Chapter 8: The Unattractive Flower (4)
Chapter 8: The Unattractive Flower (4)
Translation: Godtl
"...Haaah."
Penelope dragged her feet as if they weighed a thousand pounds.
Penelope was naturally an active person.
Given that horseback riding and hunting were her hobbies, staying out overnight wasn't even worth making a fuss about.
The reason her breath kept escaping in deflated sighs was entirely due to the disgraceful scene she'd shown Jurgen this morning.
Should she have apologized more properly?
But nobles don't apologize to commoners.
At most, even when making concessions, "That was regrettable" is the limit.
That's just how it's decided to be.
Moreover, wasn't it entirely thanks to her Emerald Permit that he could come to harvest on the fourth floor of the Labyrinth Demon Realm?
Penelope had already shown him favor—her little tantrum was just a minor display of temper.
Plus minus zero.
Now they're even with no debts left between them!
If he really wants something, I'll just give him a gift outside!
But no matter how much she muttered to herself, Penelope found no comfort in her heart...
"How much farther do we have to go?"
"...Just keep going this way for about five more minutes."
"Thanks."
Jurgen wasn't particularly bothered.
Though he'd been scolded first thing in the morning, wasn't she always a prickly young lady anyway?
She probably just had a bad dream or something—easy enough to let it go.
It wasn't like he'd gone out of his way expecting profound gratitude either.
At that age, it's normal to grumble and get irritated over trivial things.
Besides, Jurgen had a dream so grand that her little outburst seemed trivial in comparison.
Cola.
He needed to make cola as soon as possible.
"We're almost there."
"Oh, I see. That was quite fast."
Thanks to Penelope putting all her effort into guiding them properly to make up for her mistake, the two arrived at the fourth floor of the Demon Realm faster than expected.
The lukewarm breeze seeping through the passage cracks signaled their approach to the first harvesting spot—the 'Cinnamon Reward Room.'
"We've come to the right place."
In this way, the structure of the Labyrinth Demon Realm was less like a simple maze and more like an ant colony.
After navigating through narrow, winding paths, 'Reward Rooms' containing various resources would appear.
"Wow..."
As they checked the map and turned the corner, the spectacular sight that unfolded made Penelope gasp.
To put it simply, it was like a massive greenhouse.
A colossal cavern with a ceiling dozens of meters high.
From above, an indescribably mystical light shone down like the sun, illuminating the entire space.
Lush trees lined the fertile soil, their verdant leaves swaying, while the warm, humid air pleasantly tickled their noses.
"Amazing. Who could have made a place like this?"
"There's something even more surprising."
"What is it?"
"The fact that even if you harvest everything here, it all grows back in no time."
Perhaps it was the greenery they encountered after wandering through the labyrinth, where not a trace of nature could be found, but even Penelope's gloom lifted slightly.
Though she'd known about it intellectually, she hadn't expected it to be this mystical.
"Wait here a moment."
Jurgen set down his bag for a while and approached one of the trees.
About 10 to 15 meters tall, with deep brown bark and leaves the size of an adult woman's palm.
When he rubbed a fallen leaf between his fingers and sniffed, a subtly sharp fragrance spread.
Luckily, they'd come to the right place.
Penelope, her spirits somewhat restored, sidled up curiously.
"What are you checking so carefully?"
"To confirm whether this is the tree I'm looking for."
"Let me see. Just by the smell, it's obviously cinnamon."
"There are different types of cinnamon, you know. Ceylon and cassia. This one's cassia."
"Aren't they all just cinnamon?"
"Not quite."
Cinnamon is broadly divided into Ceylon and cassia.
First, Ceylon.
It's distributed in tightly rolled, paper-thin dried strips, characterized by a sweet fragrance and delicate softness.
Because both production and harvesting are labor-intensive, it's classified as a premium product.
If a modern restaurant or slightly upscale café has a menu item labeled "cinnamon," this is usually the type used.
Cassia, on the other hand, looks cheaper at first glance.
Though its form of distribution is similar to Ceylon, its appearance is much rougher, and accordingly, it's cheaper, mainly used in mass-produced goods.
