Chapter 258 - Episode Five
To Lark, “For the development of the territory!” I finally succeeded in extracting the cost of researching the Great God’s Treasure Book, including artificial spirits, from the territory’s operating fund.
However, I couldn’t say that I was going to research artificial spirits, so I somehow managed to do it on the pretext of developing new magic ores and preparing for the development of magic power wave towers for the magic cellphone Magiphone.
The only problem was that while we were talking, Altamir showed a mysterious interest in the development of the magic wave tower, which was a bit dangerous.
I looked over the list of applications and asked, “Huh, what is this for? Wouldn’t this be better?”, he asked me nearly thirty times.
Somehow I managed to get through, but I think I’d better not use this trick again.
Altamir has a deep knowledge of magic, and even has experience in transforming herself into a spirit body.
She has probably accumulated quite a bit of knowledge about artificial spirits in the process.
Since arriving in the Fage territory, Altamir has been raising her stock in the alchemy division by accusing me of being a sensible person, but she is a witch who was forced into hiding when she tried to make a pet out of Apocalypse, a large magical beast that she was originally ordered to defeat.
It would not be surprising if she had created at least two or three artificial spirits in the past.
If I’m not careful, she might figure out what I’m doing from the application list.
However, it seems that Altamir is also very interested in the magic cellphone Magiphone, She’s been trying to convince Lark, who’s not too keen on joining me, of the usefulness of the magic cellphone Magiphone, she also took the liberty of formulating a concrete plan for the construction of a magic wave tower and proposed it to Lark without my asking.
However, Lark insisted, “I owe Abel a debt of gratitude and I would love to invest in this project, but as I said before, we can’t afford to build a tower that looks like a lump of magic stone in our territory!”.
In the past few weeks, the Fage territory has been on the verge of collapse due to the blockade of the territory by the four great priests of the water god, Marias and Nelgliffe, the division of the territory, and the magic beast disaster monster panic caused by weather abnormalities, but in recent weeks, the territory has been rapidly recovering.
However, it still doesn’t seem to have enough leeway in its pocket.
The situation in our territory and our interactions with other territories have not completely returned to the stage before we were conspired against by the Riveras Kingdom.
Lark, however, has made great progress in this area since it drastically reduced the size of its private army and has been thoroughly promoting the preferential treatment of adventurers and the reconstruction of Adventurer’s Support Center.
Lark has made a profit from trading in the meat and fur of magical beasts taken from adventurers, as well as business targeting those adventurers, but it seems that the rest of the city has nothing to offer.
At best, the Ortem gourd farming seems to provide a stable income since it does not require a lot of capital, although it does not sell for much.
The armor made from Nalgarn’s massive head was sold a little bit at a time, with limited distribution, because it was expected to crash if sold in large quantities, but a quarter of it has already been sold to outside territories.
Even though it’s a quarter, don’t underestimate it.
Originally, there were nearly fifty giant Nalgarn’s heads.
Even now, the value of armor and the magical beast materials used to make it have already plummeted to almost half of what they were in the Fare territory.
Since the armor is made from Nalgarn scales, which are much stronger than those of other magical beasts, is being mass-produced at a low price, it is only natural that sales of other armor would be sluggish.
It’s a good idea to keep selling them as long as you can make a profit, but Lark is still getting a lot of grief from the other nobles over Nalgarn’s armor problem, and they’re limiting the amount they’re selling.
It seems that if we let them go out, they might say, “How many Nalgarn have appeared in your territory?”.
It’s not a good idea to make too much money off of it, since it was originally collected from Nalgarn, which was created by the Riveras Kingdom through forbidden magic.
As long as there is a clear opponent who has suffered a disadvantage, showing weakness will surely result in the people around you hitting you harder than necessary.
After the conversation with Lark was over, Altamir said in a whisper, “Assets …… assets, huh …… I could have invested from my personal assets, but unfortunately the accident wiped them all out ……”.
I was hoping that the fact that the collector and I blew up the tower would have been swept under the rug as well as the tower, but it seems that it is still firmly rooted in her mind.
Altamir looked back at the proposal that Lark had tearfully turned over to him with regret, and muttered, “I wonder if I should sell the phantom copper Oreikarukosu transmuting method ……”.
…… If you’re willing to invest in the construction of a magic wave tower, I’d be grateful, of course, but you shouldn’t sell your technique so casually.
Despite my busy schedule, I was able to make preparations for my departure within a few days of my decision to explore the eastern-most region of the Dinrat Kingdom, as indicated in the Great God’s Treasure Book.
As before, I asked Elia to be the carriage driver.
I was seen off by Lark, his private army, some of the residents, Altamir, and the somewhat relieved faces of the alchemists, and set off for the eastern-most land.
I had been checking behind me from time to time for a while after my departure, but the first ones to sweep away were the Alchemists who were supposed to be my subordinates.
“Abel, what’s wrong? You keep looking behind you like that.”
“…… Hey, am I by any chance not popular?”
I think that even Icarus, the former head of the Alchemy Division, was adored by some of his subordinates.
Even when he was expelled from the Fage territory, there were a few members who followed Icarus.
In fact, when I told the Alchemy Division that I would not be returning to the territory for a while to explore, I said, “I want to get the perspective of another sorcerer …… I wonder if anyone will ask me to come along. I was really hoping that there would be too many of them”, but they were all just high-fiving each other and talking about how happy they were, and surprisingly not in that direction.
As you can imagine, I couldn’t take it any longer, so I held back my tears and left silently, crying out to Mea, “I’m sorry, I thought Commander Abel had a pretty bold image, and I didn’t think he was that bad …… Well, I was only half-joking, but ……” he apologized later, rather seriously, but unfortunately, not a single member of the group still wanted to follow me.
“U-um …… Mea! Mea will always follow you, Abel!”
“Thank you. But that’s not what I want to hear right now ……”