The Nation of Artisans (3): Gathering the Dye Ourselves?
I mulled over Franc’s suggestion. This was a world where magic existed, but even that magic operated according to the resource called mana and its strict laws. Hadn’t Veronica, who once wore magically crafted clothes in my dream, ended up completely naked from a single wave of my hand? The people here must buy real dye because magic-based coloring had its problems. If you wanted clothes that wouldn’t fade, you needed proper pigment.
Besides, Veronica is my wife now. I can think about her without any reservations and get hard whenever I want.
—Erection acquired.
The moment the thought crossed my mind, my cock roared in celebration. Honestly, she was only the second woman I’d ever seen fully naked since birth. How could I stay indifferent? Even if I pretended to be a man who only had eyes for his wives, a man can’t lie to his own instincts.
Anyway, the important thing right now was the dye. I nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s tell them we’ll try to gather it ourselves first. If we can’t, we’ll just buy it with money.”
There was nothing to agonize over. Blowing through our cash right after getting married would only screw us over later. I had no desire to repeat the days when I became a beggar the moment I bought our honeymoon house.
If the Audumla Guild had a branch here, it had been a while since we last took a guild request. Might as well look for something we could handle.
—Creak.
We returned to the reception desk and explained our plan. The dwarf receptionist smiled brightly.
“Of course, please go ahead. Adventurers often bring in the materials themselves, just like you said.”
She easily accepted and deducted the cost of the dye from the production fee. Then she gave us directions to the alchemy guild. Maybe the guild didn’t want to handle dye production when they couldn’t even charge a commission? Having been a grad student who hated when professors dumped extra chores on me, I understood the feeling perfectly.
We placed the order according to procedure and headed for the alchemy guild.
“They even have a branch here. Must be because it’s a big city.”
“Alchemy sounds simple, but the work covers so many different fields~.”
She was right. The alchemy school ranged from nearby things like potion-making all the way to metalworking. It made sense for the guild to stand independently in a major city. The quality would be on another level too—roughly the difference between a large mart’s attached discount store and a proper standalone building.
That aside, I used to picture some cartoon character with mismatched arms and legs whenever I heard the word “alchemist,” but these days the first person who comes to mind is Tirsi.
I wonder what Tirsi is up to these days.
Winter wasn’t a busy season for the guild, and from what she said when we went ogre hunting, she should have plenty of free time.
Let’s buy some gifts before we head back.
Handing out presents to people you’ve gotten to know through work while on a business trip! It was a useful trick for smoothing out social life. This would be my first time trying it, though.
“The most popular black dye around here lately is charcoal from ‘kiln oak.’”
At the alchemy guild I listened to an explanation about black dyes. I had asked specifically about pigments we could obtain quickly in the area.
Kiln oak. Never heard of it.
“What kind of tree is it?”
“A type of oak. The sap and leaves are black, and it grows quickly, so it’s become quite popular lately. This is the color it produces.”
A tree that wasn’t green? How did it photosynthesize without chlorophyll? Thinking about it any further seemed pointless, so I flipped through the catalog instead. My elite oversized brain ran on meat-derived protein and my wives’ affection. I had zero interest in tiring myself out thinking about other people’s business.
“Hmm.”
Still, the color wasn’t quite to my taste. The catalog was filled with little round swatches of dyed fabric, like those hair-color samples at salons. But the shade from that particular tree had a strong cheap vibe.
We went through all that trouble to get good leather. This won’t do.
I might not care much about clothes, but I couldn’t let my wives get criticized. The same would apply when dealing with important guests later. Wealthy people judge others by their attire—down to the stitching and finishing. If I showed up wearing clothes dyed with cheap pigment, anyone who didn’t already know my abilities would start judging me before I even opened my mouth. People here didn’t settle arguments by fighting like Ursula, after all.
I pointed to the black shade I liked best in the catalog.
“If we use this Worr color, how much would it cost?”
“One silver per three serpe.”
