by Hiro Ainana
In that case, you really ought to make your familiar a parrot or some other talking bird. Instead, I wrote yes and no in the dirt so we could communicate that way.
I gave the witch a status report and explained a few possible action plans.
Then I asked whether it was possible that Count Kuhanou himself might be involved in the conspiracy.
The answer was—no.
So this was the aide’s own plan, then.
The viceroy of Sedum City was currently leading a party of knights to reinforce the troops fighting in the silver mines, and Count Kuhanou was in faraway Kuhanou City.
It’d be nice if we could get the count to come put the viceroy’s aide in line, but…
Just to be sure, I asked if he could actually carry out his scheme in the Forest of Illusions if the pact was broken.
Unfortunately, the answer was yes.
I couldn’t really suss out the details with yes-or-no questions, but one thing was clear: We had no choice but to deliver the rest of the magic potions and fulfill the contract.
After asking a few more questions of the old witch, I ended the call.
Once I’d wrapped up my consultation, I turned to Ine and the others to discuss preparations for making the potions.
“Now, about the vials…”
“Here, heeere! I know this one!”
Arisa shot her hand into the air like an elementary school kid. As she hopped up and down eagerly and stretched her hand as high as it would go, her cute behavior matched her childish appearance for once.
“What, you have an idea?”
“Ee-hee-hee, do you wanna know? You really wanna know?”
“Just spit it out already.”
Arisa folded her hands behind her back and looked up at me mischievously. I pinched her cheek, hoping she’d wipe the smirk off her face and explain. Her cheek was really stretchy.
“Owww! Leggo, leggo!”
“Oh, sorry. I got carried away.”
“Sheesh. I’m talking about the village! You know, the abandoned one we found before?”
Oh yeah… There was an unbroken kiln in the foothills behind that village, wasn’t there?
“But will we even be able to finish them before sundown if we start now?”
If we made it, we could collect the hundred vials in the pottery studio, too.
“Well, I’m counting on your superhuman tricks for that part, Master.”
No plan, huh? I’ll have to talk to someone who might know how to shorten the time.
With that thought in mind, I started to make my way toward the pottery studio, but Mia stopped me with a single word: “Hoze.”
… Hoze? Not haze, like the fish? … Oh, right, one of the ratmen we helped out before. Come to think of it, he did give me a piece of paper with notes about pottery in Japanese.
I took out the note and gave it another read.
The tiny writing described the process and time required for various kinds of pottery. It even included extremely detailed notes about what the processes were for and why each amount of time was necessary.
As a bonus, there were diagrams illustrating tools or passages that were hard to understand. The level of thoroughness was almost scary.
It was as if the author had known they were going to a parallel world and had prepared by collecting detailed knowledge about the world they came from.
… Well, I’ll have to worry about that later.
Mentally, I sorted through the information I’d obtained from the note.
The reason the baking took so long was because of the time it took to raise and lower the temperature inside the kiln.
Back in our world, we’d dealt with that by using microwaves to rapidly increase the temperature.
If I had some way of generating that much heat besides firewood—besides combustion altogether…
I searched the depths of my memories. Events floated across my mind and faded like a rotating lantern.
… I’ve got it. A heating method that even melted through the bottom of a copper pot before long.
I nodded at Arisa, who was beside me peering at the paper.
“See? You’ve got an idea already.”
“Yeah. You think we can just use an abandoned village’s facilities like that, though?”
“Why not? It looked to me like nobody’s been there for a long time.”
True enough. Going out of my way to request permission at the government office would just be asking for trouble.
I checked the location on the map. There was a small mountain on the way, so it was unlikely anyone would see the smoke and get us in trouble.
“All right, let’s go with that.”
I announced the plan to everyone, handed out assignments and the requisite tools, and we set off for the abandoned village.
I wasn’t sure if we’d have time to lower the temperature of the kiln after, but as long as nothing unusual came up, we should make it just in time.
We took Ine’s carriage to the village and arrived in no time.
It was nearly twice the speed of our own horse-drawn carriage, but with hardly any shaking.
“This is remarkable. What are you using for the suspension?”
“What’s ‘suspension’?”
“How does the carriage absorb impact?” Arisa asked Ine as they hopped down from the carriage.
“I dunno.” Ine only shook her head in response. The old witch had probably made it.
We parked in the square and unloaded the tools.
“Lulu, Nana, Arisa, you three ready the kiln. That means cleaning the inside and removing any nearby weeds to prevent fire from spreading. I want to do a little experiment, so if you have time, clear out whichever of the other kilns is the least damaged, too. The rest of you, come with me to collect clay.”
As soon as I finished my instructions, everyone sprang into action. Ine seemed a bit nervous.
We gathered earth from the clay source from before the village was abandoned. Thanks to the beastfolk girls’ hard work, we filled at least half of a large bucket in no time. This should be plenty.
Mia, unused to heavy lifting, looked discouraged, and I patted her on the head before speaking to Ine.
