Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 5

by Hiro Ainana

  …I wasn’t expecting dwarves to use magic in the casting process.

  “Some casters use sand or plaster, but not here. If memory serves, elves make the molds entirely with magic, don’t they?”

  “Mm.”

  Mia nodded when the workshop owner looked to her for confirmation.

  I imagine it’d be easy enough to make a mold with magic if you had a strong enough spell, maybe something like Shield or Shelter.

  After our tour of the workshop, we were served chilled tea in an office decorated with casting samples. We’d just come through some extremely hot rooms, so the cold drink was very refreshing.

  Glancing around, I spotted something interesting in the corner of the room.

  “Is that a meat grinder for sausages?”

  “Yes, that’s right. We make all kinds, from small ones for food carts to the big ones used at meat-processing plants.”

  Aha, so I was right.

  “If someone were to place an order, how long would it take to complete?”

  “Are you interested in purchasing one?”

  “Yes, I am. We had some delicious sausage in the central square, so now I’m rather interested in a machine that would let me make it myself.”

  It was possible to mince meat with a carving knife, but not only was it a pain, the others probably wouldn’t be able to do it without scattering meat everywhere or ruining the texture.

  “As far as small cart-size machines go, I believe we do have a completed one. Would you like it delivered to the mayor’s estate?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Now I would be able to make a certain something for everyone.

  I pictured the kids’ happy faces as I paid the workshop owner and filled out the paperwork.

  After the caster’s, we visited a few other general workshops. Then, at Jojorie’s suggestion, we took a little break at a windmill.

  In the park in front of the giant blades, I got to taste the city’s famous shrimp crackers and watch the younger girls play with some dwarf children.

  Once our sightseeing tour was done, I had Jojorie show me the way to one more shop.

  “Here we are: Garohal’s Magic Shop.”

  There were no customers to be seen inside, just a single dwarf falling asleep at the counter.

  “Honestly, Garohal…” Jojorie marched up to the counter and rapped him on the forehead with her knuckles.

  It was easy to tell that she was Elder Dohal’s grandchild.

  “Ouch…” Mr. Garohal rubbed his head as he looked up.

  He was surprisingly thin for a dwarf, and his beard was carefully set with wax. Maybe he was an attractive guy by dwarf standards.

  “Are you awake now?”

  “Hiya, Jojorie. It’s rare to see ye come out to the shop! Did ye finally get fed up with that meathead Zajuul? Wonderful! I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Good morning, Garohal. You mustn’t speak so poorly of Mr. Zajuul.”

  As soon as he saw Jojorie, Garohal started chattering like a machine gun. Jojorie didn’t seem overly impressed.

  “Oh-ho, are those customers behind ye?”

  “That’s right. These are Grandfather’s honored guests, so be sure to take good care of them.”

  “Ho-ho, Elder Dohal accepting a human? Is he the son of some important noble?”

  “Not quite. Mr. Satou is a blacksmith skilled enough to earn Grandfather’s seal.”

  “Och, really?”

  I presented the surprised dwarf the pattern on my fairy sword. Once he was convinced, he finally showed me his wares.

  The magic books were mostly the same as the ones in the shop underground, but there was a two-volume set on Everyday Magic by a different author, so I purchased that.

  This shop also had various smithing-related materials for alchemy.

  Some ore-based materials, like mercury and sulfur, were normally in short supply in other cities, but here they had a large supply at a very low price, so I bought as much as I could without cleaning him out.

  I was even able to buy mercury by the barrel, so it would be easy to transmute plating and such in the future.

  “Ga-ha-ha, this is the biggest sale I’ve made since we opened! Jojorie, ye really are my goddess, aren’t ye?”

  “Enough of that, Garohal! Stop celebrating and take care of your customer, please,” Jojorie chided the excited Garohal.

  Once his attention was back to me, I requested to see his scrolls.

  Now this was what I really came here for.

  Their selection of scrolls was different here than the shop underground. According to Mr. Garohal, these were aimed toward nobles and merchants.

