The Old Man and the Sea (6)
After slaying the monster, Don Salman collapsed to the ground. He had chased it without rest for three full days, and the battle had left him utterly exhausted.
“Ugh… If only I were a few years younger.”
He grumbled at his own body before simply falling backward. Pushing himself any further with sheer willpower would be foolish. It was a little risky, but he had no choice but to rest beside the monster’s corpse.
“Just… a short nap.”
Lying on his side, he couldn’t fight the overwhelming drowsiness. His eyelids slid shut without resistance, and he fell asleep.
How many hours had passed? When he finally woke, the corpse was still there.
“It hasn’t been torn apart after all.”
In the novel, the old man’s fish had been stolen by a pack of sharks after he caught it. Don Salman had worried the same thing might happen to him, but—
“Thank goodness. Thank goodness.”
Still, something curious stood out. When a monster was killed, its body turned to dust, leaving only a Mana Stone. No matter how large the creature had been, its size shrank dramatically once reduced to powder.
“As expected, humans still have so much to learn.”
Don Salman marveled at the wonders of nature. Even as humanity advanced so far, there was still so much about the natural world they didn’t understand.
“Yet the fact that we keep challenging nature is remarkable in itself.”
Believing in the greatness of human will, he rose to his feet. He approached the monster’s remains, pulled a sturdy rope from his bag, and began to work.
“Up we go.”
He fashioned the rope into a harness and tossed it over the body, cinching it tight around the torso. After tugging to make sure the knots held, he slung the line over his shoulder.
“Time to head back.”
Bracing himself, he began dragging the monster’s corpse. It was quite heavy, but as a knight he could move at a decent pace. When he finally returned to the base camp, he loaded the remains onto a cart he had prepared in advance.
“I originally meant to haul treasure in this thing.”
Still, obtaining such a large monster corpse was a fine substitute. He broke down the camp and began pulling the cart toward the village. He stayed alert along the way, but no bandits appeared. He reached the village safely and headed straight for the town hall.
“Anyone here?”
“Yes, yes, I’m here. What can I do for you?”
An elderly man emerged from the town hall. He appeared to be the village chief or caretaker. Don Salman pointed behind him and spoke calmly.
“I’ve brought a monster corpse. Could you handle the processing here?”
“What? What do you—huh?!”
The old man looked past him, saw the ferocious-looking monster, and gasped in shock. Then, remembering what had been said, he nodded vigorously.
“Of course we can!”
“Just give me the Mana Stone. You can keep the rest of the parts.”
“Understood. We’ll get right on it.”
A feast was soon held in the village. Don Salman took his Mana Stone and quietly slipped away. The old man chased after him late, urging him to stay and enjoy the celebration.
“I only did what any knight should.”
With those words, he left.
“Whoops, I dozed off again.”
Herilton, who had rowed out to sea, had fallen asleep on his small boat. He had baited his lines but hadn’t seen so much as a fish’s shadow before nodding off.
When he woke, the sun was high in the sky. He checked the lines he had cast.
“Nothing’s snapped, and nothing’s pulled tight.”
He clicked his tongue in disappointment and lay back down. With his hat pulled low, he tried to enjoy the sunbathing, but his mood was sour. The reason was obvious—he hadn’t seen a single fish.
“Hmph. Is it really going to turn out like the novel?”
He told himself it was nonsense, yet he couldn’t help hoping. After all, the old man in the story had eventually caught a massive fish. The only problem was how it ended.
“That won’t happen to me.”
Only after saying it did Herilton remember the old man’s words from the book. Still, he didn’t dwell on it. If a single phrase could change fate, then it had never been his fate to begin with. Therefore, the fact that he hadn’t noticed the line moving must also be fate.
“Hoo… Maybe I’ll sleep a little more.”
They say old men lose the need for sleep. Why does it feel like I need more?
With that thought, Herilton closed his eyes again. Drowsiness crept over him, and just as he was about to drift off, he sensed something wrong.
“…The boat’s moving faster.”
He sat up quickly and realized the third line had gone taut. He hurriedly loosened the reel so the line wouldn’t snap. Fisherman’s habits ran deep, after all.
“There we go. You took the bait nicely.”
He chuckled and maintained just the right tension. If the line grew too tight it would break; if it went slack, the fish would rest. Either way, he’d end up being dragged around endlessly.
“It won’t end like the novel.”
Herilton’s personality wasn’t all that different from other fishermen, except he was a bit impatient. He began tugging on the line intermittently to tire the fish out. If the old man from the story had been real, he probably would have waited patiently.
Quite a bit of time passed like that. Several hours had gone by since he first grabbed the line and started watching the fish’s movements. The sky had long since darkened, and stars now filled the heavens. The moon had risen—time when others would be sleeping.