It contains almost none of the "eugenol" component responsible for a smooth aroma, so its spicy, pungent scent is extremely strong.
If you think of the difference between a cinnamon latte (Ceylon) and sujeonggwa (cassia), you can intuitively understand the distinction.
In Britannia, only Ceylon was ever used as a culinary ingredient.
Cassia had merely a negligible demand as an insect repellent.
"..."
Penelope's face darkened with dismay as she listened to the explanation.
Had she really drawn the short straw among the Reward Rooms, despite her earnest efforts to make up for this morning's blunder?
"Don't worry. You've guided me well."
"...Really?"
Let me reiterate—Ceylon was a premium product, while cassia was undeniably an inferior substitute.
But the likelihood of a beverage company, which staked its survival on cost-cutting, using a premium ingredient was vanishingly slim.
In other words—
"The cola uses this one."
"O-of course I knew that. My palate is quite precise, you know."
Only then did Penelope's asymmetrically furrowed brows relax.
Considering how she'd been sulking all day like a pup with a stomachache, the fact that she was now clicking her tongue again suggested her mood had improved considerably.
Jurgen was beginning to get a sense of what kind of person she was.
"Tell me how to harvest it. I'll lend a hand."
"If it were Ceylon, we'd have to carefully scrape only the inner bark of young trees aged two to three years. But cassia is much simpler—older trees are fine, and even the outer bark can be used."
Penelope curled the corner of her lips meaningfully.
Good.
At last, an opportunity to demonstrate her skills had arrived.
It was a shame that her first chance to properly wield alchemy in ages was against mere trees rather than monsters, but what did it matter?
"In short, we just have to chop them all down."
"Oh-ho, can you manage that?"
"I'm not nearly idle enough to sit around peeling bark."
Penelope drew a silver-coated wooden case from her waist.
Slightly smaller than her forearm, it was a rectangular container with rounded edges.
An elegant rose motif was engraved in relief at its center.
This was a Palette—a specialized tool alchemists carried to safely store their catalysts.
"Stay behind me if you don't want to get caught in it."
The catalyst she selected from the open Palette was the Wind Quill.
A gull's white feather tipped with lapis lazuli—its craftsmanship and materials were impeccable, as expected of a product verified by the prestigious Alchemy Society.
But a fine catalyst did not guarantee a fine spell.
A catalyst was merely a tool.
How one played it, what magic one manifested—that depended entirely on the caster's skill.
As a fellow alchemist, Jurgen was curious to see just how capable this regular customer of his was.
"Huuu..."
Penelope clasped the feather between her crossed palms and exhaled into them.
Then, with an uncharacteristically solemn expression, she extended her hands before her chest, stacked horizontally.
It had been so long since she last used magic that even the act felt unfamiliar.
As she channeled mana to activate the catalyst, a familiar sensation coiled around her body.
First, she projected mana into the catalyst to draw forth the power of wind.
Compression.
She honed that wind into blade-like edges.
Ejection.
Finally, she unleashed them in all directions.
"Running Wind."
Twang.
With a sound like a cello string plucked in a low register, thousands of blades danced forth from between Penelope's fingers.
The blades were, in truth, compressed gusts of wind.
The transparent gale swept silently across the Reward Room, a space as large as two basketball courts.
—Whudududud.
Moments later, the cassia trees collapsed onto the ground, neatly diced into cuboid segments.
The cuts had been so sharp that the results manifested half a beat later.
"Oh-ho."
Even by Jurgen's standards, Penelope's skill was impressive.
As a 4th-Rank Alchemist, he'd assumed she could handle a mere wind feather with ease—but...
The spell's refinement exceeded his expectations.
The sharpness and transparency of the wind-woven blades.
The control to divide thousands of blades uniformly and release them simultaneously.
The focus to cleave hundreds of trees in an instant without stirring a single mote of dust—all were superb.
But.
Something's off.
A strange dissonance resonated from the Code Penelope had woven.
The spell itself was flawless, yet something about it felt... unnatural.
Is there an issue with her mana circuits?
To put it in terms, it was less like watching a perfectly functional bicycle and more like seeing a unicycle.
The end result was the same—pedaling forward to move ahead—but there was a subtle sense of dissonance in the process.