  “How do ye like that? I went all the way to Yorschka to buy these. Bet ye’ve never laid eyes on these before, eh?”

  “Oh my! I thought that Yorschka was full of monster hunters and weaselfolk merchants. You didn’t buy anything too strange, did you?”

  Mr. Garohal seemed quite confident, though Jojorie less so.

  Yorschka was a town in the southeast of this territory, a major stop on the highway that led to a group of small countries beyond the eastern mountain range.

  “Yer such a worrywart, Jojorie.” Mr. Garohal set out the scrolls with mild irritation. “Look at this! These are rare Everyday Magic scrolls: Bug Wiper, Anti-Itch, and Deodorant. Perfect for folks who ain’t accustomed to long journeys. There’s even Pure Water, to prevent any stomachaches from unboiled water.”

  They were very intriguing scrolls, but the prices seemed a little high.

  Sure enough, Jojorie’s face clouded over as she scanned the collection.

  “Say, Garohal. How much is it for one of these scrolls?”

  “Well, normally I’d like to sell ’em for one gold coin apiece, but yer a special guest. I’d settle for three silvers.”

  “You haven’t sold a single one of these scrolls, have you?”

  Mr. Garohal’s proud expression froze.

  Then Arisa dealt the finishing blow.

  “For these prices, I’d imagine it’d be easier and more cost-efficient to just hire a servant who can use Everyday Magic instead of carrying around all these pricey scrolls.”

  It seemed many merchants and nobles had had the same thought as Arisa; half a year had passed since Garohal bought these, but they weren’t selling at all.

  “W-well, we also have Sonar for finding wolves and Fence to prevent thieves from escaping!”

  “Wouldn’t a beastfolk’s sharp senses be far superior?”

  Mr. Garohal tried to recover his sales pitch, but Arisa was having none of it.

  “Th-then how about Signal? You can use it to send messages to your companions in remote places!”

  “Doesn’t the other person need to have the Signal scroll, too, to receive it?”

  “Mm, yes.”

  “In that case, you might as well just use smoke signals.”

  Arisa, a magic enthusiast, was quick to point out the problem with the Signal spell, and Mia affirmed it. When Jojorie added a pragmatic assessment of her own, Mr. Garohal looked ready to cry.

  Nana’s Foundation included Signal, so it would at least be useful for receiving emergency messages from Nana.

  Getting desperate, Garohal pulled out the next scroll, a Light Magic spell called Condense.

  “This one’s amazing! It’ll dry yer laundry even on cloudy days, and ye can read books in the dark!”

  “G-Garohal…”

  “…Okay, I thought it was the Light spell when I bought it.”

  Jojorie looked anxious about Mr. Garohal’s increasingly desperate state as he soldiered on with the sales pitch.

  I felt bad for him at this point, so I decided to give him a hand. I could probably get a good price on them now anyway.

  “Mr. Garohal, I’m a collector of rare scrolls, so I’d like to purchase all the scrolls here.”

  “R-really? Och…”

  At my words, tears welled up in Garohal’s eyes.

  “Yo
u’ll give him a discount, of course, won’t you?”

  “O-of course I will, Jojorie. In fact, I’ll sell them to ye for the price I paid for them. No markup at all.”

  I had been hoping for a bit of a discount, of course, but I hadn’t expected him to go all the way down to cost price.

  “I know! If ye collect scrolls, I have other rare ones for ye, too. I’ll go and fetch them at once.”

  Judging that he might be able to sell them to me, Mr. Garohal disappeared into the back.

  Before long, he returned covered in dust with another armful of scrolls.

  “How’s this? These are very rare indeed.”

  True enough, it was nothing I’d ever seen before.

  The first was an Earth Magic spell, Polish. It looked useful at first glance, but it seemed like a regular rasp or file would be easier to use and fine-tune.

  The second was a Fire Magic scroll, Forge. This was obviously a spell for melting metal into ingots.

  It definitely sounded like something dwarves would use, but it turned out that you would have to cast the scroll version ten times or more to even melt copper.

