Chapter 10: Bills and Flames

Chapter 10:
Bills and Flames

 

“WHAT? When you imbued the mana tool with mana, it just blew up…? Are you an idiot?” Mr. Chotos looked at me with exasperation. “Ugh…”

This man really didn’t pull his verbal punches. Yet I could say nothing in my defense. “Ack… I-I’m completely in the wrong. I’ll pay for the broken mana tool.”

“Nah, no need to pay for what wasn’t selling. It’s just…I’ve been in this business for a long time, and this is the first time I’ve heard of someone making a mana tool explode,” Mr. Chotos continued with a puzzled look. “Surely it wasn’t a defective product? I always inspect and test my goods, so I don’t think I could have missed such a dramatic problem, but…”

It was a bit after the exploding-mana-tool terrorist attack, and I had meekly apologized to Mr. Chotos when

he came back to the shop—as was my responsibility, being the terrorist in question. The only witnesses had been Gol and Teru, so I could have spun some tale, but as a man of culture, my pride was on the line. I couldn’t be a coward.

Anyway, aside from the obliteration of the mana tool, the shop was mostly undamaged. That probably had to do with the nature of the destruction, which had been something like a burst of internal pressure rather than detonation. Even the hand with which I had held the now ex-mana-tool was completely unscathed.

However, there had been a casualty. Immediately after the explosion, Gol worriedly stroked my hand, then abruptly attempted to smash the shop shelf on which the die had sat to smithereens. I was more flustered about that.

Please stop, Gol. If you break anything more, I’ll go broke from all the compensation.

I had rushed to hold her back, but it had been right on the wire…

At any rate, the silver lining was that the shock of the explosion didn’t make Teru cry. She merely blinked her little eyes in surprise before jumping around in excitement. Despite her frail appearance, Teru was a mentally sturdy child.

Hm? Wait a sec.

Returning to the topic at hand, given what Mr. Chotos had just said…was it so rare for a mana tool to explode that he questioned the quality of a good he normally wouldn’t doubt? And here I’d thought the explosion was a normal consequence of an amateur’s mishandling.

When I asked about it, Mr. Chotos frowned. “Look here… If there was any risk of it exploding just because you used it incorrectly, it couldn’t be sold as a common product, right?” Mr. Chotos pointed at the shelf of goods. “If you like, try any of the other tools. None of them will explode.”

“Eh?” I hesitated. Frankly speaking, the exploding mana tool had been somewhat triggering. However, if I didn’t work to overcome my developing trauma, I would be too scared to use mana tools for the rest of my life.

Did I have no other choice?

“You sure, mister? Are you really sure? Hey, you can’t blame me for whatever happens next, okay? If it explodes, I’m definitely not paying you for it. And if you lose any more goods, you’ll be careening toward poverty. You get that, right?”

“You’re way too scared. Every tool on this shelf is safe enough for a child to handle. Here, I’ve got you, so hurry up and do it.”

Mr. Chotos grabbed a round, white mana tool and placed it in my hand. It was the same white ball the renowned expert Little Girl-senpai had used to demonstrate the underlying principles of mana tools to her amateurish older friend.

“Argh, fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do it!” Newly resolved, I imbued the white ball in my hand with mana. Shining Lightning particles instantly gathered within it, and the white ball gave off a faint light.

Mr. Chotos said, “See? It didn’t explode, right?”

“Huh? It really didn’t.”

I could barely believe my ears, let alone my eyes—it didn’t explode. It…didn’t explode? It didn’t explode?! It didn’t explode! I did it! Behold, even I could use a mana tool! Amazing. It was glowing!

I cheered in sheer delight and excitedly imbued mana in the next products on the shelf, one after the other. There was a baton-shaped mana tool that produced water, a bolt-shaped mana tool that froze water, a mana tool that produced a comfortable breeze like an electric fan, etc. I tried all of them. So convenient—mana tools were amazing. And in the end, none of them exploded.

“Hey! This is amazing, mister!”

