The Delivery Department (1)
"?"
It was the verdict handed down in a court that had reconvened more than half an hour late.
The four chieftains who heard it could not collect their wits.
'No, what in the world did the two of them say to each other during the recess…?'
'Just how great an offer did that man make to make the verdict flip one hundred and eighty degrees?'
'…Though for some reason, His Majesty the defendant doesn't seem to have lost anything at all.'
Two hours of community service.
That was the entire sentence King Gordin had handed down to himself.
For Hagore, chieftain of the White Anvil Tribe, on the other hand, it was news like a bolt from the blue.
'Starting today, for fifty years? A renewal of the contract term?'
Even to dwarves who lived for hundreds of years, that was by no means a short span of time.
But before he could say a word, Gordin moved first.
"This is a conclusion reached after long and careful deliberation by me, presiding judge and King of La Forge. Chieftain Hagore, you will carry out your contract with the White Tower in good faith."
"……"
Truthfully, when it came down to it, their failure to uphold the contract had been entirely the fault of His Majesty's isolationist decree.
The word unfair nearly burst out of his mouth, but he held it back with superhuman restraint.
"…Understood."
"Then I declare this court adjourned. Everyone, return to your daily lives."
"May the blessing of the great flame be with you."
Fwoosh! Fwaaash.
As the chieftains' flames went out one by one, only Oscar's flame and Gordin remained in the courtroom.
Gordin, staring down at the flame, offered a word of advice.
"You'd best be careful too. The world has changed a great deal, and the demons are beginning to stir again. Back then, you may have been humanity's last hope, but you're rather weak now, aren't you."
"Don't worry. I was never humanity's last hope to begin with."
"…Kehk, kahahaha!"
Gordin, catching the meaning buried in those words, threw his head back and laughed.
"Is that so? Yes, of course it is. This is the Oscar I knew."
He bid him farewell, in hopes of the day they would meet again.
Just as he'd said—Oscar had never been humanity's last hope.
"Farewell, first calamity of the demon race, their eternal natural enemy."
"What in the world just happened?"
The flames died away, and the moment he opened his eyes in his true body once more—
Hagore came at him with a demand.
"……"
Rolling his stiff neck a few times, Oscar answered.
"I begged him."
"Begged him?"
"Yes. It seems a plea steeped in all my sincerity managed to sway King Gordin's heart."
"He's not the sort of man to be swayed by… by such personal sentiment, is he?"
"Then how else would you explain a result like that?"
Well, that much was true.
In the end, Hagore gave up pressing him.
'Hmmm. I won't know unless I pry into His Majesty's true feelings, I suppose.'
Letting out a deep sigh of disappointment, he spoke up.
"Fine, I get it. In any case, we have permission for the two factions to interact now. How do you think we should go about working together?"
"First, one question. How many dwarves does the White Anvil Tribe have at present?"
"Thirty-seven."
Thirty-seven.
Considering they were one of the five tribes that made up the kingdom, it wasn't a particularly large number.
'Nothing to be done about it. Even every dwarf on the continent combined doesn't number more than five hundred.'
Which was precisely why their bonds ran so deep.
Every single one of them was precious to their kind.
"Then first, let's prepare for your move."
"Move? Don't tell me you mean for us to relocate to the White Tower?"
"Yes. It seems the more efficient option."
The White Tower currently had quite a few empty floors.
For the sake of the White Anvil Tribe, clearing out an entire floor for them would be entirely possible.
Oscar spread his index and middle fingers.
"If the White Anvil Tribe lives in the White Tower, there are two advantages."
"Hm. One would be work efficiency, I take it. It eliminates all unnecessary travel time."
"Correct. And the other is your safety."
"Safety… Ah!"
Once the dwarves resumed dealings with humans, plenty of factions would look upon it with covetous eyes.
Which meant there was a good chance of unscrupulous parties pulling every dirty trick imaginable to get a finger in the pot.
"You've become part of the family now, so the safety of the White Anvil Tribe will be the White Tower's responsibility."
"Hmmm. We're hardly a weak tribe ourselves, but hearing you say that puts my mind considerably at ease."
Hagore, after deliberating a moment, nodded.
"Very well. We'll begin preparing to move at once."
"…You don't feel the need to hear the other dwarves' opinions first?"
A leader acting unilaterally could sometimes sow discord within the ranks.
At that concern, Hagore gave an awkward laugh.
"If that's your worry, there's no need for it."
Hagore turned and bellowed at the dwarves who had been hiding here and there, eavesdropping on the conversation.
"Pack your things! We're heading to the world of humans!"
"Oooooh!"
"Booze! First things first, let's drink ourselves silly!"
As if they'd been waiting for nothing else, the dwarves finished their preparations to leave with remarkable speed.
"My, my. I take it they all wanted to go up to the surface?"
"Seventeen years is no short time for us either. It's only natural they'd grow tired of hiding underground and start itching to move."
The luggage the dwarves hurriedly gathered in the square wasn't all that much.
"…Is that really everything you need to bring?"
"Of course. If we need something, we'll simply go and make it."
