernal weed, drinkin’ all my booze.”
The area near the seam of the left arm of his armor had turned dark red with bruising—probably from being pelted with creeper seeds. She could see only a little bit through an opening in his clothes, but he’d definitely been hit in a few places.
“Oh no! We need to heal you, quick! Po— Medicine! Medicine!”
“No use gettin’ worked up over a thing like this. It’s only a bruise. I’ve got some medicine already, so don’t worry. More importantly, I gotta finish dryin’ these.”
“What are you talking about?!” Mariela cried in a panic. “Treatment comes first! I’ll do the drying!”
“Oh, izzat so?” came Ghark’s reply. He caved to pressure with surprising ease. “I dry each pod in moist air so as not to damage the seeds. Keep an eye on the hot water so it doesn’t run out.” He went into his house.
As the old man had instructed, Mariela and Sieg watched the pot for a while.
This is sooo slow. The other pods will start to deteriorate while he’s drying the first one. What a waste.
“Sieg, can you tell if anyone’s watching us?”
“They’re not. But—”
“Form Transmutation Vessel, Tune Humidity to Sixty Percent, Tune Temperature to Forty Degrees, Dehydrate.”
Mariela used her alchemic skills on the five pods next to the pot faster than Sieg could say “—you shouldn’t!” He stared at the pods that had been dried before his eyes, looking perturbed.
“Sigh… What are you doing…?”
“Hey, I didn’t use any Drops of Life. Foreign alchemists can do this kinda stuff.”
Since the other five pods were dry, she was getting ready to dry the one hanging above the pot, too, when Ghark returned. As he looked at the dried pods and the seeds inside them, which were also completely dry without a single one of them breaking, he grumbled, “What have ye done? I only left ye here fer a second—”
“I dried ’em for you!” Mariela replied, glossing over the details. As she laughed awkwardly, Ghark’s clenched fist came down with a thud.
“Owwww…!”
Tears sprang to Mariela’s eyes.
“Y’idiot. Don’t do that sort of thing in public. There’s more pain where that came from. Got that?” he threatened. “’Ey, you over there, keep an eye on this blockhead!”
Mariela hung her head dejectedly. “I-I’m sorry…”
She’d gotten carried away and gotten a scolding for her efforts. Sieg was probably shocked, too.
Feeling glum, Mariela was about to head home when Ghark shoved one of the dried pods at her.
“Here, this is yer payment. Take it. Er, that is… Well, ye helped me out. Come back anytime,” he added curtly.
“I made Ghark angry,” Mariela said to Sieg on their way home.
“I’m…angry, too. You were too careless.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. Thanks for worrying about me.”
Even though Mariela had just been on the receiving end of a fist, her mood brightened. The many seeds inside the dried pod bounced around in time with her jaunty gait, jangling like a little bell.
07
“Excellent timing, Mariela.”
Mariela was about to enter her room at the Yagu Drawbridge Pavilion when Lieutenant Malraux called out and stopped her. Come to think of it, his room was next to hers. Although he had his own home within the Labyrinth City, he always seemed to be here in his room. Maybe it was a stand-in for an office.
After taking a moment to deposit their baggage, she and Sieg headed for Malraux’s suite. Captain Dick was sitting on the couch, as always.
“Sorry.” The captain didn’t usually say anything until the very end, but this time he spoke up immediately, and the first thing out of his mouth was an apology. Lieutenant Malraux also wore a contrite expression as he brought out a tray holding a document and a small mountain of gold coins. What in the world was this about?
“This is a copy of the receipt for the Labyrinth Suppression Forces.”
Surprised, Mariela wondered if it was okay for her to look at something like that, but since it was offered to her, she picked it up and read it. The Black Iron Freight Corps had bought ten each of three kinds of mid-grade potions for themselves, and the details and the document indicated the number of the remaining ones. The bottom summed it all up: “Total cost of aforementioned items: seventy gold coins.”
