Chapter 2: Mana Tool Shop and Restaurant

Chapter 2:
Mana Tool Shop and Restaurant

 

“HMPH, THESE SORCERY CORES are quite crude. I don’t think I can sell them,” said the short merchant in an apologetic voice. His thinning hair was brushed over his bald pate, and he was the proprietor of the mana tool shop in Tibar.

Even if I just wanted to walk around town, I needed money to do anything. I’d come to his shop to exchange the sorcery cores I’d harvested from the large monkeys’ skeletons for just such currency.

A grandma on the street who seemed to have some spare time had directed me here. She had informed me that if I needed to exchange the raw materials of mana beasts, I wanted a mana tool shop. Then she gave me a piece of candy. Although it feels a little presumptuous to say this, the elderly have always been pretty friendly with me.

The candy she gave me had an unfamiliar nostalgic flavor, like that of a mellow fruit.

No, wait, now wasn’t the time for such tangents. The monkeys’ sorcery cores were subpar goods? How could this be?! Those damn monkeys! Even in death, they were useless. Hmph, hadn’t I doubted from the very beginning that I could sell some dirty rock that came out of one of those inept monkeys?

Well…I’d thought I would be able to exchange them for some money.

“I-Is that so? I apologize for taking up your time,” I said. I dropped my shoulders and turned on my heel, ready to leave the shop.

As I did, the merchant called out from behind me. “Please, wait a moment, young noble sir.”

“Noble sir…?” I turned, only to find the merchant staring at me.

“Don’t play dumb. The tailoring of your robe and shoes, and that elegant shrine golem accompanying you… Even if I weren’t a merchant, I would be able to tell straight away that you’re not some commoner, right?”

Ah, right. I looked down at my robe and shoes. I wore an olive-brown spellcaster robe and this world’s version of leather boots. Both items had come from Imperial Master Spellcaster Luvel Zairein’s hideout. That was probably why they signaled status to this man. The next item on his list was my partner, Gol, standing silently behind me. Her lovely form was the Platonic ideal of beauty. The transcendent elegance of this white elf golem’s limbs completely overshadowed the high-class impression of my robe and shoes.

My silence was taken as a lack of argument.

The merchant scratched his short mustache as he probed further, “Seeing as you’re trying to exchange a large number of sorcery cores, you must be in great need of money. You don’t seem to be from around here, so may I ask where exactly you did come from?”

“Um…that’s…”

Now, for that, I was truly at a loss. I highly doubted I could be truthful and simply say I’d come from another world. Also, I feared that if my true identity as “the Sorcerer King destined to destroy this world etc., etc.” were revealed, I would be mistakenly arrested as the worst kind of criminal. I had to think of some kind of explanation.

Um, if I recall correctly, Master Speria mistook my birthplace for somewhere in this world, right? Ah, right, right. I believe he said I was from a spellcaster family and had wandered here from the east due to political circumstances—

“I came from the east. My name is Nemaki Dasai. I’ve come here because of, well, a complicated situation,” I said, certainly not lying.

It was true that direction-wise, I had come from the east. Moreover, being summoned to another world by an evil summoner as the Sorcerer King was absolutely what I would consider a “complicated situation.”

“I see. Just as I thought…” As if convinced by my answer, the merchant nodded deeply. “If you’re from the war-torn east, I assume you’ve dealt with quite a bit. I understand.”

“Th-thank you for your consideration,” I replied.

Wonderful! He’d made sense of my cop-out. It appeared this introduction had juice.

Master Speria, I am truly thankful for this convenient information. From now on, I shall draw on my teacher’s advice for my introductions. I silently expressed my profound gratitude to my wonderful teacher.

The merchant studied my face and muttered, “Is that so… You really must’ve been through quite a lot.” Wrinkles formed between the middle-aged man’s brows. For just a moment, a hint of hesitation appeared on his face.

“Um, is there something wrong…?” I asked.

“Ah, no, sorry. It’s nothing,” he said. The merchant quickly shook his head. Since his movements were quick, the hair covering his wide forehead fell into disarray. “In that case, Mr. Nemaki, you have my condolences for your circumstances. How about I lend you a helping hand?”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“Actually, even crude sorcery cores have some minimal use. Being in the business, I believe I can help you a bit. I guess I’m saying I can buy them off you.”

