by Hiro Ainana
“Master, I have located the criminal unit who assaulted the larvae, I report.”
Nana pointed toward the harbor.
There was a white tigerfolk man. He seemed to be having some kind of disagreement with a merchant.
I didn’t see any children around, so judging by Nana’s reaction, she must have identified him as the tigerfolk man who’d kicked the sealfolk kids back in the old capital.
“Permission to annihilate immediately!”
“No, Nana.”
That had just been an unfortunate accident, and a runaway horse had trampled him shortly thereafter, so he’d already been sufficiently punished.
It would be ridiculous to beat him up now.
“Please!”
“I told you: We don’t have any in stock.”
My “Keen Hearing” skill picked up the conversation between the white tigerfolk man and the merchant.
The white tigerfolk man’s pronunciation was difficult to understand, so I mentally adjusted to compensate.
“I just need medicine for burns. It doesn’t have to be a potion.”
“I sold my last salve yesterday.”
“Then tell me who bought it. I’ll get them to give me some.”
“Not a chance. Can’t have you harassing my regulars.”
The tigerfolk man clung desperately to the curt salesman.
It looked like there weren’t any alchemy or magic shops in town.
A little concerned, I searched the map for white tigerfolk.
There were two of them with burns in the area.
It was the pair from the black auction: the white tiger princess Luniya and the knight Gargaolon. The former was in a normal Burn state, but the latter was in the state Burn: Severe.
“Damn it— Hey! You there! This is no play for your amusement!”
When his gaze met mine, the tigerfolk man shouted angrily.
“Master, target has taken hostile action. Commencing annihilation.”
“I told you—no.”
Nana tried to take a step forward, so I grabbed her shoulder.
“Please reconsider! I must avenge the sealfolk larvae, I entreat.”
Um, they aren’t dead.
They’re running around downtown in the old capital.
“…Sealfolk?”
The white tigerfolk man frowned for a moment, then gave a gasp of recognition.
“Wait, did those children die…?”
“No, we treated them quickly, so they’re all right now.”
“I—I see… I got knocked out by that runaway horse myself, so I’ve been worried about those children ever since.”
The white tigerfolk man sighed with relief.
He had a scary face, but it seemed like he was actually a good person on the inside.
“Are you all acquaintances of those children? I’m very sorry. I wanted to go apologize to them myself, but I wasn’t able to do so. Please forgive me.”
The tigerfolk man rolled over on his back in front of us in a show of submission.
I was a little tempted to rub his tummy or something, but this was probably his race’s way of showing their highest penance, so I didn’t want to mock him.
“I forgive you, I declare.”
Nana nodded, so I offered the man a hand to help him up.
I hadn’t intended to demand an apology in the first place, so I changed the subject by indirectly asking about the medicine he needed.
“My comrades are near death because of their burns.”
“Burns?”
“Yes, Brother Gar and the young miss tried to save some people from a fire…”
There were no other white tigerfolk women on my map besides Princess Luniya, so she must be the “young miss.”
“Would lesser-grade potions be all right? I have enough of those to spare.”
“R-really?!”
“Sure. I have salves for burns, too, if you like.”
“Thank you… I’m in your debt.”
I gave him five of the watered-down potions and salves for burns.
I knew these would work, thanks to the villages where I’d handed them out along the way.
The guy pressed three gold coins into my hand for the medicine and sped off toward the mountain with the mining site.
He was tailed by a man with the “Spy” skill from a criminal guild.
As if to block the spy off, a couple of mon hunter men started fighting in the street.
“I’m telling you, Norma is my wife!”
“Just marry Gonzo instead!”
“But he’s a man!”
Ah. It was on purpose, then.
They were deliberately having their tussle in the criminal’s path.
Once the white tigerfolk man had gotten a good distance away, the spy finally managed to get past them.
Not long after, the two mon hunters exchanged looks, grinned, and headed back into the bar with arms around each other’s shoulders.
From the looks of it, the white tigerfolk must be getting support from the mon hunters in town.
“Satou.”
Mia tugged on the hem of my robe.
“What is it?”
“Buy.”
Mia pointed at a white horse tied up behind the trading shop.
“A horse?”
“Unicorn.”
On closer inspection, there was a stub on the horse’s forehead where a horn had been cut off.
I remembered seeing a unicorn horn for sale at the auction in the black-market district Muraas.
This probably wasn’t the same unicorn, but it was definitely a victim either way.
“You wanna buy the no-horn? This thing’s got a bad temper, y’know. Dunno what you’d use it for.”
The price the merchant offered was no more than the cost of a donkey, so I agreed to buy it.
“Can you ride it?”
“Mm.”
Mia easily hopped onto its bare back.
The hornless unicorn seemed to have no objections to letting Mia ride it.
“Well, I’ll be damned! I never thought I’d see that thing let anyone ride it.”
The merchant looked rather dour, so I bought a bunch of fruits and paprika-like vegetables from him and had them delivered to our lodging.