“It was due to the expedition’s budget. We persisted in our negotiations, but this amount also came from the general’s personal assets, and we were unable to acquire any further funds.”
“It’s because I was stupid enough to say we’d accept a discount.”
She knew, or rather, had noticed Captain Dick was a careless person, but he seemed to be apologizing for the other party driving a hard bargain. All this after she’d made it a point to tell them she didn’t mind if the potions sold for cheap.
“Um, so if you subtract the contracted price of the mid-grade- and-under potions, and with fifty-two gold coins for fifteen high- grade potions, that comes to about three gold coins each, yes?”
Captain Dick apologized again. “I’m so very sorry.”
“I briefly thought we’d begun our negotiations with a clean slate, but they were firm in their conditions, and I had no choice but to accept their offer,” Lieutenant Malraux explained. “I don’t normally cave…” Even he was offering an earnest apology.
“I don’t mind. Please lift your head.”
As they heeded her request, Captain Dick’s and Lieutenant Malraux’s expressions seemed to be asking “Huh? Is it okay?” and “What do you mean?” respectively.
“The general even bought them with his own money, did he not? That’s because expeditions need potions. Next time, I’ll prepare even more.”
In the Citadel City, the selling price of high-grade potions had been ten large silver coins—she got more than thirty times what they were worth before. The price was much more than enough, and if the potions were so desperately needed that someone was willing to dip into their own funds to pay for them, she would’ve been fine lowering the cost to the old selling price. Mariela was merely speaking what was on her mind.
“Mariela, are you being serious right now? Do you understand how valuable these potions are?”
Lieutenant Malraux had a dangerous glint in his eye. It may have been the first time she saw such an honest expression from him.
“Potions are consumable goods. Such a small dose shouldn’t sell at a high price. If I need money, I can just sell a lot of them.”
This was Mariela’s policy. Her master had told her to “make a lot of potions,” though she didn’t understand the true motivation behind it. Such items had been commonplace two hundred years ago, and hers were driven down to such cheap prices that they were almost a loss. When she became independent, she made potions by herself in the Fell Forest and sold them all in the Citadel City every day. She was sustained many times by the expressions of gratitude after her potion had helped someone, rare though they were. “Make the potions for the money you need” was a matter of course for Mariela, and the fact that her potions helped people motivated her actions.
“Potions are assets. They can be left to one’s offspring.” Lieutenant Malraux’s words were few but stern.
I do not know if she found them by chance or if she legitimately inherited them, but she seems to have a large number of potions. Even so, they are unmistakably limited and valuable items. I wouldn’t call such idealistic claims of hers “noble;” there are no more Alchemist Pact-Bearers within the Labyrinth City.
Lieutenant Malraux was looking into Mariela’s eyes as if searching for her true motives, but his misunderstanding wasn’t communicated to her.
“Wouldn’t it be better to leave behind more practical assets like a house or money?” Mariela replied, continuing the discussion on the wrong page.
Yeah, obviously. If something happened to me, Sieg would be out on the streets. Even with the proceeds from those high-grade potions, he couldn’t live in the house we just bought for more than ten years. Besides, I’ve only made a hundred potions so far. I can make and sell tens of thousands more.
Mariela’s carefree attitude brought the conversation to a standstill.
Malraux looked unconvinced as he muttered, “She’s a woman of few wants.”
Mariela’s share of the fifty-two gold coins came to thirty-one gold and two large silver coins. She took it and signed the document, and with that, the transaction was complete. She’d already heard from Lynx that morning, but the Black Iron Freight Corps would depart for the imperial capital early tomorrow, with plans to return in the evening sixteen days later.
Lieutenant Malraux was the one who’d reserved Mariela and Sieg’s room for them, so she told him they’d found a place to live.
“Is that so? Then, when we return, we shall send Lynx as our messenger.”
Although it would be sixteen days until their next business deal, Mariela would be busy with moving and renovating her new home. She probably wouldn’t be able to mass-produce potions. Next time they met, she promised to provide as many potions as she could. Lieutenant Malraux put in a request for specialized high-grade potions as he glanced at Sieg.