“Inenimaana, can you use Earth to Mud on this soil?”
“Okay, got it.”
Ine’s magic dampened the clay into mud, and we strained it through a coarse sieve into another bucket in order to remove any stones or roots.
This left a lot of rocks and debris in the original bucket and the sieve. Some of them even looked like gemstone ore.
I carefully mixed the formula for the vials into the mud. It was based on the old witch’s recipe, of course.
“Now use To Clay, please.”
“O-okay. Um, j-just a second.”
Ine seemed to be having trouble remembering the spell, so I opened an Earth Magic spell book and showed her.
“Nnngh, I just forgot for a second, okay? I know it…”
Muttering excuses, Ine cast the spell. Her magic returned the wet mixture into its original clay state.
I touched the clay experimentally. Maybe it was because it had been made using magic, but the clay had a uniform stickiness to it. Turning it into liquid must have pushed out the air from inside it as well.
According to the pottery notes, you’d normally have to knead it roughly to firm it up, then wedge it to get rid of the air inside, but the two spells had skipped these steps entirely. What a lucky miscalculation.
The notes also stated the clay would become flaky if it was not set to rest, but it didn’t feel any different from the clay we’d used at the pottery studio. Maybe this was another effect of the magic?
Well, I guess that doesn’t matter right now. We’re pressed for time, so I’d better move on to the next task.
“Everyone, make balls of clay about this big and line them up.”
I showed everyone a sample clay ball so that they could get started.
I took a potter
y wheel and a working stool out of the Garage Bag and set them up. Then I had Liza spread out a mat to put the finished bottles on.
“Rouuund?”
“This one is Master’s, this one is mine, and next is Tama and Liza, sir!”
“Mrrrr…”
“I’ll use yours too, of course, Mia.”
Tama and Pochi happily set about making clay balls. Ine and Mia quietly worked away, too.
Once there were about 150, I moved on to molding the vials.
“Liza, you pass the clay balls to me, please.”
“Certainly, sir.”
This process was the same as it had been in the pottery studio, so I had no issues. Remembering my old part-time job on a factory assembly line, I fell into a working rhythm.
“Master, that was the last of the clay.”
When Liza’s somewhat tired voice brought me back to my senses, I found that I’d made a whole host of containers.
Tama had started arranging the vials for me while I was working. Doing a quick estimate, I determined that there were at least four hundred. When I carefully counted later, I came up with a total of 453. I’d made too many.
All right, next is drying them.
“Go ahead, Mia.”
“Mm.”
Mia cast Clay Dry Third on the completed vials.
To make the spell easier, she did only around fifty at a time.
After three times or so, Mia was down to about 10 percent of her magic, so I gave her a honey-flavored magic recovery potion.
Mia wrinkled her nose reluctantly as she popped the cork-like stopper out of the vial. The gentle scent of honey wafted out of the opening.
“Honey?”
“Yeah, I tried to make it a little less bitter.”
Mia brought the vial up to her mouth gingerly and drank it down. My improvement seemed to be a success, because she looked like she wanted more when she was done.
“Yum.”
I was relieved that she liked it. Supposedly, it was less effective, but Mia’s MP was fully restored. I didn’t see a problem with that.
Before long, we’d finished drying all the vials. Magic was so handy.
While Mia worked her magic, I divided some premixed glaze into a few buckets.
“All right, everyone, now it’s time to glaze them. Be careful not to apply too much glaze or drop the vial into the bucket.”
Passing out brushes to everyone, I asked them to help coat the clay. We had just done it that morning at the pottery studio, so we were already well practiced. I had Pochi and Tama teach Ine how to do it.
“Huh? That was fast.”
“Yeah, Inenimaana’s magic helped even more than I expected, so we shaved off some time.”
In front of the kiln, Arisa wiped the soot from her face with a damp towel.
Just then, Nana and Lulu returned from the other side of the kiln.
“Master, all work is completed, I report.”
“I’ve finished my assignment as well.”
After the kiln was clean, the two of them had even cleared the grass and weeds in the area.
“Good work, everyone. It’s spotless.”
After thanking them for their hard work, I asked Lulu to wash the herbs they’d bought in the market and sent the other two to help with the glazing.
I poked my head into the kiln to check that the interior was intact. Perhaps because of my “Pottery” skill, all I had to do was rap on the inner wall to get a good idea of the kiln’s condition.
It was sturdier than I’d expected. Now I felt confident that it wouldn’t break before we were done.
I popped back out and started working on a magic tool to heat the kiln faster.
Using as a template the failed water heater circuit I’d made before, I improved it by adding a mechanism I’d found in Trazayuya’s documents.
I drew the heating circuit on a palm-size bronze plate that I’d bought at a blacksmith’s workshop, then repeated the process until I’d made twelve.
It would be difficult to start them all at the same time, so I made a horseshoe-shaped stand out of a few planks of wood and carved a transmission circuit into it. Finally, I set the bronze plates on the stand, and it was done.