"Aye, with our craftsmanship, there's nothing we can't forge."
It was the mindset of: if you lack something, just make it.
All they had brought were their own hammers and tools, and the Primeval Flame.
Oscar looked them over for a moment, then nodded.
"Very well. Then let's depart."
To the White Tower.
Oscar's shoulders were held high and his stride proud as he led the White Anvil Tribe into the White Tower.
And no wonder—he had just succeeded in reopening relations with the dwarves after twenty years of severance.
Unfortunately, however, the emotions in the other mages' eyes were far from reverence.
"Oscar, what's with the kids?"
"I suppose he's giving the neighborhood little ones a field trip to the magic tower."
"Hey, kids, you mustn't go running wild in the hallway, all right? Oscar's in charge, so listen to him, okay?"
"Just because they look fascinating doesn't mean you can go touching everything, now."
"……"
To their eyes, the thirty-seven dwarves looked like nothing more than children out on a picnic.
Hagore's face turned positively thunderous.
"Oscar. Just who in blazes are those imbeciles?"
"…They are, for the moment, the mages of the White Tower."
"Hmph. My will to work just evaporated. I'm nearly tempted to turn around and go home."
"Just bear with it a little. I'll draft a proper official notice and set everyone straight."
Gorn, who had been listening to the two of them, carefully raised a question.
"On the way here, we saw a huge shopping district. Might we be able to buy alcohol there?"
"Ah, I'll give the shopping district advance notice as well. If trading directly with humans makes you uncomfortable, I'll procure the alcohol for you separately."
"Not on your life! I want to buy booze with my own two hands."
"D-does that mean we'll finally get to buy our own drink, like those Red Sand Tribe bastards?"
"No more having to put on a pathetic act and beg Dad to run an errand just once…?"
"Heheh. I'm starting to think it was well worth coming up to the surface for the first time in ages."
The moment the dwarves' faces lit up with excitement like children on a field trip—
a heated argument drifted over from not far away.
"Just how long are we the only ones supposed to bust our backs like dogs?!"
"Haah, how many times do I have to say it? You're not the only ones working hard! We're toiling away too!"
"You call brewing a few measly potions hard?! We haul heavy loads all day long to every corner of the city!"
"…Measly potions? And whose raises do you think those paychecks of yours are thanks to?"
Hagore, watching the argument unfold, grabbed the hem of his trousers and gave them a shake.
"Oscar, just who are those imbeciles, brawling at the tower entrance in broad daylight?"
"Hmm. Those would be the mages of the potion department and the delivery department."
The reason for the fight could be roughly pieced together from their exchange.
"It seems the delivery department, which works outside the tower relatively more, has a heavier workload and is pressing the issue because of it."
"In a word, it's blue collar versus white collar, then."
"…Dwarves know such terms as well?"
"Of course. But couldn't a problem like that be solved if the White Tower simply rotated department personnel on a regular basis?"
"That's… well, brewing potions is no easy business, you see."
The mages currently assigned to the potion department were the very ones who had worked alongside him to create the Cadena Flu vaccine.
They had done nothing but brew potions nonstop since then, and by now the process had become second nature to them.
'If I send them to the delivery department for the sake of fairness, potion production will inevitably hit a snag immediately.'
No matter how thoroughly he taught them the formula, brewing potions demanded practiced skill.
Resting his chin on his hand, Oscar deliberated for a moment.
'But thinking long-term, the delivery department does have a point.'
It wasn't as if they were doing delivery work because they lacked skill or ranked too low.
Simply put, when he had first recruited the mages to brew the vaccine, they hadn't made the cut—and they'd been stuck shouldering the grueling delivery work ever since, for no other reason.
If one insisted on assigning blame, it came down to plain bad luck.
"…It's hardly my place as an outsider to say, but this doesn't look like a healthy situation."
"That's how I see it too."
The White Tower of today had only just begun making money and only recently regained anything resembling the dignity of a proper magic tower.
It hadn't yet grown heavy enough to stand proudly among the Four Great Magic Towers as it once had.
In other words, they still had a long road ahead.
'In a situation like this, that kind of division is poison.'
Especially if department-level squabbles like the one between delivery and potions dragged on, they would harden into outright factions.
A faction forming within a power that had only just learned to crawl?
The corner of Oscar's mouth curled up in a twisted smile.
'If something like that actually sprouts, I won't stand by and watch.'
Wasn't this the White Tower he had run himself ragged like a dog for months to raise this far?
Watching its growth stall—or worse, regress—over something as petty as factional infighting was not something he could tolerate.
"I suppose I'll have to deal with that problem first."
"Mm. Give it your best."
"Why do you keep talking as if it's someone else's business?"
Oscar flashed a grin down at Hagore.
"Forgive me the moment you arrive, but there's a job I need you to start right away."
"What? You distinctly said I'd get to drink first…"
"It's urgent, I'm telling you. Once the work's done, I'll let you drink until your belly honestly threatens to burst."
A shiver ran through Hagore before he could stop it.
Somehow, it felt as though the old days were stirring again—the days when he'd been worked like a dog by Oscar Sage.