Captain Dick had stayed quiet for the latter half of the business proceedings. He must have picked up on the mood, as he didn’t suggest any toasts even after the talk was over.
Mariela and Sieg went down to the restaurant to find Lynx, Yuric, and the other Corps members eating. Today’s menu appeared to be some sort of dark-fleshed fish, and she heard it could be requested as a steak or fried. Both seemed to be the same type of marinated fish and came with a salad.
Since they wanted to try both, Sieg ordered the steak and Mariela ordered the fried version. They were invited to the Corps’s table and ate there. The steak didn’t have a fishy odor, and it had so much fat that it didn’t seem like fish at all. The sauce was light with its blend of citrus juices and pungent spices and didn’t leave a greasy feeling afterward. The fried fish was covered in a sauce of coarsely chopped tomatoes and their juices. This coating trapped the fat within the fish, giving it a rich flavor.
Delicious as the food was, every one of the Black Iron Freight Corps ate in silence. Maybe they were focused on tomorrow, when they’d be entering the Fell Forest. Mariela didn’t know for sure, but it was undoubtedly a dangerous trip. She savored her meal in a somber mood.
After the silent dinner, they were provided with tea.
“Mariela, Sieg, you both ate it all, huh?” Lynx suddenly spoke up. “What d’you think today’s fish was?”
“Huh? Wasn’t it freshwater fish? Although something with flesh this dark is pretty unusual.”
“Saltwater…fish?”
“Aaand the answer iiiis, sahuagin!”
Mariela nearly spit out her drink.
Ack, I just snorted some of my tea!
She held her stinging nose and scowled at Lynx.
“You can’t tell, right? Right? Ya just thought it tasted good and ate it up, didn’cha?”
“It’s premium-grade fish, y’know? Made with regards from the owner,” added Yuric.
“Aw man, I bet sahuagin’s super-nutritious! Still, I never woulda thought you could actually eat it.”
Sahuagin was a bipedal fish with a particularly foul-sounding cry that sounded something like gyohhh. Since they were built similarly to humans, Mariela never once thought about eating one, let alone even considered them edible in the first place.
But it was super-tasty, though. Super-tasty!
Mariela didn’t actually say “Bleh,” but her grimace was enough. Lynx and the others burst into satisfied, uproarious laughter.
“Ahhh, that was too funny. We’re leavin’ early tomorrow, so I’m gonna head on to bed. Later, Mariela. Catch ya next time.”
Lynx took a good, hard look at Mariela before returning to his room.
08
Back in her own room at the inn, Mariela felt sad to be leaving the Corps members. As she put her luggage in order, she brought to mind the image of Lynx and the others unable to quell their infectious laughter.
“At first, I was a bit wary around them, but they’re all good people, those guys in the Corps. They’ll come back safe, won’t they?”
“The Black Iron Freight Corps…is strong. They also have potions. They’ll…be fine.”
If Sieg, who’d been through the Fell Forest, was saying as much, then they probably would be all right. Even so, she was a little worried. The five days she’d spent with Lynx and the crew had been really fun. After surviving the Stampede, Mariela had prospects for living in the Labyrinth City thanks to their meddling in one way or another.
They did a lot for me. I wonder if I can do something for them in return.
Mariela’s hand brushed against a thick tome—The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Herbs and Their Effects. Come to think of it, she’d had a conversation about the Library today.
“Library Link.”
Wondering if there was anything good in the information she had unrestricted access to, she connected to the Library for the first time in a long while.
101 Delicious Recipes You Can Make with Alchemic Skills, Essential Alchemic Products to Make Your Life Easier, Alchemic Housework Techniques for the Busy Housewife… She skimmed around there. Alchemic Sweets. Seeing this made her sad. She’d never been able to make sweets with such ample amounts of expensive sugar.
