Business Launch (1)
Fortunately, no monsters attacked during the night.
The reason was almost certainly the enraged ogre’s roar that had rolled down from the direction of the hills. Terrified, none of them had dared to approach.
Finally!
Once breakfast was finished, the real work of dismantling the ogre began in earnest.
“An ogre’s body is so tough that even dismantling it requires tools enchanted with magic. Anticipating that, our master prepared these in advance.”
Roy handed the dismantlers the equipment he had been storing in the wagon. Even as a corpse, something on the level of an ogre simply could not be taken apart with ordinary weapons. In his previous life, only people with ample mana could manage it, and only after wrapping their tools in mana first.
They severed the ogre’s limbs, hung the body aloft, and drained the blood into oak barrels. Building a dismantling yard ahead of time had been a stroke of pure genius. Within moments, dozens of barrels stood filled with dark crimson blood.
Once the blood was drained, the skinning began. More than a few people could not bear to watch—Ana and Anna among them, along with the priests who had been dispatched. Even Roy had to admit the scene was excessively brutal, enough to turn anyone’s stomach.
After that came the fat and bones, carefully separated, and the organs gathered in one place. It was there that Roy discovered something like a massive bonus.
“M-magic stones!”
“Th-this many…”
“These aren’t the ogre’s own magic stones. They’re the stones of the monsters it digested.”
From the ogre’s guts poured a vast number of magic stones, large and small.
What a windfall.
It was not a matter of dozens. Hundreds—perhaps more than a thousand.
I won’t have to worry about magic stones for a while.
Watching the dismantling work, Roy wore a broader, more contented smile than he had in a long time.
A full month had already passed since the ogre hunt.
Contrary to every plan he had made, Roy had not been able to set a single foot outside the house.
“You will stay put and behave until I say otherwise!”
That had been the Baron’s order. At a mere seven years old, running off and acting on his own behind his parents’ backs was never going to be forgiven.
I half expected something like this once the wolves were gone… but isn’t this a little excessive?
Roy was thoroughly dissatisfied. If he had not brought the ogre down, their side would have suffered far worse losses. On top of that, if the ogre’s blood was not processed at once, it would harden in no time and become completely useless. He had pressed that point hard with the Baron.
“I will permit you access to the underground laboratory. That is all. If you act on your own again, I will hold not only you but Geren and Marek accountable as well.”
Roy had no choice but to obey. It was not a serious problem, though. Processing that much blood was going to keep him buried in the basement for quite a while anyway. If anything, he was more likely to run short of mana for the work than out of things to do.
I’ll just hole up here for a while and make money.
He had no idea how long the confinement would last, but he figured a few weeks at most—a month, and it would be over. Even Jerry, who had practically held a season ticket for house arrest, had usually been released within two weeks. And how could his own offense possibly compare to that delinquent’s?
Yet here he was. A full month had gone by, and the Baron had said nothing.
Roy was growing anxious. He needed permission to leave the manor freely, using the new amulets he had crafted—and he needed it soon.
The amulets are finished, but…
The Baron still had not lifted Roy’s confinement. Under these circumstances, even asking for leave to go outside the manor was close to impossible. All he would get for his trouble was another scolding.
That did not mean Roy had done nothing. He knocked on the door of the Baron’s office every single day, begging to be forgiven already. And every time, the man claimed to be busy. The worst part was that he genuinely was busy, so Roy had nothing left to say.
November was already drawing near. In the Greenhilt territory, the harvest was in its final stretch. Everything beyond what each village needed for itself was being hauled without end toward the capital of the territory, Parolas—fresh grain, cart after cart of it.
That enormous volume of grain would be sold straight on to other territories by the merchant caravans that had come from every domain. Taxes arising from those sales, of course, along with calculating and distributing the profits from the grain; managing the flood of visitors who arrived with the caravans; securing public order; and, on top of all that, the new business Roy had started for them. List them all, and the work never ended.