“Jeez, Nemaki. You really are like a child…” Mr. Chotos was saying some nonsense words. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Every one of the mana tools intrigued me, but I thought the stick-shaped mana tool that produced water was most convenient. It was on sale, too, so perhaps I could buy it later.

However, while none of the tools I tried exploded, I couldn’t use every single one, either. For some, even if I imbued a ton of mana into them, they remained inert.

“Hey, Mister, this emerald trumpet-looking thing doesn’t do anything.”

“Hm? Ah, that’s a special type. Unless you have a certain level of aptitude in the appropriate attribute, you won’t be able to use it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hmm… Do you want me to explain this to you, too?”

And thus, I received a simple lecture from Mr. Chotos about mana tools. According to him, you could for the most part classify mana tools into three types.

The first type reproduced specific spells even if you lacked aptitude for the spell’s attribute. That glowing white ball was one such example. Even someone like me, whose conversion rate for anything outside the Earth attribute was nil, could use the illumination of that tool’s Lightning spell. However, this type of tool couldn’t reproduce more complex spellcraft. At best, they could hold beginner- and elementary-level spells. I would say they were equivalent to home appliances.

The second type of mana tool strengthened and expanded on the power and range of specific spells, thereby providing support for complex spellcraft. The turquoise crystal earring Master Speria used to strengthen his Wind-attribute detection spell was of that second type. These tools were not for laymen, but for professional spellcasters. The strange emerald trumpet that didn’t respond to me was one of this type. Apparently, it strengthened a Wind-attribute communication spell that transmitted the caster’s voice across long distances, but you needed aptitude for the Wind attribute to use it—of which I had zilch.

The last type of mana tool was not represented in this shop. Mr. Chotos said these tools allowed their users to employ unique spells that they wouldn’t normally be able to use. These spells could be completely different from the ones more common mana tools produced. Furthermore, many tools of this type could no longer be manufactured, as the secrets of their creation had been lost. As such, I’d never see one in a small, family-run store like Chotos’s Mana Tool Shop.

The formal term for this third type of mana tool was “ancient mana tool,” but because of their rarity—on top of their exorbitant price—they were irrelevant to my life. Thus, I didn’t care much about them. Besides, I had nothing but bad memories of anything called some kind of “ancient.”

As I recalled the infuriating black dragon that broke Gol’s arm and made her cry, I blew into the emerald trumpet. Because it wasn’t actually an instrument, it sounded like I was blowing air through a tube.

“By the way, mister,” I said.

“Hm? What?”

I picked up a brown die from the shelf and held it up for Mr. Chotos to see. It was the only kind of mana tool that no one seemed to want to buy. “This cube is the same as the one that exploded before. What kind of tool is it?”

“Ah, right. That’s, you know, the Earth spell that creates a simple outdoor privy. Since that spell requires the caster to continually supply mana while the privy is in use, it’s an absolute pain, right? That mana tool helps manage the process. Though, well, as you can see, it’s not very popular.”

“Eh…?”

I knew that spell. It was the spell in the introductory book to create an outdoor toilet. I believed its formal name was Create Privy.

But you’re joking, right? Is the spell that unpopular?

Create Privy erected four thin walls of dirt to conceal an outdoor toilet, which it also generated, and once one’s business was complete, it collapsed and buried itself. It was a top-notch sanitary spell. A hygienic man such as myself considered it the strongest, most god-tier spell among Earth spells.

Although, when I cast it, I hardly expended any meaningful amount of energy. But Mr. Chotos made that sound like a difficult task for ordinary casters. Even though it was a truly wonderful spell, it was treated as garbage… How depressing.

In my mind, I gently stroked the page on Create Privy in the now lost Introduction to Spellcasting IV.

It’s fine. You don’t have to worry about what others say. I understand how good and precious you are.

I had read Introduction to Spellcrafting IV in the basin after I was summoned. I thought back on my lost days with my gentle lady-teacher (I hoped), the author Emerly Heilem.

What about the co-author Luvel Zairein, you ask? Well, I’ve never heard of that jerk before.