Since I didn’t want to jump straight to the real thing, I decided to experiment with one of the broken kilns first.
I set up the heating circuit inside the kiln and put firewood next to it for fuel. I didn’t feel like going to too much trouble; I just dropped a whole bundle of wood in there and dusted it with some sawdust I’d gotten at a woodworking shop for kindling.
For the pottery itself, I pulled out a clay bowl from Storage.
I sent a bit of magic into the circuit, careful to regulate it so it wouldn’t blow up.
The heating circuit lit up bright red, and in seconds the firewood around it had burst into flame. The tremendous amount of heat got me sweating in an instant.
… This isn’t going to explode, is it?
I watched the kiln a bit nervously.
It didn’t explode per se, but the ferociously rising temperature created an unexpected airflow inside. It was a good thing that I’d left the firewood tied in a bundle. If I’d spread it out, there would be pieces of burning wood flying around in there.
Checking the temperature of the kiln with the AR display, I determined that it should reach the temperature required for firing soon and suspended the experiment.
I put the magic circuit away in Storage and doused the fire.
Because I didn’t want to throw water over it and get an explosion of steam, I threw soil over it instead.
Once I checked the magic circuit, I found that not only had the circuits melted, but the bronze plates were melting, too. Surprisingly, the wood foundation was only a bit scorched.
It wouldn’t work in the long run, but luckily I needed it to last only long enough to finish raising the temperature in the kiln. Iron would hold up to heat better, but it diffused magic.
I think the change in air currents was probably due to the sudden difference in temperature.
As a countermeasure, I added extra heating circuits on the walls and near the ceiling of the kiln. The adhesive would probably melt partway through, but as long as I reinforced them with timber it should be fine. All that mattered was that they didn’t fall on top of the vials.
I set up the new magic circuit system and lined up some firewood.
I had Mia finish the glazed vials using the Glaze Dry spell, then placed them in the kiln. In case some of them broke, I decided to bake some extras for a total of about two hundred.
“Whoa, you really did make a magic tool. I assume from the burn marks on that other kiln that it went well?”
“Yeah. I wanted to make a microwave oven kind of thing, but it was too difficult to do with the mechanisms I have, so I gave up for now.”
Arisa looked impressed as I finished preparing for ignition.
I had everyone back away before I started up the magic tool with a jolt of magic. Once the firewood was burning, I closed the kiln door, leaving it cracked a little for ventilation.
Trying to avoid causing another sudden current like last time, I gradually increased the amount of magic flowing into it over the course of ten minutes or so.
After that, it would be fine as long as we periodically added fuel.
“All right, the vials will be ready in three hours. Next we have to gather some herbs.”
“U-um, Master, there are still quite a few vials that haven’t been glazed yet…,” Liza said anxiously, but I told her we could take care of those after we’d collected the herbs.
In order to keep the glaze from drying out, I put a damp cloth over the top of each bucket.
With everyone accompanying me, I trekked over to the herb-rich areas in the hills behind the village that I’d located on the map.
Since we’d have to wade into a thicket, I made sure everyone was equipped with long sleeves and pants.
“Not exactly the
height of fashion, is it?”
“It’s mowing gear, sir!”
“Swish, swish!”
“Mm.”
Arisa grumbled, but the other younger kids delightedly posed with their baskets and little sickles.
I chose Arisa, Lulu, and Ine to tackle the nearest patch of herbs, since they had the lowest stamina, with Nana as their escort. There weren’t any dangerous animals around or anything, but I just wanted to ensure they’d be safe.
The second patch was near the peak of the hill and infested with slime and spider-type monsters. Together, we took care of the ones that might have attacked us while we were harvesting.
There were still some slimes left in the nearby water hole, but I was confident Liza could handle them.
I left this area to the beastfolk girls and Mia before heading toward the last area.
I couldn’t reach the summit of the hill by normal means. Once I’d navigated the fissures and overhangs, there was a paradise of herbs clearly untouched by people or animals alike.
On top of all the blue mugwort for stamina recovery potions, there was even a colony of the russet wort used in magic recovery potions.
I grinned to myself as I gathered the herbs and stowed them away.
In a book somewhere, I’d read that you should never completely exhaust a source of herbs—though I couldn’t remember why that was—so I made sure to leave some behind.
I finished the harvest in about thirty minutes. Afterward, I straightened up and enjoyed the scenery.
From here, I could see all of Sedum City. There should have been a village nearby, too, but I couldn’t catch a glimpse of it through the trees.
I checked in with everyone, but nobody else was done, so I just took Ine back with me to the square of the abandoned village.
“Rinse the herbs in this bucket. After that, put them in this sieve here.”
“Y-yeah, uh, okay.”
Leaving Ine to take care of washing the herbs, I started on the steps for the formula.
I chopped the herbs and spinach that Lulu had washed earlier into roughly one-inch chunks, then ground them down with a big mortar and pestle.
Ine was too engrossed in her task to look in my direction, so when I finished processing each formula, I put them away as is in Storage.