“Eh? Really?”

“Indeed. However, the buying price will be drastically lowered. Despite that, do you still want to…?” the man asked.

His forehead shone and his mustache was sparse, and although such a face couldn’t be considered charming in any sense of the word, at that moment, to me, he looked like a noble Buddha with a halo.

 

***

 

I left the mana tool shop and strolled through the streets before entering a restaurant with Gol. It was made of wood and stone and looked like a pub with a terrace that faced the street, so the interior was quite open and bright. Timewise, it was still too early for lunch, but the restaurant had several customers and felt relatively lively. The friendly atmosphere attracted me right away. From a personal standpoint, it felt like entering a family-owned, hole-in-the-wall joint.

I worked through the soothing hustle and bustle of the restaurant’s interior as I made my way to an empty seat by the counter. Gol obediently sat to the seat on my left. From this position, I surveyed the interior with open curiosity.

Several of the male customers ogled Gol. Fortunately, it didn’t feel like I was being treated as suspicious. I hoped I would be able to blend right in with the local scene. I believed this was possible because of Zairein’s robe and boots. Just as the mana tool merchant pointed out, it was clear my outfit was several times more stately than those of the other patrons. One glance at my fine outfit and no one would assume I was a dine-and-dash risk.

Furthermore, even though everyone’s eyes were on my golem companion, we didn’t get any particularly strange looks. I was really grateful for the apparent lack of an anti-pet policy—the staff didn’t even ask me to leave Gol outside like a parked car.

In fact, as I scanned the crowd, I spied a traveler among the customers by the wall who was accompanied by a large, red lizard. It seemed like the pet policy was actually pretty lax. The red lizard lay on the ground, as obedient as Gol. On more thorough inspection, an unfastened saddle lay beside it. Could the creature be mounted?

“In any case, I can finally take a breather.” I sank deeper into my counter seat and finally relaxed my shoulders, which had been tense since our arrival in town. Then I took out several types of coins from my bag of money. The clinking of the metal coins hitting each other made a satisfying sound.

Somehow, I had managed to successfully sell the monkeys’ sorcery cores, which was why I could afford to enter such a restaurant.

I had learned the rough value of these coins from the mana tool merchant. Although he made a dubious face when I asked, I’d had no other choice. After all, my knowledge of this world was lower than that of an elementary school student. Although now that I thought about it, he’d known I was a foreigner, so perhaps he hadn’t been that suspicious.

“Well, let’s do a light review,” I said as I lined up the four different types of coins on the counter.

The metal coins reflected the sunlight shining through from the open terrace, and each kind glittered in a different way. Iron, copper, silver, and gold. Roughly ten copper coins would be enough for one meal at this establishment. Meanwhile, for one of these silver coins, I could book a stay at a decent inn in Tibar. The highest value belonged to the gold coins. One of these was worth fifty silver. Also, it was a coin made of gold. Amazing! Real gold!

Meanwhile, the iron coins had a hole in their center and were worth less than a copper. I believed their exact value was…ah, I’d forgotten.

However, on closer examination, I noticed some of the copper coins were larger. Huh? Why was that again? Now I was just confused.

So, you see, I was a man who was bad at accurately calculating his gains and losses. For the number of sorcery cores I sold, I’d earned twenty-five silver coins, thirty-eight copper coins, and seven iron coins.

However, I’d actually lumped those larger copper coins in with the smaller ones. I learned this later on, but these larger coins were made with the convenience of daily life in mind. Their worth was equivalent to that of several copper coins. In other words, it was like a five-hundred-yen coin in my original world. At the time, however, the large copper coin left me completely befuddled.

In any case, for one bag of sorcery cores from the monkeys, I could secure a stay at a decent inn for a whole month. It was quite the steal! I had received far more than I initially thought possible. And all this for sorcery cores that shouldn’t have been sellable. The divine master of the mana tool shop was so very honorable.

Also, the consolation money I’d swiped from the drawer in Luvel Zairein’s library, or in short, the initial amount of money I had, was five gold and ten silver. Therefore, if I combined the money in my possession with the money I’d made from the sorcery cores, I had five gold coins, thirty-five silver coins, and…how many copper coins again? Um…well, the point is that there was a bunch jingling.