Unthinking, I casually imbued the die in my hand with mana. Faintly glowing Earth particles slowly gathered around this fabulous tool…

Could you believe it once again swelled like a mochi and burst into pieces?

The shards scattered through the shop like miniature fireworks, round two.

“Why? Why did it…?” I stood still in the middle of the ruins of the mana tool, on the verge of tears. “Sorry. I’ll pay for it…”

Gol tenderly stroked my hand as I stood there, grief-stricken. After ministering to my knuckles for some time, Gol drifted away, seemingly reassured I was uninjured. My partner was a good and gentle soul. From the bottom of my heart, I was grateful for her kindness.

That wasn’t the end of it, however. Seconds later, Gol released a wave of violent bloodlust targeted at the dice on the shelf to my right.

 

***

 

“Hmm…now that a second one has exploded, it’s hard to say it was all coincidence.” Mr. Chotos had been pondering next to me for some time.

Meanwhile, I embraced Gol to keep her from destroying the entire shelf in a murderous frenzy. Fortunately, my instincts as her owner had alerted me to her intentions. My hug prevented her attempt to cause further property damage. She had squirmed in my arms at first, but she was now docile. I was a little concerned by how limp she had gone, as if she were exhausted.

“Hmm. I believe the cause of this strange defect is that your mana conversion rate for the Earth attribute is abnormally high,” said Mr. Chotos.

“Eh? A high conversion rate causes explosions?”

“Ah, well, this is just a theory. Essentially, mana tools raise one’s conversion rate in the tool’s attribute. However, if I’m correct, the tool’s multiplier effect combined with your natural conversion rate surpassed the tool’s mana capacity and it exploded. It makes sense in theory, but…” Mr. Chotos crossed his arms and grumbled. Eventually, he looked at me like I was some pitiful animal and shook his head. “Nemaki, your abilities are really skewed.”

“Hey, Mister, I told you to stop looking at me so pityingly!”

“Ah, yes, yes, got it.”

Mr. Chotos left me to my tantrum and began to clean the remains of the mana tool scattered on the floor. I would have normally offered to help, but I couldn’t move since I was holding Gol. She cuddled up in my arms, rubbing her cheek against mine.

Given how docile she was like this, I wondered if I ought to start walking her around the town in this fashion. Back in my original world, I’d had to hold my dog whenever I took him to the vet so he wouldn’t cause any trouble. When I held him, he would relax just like how Gol was doing now. Golems really were dogs.

As I leaned my cheek on Gol’s head, I deliberated how to compensate Mr. Chotos for the succession of broken mana tools. He said I didn’t need to pay, but it left a bad taste in my mouth to be indebted to a broke man. In short, it was a matter of pride.

“Ah, right…”

If he wouldn’t let me compensate him per se, what if I bought some of his shoddy goods? I did kind of want the stick that shot water. I rummaged through my shoulder bag to grab my wallet. Then I noticed the bundle of bills inside the bag.

Right! I had forgotten to ask Mr. Chotos about the strange slips of paper with the words “Selvei Scrip” written on them.

“Hey, Mister, do you know anything about these?” I thought nothing of it as I slapped the bundle on the table. Next to this bundle, Teru was drawing a picture. A stack of money and a young girl—what a peaceful picture of everyday life.

However, when Mr. Chotos saw the stack, his expression abruptly changed. His next words were unusually sharp. “Nemaki, hurry and put those away. If you try to use that money here, you’ll be punished.”

Mr. Chotos frowned as he spoke, glancing behind himself to check if anyone else was inside the shop.

Relax. You’ve got no customers to speak of.

Still, being told I would be punished left me pretty near panicked, since I had the soul of a cultured man who always desired to operate within the bounds of the law.

“Is something wrong with this money?” I asked as I rushed to stow it away.

“Why do you even have those bills…? Well, whatever. Wait a sec.” Mr. Chotos put away his cleaning tool and closed the shop. He even closed the front shutter doors, which doubled as turning off the lights. Finally, he grabbed a mana tool that looked like a red stick from the shelves.

