by Aneko Yusagi
“Exactly.”
“That last part’s not true!”
Raphtalia had her arms crossed, like she was going to right all the wrongs in the world.
“What? Why are you looking at me like I’m weird?”
If we see Motoyasu, Filo would kick him. What was weird about that?
Oh well, I couldn’t entertain every one of her complaints.
“All right! This is the official start of our traveling merchant life. I’ll hide in the carriage. Raphtalia, when we get to a new town, you start selling our wares from the front.”
“Oh, all right…”
My poor reputation was still alive and well out in the world beyond Riyute. If I were in charge of the sales, we’d never sell anything—who would want to negotiate with a criminal? It only made sense to put Raphtalia in charge.
Raphtalia was pretty, and she had the personality for it. She wouldn’t be shy.
“Shall we be on our way?”
“Oh, Hero.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“Please, take this…”
The governor handed me a piece of parchment.
“What’s this?”
“The commercial bill of passage that we discussed earlier.”
“Oh yeah…”
With the bill of passage in hand, I’d be able to sell my things in different towns without having to pay the local governors any tariffs. It would make my life much easier. Now, whether or not these local governors should really be charging the heroes to pass through their towns… that’s another story altogether.
I mean, Motoyasu clearly thought that way.
“Travel safely.”
“Thanks. We’ll be on our way now.”
“I hope we can help you out more in the future. You’ve done so much for us.”
“Just don’t push yourselves too hard.”
“Okay!”
And so we left Riyute behind and started our new lives as traveling merchants.
The first thing we tried was selling various medicines.
We didn’t have a huge selection prepared, so we set our prices lower than the typical market price.
We started with healing medicine and nutritional drinks. They were both better than just your average medicines and drinks, and so I set the price a little higher than our other products.
Then we would stock up on herbs and supplies and leave for the next village—I’d use our time on the road to compound new medicines.
Filo was really fast, so we almost made it to the next town in a single the day, though there were times that we had to stay camped in the wilderness. On nights like that we would stop the carriage, build a fire, and have dinner under the stars.
“Master! There’s room next to me! Come sleep with me!”
We’d finished eating, and Filo transformed back into her monster form and was tapping the spot on the ground next to her.
“It’s too hot sleeping next to you…”
Filo still wanted to sleep with me every night. I’d ordered her not to turn into a monster when we were at an inn, so she took the opportunity whenever we camped out.
Granted, we were alone out there, so there was no one she could inconvenience…
“Filo, you sure do like Mr. Naofumi, don’t you?”
“Yeah! I like him even more than you do, Big-Sister!”
“Don’t call me that!
Her problem was with big-sister?
“Then what should I call you?”
“Hm… how about Mommy? I was there when you hatched from your egg, and I’ve known you the whole time! Seems fitting, doesn’t it?”
“I dunno… Big-Sister!”
They kept fighting amongst themselves, like they couldn’t decide whether they were friends or enemies.
Filo was just like a little kid, so she couldn’t help but get too serious about things.
Actually, I guess she really was a little kid. And she acted like one.
“Okay, okay, both of you should get to bed. When my shift is up, I’m going to wake you!”
“Stop treating me like a little kid!”
“Yes! Mr. Naofumi, you treat me like a child!”
“Oh, whoops! I keep forgetting how grown up the both of you are!”
“You don’t mean it!”
“Yeah, Master! You liar!”
But they really were like children. And I’d decided to be a parent to them both.
“I want to help you keep watch, Master!”
Filo picked up some rocks and started rubbing them together over random grasses in a loose approximation of my mortar and pestle.
“Ew! It smells funny!”
“Yeah, it does.”
If you could make medicine from random grasses, it wouldn’t be so hard, would it?
“Why isn’t it working?”
“You can learn some things just by watching, but others take a little more practice.”
“Is that why you can’t pull a carriage?”
“Why do I have to pull a carriage?”
“Why are you and I different?”
“What’s wrong with being different?”
Just like a kid… she’d attack anything she could think of.
If we just kept going back and forth with questions, then eventually she’d get confused and have to give up.
“Argh… Master is so… so stupid!”
“Who are you calling stupid!”
We kept at it for a while, and I was able to get some work done too.
Chapter Twelve: Rumors of the Heroes
“Huh?”
We were on our way to the next village and had been traveling for about an hour, which I’d spent working in the back, when I noticed a strange sound.
Coming from the other side of the carriage wall came the sound of a man desperately out of breath. I poked my head out to see a flustered man running beside us, a bag in his outstretched hand.
“What are you in such a rush for?”
I figured that showing curiosity in times like this could easily lead to a sale.
