In Another Era

With the three of them in tow, he opened the warehouse door.

This was where they stored inventory to be displayed in the shop.

They'd had it made particularly large during the renovation of the house and shop, so there was plenty of space.

"Ooh, nice and spacious. When you took over the shop from that man, the warehouse was as tiny as a postage stamp."

"A postage stamp… well, we renovated several times as we turned a profit. Used up all the land I inherited from my father."

"Look at you go!"

She slapped him on the back repeatedly. It hurt.

"For now, dump the contents along that wall over there."

"Over there, right?"

Azu emptied the sacks she'd carried to the designated spot.

At the end, she turned each one upside down to make sure every last stone was out.

"Each sack looks like it's worth about three gold coins."

"Quite the catch, indeed."

He picked one up and examined it closely.

The quality of the magic stones was decent.

The sizes varied from small to large.

Plain magic stones didn't need to be sorted.

While Azu was bringing the remaining sacks over, he started emptying the two people's bags as well.

Magic stones came out first, and once personal belongings started appearing, he stopped.

He'd almost grabbed someone's underwear. Close call.

Ramiza-san had already begun picking out the elemental stones from the pile.

In any case, the help was appreciated.

Orleans took up paper and pen, checking the sorted items while recording the inventory.

Azu brought in the last sack and emptied it.

"Azu, put the sorted stones into these crates. I'll take them to a magic stone dealer I know."

"Understood. I can handle that."

"Oh, there's gold in here!"

"Really?"

What Ramiza-san had picked up was a magic stone with gold mixed into it.

The gold had likely been absorbed from the geological strata when the magic stone formed.

Using a chisel, he cracked the magic stone open and extracted the gold.

It was about the size of a pebble, but it was unmistakably gold.

At this size, it would fetch a decent price.

"Man, this kind of thing is fun. Reminds me of my adventuring days."

"Come to think of it, you did that for a while, didn't you."

"I needed rare materials, and the only way to get them was to go gather them myself. Nowadays there are more adventurers, and you can acquire most things through auctions or the Adventurer's Guild, so I can focus on research."

"How far did you get as an adventurer?"

"How far was it? The Guild won't let you into the harder dungeons without the right rank, so I worked hard and ranked up until I could go anywhere."

The Adventurer's Guild restricted which quests and dungeons adventurers could access based on rank, citing adventurer safety.

The system was designed to encourage adventurers not to overextend themselves, to rank up gradually and become promising adventurers.

It wasn't popular with the adventurers themselves, but it likely reduced casualties.

"Anywhere? Doesn't that mean you reached the highest rank?"

"Maybe so. It paid well, but they started telling me to do this and do that, so I kind of stopped doing adventurer work."

"That sounds like you, Ramiza-san."

She'd quit as a royal alchemist because she found it too stuffy. She'd succeeded as an adventurer only to quit because the obligations were annoying. Now she sold potions at her leisure while researching alchemy as a free spirit.

What an incredible resume… In another era, she could easily have been called a hero.

"Hm, what?"

"Nothing. It's nothing."

She looked like a slightly scatterbrained woman, but…

After spending a good while on it, they finished the sorting and inventory.

About one-tenth of the total were elemental stones.

They'd also recovered one more piece of gold.

The rest were all ordinary magic stones.

"Sir, the inventory is complete. Please review it."

"Let's see. Yep, I was right to leave this to you, Orleans. Accurate and easy to read."

"Thank you very much."

"I'm done packing the crates."

"Good work, Azu. I'll have them come pick these up, so move them near the entrance."

"Okay."

Azu moved the crates full of magic stones.

At the current market rate, each crate should fetch four gold coins.

Four crates of those. Combined with the gold, that would come to twenty gold coins.

"Ramiza-san, thank you for your help."

"Don't mention it. You're a valued customer, and I owe you a lot."

"And your real reason?"

"I'd be so happy if you sold me those elemental stones cheap! Oh!"

"I figured. That's fine. Your potions are our flagship product, Ramiza-san."

"You're a lifesaver. I'll buy them all."

A bulk purchase would be helpful for them as well.

Thanks to Orleans, the calculations were easy.

"At this volume, that comes to eight gold coins."

"Sounds about right. It'd cost double if I bought from a magic stone dealer."

"Yes. They're quite expensive at retail."

Magic stones depended on adventurers and the nation's military for supply.

So while plain magic stones were reasonable enough, elemental stones inevitably came at a premium.

He accepted eight gold coins from Ramiza-san.

Cash payment made settling up quick and easy.

She packed the elemental stones into her storage bag.

"This trip was well worth it."

"Well, you're welcome to come by for a meal anytime."

"You're so kind."

"By the way, since you've been to all sorts of dungeons, have you ever been to this one?"

This was a good opportunity, so he decided to ask about the dungeon the viscount had asked them to conquer.

It didn't seem to be an extremely difficult dungeon, but if they could learn about it in advance, it would make things easier for Azu and the others.

"Wait, that's…"

Ramiza-san's expression changed.

It didn't seem to be a pleasant topic.

"A viscount… did a noble ask you to conquer this?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Did you hear the details?"

"No. Just that his territory's soldiers couldn't spare the manpower, so he wanted us to thin them out and conquer it."

"Geez. You shouldn't just accept requests from nobles so readily, Yohane-kun."

She grabbed both his cheeks and pulled.

"Well, if they're high-ranked adventurers, maybe he just figured they could handle it. It's true that the difficulty level isn't that extreme, but the environment is nasty."

"How so?"

"The entire dungeon is filled with deadly poisonous fumes, and every monster in there uses all kinds of poison. It's a poison dungeon. On top of that, you'll need resistance to dark-element attacks. If you went in without preparation, you'd have to turn right back around."

"That does sound nasty…"

"On the flip side, if you can handle the poison and darkness, it'd be a cakewalk for you lot. It's a good place to learn the importance of resistances, actually."

"Resistances…"

He recalled how they'd once bought equipment for everyone to build up fire resistance.

Since then, they hadn't had much trouble with resistances.

Standard four-element resistances could be managed by crafting equipment with elemental stones.

They were also available on the market.

But for poison and darkness… what were they supposed to do?

"Want me to lend you rings that nullify poison?"

"Something that convenient exists?"

"Nothing is impossible with alchemy. Well, they're single-use and time-limited, though. Making permanent ones requires ultra-premium materials."

He asked the price, and it turned out that just one of the materials would cost enough to build a house.

Only the extremely wealthy could afford that.

Then again, if you could ward off poison with money, people would probably pay for it.

"In exchange, can I come along? Poison-type monsters make great materials."

"Azu, what do you think?"

When it came to adventuring, Azu was the leader.

He asked for her opinion.

"We can't deal with poison on our own, so I think we have no choice but to ask Ramiza-san."

"Yeah…"

"Then it's settled. Let me know once you've decided on a date."

With a beaming smile, Ramiza-san headed home.