Although I was ignorant to the price of commodities in this world, if I assumed one silver coin was roughly equivalent to the worth of a ten-thousand-yen coin in modern-day Japan, then I could probably consider the current amount of money in my possession to be around three million yen. I wasn’t really sure about the finer details of the arithmetic, but…

With this amount, I don’t think I’ll need to worry about money for the time being. I might even be able to enjoy shopping in another world!

However, the coins I’d found in Zairein’s library would be considered a bit measly for an inheritance. As someone with the grandiose title of Imperial Master Spellcaster, I would have thought he’d have more money for his heir. At least several million yen, maybe? No, more like several hundred million. Was my actual inheritance locked away somewhere else?

Then again, hadn’t Zairein known he was going to die for his plan to destroy the world? In that context, why would he have left any money behind at all? Ah, then my lack of inheritance did make sense.

The money I’d found in his study might have been the remains of the funds he’d used to build the grand stage of the summoning ritual. Or…maybe the bundle of bills I’d found with the coins was the real meat of the inheritance.

Yes, those suspicious bills with the words “Selvei Scrip” written on them. I’d forgotten to ask the mana tool merchant about them. I had been watching the customers in this restaurant, too, but everyone used coins to pay. Not a single person used paper money.

I think it would best not to use any Selvei scrips to pay my bill at this place. I should probably find somewhere I can exchange them for coins.

Maybe at a bank? Did banks even exist in this world? From what I’d seen of humble Tibar, I didn’t expect to find such a fancy establishment.

“Well, I probably don’t need to think this seriously about money,” I muttered as I swept the coins back into my bag.

In fact, I was being a bit nonchalant about my financial situation. Hadn’t I already survived no-man’s-land before I came to this area with people and their tawdry currency?

Even if I ran out of money in the future, I highly doubted I would die of starvation. After all, I had the peerless Gol with me. As long as I knew what types of wild animals were edible, I would only ever need to ask my partner to hunt them. Her astonishing offensive ability and agility had let her single-handedly annihilate whole troops of monkeys hurling stone bullets. She’d have no trouble catching a rabbit or any other small animal. Come to think of it, Gol had instantly killed a deer only this morning. Maybe that was also edible!

No, wait a sec. I shook my head. Gol already pampers me too much. It’ll look bad if I let myself take this moocher lifestyle any further. No good! No good at all.

Ah, there we go—I could try using Earth Spear where other humans couldn’t see me and control it like a surface-to-air missile. I could probably even hit a flying bird. Though if I couldn’t control it well enough, I ran the risk of turning my prey into so much splatter…

All right, if worse came to worst, Gol and I could become hunters.

Just as I began to entertain the thought of changing my job from Sorcerer King to an honorable Tohoku-style Matagi hunter, I realized I should set this aside for the time being. I was sitting at the counter of a restaurant. The reason I’d come here was to have a meal, not contemplate a career change.

So let’s order some food already. I scanned the menu written on the wooden board. “Which one…?”

Leam-style lamb. Root-steamed stone barnacles and spring vegetables. Zernus brothers’ honeycomb tart… Line upon line of unfamiliar dishes.

While I recognized some ingredients, it was difficult to pin down what any one dish would taste like without understanding the whole name. “Just who are these Zernus brothers…?”

Anyway, I suspected the dish labeled “whole roasted red quail” was probably a roasted quail. The price was listed as nine copper coins, moderate for a meat dish. The other meat dishes were, on average, over ten coppers.

“It can’t be helped. Guess I’ll just order a whole roast.”

Just when I was about to avoid a dubious culinary adventure and opt for the safe bet, I noticed the man sitting to my right.

He was round and plump—in other words, a fat man. Age-wise, he was still young. Was he around my age? Regardless, unconcerned by any onlookers, he immersed himself in his meal, entirely focused on stuffing his face full of the food on the large dish in front of him. As I gazed upon him, I felt some kind of inexplicable camaraderie.