  “I-it can be used as Attack Magic!”

  “If you used this as an attack, you’d hurt yourself, too. There are plenty of other spells that are more MP cost-efficient, like Fire Shot.”

  To make matters worse, its range was so short that it would even burn the person who used the defective scroll.

  Basically, you’d be better off just using a regular furnace.

  Besides, there would be little point in attempting blacksmithing on the go, so there was virtually no demand for a product like this.

  The third scroll was called Magic Mold.

  This spell caused a transparent cube to materialize in midair, where it could be shaped to the user’s liking and then reversed to create a mold.

  “This one actually does sound useful.”

  “Yes, couldn’t you sell it to people for making prototypes and such?”

  “Well…”

  Again, although this one seemed useful for blacksmiths, there was a major drawback.

  “Intermediate.”

  “Oh, that’s right! This is an intermediate spell, isn’t it?”

  Mia mumbled a word, and Arisa promptly agreed.

  In other words, it would consume much more MP than a lesser spell.

  “Plus, they told me clay was easier to use…”

  Still, it could be used to make molds out of clay prototypes, but there were more problems, as Mr. Garohal confessed.

  Its durability was terribly low; if molten metal was poured into it, the mold would break from the heat damage before the metal hardened.

  “Y-you can use it with wax, at least…”

  With nothing left to say to Garohal’s half-hearted defense, Jojorie simply patted his shoulder comfortingly.

  The last scroll was a Practical Magic spell, Cube.

  “Why do you have such a bizarre scroll…?” Unable to think of any uses for the spell, Arisa knit her brow.

  This was a spell in the vein of Shield and Floating Board that could produce transparent cubes in the air in a size of the user’s choice.

  It seemed to be mainly used for blocking charging enemies or making temporary desks and chairs.

  It didn’t last long, and it would disappear as soon as the user moved away from it. Instead of being fixed in the air, it would move if enough weight was applied to it.

  So I could make invisible stairs in midair and stuff. Would this spell actually be useful?

  “The lowest level of Cube is only about this big, you know.”

  Arisa drew a square approximately four inches around in the air with her finger. And it could support just a pound of weight at that, she explained. Scrolls could produce only the lowest level of a spell, so I could see why this one was another dud.

  “…I thought I was buying two Magic Mold scrolls, but one of them turned out to be this.”

  “Garohal…”

  Mr. Garohal muttered self-deprecatingly, and Jojorie watched him with sympathy.

  “Well, this sure is a weird collection of scrolls you’ve got here…”

  “Mrrrr.”

  Arisa and Mia looked unimpressed.

  Tama and Pochi were sleeping at Liza’s feet. They must’ve gotten bored.

  These were the last of the scrolls, so I decided to start the negotiations.

  “Well, they’re certainly all very interesting. So, how much would it be for the lot of them?”

  “…Huh?”

  All the criticism from Jojorie and Arisa must have had Mr. Garohal convinced that he couldn’t sell them. When I asked about the price, he looked completely flabbergasted.

  True, these were garbage by normal standards, but to me they were much more fascinating than the ones I bought underground.

  “You will sell them to me, won’t you?”

  “Oh, uh… Yes! Yes, o-of course!” Mr. Garohal stammered in disbelief, but he agreed to sell them when I pressed the question. “I’ll sell them at cost—no, that would be greedy. A silver coin for each will be fine. Och, what a great day. Jojorie, yer a goddess.”

  I handed the money to Mr. Garohal, now thoroughly cheered up, and accepted the bunch of scrolls from him.

  If I ever learned how to make magic scrolls, I swore to myself that I would sell the best ones to him wholesale.

  Anyway, these were the ones I ended up buying:

  > Scroll, Everyday Magic: Bug Wiper

  > Scroll, Everyday Magic: Anti-Itch

  > Scroll, Everyday Magic: Deodorant

  > Scroll, Everyday Magic: Pure Water

  > Scroll, Practical Magic: Sonar

  > Scroll, Practical Magic: Fence

  > Scroll, Practical Magic: Signal

  > Scroll, Practical Magic: Cube

  > Scroll, Practical Magic: Magic Mold

  > Scroll, Earth Magic: Polish

  > Scroll, Fire Magic: Forge

  > Scroll, Light Magic: Condense

  Someday, I would use them from the magic menu, and I eagerly anticipated the effects.