A price that sounded fucking familiar. So this was the expensive dye the guild receptionist had mentioned. I wrote down the names of the two viable options in my notebook. The dyes we could get locally seemed to be kiln-oak charcoal and something called Worr grass. Apparently the Worr grass clumps that darken when aged had become scarce, so people were using the charred oak instead.
Having learned what we needed to know, we browsed the alchemy guild a little longer before heading to the Audumla Guild’s Hremar branch. No matter the country, our Audumla was always reassuringly tiny and pathetic. Feeling comforted by that fact, we walked up to the request board.
There are quite a few requests for black dye.
Four or five in total, but even that was a lot. Requests with the exact same objective rarely overlapped.
“──Ah.”
I was scanning for requests that asked for dyes other than the oak when Franc suddenly froze, her eyes locked onto one particular posting.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, um. I recognized a name…”
“A name you know?”
Franc nodded and pointed at the request sheet.
Looking for an adventurer to escort me while I gather dye — Hela Deldornen.
“Hela Deldornen? A woman?”
“Yes. Back when I was trying to earn boat fare from Nidavellir to Britannia, I did some odd jobs at the tailoring guild here. Miss Hela was the nice auntie who looked after me.”
Ah, that made sense. Thinking about it, it was obvious. A small country like Nidavellir didn’t have many ports. It wouldn’t be strange at all for Franc to have come here looking for a ship to Britannia.
“If it’s someone you know, shall we take this one? The details are perfect too.”
I picked up the request form. It was for gathering, which meant she knew where the grass grew. That would be far better than wandering around blindly.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
“Hehe. Gathering, you say? It reminds me of my Iron Class days. How nostalgic☆!”
“Wow. Look at you, acting all cocky when you’re still a squirt.”
We accepted the request as agreed. We presented the residence permit and ID we’d stamped upon entering by ship. Even though it was a Bronze Class request, a mere Iron like me could still take it.
—Knock knock knock!
The form said to visit the client’s home, so we went straight there. When I knocked, I heard unsteady footsteps before the door opened.
“Yeees… Are you the adventurers who took the request…? Oh?”
The dwarf woman who opened the door widened her eyes in surprise. She had recognized Franc. The equipment was different from their first meeting, but that adorable face and those generous breasts were impossible to mistake. For the record, Aunt Hela didn’t have a beard either. She was also quite slender, which made me decide to throw every preconception I had about dwarves straight into the trash.
“Oh my goodness! Is that really you, Franc?! You said you were going to become an adventurer in Britannia! Have you been well?!”
“Hehe. It’s been so long, Miss Hela. Ah, this is a little gift.”
Franc handed over the bag of fruit I had suggested buying. Giving fruit or drinks when meeting someone after a long time was simply the habit of people from a Confucian country like Korea. It had gone over well in Britannia, but I wondered how it would be received in Nidavellir.
“My, how thoughtful! And look at that smile—you’re not starving like you used to, I see?”
I had been worried, but fortunately Aunt Hela accepted the fruit basket with genuine delight. The fact that she spoke in Britannian suggested she was familiar with that culture. Dwarves did travel abroad quite often.
“Yes. I met a wonderful husband and got married. We came here for work this time, saw your request, and decided to come.”
“Oh my, oh my! Goodness gracious!”
Hela looked back and forth between me and Franc, clapping her hands in excitement. The dark circles under her eyes were quite severe. Had she pulled an all-nighter? When you stay up working past the sleepy stage, you sometimes hit a strange high where everything feels exciting for no reason. It looked like Hela had entered that state. Even for a talkative auntie, her level of excitement seemed excessive.
“Oh dear, where are my manners! Come in, come in!”
“Thank you. Excuse us.”
We didn’t refuse and were led into the living room. Hela brought out the fruit after washing it.
“Sorry. Work hasn’t been going well lately, so I can’t seem to focus. Not the best thing to say to welcome guests, but I haven’t been sleeping much at night.”
