Chapter 73
Chapter 73
Demon (3)
“Are you alright?”
It hadn’t taken as long as I thought. I had returned just one hour after leaving the chapel.
With a tired face, Winter asked me worriedly.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Since I went, I secured a contract.”
“That’s a relief. You even secured a contract…… Pardon? What kind of contract?”
I handed her the glass orb I always carried with me. Winter hurriedly caught the one that had suddenly flown toward her and made a puzzled expression.
“A glass orb. I decided to supply them to the Imperial House. 25 Nuckles per piece.”
“…….”
At the end of my words, Winter’s expression turned heavy.
I was exhausted because of the dumplings. As soon as I collapsed onto the sofa, sleep began to creep over me. When I glanced over, Winter’s hands were trembling.
“Why are your hands shaking? Did you eat something weird?”
“……How many. How many are you planning to sell?”
“What? Initial batch? 200. 200 glass orbs.”
“Two… two hundred. By when? By when is it due?”
“By next Thursday.”
“Today’s Saturday, so Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Only five days.”
The absurd number, 200. At that, Winter squeezed her eyes shut tight. Then she lowered her head and began to sob.
I had no intention of scolding her for crying, but shouldn’t she at least tell me why? I looked at Winter with a flustered expression.
I had no choice but to pat her small shoulders and offer some vague comfort.
“What’s wrong?”
“Thaaat. Sniff. Thaaaat! It takes. Sniff. One hour to make just one!”
“…….”
Eight hours of sleep. Two hours for eating and washing. Six hours of class. If that left eight hours, then one person could make eight a day.
If we mobilized me, Winter, Worden, and Canis, that would be 32 a day. Since half of Saturday had already passed, we would barely reach the order quantity even if we started now.
“Does it really take that long to make?”
“The detonation device. Sniff. It takes a long time to make that. Huu. Hic.”
“Stop. Calm down and explain.”
“Sniff. Drilling the glass orb is easy. It only reacts once you make the detonation device. First, we put our Divine Power into the detonation device, and when we press the button, the device embeds itself into the drilled glass orb and injects Divine Power. Then it explodes after three seconds.”
“……You made it insanely well.”
I thought, since this was a magic-does-everything kind of world, it would just be solved with magic, but to think there was such a mechanism.
“We’re screwed.”
But now wasn’t the time to admire it.
Fortunately, if I pushed myself a bit, we could make the deadline. I didn’t attend classes, so I had that extra time.
“Worden went to class, right? Canis! Get out here!”
“Yeah! Did you call me?”
It was a movement technique that gave me chills every time I saw it. In the game, I had only seen her in a berserk state, so I never knew she had something like this.
“Mm~ Why is our Winter so startled~”
Startled by Canis’s movement skill, Winter clutched her chest and breathed heavily. You’d think she would be used to it by now, but since she reacted every single time, Canis kept doing that.
“Huh? What’s this warm escort about?”
Canis suddenly appeared behind me, so I grabbed her and plopped her down onto the sofa.
“Make them.”
“……Huh? Make what? A baby?”
“Stop talking nonsense.”
Just what kind of brain structure did she have for jokes like that to pop out so naturally?
Frowning as hard as I could, I shoved a handful of glass orbs into Canis’s arms. Startled and spouting nonsense, she finally turned pale.
“Two hundred by Thursday. We’re making them. Got it?”
“I’m not part of the Order—”
“No. You are doing it. I’ll give you 1% of this initial sale. You’ll do it, right? It doesn’t really matter if you don’t. But it’ll be fun. Because I’m going to send a letter to your family. Saying that the only heiress of the Ulbushis Family, long-time rivals of the Duhein Family, has been associating with none other than Davide, the infamous human trash of the Duhein. What do you think? Sounds fun, right?”
Canis’s face gradually turned white. Winter stared with her mouth hanging open.
“Haa. Haa?”
Canis trembled so badly she looked pitiful. From what I heard in the game, the head of the Ulbushis Family—Canis’s father—was a very strict man.