But Herilton could not sleep. It was grueling work, yet he had to stay awake all night holding the line.
“I won’t let you get away. I’m catching you no matter what.”
His eyes burned with determination, and his hands were filled with resolve.
In the end, he stayed up the entire night and greeted the dawn with a tired face. Watching the rising morning sun, Herilton felt how much strength he had lost. Still, he couldn’t let go. He pulled on the line.
Then he felt something different from before.
“Oh! Its strength has dropped a lot!”
It could mean he had lost the fish, but his hands told him otherwise. He yanked the line quickly, and it came in without resistance. Excited, he hauled it up faster and looked down at the water with a joyful expression.
After some time, a shadow finally appeared beneath the surface.
“It’s pretty big. But the shape is strange.”
It was a large fish roughly three meters long. Yet the shadow’s outline wasn’t like anything he had seen before. It looked riddled with holes, filling him with unease.
“It can’t be… No way.”
When he finally pulled it all the way up, he could only despair. Kneeling on the boat, he stared at the fish he had brought aboard. Its entire body was covered in wounds and gaping holes, as if something had torn chunks out of it. In other words, it was already a corpse—and his own mistake.
If only he had been more careful.
If only he had checked more often.
If only he had made a better decision.
All sorts of thoughts swirled in his mind, and a wave of self-reproach crashed over him.
“Damn it!”
Unable to contain his anger, he slammed his fist against the boat. The vessel rocked wildly from the blow. It didn’t break, but it was enough to throw him off balance for a moment. He tumbled over in an undignified heap and felt the deepest humiliation.
If he couldn’t even take care of his own body, how could he possibly catch a fish intact?
He no longer had the energy to keep fishing. Dejected, he turned the boat around and began rowing back to shore—unaware that a new, even larger fish had just taken the bait and escaped.
The Old Man and the Sea was selling well. Opinions were divided, but even after a month it showed no signs of slowing down.
“Still, compared to the other books, sales seem a bit lower.”
Looking at the long term, it would likely underperform relative to the others. The reason was that it felt far too grounded in reality. The concept of Human Triumph was simply too unfamiliar. This was still an era when religion held immense power. Compared to the other novels, the difference was even clearer.
Sherlock Holmes had no such issues because Holmes was such an impossibly brilliant character. Don Quixote was a satire of chivalric literature, not a challenge to religion or the idea of human will. The Little Prince could practically be called pure fantasy. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came close, but even that ultimately involved the influence of God.
In contrast, The Old Man and the Sea left no room for divine intervention. It was purely a story of human willpower overcoming everything.
“In that sense, The Old Man and the Sea really is special.”
Even so, its evaluation might change later. There was no point dwelling on it. He needed to think about something else.
“I heard there have been problems in the factory cities lately.”
Rumors were spreading that workers kept dying. One day a man was found dead. Another collapsed while working. Yet another began coughing and soon fell with a high fever. Countless similar stories were circulating.
At first, people blamed poor working conditions or the materials they handled. The latter was unavoidable, so he wouldn’t press the issue for now.
“But working conditions can be improved.”
He examined places with better conditions, only to find similar rumors spreading there too. In other words, even workplaces that provided proper rest and weekends were experiencing the same problems.
That was when he reached a single terrifying conclusion. He had no choice but to consider it.
“Could it be… an epidemic?”
Wherever people gathered, disease was bound to follow. They came from all over, carrying countless bacteria and viruses, and met one another. In modern times, people washed their hands and medical standards were high. But this was the Middle Ages. Handwashing? Such a concept barely existed. The importance of handwashing had only become widely recognized in the modern era—late modern era, at that!
“I hope there isn’t something like the Black Death here too.”
That would be a serious problem. The best course was to take every possible precaution immediately.
First, they had to drive out rodents like rats. They weren’t the only carriers, but they were one of the main ones. Next, handwashing had to be made mandatory. At the very least, workers needed to be educated about it.
“That means we’ll have to distribute soap.”
More precisely, they needed to mass-produce it. Interestingly, both liquid and solid soaps had existed even in the Middle Ages. However, in this world they were mainly enjoyed by nobles. The high-end versions used olive oil and the like, but even those were used more for laundry than handwashing. Among commoners, soap was either nonexistent or made from animal fats, producing a terrible stench.
“It’s a shame this isn’t the East.”
The culture here was closer to Europe, so they didn’t use lye. If they did, he could have at least told the commoners to use that.
“No helping it. We’ll have to start mass production right away.”
This would mean building yet another factory, but it was a necessary investment. He immediately brought out a blank blueprint and began sketching a machine that could stamp out soap. Oh, and soda—sodium carbonate would also need to be mass-produced.
The workload had increased again, but he believed it was necessary and continued drawing the designs, hoping he wasn’t too late.