Ah. I figured it out. He was wearing a robe similar to mine, one with a kind of capelet in the style of an Inverness coat. Was he also a spellcaster? Well, then. It seemed the average spellcaster dressed in this kind of clothing. I recalled Master Speria’s outfit had also resembled this spellcaster uniform, though since his clothes had been torn when we met, I couldn’t be too sure of the details. There had been quite a large hole around his stomach area.

But could I really use my and Master Speria’s outfits as points of reference for spellcasters at large? After all, my teacher was twice as old as me. Not to mention, if an unamicable-looking youth like myself were to imitate the style of such a gentle older fellow—one whose smile could knock any lady off her feet—I would only insult him.

In any case, there wasn’t much difference between my clothes and those worn by the man sitting next to me. Based on this, I was likely easily recognized as a spellcaster. More importantly, the dish in front of my neighbor appeared to be some kind of pizza.

It must be really delicious, huh?

My fellow spellcaster wasn’t the least bit aware of my open stare as he continued to stuff his cheeks with this world’s version of a pizza.

Well, my unnamed neighbor… Ah, right, I’ll just call you Pizzaman in the meantime. Looks like you’re truly enjoying your meal, Pizzaman.

For some reason, watching him made my stomach grumble. And heck, I was finally inside a restaurant in another world. I might as well be a little adventurous.

“Um, I’ll have whatever the man next to me is having,” I said to the proprietor behind the counter.

“Got it! One baked sempiol, comin’ up.”

Oh? A baked sempiol, was it?

After giving my order, I waited a while before a hot dish was brought to me. Since it was freshly baked in a stone oven, puffs of steam wafted from it.

“All right, your baked sempiol,” said the man behind the counter.

This was the first time I had seen a freshly baked product since coming to this world. I was actually a bit moved. A luxurious slathering of cheese, mushrooms, thick slices of meat, and brightly colored vegetables were strewn over a flat, fluffy base. It looked delectably hearty. An egg had been cracked on top of all these ingredients. The flames from the oven hadn’t fully cooked the egg, which left it in a perfectly runny state, and it appeared I was supposed to dip the rest of the baked sempiol in it.

When I took a bite, I couldn’t get enough of the rich, aromatic flavor. Plus, the way the melted cheese and dripping egg mixed together was sublime.

“Oh, damn. This is reeeally good. Are you kidding me…?” Just like Pizzaman, I was in a trance as I chewed through the baked sempiol. He, incidentally, had by then moved on to his second.

Thanks, Pizzaman. You have really good taste.

 

“Hah, I’m stuffed. I’m in paradise.” I rubbed my belly, satisfied with my meal at this restaurant in another world. Once I finished my baked sempiol, I was on a high and ordered a “Zernus brothers’ honeycomb tart” for dessert. How can I put it? Since the baked sempiol was so much more delicious than I could have imagined, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try out another suspicious-sounding dish… Ah, that’s it. I ordered in the spirit of adventure.

This dessert from some questionable brothers was a honeycomb-shaped pastry baked to a light golden-brown that resembled a berry tart with honey and strawberry-looking fruits. Its sweetness melted my cheeks. Yup, that tart was just delicious.

I’m truly sorry, Zernus brothers. Please forgive Past Me for doubting you.

I didn’t need to know the ingredients to be satisfied with my meal. I opened my black leather shoulder bag and rummaged through it to pay the bill. This bag, which I’d received as a graduation present from Master Speria, was stuffed with random things despite its unusual weightlessness. Well, there currently wasn’t much inside, so that lightness probably didn’t mean much.

As I was thinking absentmindedly about the abnormality of the bag, I noticed something shining at the bottom. “Huh? What’s this…?”

I picked up a crystal the size of a dry-cell battery that glistened blackly. It was a monkey’s sorcery core. It must have spilled out of the bag I kept the rest of the cores in and fallen to the bottom sometime during my journey. As such, I hadn’t sold it to the mana tool merchant.

Although it looked like a first-class gem, I could only let out a sigh as I held it in my hand. “If only this weren’t a low-grade piece of junk…”

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that these cores were crude, I could have gotten a pretty penny for them. Apparently, sorcery cores of good quality could be sold at a much better price. By my estimation, a bag of quality cores might even ring up several gold coins. If that was true, my financial concerns could have been completely blown away.

That being the case, I should have properly searched around for better sorcery cores each time Gol mercilessly mowed down a big monkey.