  The next day, we went to say our farewells to Elder Dohal before leaving Bolehart City.

  “Satou, I’ll give ye Jojorie to wife so ye may carry on my legacy.”

  “M-master! I’m the one who should marry her…!”

  “G-Grandfather?! And you too, Mr. Zajuul! What are you saying?”

  Elder Dohal’s sudden declaration sent Jojorie and Zajuul into a panic.

  Jojorie was a great girl and all, but unfortunately, she was miles out of my strike zone.

  “Lord Dohal, it is most kind of you to offer, but sadly I have a mission to attend to. Besides, I am certain there are many wonderful young men in Bolehart City who would be better than the likes of me. And you can pass on your magnificent crafting skills to your apprentices as well.”

  I politely declined, and luckily Elder Dohal didn’t push the subject further.

  I probably had “Persuasion” to thank for that.

  Elder Dohal and many of the other dwarves saw us off as we departed from Bolehart City.

  I would have to come back to visit sometime, perhaps with a gift of fine liquor from my journey.

  I put a hand on the fairy sword at my waist as I watched the smoke from Bolehart City disappear behind the mountains.

  On the Banks of the Great River

  Satou here. When I think of big rivers, I always think of the Yangtze River. I know there are plenty of others, like the Nile, the Amazon, and the Mississippi, but my mind always goes to the Yangtze. Maybe it’s because of the Battle of Red Cliffs from Romance of the Three Kingdoms?

  “Lulu, bring us down that side street there.”

  “Yes, master.”

  At my instructions, the carriage moved off the main road down a narrower path.

  “What’s up? A shortcut?”

  I smiled back at Arisa and said nothing.

  Before long, her doubtful expression turned
into a smile as well.

  “Ooooh! A flower garden? How lovely! It’s enormous, too!”

  Just as Arisa exclaimed, a field of colorful flowers was in full bloom.

  I had found it by searching the map for the blossoms used in the crowns that Nana and Mia had purchased when we first arrived at Bolehart City.

  We stopped the horse-drawn carriage by a stream near the flower garden.

  “Let’s have lunch here today.”

  “Understood. Everyone, to your lunch stations! Begin the preparations.”

  “Aye-aye, siiir!”

  “Roger, sir!”

  After my suggestion, Liza was quick to give everyone directions.

  Tama and Pochi took care of the horses, Mia and Arisa went foraging, and Liza and Lulu helped make lunch.

  Nana usually helped with lunch as well, but today she went with Arisa and Mia as their guard.

  I taught Liza and Lulu how to use the meat grinder we’d just bought in Bolehart City as I prepared the ingredients for lunch.

  After a while, Tama and Pochi finished their duties and came along to watch us cook.

  “So rooound?”

  “Very unusual meat, sir.”

  Tama and Pochi tilted their heads as they looked at what I’d made with the new meat grinder.

  Tama was particularly intent on following the ball of meat with her eyes as I tossed it back and forth between my hands.

  She was fidgeting as if she might reach out and grab it at any moment, but in all likelihood the fear of wasting food restrained her.

  I arranged the palm-size patties on a hot plate sizzling with oil. Then, once I’d flipped them over once, I covered the pan with a lid I’d purchased in the city.

  “It smells very, very good.”

  “It might be too soft for you, Liza. Should I prepare a rocket wolf steak as well?”

  “Certainly not! Master, I swear to you that I will gladly consume anything you cook without leaving a single crumb of meat behind.”

  Liza’s face was intensely serious as she spoke.

  …You really don’t need to get that worked up over lunch, Liza.

  “Ooh! Are you making hamburgers?!”

  Sniffing her way over to us, Arisa correctly guessed the dish I was preparing.