Can you hear me, everyone? This is Tenma reporting live from the scene!
The Celia volcano here in Kukuri Village has finally erupted!
The eruption is massive — we've confirmed five or six blasts so far. It's even threatening to swallow the Ricardo Barrier and the Merlin Barrier that were set up.
That's all from the scene — oh! Another eruption! It's heading this way!
Everyone, if I make it out alive, let's meet again!
"Tenma!! Are you even listening?!!"
"Y-yes! I'm listening!"
"Don't lie to me! You've been spacing out this whole time!"
Crap, they saw right through me. Everyone, farewell — ah, no, no, no, I almost tripped again.
"Tenma, why didn't you run away?!"
Here we go again — she was about to start the whole loop over.
That's when — not a barrier, but Dad and Grandpa showed up to rescue him.
"Celia, let it go already. What Tenma did might have been dangerous, but it wasn't wrong."
"That's right. Even if Tenma had fled, there's no guarantee the Dragon Snakes would have retreated deep into the forest. At worst, they could have expanded their range and attacked the villagers who were out hunting, or even the village itself. He prevented that from happening, so isn't that a good thing?"
"...Fine."
She reluctantly calmed her anger, but —
"However, I'm banning you from entering the forest until the shallow areas are confirmed safe! Got it?!"
"Aww..."
"Answer me!"
"Yes, ma'am! I understand, Mom! I won't enter the forest until the safety check is complete, ma'am!"
"Very well!"
The quip was completely ignored.
"In any case, we should check early on whether there are any dangerous Monsters around the village and in the shallow parts of the forest."
"That goes without saying, but we should also send word to Margrave Haust—it'll come in handy if anything happens."
Ricardo and Merlin said this, then left the house to make preparations.
The next day, Tenma went with his father, grandfather, and Uncle Mark to butcher the two wolves and six Dragon Snakes that had been stored in the Dimension Bag.
The wolves' magic cores, fur, fangs, and claws were skinned off, and the rest was cremated and buried deep underground, with a grave built on top. The wolves' fur was a brilliant gold and silver. Incidentally, Shiromaru had thought it was white, but when washed with hot water, it turned out to be more of a silvery-white color.
As for the Dragon Snakes, all six were around four to five meters long, but their hides came off more easily than expected, and the materials only needed to be separated into magic cores, hides, fangs, skulls, livers, and meat without any special processing, so it was finished faster than with the wolves.
The wolf materials were stored without being sold in Tenma's Magic Bag (advanced grade, capable of holding up to about 1,000 kg). Of the Dragon Snakes' magic cores and 1,200 kg of meat (each weighed about 400 kg total, with roughly 200 kg of edible portions), 400 kg was put in the bag for preservation, 400 kg was shared among the villagers, and the remaining meat was sold along with the hides from three of them and the other materials to the merchant caravan expected to arrive soon. The total sale price came to 30
00,000 G
.
The Dragon Snake meat was moderately fatty and had a light, delicious flavor.
The currency unit in this world is
G
In Japanese yen, 1 G is roughly equal to 10 yen.
Coins come in copper, silver, gold, and platinum. There are two types each for copper, silver, and gold—regular and large—plus one type of platinum, making a total of seven types of coins. The regular coins are simply called copper coins, silver coins, and gold coins. From lowest to highest, the denominations are 1 G, 10 G, and 100 G, while the platinum coin is worth 1,000,000 G.
A typical family of four in a central city can live on about three to four gold coins (30,000–40,000 G) per month on average, while in a rural village, they can get by on less than one gold coin. In Kukuri Village, living expenses could be covered with about five to six silver coins per month on average. However, this was because nearly all of their food costs were paid for with hunting spoils.
Half a year passed since then. Finally, the safety check was completed, and Tenma was able to enter the forest once again.
During those six months, Tenma had been working on alchemy's "Refining" process and, through Creation Magic, "
he had been focusing on
the practice of "Creation Magic."
As a result, he successfully learned the methods for "Weapon" refining and "Golem" refining.
Weapon refining involved "using materials found in the surrounding area to create the weapon you imagine," requiring precise visualization — if that imagery was sloppy, the resulting weapon would have problems with both performance and durability.
Well, since he originally planned to use them as disposable weapons in emergencies anyway, that wasn't really a problem.
Golem refining involved pouring magic power into metal, magic cores, or magic stones and performing a technique to create a core.
By inserting that core into a body crafted through alchemy, a golem that obeyed its creator's commands would come into being.
A core made from metal could only execute simple commands, but one made from magic cores or magic stones could potentially create a pseudo-life form depending on the quality and compatibility — though the difficulty skyrocketed accordingly.
For reference, a magic core was a defining characteristic of Monsters: a mass of magic power found inside their bodies.
The smaller ones were only about two to three centimeters across, but the largest recorded specimen was a full meter, discovered inside the body of an
Ancient Dragon,
according to historical records.
In general, golems with cores made from magic cores or magic stones were more powerful.
Tenma ventured into the forest for the first time in a while.
However, out of consideration for Celia, he intended to do little more than take a walk around the forest's outer edge.
"Go on, fetch it, Shiromaru!"
"Woof!"
Shiromaru dashed after the wooden branch Tenma had tossed.
The pup, who had grown to about fifty centimeters over the past half year, sprinted after the thrown branch, his silvery-white fur gleaming.
Tenma and Slarin both watched the scene. As it happened, Slarin was poking his face — or something like it — out of the basket on Tenma's back.
Tenma had been scanning within a radius of about five kilometers using his exploration ability, when he picked up dozens of responses at the edge of his radar. He quickly called Shiromaru over.
It was getting long, so I've split it up.