Oh right, I bought coarse sugar today.
Thinking maybe she could make them now, she began to read. The foreword was written in an extremely roundabout fashion, but it seemed to be a collection of recipes for making sweets with potion effects.
Whoa, what the heck? This is really neat! Ahhh, but the effects are about ten percent less than an actual potion. Hmm, this is dicey. But if these can help kids enjoy a bitter potion, maybe they’re not such a bad thing after all.
Mariela had been working on improving the taste of potions and had failed to make a “Yummy Potion” many times. Her goal was to someday perfect one that had a good flavor without sacrificing efficacy and then register it in the Library.
She flipped through several recipes. They had names she didn’t really understand, like “Regen Candy with Excellent Staying Power” and “Fight Until Dawn! Beast-Mode Berserker Chocolate,” accompanied by even less understandable instructions.
“What’s wrong?” Sieg asked, noticing the dubious expression on Mariela’s face. When she told him about the recipes, he looked puzzled. “Are you going to make one?” They really did have strange names.
“Candy that stimulates continuous recovery of strength would be good for children weakened by disease, and this berserk-inducing chocolate could provide nutrition and really turn the tides for someone cornered by monsters. So they’re wonderful ideas and all, but I dunno why they’ve got such strange explanations,” said Mariela, and Sieg looked away awkwardly.
“Oh, there’s this:
“‘Peppy Beginnings Cookies—for the alchemist just starting out. Give these cookies under the pretense of a thank-you gift or as salutations. Supereffective even outside ley lines! You’ll be sure to catch the recipient’s eye once they’re bursting with pep. With your preparations now complete, carefully reel in the thread to ensnare the prey in your web!’”
Thread? Was this recipe’s author a spider or something? Not that there are any…nonhuman apprentices.
She didn’t really understand the explanatory note, but she guessed from the ingredients and recipe that these cookies with creeper seeds kneaded into them used the maker’s own magical power in place of Drops of Life to heighten the efficacy. The medicinal effect of creeper seeds reduced fatigue, not to mention the seeds themselves were also nutritious—consuming one was the equivalent of eating a full meal. They imparted a peculiar flavor if you ground them into a powder and blended them, but they were often crushed and combined with tea leaves for their aroma. Since the recipe didn’t use Drops of Life, it would have only slightly more of an effect than regular sweets, but the effect wouldn’t be lost even if they were removed from the area where the alchemist made their pact.
“Yeah, I’m gonna try to make these.”
Mariela wanted to share them with Ghark and the ladies at the inn. And Sieg, too, of course. She would need the same number of creeper seeds as the number of people she wanted to feed and crush the seeds into powder. For the required tea leaves, she could use the ones she bought at the Merchants Guild. Then she needed flour, eggs, and butter. She could prepare sugar by separating out the coarse sugar from its impurities.
She went down to the restaurant to discuss with the owner whether he’d sell ingredients to her. He happily parted with them and even asked, “Do you want to use the kitchen?” but she politely turned him down. Although Alchemic Sweets used hardly any potion components, it was strangely fixated on alchemic skills, using them for every stage of the process instead of utensils or an oven.
Really, who in this world wrote this? What a weirdo. Well, whatever. Let’s start the, uh…alchemy?
Feeling puzzled about the student author and their strange fixations, Mariela began the recipe.
“Form Transmutation Vessel. Control Temperature. Melt Butter. Mix Magic. Insert Sugar. Mix Magic. Control Temperature. Insert Eggs. Mix More Magic. Insert and Disperse Wheat, Seed Powder, and Tea Leaves. Mix Magic. Mold. Control Pressure. Superheat. Preserve. Refrigerate.”
She proceeded through each of the steps of the recipe with ease. The designated temperatures were loose, such as “about the temperature of boiling water” or “about room temperature,” and whenever she added an ingredient, all she had to do was knead in magical power and mix them together. The sudden decrease in pressure midway through would cause the batter to bubble, and it seemed the cookies would turn out crisp. The recipe recommended making the cookies into a heart shape, but Mariela wasn’t keen on the idea of such an inefficient shape, so she made all of them into squares.
