Chapter 3.4

Chapter 3.4

What’s up? Somethin’ bad happen？」

「Not exactly bad, I just didn’t get it」

「Whaddya mean didn’t get it？」

Wondering how to answer Hiroshi’s question, she decided to start with her own question.

「These are just makeshift ingredients, right？」

「Well yeah. I fiddled with them a bit, but the materials they come from ain’t very good in the first place」

「……Then I definitely don’t get it……」

「Seriously, get what？」

「Just the fact that these are better than the ones we used before……」

With her saying things that he had no idea how to resolve, Hiroshi was at a loss for words.

「……Well, I’ll at least hear out yer complaints and grievances as we go back to the inn」

「Yeah. Nothing worth discussing here anyway」

「For now, please make do with these replacements for the broken file and chisel. Also, I’d appreciate it if ya kept this between us」

「……I know. No one would believe me even if I did tell ‘em, man」

The man nodded while wryly smiling at what Hiroshi had said. To put it precisely, Haruna’s rapier was more high-functioning than any weapon in the Association, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t anything better. For weapons crafted even cheaply by skilled dwarven artisans, if you were to apply voracious enchantments, it might not be easy, but you could create superior weapons. However, when it came to weapons crafted from the lacking ore in this area, things were different. No one would see this weapon with all of its enhancements and think it to be merely “makeshift”. They would dismiss it as idle gossip.

「We’ll be takin’ our leave now」

Hiroshi lowered his head. After seeing him off with a sigh, the personnel began scraping off the ashes from the heat source section of the now-cool smelting furnace. All of the firewood had been extinguished.

「Seriously, what was all my effort worth? I sooo need to vent」

They were returning home. They were secretly talking using the functions of the Adventurers Card, which in game terms was essentially party chat. Haruna began thrusting her irritated feelings with all her strength at Hiroshi.

「Not much I can do about that though……」

「I struggled to complete a quest and finally got my hands on Chivalrous Thief Alvan’s Rapier. I saved up as much as I could and refine it to +6. Yet now! Do you realize how much of a shock it was to see my precious old weapon that I had cultivated with enchantments just get easily beaten by a weapon that was only made using the ingredients around this first-timer area?」

「Hold up a sec」

He couldn’t bring himself to let that statement go by, so Hiroshi decided to stop her there to confirm.

「What？」

「Wasn’t Chivalrous Thief Alvan a humanoid unique boss？」

「I think so. What about him？」

「The NPCs were sayin’ he was caught. Were you the one who did that, Toudou-san？」

「I guess that’s basically how it went？」

After wryly smiling at Haruna’s answer, he decided to hear what had transpired. To sum up what Haruna told him, it had begun when she was doing her normal plaza performances for money. She had asked if there had been any strange occurrences lately, and then a quest had just emerged with a crime notice. It must have been one of those unique quests that only appeared once in the game’s entirety.

This was yet another strange quest. Suddenly, the chivalrous thief Darl laid eyes on her, and both him and Alvan had competed for Haruna. After he had won, he had pressed on her to be his bride since it was the winner’s right, so she had struck him unconscious and sent him to the authorities. In so far that he was a unique boss, Alvan was absurdly strong, but thankfully, he had revealed nearly all of his attack patterns and cards in his fight with the thief Darl, so she had managed to hold out by countering her opponent’s moves and barely overcame him, or so she said. Another plus was that his physical resistance and magic resistance were low for a boss.

「Yer a tough one, Toudou-san」

「That’s only because I was well-matched. I bet if I were as tough as you, I could have struck him down as soon as his stamina ran out, so wouldn’t this be easier for you？」

「Even though I’m rather removed from that sorta thing, that does not sound righttoo pretty」

「Nah, the winner is always right！」

Hiroshi had meant it as self-depreciation, but Haruna tried and failed to reassure him.

「But I still can’t believe that the starlight I got my hands on after so much trouble would lose to a makeshift rapier, even with its added effects……」

「W-Well, try ‘n bear with it. As an apology I’ll give ya any enchantment ya want as long as it doesn’t require a catalyst」

「Now that just makes me feel even more frustrated or something……」

Haruna had resumed her grumbling. Hiroshi decided to comfort her.

「W-Well, y’know」

「What？」

「If ya’d brought somethin’ like a fully-enchanted god steel rapier, yer rare drop wouldn’t be worth nothin’……」

「Something like that exists too? Wait, and you can make it？」

While taking some distance from Haruna and her rather serious face, he fearfully replied. To further illustrate the situation, he had been continuously keeping his distance the same from her even as she pressed closer.

「If I tell ya, try not to get angry……」

「What now?」

「If it’s a rapier we’re talkin’ bout, the necessary amount of ore is slim, so I think I made three of ’em for trainin’ and left ’em rolled over in the storehouse……」

「Y’know, I feel like your existence is enough to make most of the players’ struggles meaningless……」

「Ya say it like it’s easy, but ya realize there ain’t no way that it’s easy to make a god steel rapier that ya can cast full enchantment on right from the raw material stage, right？」

Haruna deeply sighed at Hiroshi’s lackluster statement. If he couldn’t easily make them, then why on earth were there even so much as three of those sitting in his storehouse?