He loved Canis dearly, but he educated her just as strictly. That was why, despite her bouncy and tomboyish personality, etiquette was ingrained into her body.
“Ah, and saying it’s a lie won’t help. A lot of students know you come to our chapel. Even if that weren’t enough, I’d ask the Vice-Commander to testify. So? Sounds entertaining, doesn’t it?”
Canis was quite afraid of the head of the Ulbushis Family. I was sorry. Sorry to go this far. But I couldn’t give up.
“Hurry and teach her the method. We don’t have time for this.”
“Y… you’re a demon.”
I didn’t want to use a method like this if I could help it, but I had no choice. I had already confidently promised to supply them to the Imperial House.
If I broke that promise, I couldn’t even imagine how much the Imperial Princess would hound me. On top of that, it was 200 units at 25 Nuckles each.
A simple calculation made it 5,000 Nuckles. And that was only the initial batch. Considering the additional quantities promised afterward, it was by no means a trivial amount.
More importantly, this wasn’t a short-term contract but a long-term one. Trust was important.
“Da… Dabi is a demon. There’s a demon living in this Order!”
“No. I’m only your demon. The Goddess is incomparably lovely and merciful. This is the place where such a being is enshrined. There are no demons here. So let’s get to work.”
“……I don’t think that’s true.”
I cut off Canis, who was now sniffling as she moved her hands.
Winter, who had sighed and gotten back to work, lightly threw in a remark, but I ignored it.
If I was being promoted from human trash to demon, wasn’t that technically a rise in status?
***
It was a tearful effort. Especially for me.
I asked those who went to class to bring me food, and I stayed in the chapel the entire time. I slept two hours a day.
“Ah. My eyes feel so dry.”
I pressed firmly around my eyes. Thanks to the exceptional performance of my Adaptive Body, I accomplished the feat of making 90 by myself.
“Everyone, get it together.”
For some reason, Canis couldn’t shake off her dazed expression, and Winter was just about to turn into a slime.
Worden, who had been relatively fine, suddenly started bleeding from his nose with a stupid look on his face. But now, it was finally over.
“I-It’s finished.”
At last. This morning. I handed over 200 glass orbs to the Vice-Commander, who had come to the chapel.
“Anyone going to the marketplace?”
No one answered my question. At some point, Canis had disappeared, and Winter was asleep face-down on the desk.
Worden was bundled up in his padded coat and didn’t move an inch. I let out a sigh and stood up.
“Phew.”
The Vice-Commander, who had visited in the morning, asked me to stop by the workshop, saying its owner was furious. I couldn’t bring myself to refuse that earnest request.
Thanks to that, I had to head toward the workshop with dark circles deeply etched under my eyes.
“Ah, right.”
It was incredibly bothersome, but since I was already out, I might as well stop by. I headed toward the grocery store where I had bought garlic for the seaweed soup.
“Welcome— Oh? You’re the garlic customer from before, aren’t you?”
The moment I stepped inside, the clerk greeted me kindly, and I felt a bit unsettled. She was quicker on the draw than anyone I had met so far.
“Yes. Well.”
“May I help you?”
If she had joined the military, she would probably have been more suited to it than expected. That sales smile she showed in an instant, and the terrifying ability to remember someone she had only seen once.
Thinking that, I nodded at her offer to help.
“Do you sell dried fruits here?”
“Of course! Most fruits grown on Museion Island can be dried. We produce more than enough ourselves.”
“Do they sell well?”
“They do, I’d say? They’re not an extremely popular bestseller, but they’re more like a steady seller that someone always looks for.”
Her rare kindness—almost to the point of feeling obsessive—made me unknowingly prolong the conversation. She was more eloquent than I had expected.
“Hehe. Dried fruits are good to eat on their own, and they’re also great with tea! They don’t have the fresh, juicy burst of regular fruit, but you can enjoy a much more concentrated aroma and sweetness. And the shelf life increases dramatically as well.”