When I finished my business and left the trading post, an unfamiliar young man was standing next to my group. It was a humanfolk boy with the tan and physique of a manual laborer.
“Master, this person says he wants to buy potions from you…”
“Please, won’t you sell me some burn medicine? I’ll pay any price.”
This must be for another victim of that pyromaniac noble.
I asked the young man what had happened, and he said that his older sister had been seriously burned when she’d tried to help a beastfolk child.
On top of that, it turned out that the so-called protector of the peace, Baronet Poton, was throwing people in jail when they tried to submit complaints about the noble’s unchecked violence. The frustration of the townspeople was reaching a breaking point.
I had no obligation to clean up after Baronet Poton and the pyro noble, but Tama and Pochi were looking at me with eyes that said Please help them! so I gave in and agreed to the young man’s request.
I could give him as many potions as he needed, but instead I told him “the prescription might differ depending on the degree of the burns” and had him bring me to his home.
Magic potions were expensive for low-income families, so I wanted to make sure they actually reached all the people who needed them.
“Sis, I brought a doctor.”
The voice that responded to the boy sounded like it belonged to a hoarse old man.
But according to the information I’d found on my map, I assumed his sister was a twenty-two-year-old single woman…
…Erm, not that the “single” part mattered. At all.
I had my party wait in the room by the entrance while I followed the boy into the back room.
&nb
sp; This is terrible.
The girl’s skin was burned from her right shoulder to the lower half of her face.
The boy sent the younger children who’d been watching over his sleeping sister into the other room to play with Tama and Pochi, clearing a space for me.
The burns were bad in places, but my watered-down burn potions should be able to heal them without a trace.
Swallowing seemed to be painful for her, so I used a feeding cup to pour it down the back of her throat.
Then I used Liquid Control and See Through from the magic menu to make sure the potion didn’t go down her trachea.
“…Ohhh!”
Standing beside me, the young man gasped.
I understood the feeling. No matter how many times I saw it, watching the quick effects of a magic potion at work made me a little queasy. Even the areas where muscle tissue had been visible were growing fresh pink skin.
Healing potions didn’t do anything for physical exhaustion, so I also gave her a high-calorie nutritional-supplement potion I’d formulated for seriously ill patients in Muno Castle. This way, she should be fine by morning.
The nutritional supplements were made with gabo fruit and gold-orange fruit from the Mountain-Tree, so the cost to make them was incredibly low. And I’d mass-produced a bunch back in Muno Castle, so I had several barrels’ worth to give away.
“Thank you, Doctor! I’ll scrape together the cost for the medicine, no matter what it takes!”
“Ah, wait a minute…”
The young man looked like he was about to charge out of the house, but I stopped him and asked if he could show me where the pyro noble had gone on his rampage as payment.
“This is awful.”
“Mm. Bad.”
Before our eyes was a row of three tenements that had been completely burned down.
Several beastfolk were lying on planks in the shade of the houses’ remains.
“What do you want with us, humans?”
As we approached, the beastfolk who were tending to their wounded raised their hackles.
An apefolk man who seemed to be a mon hunter blocked the young man’s path.
“Wait! I’m Hyona’s younger brother. I brought a doctor.”
“Right… I thought you looked familiar. Well, forget us; just have him treat Hyona. These guys aren’t gonna make it. Even if we sold ourselves, we couldn’t afford to buy them medicine.”
I’d forgotten just how expensive the potions in stores were, since I’d been making them myself for a while now.
The cause of the high price was the cost of the monster cores. Without a high “Transmutation” skill level like mine, it was impossible to make potions with anything less than high-grade cores.
Judging by the levels of the mon hunters in this town, their main prey was probably demi-goblins, which wouldn’t yield high-enough-quality cores to make potions.
“Hey, you…”
I glanced over the prone beastfolk to see what kind of shape they were in.
Their burns were much worse than Miss Hyona’s had been.
Their only relief seemed to be large leaves that were wrapped around the worst burns.
“Hey! Quit starin’ at ’em!”
“Don’t be rude to the doctor!”
It took some arguing between the apefolk man and the young boy, but eventually they allowed me to heal the children and elders who were hidden inside.
Personally, I was fine with leaving them alone if they refused to accept treatment, but the young man was so desperate that I ended up playing the role of the softhearted pharmacist.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I never thought I’d move this hand again! It’s all thanks to you, Doctor.”
“Thanks, mister.”
The people I healed, their families, and even people who seemed totally unrelated came up to thank me.
Some of the beastfolk were hard to understand because of the structure of their mouths, so I mentally adapted like with the white tigerfolk man.
“Sorry I doubted you before, Doctor. This is just us poor folks’ food, but I want you to have it.”
The standoffish apefolk man, who’d disappeared for a while, returned to offer me a basket of red fruit.
“Geh! You’re giving him redfruits?”
“Watch it, kid! We have an old saying, ‘A redfruit a day keeps the doctor away.’ He might be able to make medicine with it or somethin’, right?”
