Uncomfortable Cohabitation (2)
After dinner, I had a brief talk with Priest Daniel.
"What did you do about your gear?"
"My gear?"
"No honorifics."
"Haha, I couldn't very well show up wearing something with the church's symbol still stamped right on it, so I left it at the temple."
Looks like he put some thought into it before coming. Or did Sister Mary tip him off?
"We'll need to get you new equipment, then."
Church-issued gear was far too conspicuous. Fresh gear would be better.
"I'll speak to the temple about it."
Relying on the temple for even this feels a bit much…
What if I make Scrap Iron with alchemy? Produce it in bulk and forge him a new shield, sword, and some basic gear!
It seemed like a solid idea.
"Come to think of it, Young Master, what happened to that iron of yours?"
"I'd completely forgotten…"
Ah, so that's why I never heard anything after he said he was going to make a sword.
"While we're outfitting Daniel, you could get a sword made too, Young Master."
Maximilian suddenly went wide-eyed and glared at Priest Daniel.
"I-I'm fine. I can just ask the church for gear."
"No need. You're my people—I'll provide for you."
What a hassle, but tomorrow I'll have to leave the capital and gather some materials for Scrap Iron. Priest Daniel clamped his mouth shut. He seemed to feel guilty for putting me out.
But I was doing this because I felt uneasy about constantly holding my hand out to the temple myself. Even if he had made a mistake, I still had some pride left—I couldn't just keep taking forever.
In any case, I steamrolled right over their protests that they were fine and could just go to the temple. Then I explained what I planned to do.
"Alchemy and combination?"
"That's right. I'll use the techniques I've been researching to create iron."
I also told them that the iron I made had high mana conductivity.
"A rare treasure, then."
"My own weapons are made from it. From what I've heard, high conductivity gives you an edge in real fights between strong opponents. So when we make them, we might as well make them good."
Once the rough explanation was done, I listed the materials we'd need.
"Mud, sand, and stone?"
"For now. Mud can be made by mixing sand and water, so the important one is sand."
Young Master Maximilian and Priest Daniel hurried over, sat right in front of me, and leaned in to listen.
"Fine sand is best, and as for quantity—plenty. No, the more the better. For the stones, ones with a high iron content would be ideal. And once you combine them, you end up with roughly seventy percent of the stone's volume as iron, so it would help if you calculate how much iron you'll need based on the gear you want."
After I finished the thorough explanation, both of them wore thoughtful, troubled expressions.
"Well, since we're going to gather the materials together anyway, I didn't really need to explain all that."
I might have overdone the chatter a bit.
"Is that necessary? Why not just tell each of them to bring back the amount they need, and while you wait, you can research with the materials we got yesterday?"
Sister Mary said bluntly.
"Aw, come on, I couldn't do that."
I said it with a smile, and both men's expressions changed at once.
"No, we'll gather the materials ourselves. Please wait at ease, Miss Julian."
"Exactly. It's for my own gear, so I should be the one to get it."
"Hmm…?"
When both of them put it that way, maybe I should just let them?
"Emma, don't you want a new weapon made?"
My sister tilted her head slightly.
"Dunno."
Honestly, even when I want to invest in her, she acts like that.
Once the conversation roughly wrapped up, we decided to head back to our rooms and rest. On the way up to the third floor, I spoke quietly to Maximilian.
"Could you gather enough materials for one extra sword?"
He smiled gently.
"For Miss Emma, I take it?"
"Yes. She talks like that, but I still want to make one for her."
"Understood."
Priest Daniel would need not just a sword but a shield and other gear as well, so he probably wouldn't have much to spare.
After breakfast, Priest Daniel and Young Master Maximilian left the mansion right away. They set out early, determined to gather materials.
"How long do they think it'll take, acting like that?"
The two of them had looked terribly serious and earnest when they left. I couldn't figure out what had them so worked up.
"Well then, I should get on with my own work."
The storeroom was packed with evening primrose that Sister Mary had obtained and the materials Maximilian had bought.
"Let's begin."
I asked Sister Mary to prepare a large batch of Attunement Agent. I prioritized combinations using Perfavor and poppy. I prepared the formula that had reacted best the other day and thought it over.
Clearly the reaction had been good up to the midpoint. Then the medium suddenly vanished and the combination ran into trouble.
So then… maybe there just wasn't enough medium?
Sister Mary suggested trying to add water. I had been considering adding more Attunement Agent. With plenty of materials now, we could try both.
"Doubling the amount of Attunement Agent…"
I tried the combination.
"A failure."
Sister Mary looked at the pot with regretful eyes.
"So adding more Attunement Agent doesn't work…"
This attempt's reaction itself had been subtle. Should I try adding water like Sister Mary said?
Next I tried adding water instead of Attunement Agent.
"This one's a failure too…"
Water alone doesn't work, and too much Attunement Agent is no good either? Then… mix the two?
I combined them with Attunement Agent and water in a one-to-one ratio.
"The reaction's good!"
A promising sensation rose from inside the pot. Sister Mary showed off her multitasking skills, checking my side while working on her own combination.
She's gotten used to it, I guess.