As she spoke, Hela peeled the fruit with mechanical precision, exactly as one would expect from a pureblood dwarf.
—Shashashak.
She rotated each piece to remove the peel, then sliced it into perfectly even pieces on her palm. In ten seconds one fruit was transformed into bite-sized chunks and placed in a bowl.
“You can’t sleep… because of the dye prices?”
“That’s right. A fight broke out at the docks not long ago, and the fire spread to the garden where the dye plants were grown. The tailoring guild has been struggling too, since the material costs are almost the same as what the guild supplies.”
While cutting the third piece of fruit, Hela answered Franc’s question. This auntie really had generous hands. We’d only bought eight pieces—did she plan to cut them all? Was she scolding us for buying them in the first place?
—Shashak. Shashak.
Hela’s peeling grew faster. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, probably from lack of sleep.
“Anyway, the real problem is those money-obsessed fools. If they reduce the supply just because it doesn’t sell, how are we supposed to preserve tradition? Worr grass is still obtainable, so that’s something, but Chelsea beans and Antonio fruit…”
“Ouch!”
The fruit knife nicked the tip of Hela’s finger. That’s what happens when you let your mind wander while holding a blade. I pulled a tissue from the table and handed it to her.
“Are you all right?”
“Ah, thank you. Franc really chose a good husband.”
Hela mumbled in embarrassment, then looked at Franc.
“Would it be all right to ask for the escort request tomorrow?”
“We’re fine with it, but you look very tired, Miss Hela…”
“Hehe. Thank you for worrying, dear. I’ll just take the kind thought. The competition deadline is only two weeks away, so I need to push through a little longer.”
Hela displayed true professional spirit. If my own projects had only ten days left, I’d be tasting pure acid in my mouth. Ugh.
After that, Hela and Franc chatted about the past, laughing together until it was time for us to leave.
“Come back to the house at nine tomorrow. I’ll see you then.”
“Yes. Sleep well.”
We gave our client a proper farewell and headed out to find an inn. I felt like I had caught a brief glimpse of Franc’s past.
“Franc. Did you really work while starving back then?”
“Ah, that? Only for a little while. The work wasn’t physically demanding, so I just skipped lunch. Miss Hela would sometimes pack food for me.”
Embarrassed about her hard times, Franc spoke awkwardly. It was probably an unpleasant topic for her. I only wanted to show her my good sides and proud memories too.
“Hehe. Our Franc is so capable that even the adults adored her.”
“Hehe. Stop it, you’re making me blush.”
Franc smiled happily as I stroked her head, but I caught a faint shadow in that smile.
“……Did I make a mistake bringing you back to Nidavellir?”
When some people feel joy returning to their hometown, others feel the opposite. The ways of the world were as complicated as the dye situation in Hremar. Since I always waited for my wives to speak first, I might have unintentionally forced Franc to endure in silence.
“Huh? Ah, it’s not like that.”
Noticing my thoughts, Franc waved her hands quickly.
“It’s just… I thought of Mother for a moment. If you start feeling sorry again, I’ll feel sorry too, so no worrying. Okay?”
“All right.”
If that was what Franc wanted, making the mood awkward would be pointless.
“The mood got a little gloomy, didn’t it~? In times like this, the best thing is to look around, play, and enjoy ourselves, right?”
Larilura smoothly jumped into the brief silence. Our party’s youngest member took on the role of mood maker and winked.
“Let’s hurry and find a nice place to stay! Then we can eat out♡! Seafood is good, but today let’s enjoy dishes we couldn’t have on the ship☆!”
“Hehe. And who’s paying?”
“Huh? Obviously Senior has to treat us, right?”
“My wallet is mortgaged to my wives, so no.”
“I can’t either~? The money I’ve saved is going to be my dowry for my husband when I get married☆!”
“Usually isn’t the woman the one who receives?”
“Kuk kuk kuk.”
It was a silly joke, but Franc laughed again right away. As expected, this was the atmosphere that suited us best. And so we secured lodging for the two wives waiting for us.