This was the busiest season of the year for the lord of this land and every official under him, a stretch when tasks arrived without pause.
Things are getting tangled.
It looked as though Roy’s plans would have to be set aside for a little while. He would not need to wait long, though. A perfect opportunity was about to arrive.
Roy’s seventh birthday banquet.
This was no ordinary birthday. Not only the minor lords of the Greenhilt territory, but visitors from nearby domains as well, would come. The eyes of any number of nobles would be fixed on the occasion—and for the guest of honor himself to be under house arrest? Unthinkable.
A tiresome ceremony he had barely looked forward to at all was suddenly something Roy began to anticipate with real eagerness.
A free-exit pass as a birthday present. Hmm. That wouldn’t be bad at all.
Turning such thoughts over, Roy spent yet another day buried in the basement, crafting new amulets.
The city of Parolas was currently in the full swing of festival season.
The October Harvest Festival held at the temple was celebrated around this time in other territories as well. But as a domain that produced the second-largest amount of food in the kingdom, its scale left every other territory in a different league.
Merchants from the caravans who came to buy grain and resell it elsewhere were only the beginning; crowds poured in from every region. It had been true since ancient times: where food is abundant, people gather; where people gather, merchants gather; where merchants gather, there is more to see; and so people gather again.
Because of that structure, every October an enormous throng flooded into Parolas, and every street and corner of the city took on a festival air. The endless stretch of street stalls that formed on its own was far more impressive even than the one in August. August’s stalls drew people from within the territory for the baptismal rites and coming-of-age ceremonies; October’s brought in visitors from outside as well.
Merchants from other domains who came to buy grain did not arrive with empty carts. They loaded their own territories’ specialties and brought them to this city. The market that opened as a result could only be on another scale entirely.
And this year was even more special. Over the past month, anyone with half-decent access to information had heard the news.
Someone killed an ogre, they say.
A huge one, too.
And the one who took it down was the lord’s young son?
It was all thanks to magic weapons—and those weapons weren’t found in a dungeon; they were made by hand. If you go to the Greenhilt territory, you can not only see them but buy them.
On the strength of those rumors, more people had flocked in than in any year before. Among them were not only grain merchants but famous mercenaries and hunters as well. Some had been sent by weapon dealers or others on their behalf; some had come purely as tourists.
And once they arrived, they learned the rumors were true.
“This is the sword, right here!”
“Ohh!”
A burly mercenary drew a blade in the middle of the street. Light unique to magic weapons spilled from the steel. That bluish radiance, something mere wrapping of mana could never produce, seized the eyes of the onlookers and passersby alike.
“Magic stones for sale! Magic stones! Magic stones that were in the ogre’s belly!”
“They’re all tiny, though. How do you prove they were in an ogre’s stomach?”
“If you don’t trust me, don’t buy! Why come and harass a man trying to do business? I’m not even charging more just because they came from an ogre’s gut!”
“Urgh… well, that’s true.”
There was no one left in the territory who did not know the ogre had been subjugated. Using that fact to advertise one’s shop had become something of a fashion. Since no one was gouging prices, the city guard simply looked the other way. And because enormous ogre bones were on display as shop decorations all over town, even the more dubious claims somehow acquired a strange credibility.
That was because Roy had sold off every part he did not need for a pittance. Those bones were difficult to work, but they were widely used for all kinds of ornaments as well as weapons and armor. Hang one of those massive bones on a wall, and the whole atmosphere of a house changed. There was no better way to flaunt one’s wealth to visitors.
“The lord’s son is only seven?”
“That’s what I’m telling you! He had his baptismal rites with my own daughter. At that age, the stories about how gifted he is are already everywhere. My girl shook his hand and even talked with him—she wouldn’t stop bragging about it.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“What, has this man spent his whole life being fooled by people?”
Talk of Roy never stopped. But the person truly drawing attention was, in fact, someone else entirely.