We slowed the carriage down so that I could hear what the man had to say.
“I have to get to the village across the mountains…”
“You’re running to the village over the mountains?”
Apparently his parents were sick and he was running to get medicine for them. Filo had just overtaken him on the road.
“Yes, and without a minute to spare!”
“Filo, if you ran as fast as you could, how long would it take to get there?”
“Lemme think… Well, I could go faster if I didn’t have to pull the carriage…”
“Fine.”
I looked over to Raphtalia, and she nodded immediately, already understanding what I meant to say.
“We’ll take you there for a silver piece.”
“What?”
The man was shocked.
“But I was just going to buy medicine… See, I don’t have enough money…”
“You can just give us something worth a silver piece. Or just bring us medicinal herbs the next time you see us. Of course, if you don’t keep your promise…”
“Oh, well, if that’s okay then…”
“Great! That settles it! Filo?”
“Okay!”
I moved over onto Filo’s back, and pulled the man up to sit with me.
“Woah!”
The man was surprised, but Filo covered him with her wings and took off at full speed.
Raphtalia was waving to us from the carriage.
“Here we go!”
“Oh!”
Filo might have been shaped like an owl now, but it had done nothing to slow her speed.
Before we knew it, we had already arrived at the man’s house.
“That was so fast!”
“You better hurry up and get them their medicine. Careful now!”
“Okay!”
The man went into the house, and I followed him inside. We hadn’t fi
nished discussing my payment.
It was an average farmer’s house. I could hear violent coughing coming from somewhere inside.
“Ma… It’s medicine, you gotta drink it.”
I followed the sound of the voices, and came across the young man giving medicine to two older people, both with pale faces.
I didn’t know what kind of medicine it was, but it seemed to be more effective than the medicines I was accustomed to.
“Hey. I’ll take care of administering the medicine. Why don’t you go boil some water and make them something good?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m just waiting to see what happens.”
I took the medicine from the man, and, supporting the weight of the old woman, gently gave her some medicine.
I hoped that the medicine efficacy skill booster I’d learned before would work.
Cough… Cough…
The old woman took the medicine and managed to swallow some of it.
The woman was suddenly enveloped in a shower of glowing light. Apparently that signified that the medicine had been effective. She even looked healthier. Some color had returned to her pale face, and she seemed to be coughing less than she had been.
“Just try and relax. Your family will be back with food soon.”
She managed a weak smile and then lay back down.
“Now then…”
I left the room and went into the kitchen.
“Did they take the medicine?”
“Yes, and it seems to have worked.”
He sighed deeply, as though a great weight had been removed from his shoulders.
“I’ll be back later, so make sure you have my money.”
“Okay.”
I left the house, found Filo, and quickly road back to where we had left the carriage.
When we arrived back at the village the man was there waiting for us, looking tense.
“Um…”
“What is it?”
We talked as we unloaded the luggage from the carriage.
“My mother seems to be doing much better…but just who are you?”
“You don’t need to know.”
If he knew my name, he’d instantly associate me with the bad rumors that have been going around. And he would start to doubt me.
“Please just tell me your name.”
“I’m not obligated to. The medicine worked, right? So bring me a piece of silver, or something worth that much.”
“All right!”
He ran back to the house, flipped through some materials, and then came back out with some food.
“So that’s it, huh? Fine, well, keep an eye out for us, okay?”
“Yes! Thank you very much!”
The man looked very happy.
I suppose it’s a bit of a digression, but some time later on we actually did come back to this village. The old lady was very energetic, almost too much so.
I went back to my studies in the back of the carriage. I was trying to read the intermediate medicine recipe book. The recipe book seemed easier to understand than the magic book, so I was starting with that one. But after I dedicated a bunch of time to translating a recipe, I found out that it was a medicine I already knew… I was disappointed.
Come to think of it, I had been pretty neglectful of my studies up until now. I’d been so busy for the last month that I hadn’t had time to think about it, but if I ever made it out of here alive, I’d have to say something to my brother, who had worn himself out studying too hard.
“Mr. Naofumi, I think we are pretty much done here for today.”
We’d arrived just past noon, and now evening was approaching.
“Are there any parcels or letters that we could take to the next village?”
“I’ve already collected them.”
I climbed out of the carriage and helped load up the luggage.
Granted, there were only certain kinds of people that would give their luggage to a traveling merchant they’d never met. It was mostly cheap things that people wouldn’t be too upset to lose. Even still, we were able to make some good change.
We travelled this way for a while, moving from village to village and town to town.
Whenever someone wanted restorative medicine, I would give it to them myself, and that way they could take advantage of my medicine efficacy skill.