Like cats and dogs, the boy and the apefolk man were at it again.
But I would never use this redfruit for medicine.
“Thank you very much.”
To show my appreciation, I picked out one of the redfruits from the basket and took a huge bite.
It was a bit overripe but still juicy and delicious. I hadn’t tasted this in a long time.
“I want a bite, too!”
“Sure.”
Arisa zoomed over and made grabby hands at me, so I handed her one.
“Do you two want to try it, too?”
“Aye!”
“Of course, sir!”
I handed one each to Tama and Pochi.
“Mrrr?”
“I prefer meat, sir.”
The two of them eagerly bit into the fruits, but their faces scrunched up as they chewed on their first mouthful of tomato.
They probably didn’t like the strange jellylike texture of the inside.
Arisa, on the other hand, munched away happily. “Mm! A little overripe maybe, but it’s been sooo long!”
“Finiiished?”
“It’s bad to waste food, sir.”
“Very good, you two.” Tama and Pochi managed to eat the rest of their tomatoes anyway, so I patted their heads and praised them.
The other children seemed interested, too, but hesitated when they saw Tama’s and Pochi’s reactions.
Lulu was the only one who worked up the courage to try it, although judging by her expression, she didn’t like it much, either.
“Are tomatoes a specialty of Puta?”
“Tomatoes? If you mean redfruits, the only villages that grow ’em are ours and a few birdfolk tribes.”
Using a map search, I confirmed there were only three villages that cultivated them, but they grew wild in huge numbers along the mountains to the south.
The apefolk woman I had treated turned out to be the man’s sister, who’d come from their home village to marry here.
“Are these the only redfruits you have? I’d like to buy more, if you have them.”
“We don’t need yer money, Doc. If we can even begin to repay you with these things, I’d give ya as many as ya like…”
But then the apefolk man’s face clouded.
“…But these are the only ones ripe enough to eat. The rest still need some time…”
I actually wanted some less ripe than these, so I asked him to deliver them to our inn.
“Sure! I’ll go pick ’em all right now!”
With that, the apefolk man sped off eagerly.
I didn’t want to take all their food, so I sent a young apefolk boy after him to tell him half would be fine.
The man had said they didn’t need money, but I was worried about how they’d get by, so I decided to pay them the market price anyway.
Now I could make ketchup, tomato sauce, omelet rice for the kids, and maybe even some whale-meat stew.
But all that could wait! More importantly: pizza!
I could make pizza!
I had over twenty different kinds of cheese from the nobles in the old capital, and in large quantities, too.
And for toppings, I had all sorts of veggies, meat, and seafood in stock.
Making a pizza oven in the middle of town would be a bit too conspicuous, so that would have to wait until we set out on our travels.
But I could start working on my tomato sauce until then.
“Hee-hee~?”
“Master looks happy, so Pochi’s happy, too, sir.”
Tam
a and Pochi, who were clinging to my legs, nuzzled against me gleefully.
Oops. I got so excited about making tomato-based dishes that my “Poker Face” skill must have cracked.
That was the power of tomatoes for you.
Clearing my throat and wiping the grin off my face, I thanked the beastfolk, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, before we headed back to the inn.
“Are you Sir Pendragon?”
“I am. A pleasure to meet you, Baronet Poton.”
I had everyone wait in a nearby vacant plot while I returned to the inn alone.
This was because I’d seen on my radar that Baronet Poton had just made a grand entrance at the inn with an entourage of about ten guards.
He was a plump, balding middle-aged man whose gaze kept wandering around restlessly behind me.
It was as if he suspected that his enemies might come charging in through the door of the inn at any moment.
“Marquis Lloyd’s letter said to treat you as I would the marquis himself. However, I have never known the marquis to have an associate such as yourself…”
He seemed to think that the letter might be counterfeit.
But he probably didn’t want to insult the marquis by asking him, just in case it was real, so he came out to see me and judge for himself.
“Quite understandable. I have only had the pleasure of his acquaintance for roughly a half-moon now.”
I reached into my robe and pulled out the dagger with the Lloyd family crest, presenting it to the baronet.
“A dagger with Marquis Lloyd’s crest…”
Baronet Poton held the dagger and flowed magic power into it, and the crest glowed faintly with some ancient letters that must have been the family motto.
I believe I’d seen a plate engraved with the same words in the entrance of the marquis’s home.
“I-it’s real!”
The blood drained from the man’s normally ruddy face.
He must have been expecting me to be a fake.
“F-forgive my rudeness, Sir Pendragon. Please, you need not stay in such a miserable shack as this. Won’t you come to my castle instead?”
The innkeeper scowled at this rude comment.
But he obviously couldn’t complain to a noble in front of all those guards.
At any rate, I didn’t really want to stay under the same roof as that pyromaniac.
Oh, I know.
I could decline and threaten the baronet into doing something about that pyro at the same time.