Sieg had said he wanted to eat a heart-shaped one when she talked to him about the shape, so she made just one of them into a heart. It was a little difficult—the left and right sides weren’t symmetrical, and it looked more like a daigis leaf. But the process was fun, so she tried to make another cookie into a raptor shape.
“A sahuagin?”
“No, Sieg, it’s a raptor! Although… Yeah. It does look like a sahuagin. I’ll give this one to Lynx.”
She lined up all the cookies in the Transmutation Vessel and baked them in one batch. They turned light brown in the amount of time the recipe said they would. After refrigerating them, they were finished. When she took them out of the vessel, a pleasant buttery aroma wafted up from them.
“Let’s each try one. Just a li’l taste test.”
Sieg bit into the daigis-shaped—er, the heart-shaped one, and Mariela into a square one.
Crunch.
The buttery flavor spread through her mouth, and then a gentle scent of tea leaves reached her nose. The cookie had the peculiar taste of creeper seed, but coupling it with the tea leaves and eggs transformed it into a distinct flavor all its own.
“It’s delicious.”
“Wow, this is good!”
Sieg seemed to like it, too. Since he savored his bit by bit, she encouraged him to have one more, but he said he’d already had a meal and therefore had enough for today.
He’s well-behaved. It’s gotta be tough not to go for seconds.
She cut up some cloth she’d bought that day and wrapped the cookies in it, with the sahuagin-shaped one in a separate cloth so that it wouldn’t break.
“I should go to bed so I can give these to the crew before they leave tomorrow morning. Wake me up if I oversleep, okay?”
Mariela was preparing to head to the bathroom before bed when Sieg stopped her. He pointed to the window, which overlooked the rear yard, and through it she saw the figures of two people.
It was Captain Dick and Amber.
Under the light of the moon, the pair embraced tightly. After gazing at each other for a little while, they reluctantly parted ways and returned to the inn.
Once she got back to the restaurant, Amber would probably greet customers as she always did, while Captain Dick would return to his room. Both of them disappeared from sight.
Mariela wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight after all, and she wanted to pin the blame on the Peppy Beginnings Cookies.
Before dawn, Mariela chased after Lynx, who was boarding one of the iron carriages. After last night, she hadn’t been able to sleep after all, but she could at least properly see him off.
“Mariela, it’s still nighttime. Go back to sleep!” Lynx greeted her the same way he always did.
“I made these. They’ll give you energy, so share them with everyone. Ah, this one’s especially for you.”
She handed over a bundle of cookies and the wrapped sahuagin-shaped one.
“No way, really? Wow, thanks! Can I open it?”
It was dark, so she couldn’t see his expression, but he seemed delighted. He unwrapped the sahuagin cookie next.
“…The heck is this?”
“What d’you think?”
“A raptor?”
“The answer iiiis, a sahuagin!”
“SERIOUSLY?”
It actually is a raptor, though. Amazing that he guessed it right.
Lynx bit into the cookie with a light crunch.
“Oh, this’s really good. Thanks much. I’ll buy you a souvenir or somethin’, ’kay?”
With that, the Black Iron Freight Corps departed for the imperial capital.
“They’re gone.”
After seeing off the Black Iron Freight Corps, Mariela and Sieg were now alone.
“It’s still…early. You should go back to sleep.”
In the dim light of the early morning, Mariela stood motionless as she stared after the iron carriages, and Sieg ushered her back to the room. Once she got into bed as he’d told her to, Sieg folded the covers all the way up to her neck.
“Sieg, you’re not going to sleep?”
“I’m…fine.”
Mariela seemed lonely, so Sieg hesitantly reached out and gently stroked her head.
“Good night, Mariela,” he said, and he left the room.
After closing the door, he murmured, “I’ll be by your side, no matter where that may be.”