I shook my head a little at the thought. That wouldn’t have been a realistic approach. To retrieve sorcery cores from sources other than skeletons, I would have needed to dissect the fresh corpses of those awful monkeys. I certainly hadn’t had the time or the mentality to do so on my possibly endless journey filled with random bursts of violence.

Most importantly, when I had been traveling with Master Speria, he hadn’t shown any inclination to gather these sorcery cores, so of course I’d thought they were worthless.

Seriously, that man has so few worldly desires… As I reminisced about that scholarly, bespectacled man, I finished my cup of cold water and continued turning the black crystal in my other hand.

At that moment, a voice suddenly called to me from the side. “Whoa. That’s an Earth Ogre’s sorcery core, right? Amazing!”

The owner of this voice was Pizzaman, who was now on his third baked sempiol.

Earth Ogre? What’s that? Oh, was he referring to the monkeys? According to Master Speria, the monkeys were known as Earth Goblins, if I recalled correctly. I supposed that made the large monkeys the Earth Ogres. I had to be careful. Because I’d been constantly calling them monkeys, I’d completely forgotten their official name.

“You know, like, how Earth Ogres create an outer stone shell with mana circulation?” Pizzaman continued. “Well, they’re practically like golems, am I right? Defeating them must’ve been, like, super hard. I mean, spells don’t work on them, right? They also fire off their instant-death spell Stone Bullet. They’re fast, intelligent, and come in swarms. Honestly, I can’t even imagine how you could defeat one. Y-you’re amazing…!” Pizzaman said. His eyes twinkled as he rapidly fired off this one-sided conversation. Those eyes were so lovely in their excitement that I felt I would be sucked right in.

Still, I didn’t mind being complimented. More importantly, I didn’t sense any sarcasm or flattery in his beaming expression. His face simply looked like that of a student sincerely praising a classmate who was good at something.

It looks like spellcasters are surprisingly pleasant people. Well, that might just be his personality.

Although Pizzaman was gushing with compliments, I had really only picked this sorcery core out of a skeleton.

Let’s be honest and tell him the truth.

“There were corpses on the road. I only picked this up from one.”

“Oh? Still, how lucky. But, you know, finding a skeleton of an Earth Ogre meant you ventured into the miasma, right? That alone is, like, not something just anyone could do.”

Pizzaman admired me for some time before noticing Gol sitting next to me. I followed his line of sight and casually glanced over at Gol. She was delicately wiping the remainder of the tart from my left cheek.

Gol, thanks for always being so kind. But, please, I beg of you… Just this once, please don’t treat me like an infant. My pride and dignity were being shredded as she continued babying me in front of my classmate.

Gol wiped my cheek, uncaring about the tears in my eyes.

Pizzaman said to me, “I see. So that outrageous beauty of a shrine golem that’s been sitting beside you this whole time… At first, I thought it was because of your preference, but that’s not it, right? You’re actually, like, not a simple aristocrat but, like, a pretty good golem wielder, right?”

“No… Um, what do you mean by ‘preference’…?”

Pizzaman, do you think I’m some bishoujo figurine fanatic? Well, huh? I swallowed back my tears at my classmate’s doubtlessly declining image of me.

Pizzaman remained unaware of his unintentional insult as he ate the rest of his baked sempiol, and he rubbed his stuffed belly. “Still, I’m envious of you. On top of having, like, a beautiful golem accompanying you, you also have a high-quality sorcery core. If you sold that for a decent price, you could, like, live the rest of your life free of worry. As for me, I’m gonna run out of money soon. Maybe the Association—”

My shoulders twitched at Pizzaman’s statement. “Sorry, but could you say that again?”

“Eh? What? That I’m, like, gonna run out of money soon, so I might need to ask the Spellcaster’s Association for help? I’m, like, bummed out.”

“No, not that. Before. About the sorcery core.”

Pizzaman looked at me with his wide, pure eyes and responded with a puzzled frown. “Eh? Oh, that your Earth Ogre sorcery core was, like, huge. I could tell from just one look that, like, it’s good-quality product, and if you sell it, you’ll definitely get, like, a ton of money.”

“Wha…?”

Wh-what did he just say?