After we’d been at it for two weeks or so, we began to get a bit of a reputation as the merchants with the weird bird that sold everything.
When we had made a good name for ourselves, people became much more trusting, and more and more pedestrians came to ask us for rides. So before long our profits started to rise.
There were some really good things about the traveling merchant’s lifestyle.
The first was that I could sell the medicine that I made while we were on the road. The second was that I was able to absorb any monsters that we came across on our travels. Of course, all I really ever got out of it was typical status boosts.
One other thing I learned after we started traveling was that monsters were very different depending on the locale. Considering that I could grow stronger by absorbing a variety of different monsters, starting this traveling gig was turning out to be a really good arrangement.
The other good thing was that I was now in a position to hear all sorts of gossip.
I’d had no idea for the longest time, but now I was able to make a good guess where the other heroes, Motoyasu, Ren, and Itsuki, had based themselves.
Motoyasu seemed to be out to the southwest of the castle, where he had apparently saved a starving village by breaking the seal on some kind of legendary crop. He must have known to go there since he knew everything about the place already. It actually reminded me a lot of the place we’d been to, where we fought the Nue.
Ren had gone to the southeast of the castle, but apparently he would go anywhere that was inhabited by tough monsters. I’d heard various tales of his exploits—like that he’d defeated a violent dragon somewhere out to the East.
As for Itsuki… I wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but he had gone with some adventurers that had visited the kingdom seeking help. He went with them to a country in the North, where the government was corrupt. He fought with the resistance to overthrow an evil lord.
Having said that, Itsuki’s story was missing the most details, so I couldn’t really be sure of anything. I’d only heard vague references to him as “that adventurer with the strong bow” and so on.
All of this sounded a lot like something I’d read before coming to this world, something I’d read in the The Records of the Four Holy Weapons.
Anyway, so that’s what our travels were like.
At the end of the two weeks, our stats were looking like this:
Naofumi: LV 34
Raphtalia: LV 37
Filo: LV 32
I guess it was because she was a monster, but Filo was certainly leveling up quickly.
Filo was now much stronger, physically, than she had been. While she used to use both hands (wings?) to pull the carriage, she now only used one, and yawned the whole time.
Naturally, I tried to get her to try harder, but she only protested.
“But it’s so light that I lose my motivation!”
Whatever.
Afterwards, all the shields that I got while traveling only unlocked status boosters.
If there were any interesting shields… well, there was this one:
Crystal Ore Shield: ability unlocked:
equip bonus: fine crafting 1
We’d come into a booming mining town, and there was a poor-quality crystal lying there. I let the shield absorb it, and that was what I got.
It seemed like a skill that could lead to some serious money making possibilities, but I didn’t have enough information to go trying it out just yet.
I tried polishing the crystal ore, but it just broke and crumbled, so it must need to be combined with something else in a recipe. Eithe
r that, or I was just doing it wrong.
Regardless, I still needed to translate that book the apothecary had given me.
Sure, if I’d spent two weeks on it, it should have been simple enough to read. And I’d had the thing for close to three weeks now, so I should have been able to glean some information from it.
Antidote, weed killer, healing salve, restorative medicine (I’d already made that), nutritional drink (I’d made that too), gunpowder, acidic water, magical water, soul healing medicine, insecticide, were the recipes I’d been able to figure out, and after I went through them all, the book was over. Apparently you could alter the effectiveness of these basic intermediate medicines by mixing them with different additives. It was all rather vague, so I wouldn’t say that I really had a handle on it. Even still—I was starting to realize that the recipes the apothecary had given me were pretty average for intermediate level.
Well, I’d been able to figure out the book, so I didn’t think I’d need it anymore. I let the shield absorb it. This was the shield I unlocked:
Book Shield: ability unlocked:
equip bonus: magic power up (small)
I thought for sure the shield would unlock some intermediate medicine recipes, but I was wrong.
And on top of that, the shield’s defense rating was really low!
It happened the day after I finished translating the recipe book.
We came upon a monster called Torrent, defeated it, and I absorbed it into my shield.
Torrent Shield: conditions met
Blue Torrent Shield: conditions met
Black Torrent Shield: conditions met
Torrent Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: plant classification 2
Blue Torrent Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: intermediate compounding recipe 2
Black Torrent Shield: ability locked:
equip bonus: rookie compounding
Intermediate recipes? Was this some kind of joke? I just finished translating that book!
Well, at least I’d only done up until the healing salve. The last time a shield unlocked recipes it was from a Mush, so I guess plant-based monsters would yield recipes. Even still, after I’d put all that work into it all—here they were: unlocked just like that.