「And I don’t mean to brag, but even that rapier was quite difficult to make, I’ll have ya know」

「Saying that after the fact, do you really think that’s going to sound persuasive？」

「Still, in actuality, makin’ them with those ingredients is impossible without advanced forgin’ and advanced refinement. Ya need like fifteen years in-game of studyin’, y’know?」

「Maybe so, maybe so, but……」

Even if making them was up there in difficulty, onlookers would just see it as a pretty easy task. So that was probably why Haruna took such issue with it.

In actuality, most of Hiroshi’s normie friends in the game were intimidated by the difficulty of obtaining the god steel and the necessary quantity and had not ordered full enchanted equipment.

There was also the added fact that the monsters which the rare materials came from were very deadly. Therefore, unless players happen to come across them while hunting for raw materials, they would never purposely look for them.

In addition, he would stand out too much, so he didn’t really use it other than when hunting with close friends. Thus, nearly no one knew he even had such equipment. 24 people in advanced crafting already had their storehouses branded as liable to destroy the game balance. However, if you were to gather up everything in there, there was maybe only 5% god steel in comparison to the actual players population.

Furthermore, unknown to them, boss drop equipment from humans or demihumans would change in number and quality depending on how high quality the weapons the players had from stalls or auctions, as well as the number of players. Therefore, being that nothing was really being sold above the average market price, even the famous sword of the chivalrous thief Alvan wouldn’t match god steel equipment. Heck, it wouldn’t even be as good as a fully enchanted makeshift weapon using Carpentry for the Gods.

「Well, that aside」

「……Mm」

「There’s somethin’ I wanna do later, so I’d like ya to come with me after we get a bite to eat」

「Sure, but what do you want to do？」

「Search for a base of operations that has plenty of space for a workshop, as well as checking for food ingredients, seasoning, etc」

Understanding what Hiroshi was getting at, she nodded earnestly.

「I estimate it’ll be 20,000 Chrones for all the effort. Normal houses are cheap and ya can usually easily get 5 of them, but when it comes to workshops, it’s more costly」

「Even in the game, trying to get things like big shops required an extra digit, right」

「Even saving up would be difficult if ya don’t know how much ya need. That’s why we’re startin’ by confirmin’ that」

「Depending on the amount of money, I assume that my singing will also come into play？」

「Exactly. And then we hafta put some effort into takin’ requests」

Other than Haruna being in a bad mood today, they had taken too much time on manufacturing and this wasn’t the best time to get your hands on requests, so they hadn’t bothered doing their typical adventurer tasks.

「So what about the checking for food ingredients and seasoning？」

「I’m not sayin’ it’s bad or unsatisfying, but the inn’s food is overall sorta sketchy and repetitive with its seasonin’, don’t cha think？」

「I agree. If we’re going to be here in the long stretch, I really want more food taste variety」

「So for that reason I’m thinkin’ we should see what kinda food ‘n seasonin’ is around and make as much as we can ourselves」

「You can make stuff？」

「Ya’d be helpin’ me a lot, but I do think that I can hold my own with most seasonin’」

Hearing Hiroshi’s reassuring statement, she put on a face more earnest than ever before as she nodded. She honestly wasn’t so desperate that she had to eat Japanese food, but she wasn’t about to put up with food that only had salt, sugar, and spice added to it.

It was hardly better than her great-grandparents’ home country’s food. Even the cooking methods consisted only of stew or roast, whereas she had yet to lay her eyes on fried or steamed meals. Apparently, even in regards to fermented food, there was just salt pickling, smoking, cheese, alcohol, and then black tea. There was also fruit vinegar from fruit alcohol, but they saw it as decomposed and had abandoned it.

In regards to fermented products, fermentation was always a thin line with decomposition, so it was natural that you had to risk tasting it in order to progress. As long as convenient, widespread enchantments like Prevent Rot were around, there might not even be a need to make preserved foods. So she could see why fermented foods were such a strange category.

In addition, even though you could always steam things with a certain amount of knowledge and specialized tools, it didn’t sit right with him that most people didn’t fry anything, even though oil for meals had been mass-produced for a while. But it was pointless to question it. That was how things stood, so he decided to do something about it himself.

Happily enough, he knew from yesterday and today’s meals that sugar, spices, etc, were easily going around for even commoners. Also, all of the Farlane region had clean water that could be drunk as is, and since there were all sorts of regions within the country other than desert with their own climates in addition to there being a big port within the city, they could expect rich variation in food ingredients. It wouldn’t necessarily be identical to how Japan was, but doubtless with a few tweaks it would work.

「So in order to enjoy superior food, we best secure a cookin’ place as our first step」

「Right. Let’s do it！」

It had started out as a relatively serious problem, but the two of them deviated further and further from their goal. They ended up devoting any free time at night to make curry powder and mayonnaise, in which the process was going to take a week to complete.