46 Episode 45 Undergakings and Medicinal Herbs

Well, good luck with that.

"Yes, sir.

I told Mercia and Catherine what I was going to do, gave them the money, and left Photoren.

There are three basic policies.

The first is that Kaede Catrine's Armory will become a part of Kaede Trading Company.

Mercia told me that Catrine's skills are quite good, or perhaps even the best in all of Photoren, so I decided that it would be a shame to let her run the store.

Secondly, even if I'm not around, the shop should be in the black, or even in the red, but only a small amount, so that even if we have enough money, we won't expand too much.

For this reason, even if you have enough money, do not expand the scale of your business too much.

Of course, other stores are also competing seriously to earn money, and there is no way they can easily beat other stores that have already secured their base.

That's where I come in. 　If I can purchase even a small portion of the products at a much lower price than other stores, I can make a whole lot of money, which is a huge advantage.

Of course, selling the items I brought in at a lower price doesn't mean that the profit margin of other products will increase, but it does reduce the fixed cost of having a store.

Besides, if I process and sell the goods I brought in at Kaede Trading Company, I can also gain an advantage there.

For example, when I make dried meat, it usually goes through adventurers, guild, dried meat processor, and grocery store twice before it gets to the grocery store, but in my case, it goes through adventurers, Desibatore grocery store, and me = merchant.

On top of that, the purchase price at Desibatore is about 1/10th of that at Photoren, so there's no way I won't have an advantage.

Incidentally, meat from Desibatore is inedible as it is, but if it is dried, the poisonous substance is removed and the meat becomes safe.

Meat from Photoren is also dried because it may cause the same kind of symptoms as those of Desibatore, though not as severe.

It is said that the meat with the symptoms deteriorates very slowly until the poisonous substance is removed, so it can be identified.

Even so, it is said that if the environment is not prepared for drying, the meat will rot before the poison is removed.

It's just that they are not transported in Desibatore because it's not worth the trouble of transporting them or processing them in Desibatore, but the meat of demons from Desibatore is rather good quality, and many of them are relatively expensive here.

If it could be easily transported, it would be a treasure trove.

However, if you expand the scale of your business too easily, you may be diluting its merits.

You should take a look at the situation and decide whether to increase the size little by little.

Lastly, the type of business.

For now, it will be food and possibly materials for demons.

Of course, meat will need to be processed into dried meat before it can be sold, and we will need the equipment and manpower to do this.

This is, of course, for the purpose of making the most of my advantage.

I don't see the point of having a furniture shop if I'm selling demon materials and meat from Desibatore.

Besides, a grocery store can even process the food you bring and take it to Desibatore.

Needless to say, demon materials will be sold to the surrounding blacksmiths and armor makers rather than retail.

This does not require any processing equipment, so there is no cost involved.

I'll just sell it when I get there, and I don't need it.

So, this is how we are going to do it for the time being.

I've given Mercia 40 million yen, and I've left it to them to secure all the personnel and equipment.

I'll give him some basic policies and ideas, but I doubt he'll have any say in the actual management.

I'm an amateur, and it's a pain in the ass.

I decided to buy about 10kg of bread and go back to Desibatore.

Bread is light but bulky, and it is not so easy to find in Desibatore.

If you're going to stockpile it, it's better to bring it to Desibatore to trade with demons.

On the way back, you will fly at almost the speed of sound, but unlike on the way there, you will stay slightly below the speed of sound.

It was interesting to see the scenery physically blow up, so I continued to do it, but I felt it was bad for my ears.

It's not good for the environment either.

We arrived at Desibatore without any problems.

It was already late in the evening. 　It was a good idea to go to Fautren while we still had a day to spare.

I stopped by the grocery store to ask about the progress of the demon collection.

How's the demon collection going?

"I've collected quite a bit. At the price of Photoren, I think I've got about a million teru worth.

Is that a lot?

I'll do the math.

A simple calculation shows that there are about 3333 kilograms of dried meat, which is quite a lot of meat alone.

If each cow weighs 600 kilograms, that's more than enough for five cows.

Is it mainly for food?　Or is it mainly demon materials?

Most of it is food. The parts that can be used as weapons are usually profitable to bring back, and the armor that can be used to make equipment here is also profitable to bring back, so there's not much left.

There's not much left, that's why they stay.

Where is it?

It's piled up there. 　Inedible monsters don't get damaged easily.

The shopkeeper points outside the store.

The shopkeeper pointed outside the shop. When I looked over, I saw a pile of demons, not so much ...... high, but piled up.

One-tenth of the price of a Photoren, so 100,000 in all, right?

Yeah, I guess I owe you 900,000 for the Giant Spider Club.

Yeah. 　By the way, I bought about 10 kilograms of bread from Phothren, would you like to buy some?

That's why I bought it.

I have a set meal for myself.

There is no need to eat bread that is not particularly good.

How about one kilo for 3000 Tel?　Ten kilos will go moldy before we sell out.

You have mold? I've never seen it before.

Must be the overly convenient item box.

Well, let's look on the bright side, there's always the possibility of getting penicillin.