The combination itself was close to simple labor, after all…
Rainbow light flickered to signal success, and the contents of the pot swirled together and took shape. Inside the pot sat several small lumps.
"These are…"
The form was familiar to me. More precisely, I knew what they were from my previous life's memories.
Pills. Conveniently shaped pills for easy consumption.
"What a curious form. Are they elixir pills?"
Come to think of it, some medicines in this world did come in this shape. They were just larger and harder to swallow. Most medicines prepared at apothecaries came as powders.
"Probably."
What kind of medicine is it? For now I carefully transferred them into a container. Because of the amount of materials we'd used, there were more than thirty pills.
"It'd be fastest to just try one myself…"
I muttered quietly, and Sister Mary rushed over to my side.
"Absolutely, absolutely not. You must not take them."
"You heard that?"
"We can always test the effects on some useless temple personnel, so please take better care of your own body, Julian."
I shrugged. Shouldn't we be the ones protecting the faithful instead?
"Yes, yes, I will."
I'll just check later in secret.
"I'm confiscating these."
"Ah…!"
I stretched out a pitiful hand, but Sister Mary was firm.
"Hngh…"
I slumped my shoulders. I couldn't confirm the effects, but since we'd used poppy, I could guess. Pain relief, of course.
"Next, maybe I should try some evening primrose…"
I still hadn't gotten a feel for this one, but I worked at it diligently for now. Thanks to Sister Mary somehow obtaining over a hundred flowers, we had room to spare.
But in two hours I'd used up a third of them. Maybe I should think a bit more carefully before using them…
"Ugh, maybe I should set this aside for now…"
There were other materials, so I might as well try those…
The next material I tried was tobacco leaves.
"Tobacco…"
There was only one reason I wanted to try combining with this. I already knew what could be made from it.
Honestly, combining while knowing what would come out was a bit easier than combining without any idea of the result.
Tobacco was bad for the body, but if alchemy's mysterious power eliminated the side effects…?
I held a tiny bit of hope for that as well.
"Tobacco, is it?"
"Yes."
But how exactly was tobacco made? I knew from my previous life's knowledge that there were all sorts of tobacco products, and I knew pipe tobacco was widespread in this world too. But I had no idea how to actually make it. I wasn't even a smoker—how would I know?
For now I decided to roughly mix the tobacco leaves with Attunement Agent or water and try combining.
The result was, of course, failure.
"Not easy."
Still, I'd produced one result today… I should rest and organize that for now.
My sister helped clean up without a word, and Sister Mary brought tea and snacks.
"Thank you."
"You combined without even eating lunch, so I figured you'd be hungry."
Has that much time already passed?
"How far did Young Master and Daniel go that they still aren't back?"
"Just leave the fools be."
When I brought up the two of them, Sister Mary shook her head with a look that said they were a headache.
Well, those two aren't children—they'll manage on their own… right?
I decided to end today's recipe hunting there and prepare some Attunement Agent in advance.
Sister Mary and I diligently made Attunement Agent until the two returned. We focused especially on the yellow Attunement Agent used for Scrap Iron combinations, to the point that we couldn't make any more because we were out of sand.
"Whew, with this much we shouldn't need to make Attunement Agent when we produce the iron, right?"
I decided to wrap up today's combinations and rest.
I finished cleaning the kitchen thoroughly and was about to head off to rest when Priest Daniel returned.
"I'm back."
A large bag hung from Priest Daniel's back, and he carried big sacks in both hands.
Don't tell me he brought alchemy materials like that?
"W-well, let's head to the storeroom first."
We went to the storeroom and examined the goods…
"This is…"
The sacks held fine sand. It was so fine I almost mistook it for something else entirely.
"How is it?"
"It's excellent."
The other sack held slightly coarser soil with plenty of gravel mixed in.
"And this side…?"
"I removed the moisture from mud. Just add water and it'll become mud again."
Well, I could make mud from sand alone, but using this soil wouldn't hurt either.
The bag no doubt held stones, but I still needed to check, so I opened it and looked inside. It was packed full of hard stones, especially ones with a dark luster.
"I looked into it and learned that dark-colored stones contain a lot of iron."
"You worked hard. With this much, we shouldn't run short."
Priest Daniel had brought exactly the materials I'd described. While I was taking some out of the storeroom and organizing them, Young Master Maximilian arrived.
"You're here?"
"Yes."
Well then, shall I see what the Young Master brought too? Maximilian had come with one sack and a bag. First, the sack held sand, just like Priest Daniel's—fine sand of similar quality.
"How is it?"
He looked quite proud of himself.
"Well, it's about the same."
"Pardon?"
"It's similar."
I casually showed him the sand Priest Daniel had brought. Maximilian looked toward Priest Daniel with a resentful expression. They're not children—why is he acting like that? Next I examined the contents of the bag Maximilian had brought.
"This is…"
It wasn't stone. Inside were carefully shaped ingots.
Maximilian looked triumphant again.
"These are Black Iron ingots. Watching your alchemy all this time, I thought that instead of stone, Black Iron might work, so I brought some."
There were also ingots containing silver. They were certainly hard-to-obtain materials, but… would the combination even work properly?
I looked at the Young Master's cocky expression and let out a sigh.