“Did you really have to close the shop because of me? I don’t get it, but I’m sorry.”

“No one was coming in anyway. More importantly, Nemaki, lend me one of those scrips.”

I drew a bill from the bundle and handed it to Mr. Chotos, who held that red stick over the bill. Red particles like little flames gathered at the stick’s tip before a small flame flickered to life.

“Oh! That’s convenient.”

I was impressed until Mr. Chotos, of all things, set the bill on fire.

Are you stupid, Mister?! Has all the stress of your debt driven you insane?! “H-hey! What the hell?”

“Don’t panic. Just look.”

“‘Don’t panic’?! What do you think you’re doing to my precious assets—huh?”

As I peered, I saw that the scrip wasn’t on fire. A pale green light surrounded the paper, and the fire was soon extinguished. Teru watched the green light with twinkling eyes. I understood her awe in my bones.

“So it really doesn’t burn… I see. This scrip is the real deal. The flame’s failure to catch confirms it.” Mr. Chotos returned the bill to me and placed the red mana tool back on the shelf. “That Selvei scrip is a special type of bill produced with an advanced spell. You can’t use it anywhere other than the Selvei territory in the Great Forest to the north.”

“Huh…?”

“Of course, this scrip can’t be traded at a currency exchange, either. So don’t be stupid and bring this over to one, got it? You’ll be asking for trouble. I know you’re like that, but I thought I’d at least warn you.”

Ah! You once again described me as “that.” You bastard. Are you seriously trying to pick a fight with me? Fine, I’ll take you up on it!

I was about to kick off an ultimate showdown with this man when I thought again.

Wait. Now that he mentions it, I did think about trying to exchange these bills for other currency, didn’t I? You’re pretty sharp, mister. Our battle will have to wait.

“Anyway, Nemaki. Where exactly did you get your hands on these Selvei scrips? You’re from the east, right?”

Even if you ask me, how would I know? I just randomly swiped them as a consolation prize from Zairein’s study. I rubbed my neck. “To tell you the truth, I never knew what they were. I just happened to come upon them on my journey.”

“Is that so…? Well, I won’t pry. Anyway, just because this scrip can’t be used anywhere outside of Selvei, don’t think of them as counterfeit or useless scraps of paper. If you do have the opportunity to go up north, or if you have connections there, you could very well find a use for them.”

What? Is that so? Because Mr. Chotos had gone all tense and dramatic, he had needlessly scared me. “Well, do you know how much these bills are worth?”

“Hmph, let me see… I don’t know the northern economy very well, so I can’t say. But I don’t think it’s some outrageous amount. At the very least, they’re not going to be worth more than an Earth Ogre sorcery core. So for you, it might not be worth it to make a trip all the way to snowy Selvei just to liquidate this cash.”

Mr. Chotos frowned at the bundle of bills, tilting his head in puzzlement. “From what I can tell, I think some scrips were taken out after they were bundled. Look, the string holding the bundle is a bit loose… Could this be the change leftover from a larger purchase?”

I also tilted my head. This Selvei scrip was a local currency. As such, it wasn’t strange to learn that its use was prohibited outside its territory. However, the presumably severe punishment that came with it was a bit much.

If I assumed the surrounding territories preferred to use gold and silver coins, then all the more universally useful money—gold and silver—would flow into the Selvei territory, be converted to scrips, and the money would…stop. It gave Selvei an overwhelming economic advantage. That would be bad. Hopefully, there were proper regulations in place.

Anyway, I was more interested in why Luvel Zairein had these northern-use-only bills while his summoning ritual was prepared in a deserted basin in the east.

I had read Zairein’s biography in his self-written books in his study. He was originally from the imperial capital, which was further west of Tibar. That biography never mentioned any connection to the north. Did this mean Zairein had obtained a large sum of local currency to buy something big in Selvei? Mr. Chotos’s earlier observation supported this.

As someone who intended to die and held no lingering regrets as he planned to end the world, what had Zairein wanted to buy in such a faraway place?

