The Delivery Department (2)
"So, you're telling me…"
Lately, the Vice Tower Master seemed to have developed a hobby of discovering Oscar's many different expressions.
He was a man who rarely let his emotions show, so it was genuinely amusing to watch how his face changed each time something surprised him.
"You say the chieftain of the White Anvil Tribe is standing in the corridor right now?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. I did hear that Oscar was going to visit their city alone, but…"
He hadn't expected him to bring the dwarf back this easily.
No, honestly, he had assumed Oscar would return empty-handed without so much as a glimpse of the chieftain.
The White Tower had sent envoys every year to try to establish relations with the dwarves, and none of those attempts had borne any fruit.
"What on earth did you offer him to win him over?"
"I tempted him with an airship."
Oscar revealed the secret of how he had persuaded the White Anvil Tribe.
At that, the Vice Tower Master slapped his knee in admiration.
"Brilliant! Beer drunk above the clouds—even I, who care little for drink, find that appealing."
"Exactly. Imagine what it means to dwarves, who live and die by their ale."
This was their chance to be recorded in history as the first dwarves ever to drink on top of the clouds.
It was, in other words, an offer they absolutely could not—would not—pass up.
"We shouldn't be sitting around chatting. Please bring the chieftain inside at once."
"Yes, sir."
Oscar opened the door and beckoned to Hagore, who had been waiting glumly in the corridor.
As the dwarf stepped into the room, the Vice Tower Master rose from his seat and greeted him.
"I am Hamel Grimwiz, Vice Tower Master of the White Tower. It has been a long time."
"Aye, so it has. Thirteen years, give or take?"
Hagore folded his arms, tilted his head up, and answered with full confidence.
Not that his childlike appearance lent him much in the way of intimidation.
"Has it truly been that long?"
"Must feel like no short span to you humans. You've aged quite a bit yourself."
Seating himself, Hagore extended a hand.
"Well then, I expect you've heard the gist of it already. Let's work well together."
"When you say the gist…?"
"Hmm? You mean you haven't heard yet?"
Shooting the Vice Tower Master a look that plainly asked what on earth the two of them had been talking about until now, Hagore explained it himself.
"Our White Anvil Tribe will be living here in the White Tower from now on. The exclusive contract's been renewed for fifty years, so you'll be seeing quite a lot of us."
At those words, the Vice Tower Master's pupils trembled.
Dwarves—who were they, after all?
The miraculous race whose mere touch sent the value of any object skyrocketing.
And now the tower would have access to that race's craftsmanship for the next fifty years?
And with commerce between humans and dwarves severed at present, no less…
It amounted to complete, undisputed ownership of their technology—in a word, a monopoly.
Even if the dwarves simply built and sold equipment, Shilin would become the wealthiest city on the continent overnight.
Just as he was silently screaming with joy, Oscar spoke up.
"What if we converted an entire floor into a colossal workshop and ran it that way? What do you think?"
"Of course—of course it's possible. Why would it not be?"
The Vice Tower Master leapt from his seat at once, pulled a floor guide from the drawer, and paged through it.
"We have floors that are currently out of operation like this. Is there a level that catches your eye?"
"Hm."
Hagore studied the booklet, then asked,
"The thirteenth floor looks good to me. With empty floors above and below, we can hammer and clatter to our hearts' content."
"Very well. If you need any materials, simply say the word, whenever."
There was no such thing as inter-floor noise complaints in a magic tower.
In other words, Hagore had chosen as his lair a place where he would rarely have to cross paths with other humans.
"Then for the time being, you can rest while the workshop and your lodgings are being built…"
"That won't do."
It was Oscar who so cleanly severed the Vice Tower Master's kindness.
Ignoring the glare Hagore leveled at him, he continued.
"I noticed on my way in that the conflict between the potion department and the delivery department seems to have deepened lately. Am I right?"
"…Hah. So they quarreled again, did they?"
The Vice Tower Master sighed and nodded.
"Yes. I've been racking my brain for a way to satisfy both sides, but every solution I find takes time. And we can hardly afford to give up the potion division's revenue, either."
"Then I have a proposal to make."
"Oh? And what would that be?"
The Vice Tower Master's eyes lit up.
Oscar's ingenuity had pulled the tower out of crisis more than once already.
Bearing the full weight of that expectation, Oscar opened his mouth.
"Let's use this opportunity to overhaul the delivery department."
"An overhaul, you say…?"
"For one thing, the delivery business simply cannot continue in its current form."
Oscar laid out what he had been thinking.
"The biggest problem is wasted manpower. There are far more than one or two intermediate- and high-rank mages currently assigned to the delivery department, aren't there?"
"…I can't deny it."
"Just reassign those people to magical research or commissioned work, and their grievances will vanish entirely."
"But we cannot abolish the delivery business—not with the airship project ahead of us."
"Yes, I know. Which is all the more reason we have to fix things now."
Once the airship's development was complete, the White Tower needed to spread its wings and take flight.
The point was that they could not afford to have their ankles grabbed later by talk of overhauls and reorganizations.
"Ideally, I think a few intermediate mages should oversee and manage the delivery department."
"And if they're managing and supervising… who, pray tell, will actually do the delivering?"