“Do you produce the dried fruits yourselves?”
“Yes, yes. Our shop has a magitech device for drying fruit. And it doesn’t just dry them roughly—it takes a long time….”
For a moment, I wondered if she was just an explanation enthusiast, but her bright voice and overly clear diction made me nod along without realizing it.
Then I came to my senses when I realized I had been listening for over ten minutes.
Last time, I had just been flustered by the alien presence known as seaweed. In truth, she was a truly terrifying beast.
“May I ask you to dry something for me?”
“Of course! Sometimes people bring fruits that we can’t procure ourselves.”
“In that case, please slice garlic and dry it.”
“Yes, yes~ Drying garlic. Dried garlic……. Pardon? Dried what?”
Her shock was obvious. She stared at me with her mouth wide open, as if doubting what she had just heard.
But what she heard was the truth. The spirit of a Korean flowed through my veins.
“G-Garlic?”
“Garlic.”
“G-Garlic.”
The seaweed soup I had eaten late that night kept coming to mind. Especially that garlic aroma. It surfaced again and again while I worked on the glass orbs.
I wanted it so badly. I even tried chewing raw garlic after buying some, but Winter scolded me.
“If you dry it, the smell will be weaker, right?”
“……It’s not a fruit, but. It might……. No, that’s not the point. Are you really going to eat something like that?”
“Is there a problem?”
“No. Certainly. I see. It’s a matter of taste, isn’t it?”
What was she understanding on her own? I looked at her with a slightly sunken expression.
The clerk, who had been muttering in her own world, noticed my gaze and quickly fixed her expression.
“I think we can make it! This feels like quite a new challenge.”
“……A challenge. Is it really that serious?”
Don’t you just dry it and call it a day? I stared at the clerk, who seemed strangely fired up.
“Fruit flavors become much stronger when dried. But you’re right. If processed that way, the smell should definitely decrease. The spiciness might also mellow out a bit.”
“Ah, I’d prefer the spiciness to remain.”
“……Then you’d have to challenge yourself with selective breeding.”
“Hmm. Yes. Well. I’ll leave it to you.”
“Shall we use the garlic we have in stock?”
“Please.”
And just like that, the matter of dried garlic seemed settled. Sadly, neither the dormitory meals nor any food available within the Academy used garlic at all.
I could cook for myself, but borrowing a kitchen was such a hassle that I didn’t want to go through that trouble every time.
“How much would you like?”
“As much as possible.”
“……We bring in 10 kilograms per month.”
“Yes. I’ll take that.”
“Oh my.”
The clerk now looked at me as though I were something frightening. I might be a bit unusual, but was that reaction really necessary?
“I have a rough idea of how to process it, but to optimize it, I’ll need to conduct several experiments. So it may take some time.”
“That’s fine.”
“Alright. Then could you come back in a week? I’ll prepare several variations by then. You can taste them and choose the one you prefer.”
“I’ll leave it in your hands.”
It was a deal far more satisfying than I expected. How long had it been since I concluded a transaction that was this easy, fast, and beneficial? Anyone would understand if I said the most recent one had been with the Imperial Princess.
“This is on the house!”
She handed me an apple with a fresh fragrance wafting from it. Ten kilograms of garlic was by no means a small amount by this world’s standards.
Of course, even in Korea, where consuming over 6 kilograms a year wasn’t unusual, it was still a bit much. But since its shelf life would change drastically once dried, I planned to buy it and eat it little by little over time.
“It can be used in cooking as well, right?”
“In cooking? Certainly. Since it’s dried, not roasted.”
“Indeed.”
Come to think of it, even ramen soup had dried vegetables. The prospects were bright. I could use it for seaweed soup or even while camping in the mountains.
Now that I thought about it, Bereninche had really enjoyed the seaweed soup. I should consider recruiting her.
‘How should I put it.’
Bereninche was scary, but she felt familiar. Maybe because she felt like someone from my hometown.
As expected, Koreans and garlic were inseparable.