“You probably don’t know this,” said Mr. Chotos, “but Selvei is a recent addition to the empire as a result of the great Northern Expedition over thirty years ago. Their currency was different, and their laws were different, too. They even recognized the abominable custom of slave trading. Personally, I would never want anything to do with them, even if it was purely business-related.”

“Hmph, I feel the same. Trading in human beings? What an absurd place.”

As I spoke with Mr. Chotos, Gol stared at the Selvei scrips on the table. Usually, she never paid any attention when I talked to anyone else and only stared at my face. It was rare for her to look elsewhere. Also, she seemed a bit gloomy. Her long ears were tilted down.

Could it be that you hate these bills, Gol? I don’t have any particular need for these strange scrips, so if they make you this sad, I’ll burn them right away… Oh, right. They won’t burn.

“Well, frankly speaking, I don’t need these,” I said. “Do you want them, mister?”

“I don’t need them, either. Like I said, I don’t have any business partners in the north. And since the shop’s finally getting back on its feet thanks to you, I don’t want such problematic things tied to my business.”

“Argh, I can’t burn them and I can’t get rid of them! These Selvei scrips are practically industrial waste,” I spat as I chucked the bills into my bag.

Mr. Chotos frowned. “In-dues-treel waist… Huh, what’s that?”

“Ah, sorry. It’s a phrase from my hometown. Um, it means something like useless trash you can’t get rid of.”

“Oho, this is the first I’ve heard of it. What a strange phrase.”

As you may have just surmised, not only did my weird translation ability occasionally undergo gorillafication, there was this additional shortcoming I had just discovered, which functioned almost like a hole. In other words, vocabulary for concepts yet unknown to this world simply couldn’t be translated.

Somewhere in the process, actual Japanese generated in my brain and tried to make its way out of my mouth. How frightening. If I didn’t pay close attention, I might end up speaking Japanese in this place.

When I was with Master Speria, I had treated him as a respectable senior, so I had chosen my words with great care. Since I was so vigilant when speaking to the first living person I met in this world, I had managed to avoid using any words that could have revealed my translation shortcomings. Before that, Gol had been thoughtfully interested in everything I said, no matter what it was. Since I had never noticed this glitch before, it came as a bit of a shock when I first realized it.

Furthermore, since I spoke so casually with Mr. Chotos, and he met my retorts in kind, I was instantly aware of the misstep.

Incidentally, I think internet slang and game terms often slipped through my translation—take the “romance flag with a blossoming young lady” I went on about earlier. The word “flag” was outside the translation’s ability to accurately grasp. I felt a great deal of spite about this.

I mean, it was true that “flag” was itself derived from computer jargon and thereby involved some complicated implications. Accurate translation might have been genuinely impossible.

But I was interested in the fact that while my internet slang largely went untranslated, computer terms often worked out just fine. Words like “software” and “programming” apparently had readily parsed equivalents in this world’s language.

Given that, was it possible this world had computers, or perhaps spells that operated like them? It felt like a real possibility.

Lost in my thoughts, I stroked the unusually depressed Gol in my arms. As I pet her, she slowly returned to her energetic state. She buried her face in my chest and squirmed. Thank goodness.

At that moment, the bright afternoon sun flooded the interior of the shop. Mr. Chotos had reopened the shop’s shutter doors.

“Ah, right! Nemaki, there was something I forgot to tell you.” Mr. Chotos turned to me with a smile.

“Eh? What?”

“Ah, it’s really nothing. It’s just that I rushed back to the shop as fast as I could, but seeing you crying about destroying the mana tool surprised me and it slipped my mind. It turns out, with the profit I made from the sale of those sorcery cores, I can at last pay back my debt.”

“Oh, really? So you did get it done.”

Good for you, mister. But I-I wasn’t crying or anything!

Although he so casually insulted me with an entirely false revisionist history, Mr. Chotos looked really excited as he spoke. At the same time, he seemed just a touch nervous. “That’s why, in a few days, I plan on going to the branch office of the Paisley Company in the northern town of Zibil to repay the debt.”