The details were unclear.
Perhaps it was simply that Penelope lacked the imagination to fully materialize her magic.
But for now, her mind had wandered off track, and before her stood Penelope, waiting expectantly for praise.
As a regular customer, a little lip service wouldn't hurt.
"Impressive. I can't help but applaud."
"It's nothing."
Whatever his true thoughts, Jurgen gave her a round of polite applause, while Penelope shrugged as if it were no big deal.
The heat of intellectual fervor that warmed her brain as she constructed the magic, the exhilarating rush of mana coursing through her circuits—
The liberating sensation of unleashing the loaded spell, the pride in knowing her skills hadn't dulled—
It was the best she'd felt in a long time.
And with Jurgen's admiration and exclamations adding to it, her long-starved craving for recognition was finally satisfied, her pale cheeks flushing a rosy peach.
She wanted to boast even more, but doing so might make her seem less impressive.
Acting as if this were just another day made it all the more special.
And Penelope hadn't even shown the full extent of her abilities yet.
"The trimming seems about done. So, how do you plan to carry all this?"
Even if the wood had been neatly cut into cube-shaped blocks, hauling them out of the labyrinth was another matter entirely.
And today wasn't just about the cinnamon trees—they still had to gather nutmeg, vanilla beans, and neroli from the Reward Room.
Normally, one would hire a porter to handle this, but there were only two people here.
In other words, a dire crisis that left Jurgen at a loss.
"I do have a bag. I could lend it to you if you need it."
Penelope, having set the stage, revealed the saddlebag at her side.
The ivory-colored saddlebag, which matched her dress perfectly, looked like nothing more than a fashion accessory at first glance.
Its design prioritized aesthetic beauty over functionality.
"It's enchanted, so it should be able to hold everything."
But this saddlebag was the kind of item that would make any adventurer drool.
A luxury item equipped with both spatial expansion and weight reduction—something most mid-tier adventurers could only dream of due to its price.
One could say it was a trump card she had prepared for exactly this kind of situation.
However—
"Miss Penelope, sorry, what was that you just said?"
Penelope was about to witness something unbelievable.
A black tentacle was oozing sluggishly out of Jurgen's leather bag.
Like a frog's tongue, the tentacle snatched up the wooden blocks and swiftly tucked them inside the bag.
"A monster?!"
"Ah, let me introduce you. This is my familiar, Viche."
"A familiar? You're a tamer?"
"Not exactly... but anyway, say hello, Viche. This is Miss Penelope, a regular."
Viche wriggled a single tentacle in greeting right in front of Penelope's stunned face.
"No way..."
It wasn't like she'd never heard of such things.
Though monsters were generally hostile to humans, she had learned during her university days that there were rare individuals known as "tamers" who could control them.
The most famous example was the legendary adventurer "Ravina," revered as the "Queen of Monsters."
Since the talent was largely innate, simply being a tamer was enough to be considered a combat asset on par with a 2nd-Rank Alchemist.
Recalling this, Penelope flinched and asked,
"So... how strong is your familiar?"
"Not particularly strong. As you can see, it's not a combat type. But it has a habit of storing things, so it's perfect as a bag substitute."
"So it's not as impressive as my magic."
"Of course not."
It was a small relief that this familiar named Viche—a name that didn't suit it at all—wasn't some powerful monster...
But still, it was a little unsettling.
She had laid out the red carpet and revealed her special trump card, only for Jurgen to perfectly time the reveal of his familiar, leaving the situation awkwardly balanced.
The original gap between a 4th-Rank Alchemist and a civilian had now been neutralized into one between a 4th-Rank Alchemist and a tamer.
[Candy]
"Good work."
About three minutes later.
Viche had successfully gathered all the cassia trees in the Reward Room.
The speed was astonishing, incomparable to doing it by hand.
"Now, shall we move on to the next Reward Room?"
"Sigh, fine, fine."
That day, Penelope and Jurgen thoroughly looted the fourth-floor Reward Rooms through a similar process.
For Penelope, who had been thirsting for recognition, it might have been an unsatisfying haul—
But with this, all the materials had been collected.