I don't know if recovery magic is a substitute for antibiotics.

Yeah, please add that to the 900,000.

Okay.

I give him the bread, put the demon in the item box, and leave the store.

I have nothing to do, so I go back to the inn, have dinner, and go to bed. 　It's a healthy life.

It may be too healthy, but we'll be fighting and logging tomorrow anyway.

There's no need to do it at night, when visibility is poor. 　There is no need to do it at night when visibility is poor.

The next day, I woke up at the usual time.

There is nothing to indicate the time, but I feel that my sense of time has become more accurate.

The logging is supposed to start at noon, so I'll go to the guild before noon and have a look around.

I haven't seen much of the ground since I just randomly flew into the air and cut down trees while flying at high speed last time.

I didn't even see any demons that could harm me, so I just slashed them and rolled them in.

At any rate, I observed from the sky, at a rather high altitude.

It's important to get the whole picture.

The long and thin land is divided into forest and grassland by the Desibatore.

There is a part where there are no trees, like a summer ski resort, but I must have cut them down.

I was going to go down to the ground and observe, but when I got down to the ground, I was already surrounded by demons.

Two in front, one behind, and two on each side.

They look like a reddish Gargon, though they're a size larger than Gargon.

It's a bit bigger than Gargon, but weighs ...... no less than 500 kilos, which would be good for making dried meat.

He holds up his magic sword. 　Since it's going to be made into meat, it's better to cut it with a sharp sword than to crush it with magic.

As I took a step toward the demon in front of me, the demon behind me lunged at me.

I turn around and cut it with my sword.

As he turned around, he felt the demon behind him coming at him with his tentacles.

A little later, on both sides, a plan to make it impossible to react in time.

Nice coordination. Impressive.

--But it's pointless.

I slice the demon in front of me sideways, then spin around and slice three of them with the same momentum.

Of course, the demons on the wrong side will pass right through, but there's no way a demon that's not a boss can penetrate magical armor.

You end up slicing through the bounced monsters with your magic sword.

No matter how great the coordination of a tank with empty hands, it can't do a single scratch.

In fact, in the worst case scenario, you'll be blown away by the explosive reactive armor.

So there you have it.

Stow them in the item box while they're still fresh, and continue your reconnaissance.

Trees are spaced about three meters apart, which seems to be a lot more than in Japanese forests.

However, the undergrowth is quite low, so visibility is not that bad.

The undergrowth is ...... zunana grass.

I hadn't noticed it before, but it was all over the ground.

When I checked it, I found it was still zinnana grass.

And there are no immature ones.

This is scary.

Is it just a coincidence that this is a cluster of plants?　But other places also have low undergrowth, so it's not surprising that it's the same as here.

I'm sure of it because I checked it when I was cutting down the trees.

This could be very lucrative.

Let's say you can cut 3 trees per second at 30 ter per tree.

That's 3,600 trees in an hour, or 324,000 tels.

That's not so great.

It's not even worth it while fighting demons.

It might be even more unprofitable if you consider the time it takes to carry them to the photoren for processing.

I don't know how much it will be reduced to dried meat, but it won't be less than 100,000 ter.

It shouldn't take much time, about three times that.

And an hour.

Yeah, subtle.

But that's assuming three plants per second.

It would take less than a second to cut three zunana grasses with a lawnmower.

When you are cutting a tree, you can cut all the weeds by just cutting close to the ground.

The problem is how to collect them.

The best way is to use air, like a vacuum cleaner, to collect things that aren't too heavy, but I haven't used any wind magic that uses wind.

I'll try it for now.

Imagine cutting the root of the zunana grass with a magic sword and pulling it with magic.

Oh, it's being pulled well.

But it doesn't feel like wind, it feels like it's being pulled by a string.

The speed is about 30 km/h?　Not bad.

Looking at its status, it doesn't have any additional magic skills, so it must fall into one of the categories it has.

It may be the range of Wind Magic 5, which was added when he flew at the speed of sound.

As I was cutting and pulling the surrounding zunana grass, I found out that this magic pulls objects in a straight line.

It's a familiar behavior.

Oh, so that's what I was trying before I made the tactile plate.

Then I thought that I could make a plate like the tactile plate, and tried it, and succeeded.

The surrounding zunana plants are pulled together.

The grass behind the tree is not pulled, so there is a high possibility that it cannot be pulled through the wall.

You can't see the magic consumption because the magic recovery is too fast, but it's not much when you try to pull them while shooting a spear with your spare magic.

It's about one per second or less.

However, if you do it while cutting down a tree, you will be flying at over 40km/h.

I thought it was a little slow, so I increased the magic consumption, and the speed went up to about 50 km/h.

The magic power consumption is about 2.5 per second, which is more than enough magic power to be used while flying at 40 km/h.

Come to think of it, the magic sword must be eating up magic power too, but I don't feel like my magic power is decreasing even though I'm holding it.

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that magic swords are said to use magic power regardless of the owner's will.

Well, it took me a surprisingly long time to study magic.

It's a wonder I haven't encountered any demons other than the first one until now.

It's almost noon, let's go logging.

Gale lumberjacks, let's move out.