"We hire new couriers, of course."
At that answer, the Vice Tower Master groaned.
"Oscar. The White Tower's delivery business runs on one thing and one thing only: the Flight spell. Where in the world—anywhere but the White Tower—would you find people who can cast it?"
"We possess the technology to operate an entire airship. We'll use that."
"…That technology?"
"Yes."
Oscar drew a picture in the air with his mana.
The first thing he sketched was a great ship.
"An airship can carry enormous quantities of cargo. But that only adds a new category—trade—to the delivery business. It won't do much for the deliveries currently moving through the city itself."
"I suppose not. Airships are simply too large."
"Which is why now is the time to build a micro-scale airship. Collecting data along the way would be a nice bonus."
Beside the ship he had drawn, Oscar sketched a two-wheeled vehicle.
"Have you ever heard of a 'motorbike'?"
"Of course. One of the vehicles developed by the Yellow Tower—a one- or two-seater, unlike an automobile. But…"
He blinked.
"Isn't that the venture the Yellow Tower abandoned and withdrew from, because of battery capacity limits?"
"Correct. A large automobile can carry a massive battery and run for over ten hours, but the motorbike was lucky to manage two or three."
Because of that, most who had pursued motorbike ventures went bankrupt.
With the Yellow Tower's current technology, it was simply impossible to make batteries any smaller or more efficient.
"But we have Ouroboros, don't we?"
"That spell is surely only needed to power an airship's engine—ah!"
Only then grasping what Oscar was saying, the Vice Tower Master burst out in a cry of realization.
"You mean to modify that motorbike into a miniature flying craft!"
"Exactly. Of course, it will be difficult—drastically reducing the weight and reworking it to carry cargo…"
Swoosh. Oscar glanced at Hagore.
"But we have the finest blacksmiths on the continent to make it a reality."
"Mnngh."
Hagore, having grasped at once what work would soon fall to him, let out a groan.
"In short, you want me to take that motorbike thing and rework it so ordinary folk can ride it?"
"That's right. From now on, we'll recruit civilians, run our own training program, and restructure the system so that only graduates of that training are permitted to make deliveries. Naturally, the single most essential feature will be theft prevention. Making sure only qualified people can operate and ride the vehicle—that's what matters most."
"Hm. If the thing's going to be flying through the sky anyway, the wheels are pointless. Strip them off… and the cargo compartment ought to go at the back."
He had pretended reluctance, but the moment actual work was placed in his hands, Hagore threw himself into the problem more fervently than anyone.
He was, after all, a dwarven artisan for whom nothing in the world was more thrilling than building something new.
"I'll need to see this motorbike of yours with my own eyes, but the shape will likely change a fair bit. The way I'm picturing it now, it'll end up looking something like a sled."
"The form doesn't matter—just make it as stylish as you can. Elder Schwein will be sending over a prototype of the mana battery he's developed, so I'd like you to leave space in the design for the new power source."
The Vice Tower Master, who had been listening to the two of them, finally spoke.
"Oscar, hearing all this, one thought occurs to me—won't this method take time as well?"
"Yes. Quite a lot, actually. First we'll have to hire new staff and drill them thoroughly in motorbike operation. And in the process, we'll naturally have to weed out any spies or people of unsound character."
"Then doesn't that make it impossible to quiet the delivery department's grievances after all…?"
"That's fine. Let them strike."
"?"
Oscar dropped the bombshell of a declaration as casually as remarking on the weather.
"In rebuilding the business and the system and relaunching them, I'm budgeting exactly two months."
"Shutting down an entire business for two months—that's practically suicide…"
"Vice Tower Master. Even if we halt the delivery business, there's no one out there to steal it from us."
"…"
After a moment's thought, the Vice Tower Master nodded.
Certainly, this money-losing venture was something everyone already pointed at and called foolish even now.
What else could explain the fact that fifteen years had passed since the business launched, and not a single competitor had appeared?
"Hm. In that case, using this as a chance to remind people of the convenience—and the importance—of delivery services wouldn't be a bad idea."
"It wasn't my intent, but people will be complaining of considerable inconvenience."
There was a saying: the shock of contrast.
When something comfortable and good vanishes suddenly after you've long enjoyed it, the gap hits you all at once.
And it will be all the more so when it's something as taken for granted as delivery.
When that inconvenience reached its peak, the White Tower would come to find them again—this time with a service improved beyond anything they had known before.
"And one more thing. From now on, ordinary civilians will be making the deliveries instead of mages, which means we can deploy a workforce incomparably larger than before. In other words, there's room to expand the business."
"Expand the business? Is there really more ground for delivery to cover?"
At the Vice Tower Master's question, Oscar gave a faint smile.
"Yes. It will cost more than ordinary delivery, but it will be an entirely different service from the kind that takes days at minimum. A premium service—order in real time, and your delivery arrives within the hour at the latest."
Everyone has days like that.
When you can't be bothered to lift a single finger from your room, yet still crave the delicious food sold at a restaurant downtown.
Or when you need to send something to someone urgently, but circumstances make it impossible to go yourself.
"The service we're expanding into—People of the Wind—will be the perfect answer for exactly those people."